Preparing for Success in 2021 with Dr. Alex Vidan

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Catch Up with ChiroTouch. I'm your host, Dr. Brian Blask, and my guest today is Dr. Alex Vidan of the Vidan Family Chiropractic.

I'm very excited to talk to him about preparing for a new year, not only because A, he's a phenomenal chiropractor, an interesting guy, but B, because I think we're all pretty happy to be putting 2020 in the rearview mirror. Now, Dr. Vidan, earlier this year, we came together on a webinar about coping with the stress that comes with battling a pandemic. I'm sure in your office, your staff, everything, you've learned some things over the past six months about operating in these challenging times.

So I'm very happy to have you with us today.

Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

Can you tell our listeners a little bit more about you, your practice, kind of where you are?

Sure, yeah, we're a wellness-based practice. We have a lot of patients that come in to us for conditions, issues, pain, all that kind of thing, and then show them what it is that chiropractic can do to help them in a wellness lifestyle and show them that. And so meet them where they are, and then show them what they can have, and that's kind of our whole goal within that.

I got into chiropractic because I had a sports injury, I had a concussion. From that point forward, I would have debilitating migraines and headaches. I would have usually about five to six headaches a week, usually one to two debilitating migraines a month.

And somebody turned me on to chiropractic. I was pre-med, working at the hospital, all that stuff, and finally went in to go see a chiropractor. And from that point forward, I knew, all right, I've got to be a chiropractor because this just totally changed my whole life.

And now in the past, what, going on 21 years, I've had seven headaches and one migraine. And that was like a typical week for me. So I will take it all day long.

And because of the fact that that impacted my life so greatly, I wanted to do the same for other people and get to help them. And I found that chiropractic was the way to work for me. So we get to help a lot of people in a lot of different ways.

Everything from moms and babies. I was just adjusting a mom that came by the office this morning. She just delivered their newborn and brought in.

This is her second newborn to bring to us. And we've been taking care of them. And we've got that.

So we take care of a lot of moms and families and kids, as well as CEOs, CFOs, pro athletes, the whole thing. So it's a lot of fun.

Yeah, that's phenomenal. What a great family style practice that you can just affect and help so many people, where you guys are in your community. Congratulations on building such a phenomenal business.

And so for many chiropractors, I mean, speaking on the business side of things there, kind of building that. You think about 2020, kind of what we've gone through. It was about survival for a lot of, I mean, we're small businesses for the most part.

And so from a business and operational standpoint, what do you think, how do you think that we can all kind of prepare for a better year next year?

I love this question. And I would say that one of the big things is, if it's been about surviving for us in 2020, then we have to think about what have we been doing to actually prepare, and what have we been doing to survive in 2020? And so when I look at that, I think that most of us, when we really truly evaluate what it is that we're doing, and we really step back and step away, we know that there's things right now that we could be doing in our practice that would impact our practice in a positive way.

As in, it would impact our practice if I started doing this, if I started taking this action now, the little things that we know that will make the big difference. We all know those things that we should be doing. I should be making sure that my day one, my day two process is solid.

I should be making sure that I'm following up with patients that aren't on track. I should be making sure that I'm connecting with them whenever they miss their appointment and making sure I talk to them about the importance of that. I should be making like all those things you should be doing, start doing now to be ready for 2021.

So, it's not just about, oh, I'm surviving this. I'm actually going to move forward and grow. A lot of times we think, well, I need to know the entire process.

I need to do every single step of everything that I've got to do. That's not the way this really works. It's just start taking steps in the positive direction and just start taking some action and it's going to impact your practice.

It's going to impact your life. It's going to impact your community. Those are the things that we need to start doing.

Do those things. Start with the things you already know that you should be doing. Start there and then move forward.

Yeah. Then give yourself that ability to pivot when needed. We've all had to pivot in obviously in the COVID time here throughout 2020.

What you're saying there is have a plan, know what you need to do, have those systems in place because we've all, even if you don't have it and you want to look back and say, okay, what just worked in the last six months for my practice or didn't work, now is the time to prepare for 2021. I'm on the sales side of ChiroTouch here, and I've been doing it for about six years and now is a very busy time for us because everybody wants to be ready for 2021. They look at the evaluate and they say, okay, I need a new system.

I need new practice management, I need better documentation, so we are very busy from sales because everybody wants to do this. But even if you like somebody like you who was already established, a lot of our listeners now are ChiroTouch users, so they're already established with ChiroTouch. We just want to make sure that you can be more efficient in 2021.

Do you guys go through anything internally as staff? Do you guys meet? Do you go through anything with team members to get ready and pivot here for 2021?

Yeah. Well, here, let me start with just one thing. We know that right now that 2020 has been, because I love everything that you said and I'm on target with that too, that we know that 2020 has been an overwhelming amount of, like you talked about in the beginning, stress, right?

It's been an overwhelming kind of just like this doom and gloom negative kind of an outlook and just these glimpses of positivity. One of the things that we do every single week, every week that we do is, and we've been doing this for years, but we found that right now is like the key time to be doing this because of everything going on in 2020, is every single week, everyone on the team brings a win to a meeting. We literally do a meeting where we just focus on what's your win?

What's your win for the week? What's the one thing that you're like, man, we impacted that person's life? Or, you know what, I got to spend more time with my wife and kids this weekend than I have in a long time, and we did this and that really filled me up and made me more ready to come out here and serve.

But whatever the win was, the more we can focus on those wins, the better off we can be. We need to learn from the losses. Like you said, look at the past six months, what's been working, what hasn't been working.

If this hasn't been working, I need to modify, tweak, do those things, change my system that I'm using, and so those things. But then also, what are the wins? Far too often, we focus only on the losses, and we never give ourselves credit for the wins.

Or we take the little wins and we try to magnify them out. Let's just look at it in a balanced way and really look at it in an effective way and say, let's learn from those losses. Let's look at those wins and say, how do we now focus on the wins so that it keeps it in a positive headspace?

Not to where we're denying what's really going on. Not to where we're like shooing the things that aren't going to really impact or change our practice by looking at the negatives. But we've got to look at that, but we also need to really focus on the wins more now than ever.

I totally agree with that. And it comes down to that whole mindset, right? Your outlook on life and business and practice.

You are, as a chiropractor, a business owner, you use your hands to help the body heal itself. Like you have to bring that positivity, and people can see it, they can sense it, right? So when you can bring that positivity to the practice, you know, and especially meeting with your team, because there's a lot going on in the world.

So when you can bring that kind of positive atmosphere and like you said, the wins, this is what we did that was amazing today or this week. I think it breeds into your business and into your practice and still does help you grow.

Yeah, no doubt.

And so what do you guys do when it comes to educating patients? Because right now, I feel like the outlook for the pandemic and the virus and what's going on is we still need to be educating our patients, right? We still need to be able to tell them what's going on with their immune system and what's going on with the virus.

What do you guys continue to do there from the education standpoint?

We do what we've been doing. Just we're just pouring gasoline on it now is what we're doing. And so we're doing everything from table talk to, so when they're right there on the table, when we're adjusting them, we're talking to them about the things.

I mean, I must have had at least half a dozen conversations just this morning already about the immune system, stress on the immune system, bodies function, all those things where it's just on stress, where people are saying, I'm just stressed. I'm just dealing with a lot more stress right now. And we are all dealing with more stress.

Our baseline level of stress has just gone up. And we all know that whenever stress is high, immune function goes low. So we've got to make sure that we're talking to our patients about that.

So Table Talk has been huge. We're making sure that we're sending out emails and things like that to let them know about that. Not bombarding them, but just making sure that we're keeping them up to date about what's going on.

We're making sure that we're doing things online, like on our Facebook, on all our social media platforms, all that kind of a thing. We're doing that as well to our educating them and talk to them about that stuff. Not stuff that's going to serve us, stuff that's going to serve them.

And that's the big thing. When we're educating our patients, a lot of times people turn it into, I'm going to hammer them and bombard them with this information that I believe is going to change their life. Well, great, that's good, but they might not be ready to hear all the miracles about chiropractic that's out there.

Nothing wrong with that, right? But we need to meet them where they are and then show them along what it is that they can have. If we meet them where they are and then show them like, hey, look, I understand this is why you're here, but let me show you some of this else, too, and educate them and just keep doing that through everything from talking to them face to face, making sure that we're on social media, we're making sure that we're connecting with them.

All of our team is educated on those things, too, so if people ask questions, they're all educated on what's going on as well. It's a team approach and we know that the more that we have the team on board, everyone then understands what's going on, so that they can all be educated as well.

Yeah, that's phenomenal. Just getting that message out there, continuing to communicate, like you said, all channels, table talk, social, everything. It's so important.

How about you? I mean, how about you, for our doctors out there that are listening, personal, professional? I mean, there are things that you look at to get in order for 2021, anything you work on specifically?

Yeah. So whenever I'm evaluating myself, I mean, I like to read and I like to listen. I'm a big fan of Audible because I can do two things at once.

I can work out and I can listen to a book. And so I do that like crazy. I just listen to books.

I devour them and I don't just listen to them, actually listen to them and then take notes on stuff that I need to do and do my action steps so that I'm prepared for my goals for 2021. So I'm prepared for the things that are going to be coming and I'm taking the action steps along the way with that. So the big things for me are is I want to read, I want to make sure that I actually implement.

I'm not just a consumer of information that I'm actually applying the information so that I'm taking action on that and making those things my habits. The more that I can make it the habit, the more I can make the habit of Tabletalk, the more I can make the habit of creating videos, the more I can make the habit of those things because I have it in my schedule, then it's set in my schedule and I live and dive on my schedule. I can pivot like we talked about before, I can modify, but I'm going to make sure it gets in.

I'm just substituting one thing for another and moving things, but it's going to happen that day. So those are the things I do. It's constant, constant, constant where I'm looking at those things to figure out like, all right, how am I going to pour into myself and then keep growing from that?

Yeah, that's phenomenal. And I like one thing you said there was, it was more about goals than it is resolutions. Right now we hear the term New Year's resolutions.

I'm not a huge fan personally of the resolution word. I prefer to use goals. You know what I mean?

To make sure that, okay, I have a goal in mind of what I want to do, but write it down. We all know the stats on writing down goals and how it's more effective if you write them down. So write down your goals, right?

And then hold yourself accountable, right? If you need a partner, right? If you need somebody that says, hey, hold me accountable for this, or like a mastermind, or if you're part of a coaching group, make those lists.

And then, you know, what do you recommend there? I mean, when it comes to accountability.

Yeah, so I mean, when it comes to accountability, I look at it as two different things. Yes, you can have other people to help you stay accountable, no doubt about it. I like to keep myself accountable with that too.

So one of the things that I do is, is every day I write down, these are my big goals that I'm going to have. And then these are what are my three to five action steps that I'm going to do in order to what we call win the day. And I didn't come up with this.

I got this from two guys named Ben Newman and Anthony Frisella. Those two guys, I listen to them, I follow them, and they talk about this. And so their whole thing is, is I look at it this way.

Every single day, I'm writing down what my goals are. I write down my goals, and then I want to know, how am I going to take action today to move towards those goals? So if it's educate more new patients, what am I going to do today that's going to educate more new patients?

So am I going to create a video? Great. I created a video.

Now I have to make sure I create it, I post it, I edit it, whatever I'm going to do to that video, or I'm just going to put it out raw, whatever it is. Like those things so that every single day when I get done and I look at my three to five things that I should have done for that day to reach my goals, what I do is I put a win column and a loss column. And every day I might not have a W next to every single one of those tasks.

But when I get to the end of the day, if I've got more wins than losses, that's a win, right? Like we say all the time, well, we highly underestimate what we can accomplish in a year. And it's because we don't take those daily action steps, those little tiny micro action steps that win to make it to where the macro, the big win is that we're totally different practice or person or reaching our goals, whatever it is in a year from now.

So that next year when we're talking about this, it's not a whole new repetition of, yep, you know what, I need to get back to the gym again. I need to do that. Well, what did you do today to do that?

Like what action steps did you take? And when you can write it down every day, like you said, like writing down those goals, it has an impact. Write those down every day, that way you're focused on what those are.

I write them out every single morning and then every single day I say, these are the five things or the three things that I have to get done today. And I'm realistic with myself as to how many things I'm gonna get done that particular day based on the amount of time that I have. I'm not writing out an entire list of stuff when I know I've got a compressed day, I'm jamming, I'm rocking.

All right, I'm just gonna get these three things done, but I'm gonna get them done.

And that works well too because as humans, I think we're oriented to be list-oriented. So if you can list it out like that, and then have those goals, actionable steps, take the little bites, if you will, with those daily actions, it does, it builds into a huge goal that you've set by right now, preparing for 2021 and having the actionable steps to actually make that happen, because it's not gonna happen overnight. It's not gonna happen in January.

It's gonna happen every single day. That's gonna have it out for all 2021. So I think those are phenomenal tips.

I think you have brought a ton of value here to people just planning for 2021 and kind of getting that message out there about what we need to do. Anything, any final thoughts, any parting words of wisdom for our audience, things that you might be doing or you've heard out there on the street about what we can do for 2021 to be more successful?

I'll say two things. Number one is at this time giving ourselves grace on things and realistic, like giving ourselves grace on some things and giving ourselves forgiveness on some things is going to be a good thing, meaning that we put a lot of pressure on ourselves for a lot of different things to make a lot of different things happen. And if that hasn't happened, you know the action steps to take.

Give yourself grace on what's happened before. Don't beat yourself up on that and then start saying, okay, this is what I'm going to do to make changes on that. And then the second thing that I would say is just as far as your practice goes, your patients go, your team goes, like be there for them, support them, show them, you know, don't tell them, like show them what it is that this is about so that you can actually be there for them in a way that you're leading and you're taking charge within that too.

The more that you can do that, the more that you can care and care in a way that if this was my own sister, brother, mom, dad, grandma, whatever it is, how would I talk to them too? Like how would I show them that I care? How would I show them that I'm there for them too, to support them within that too?

Because I'm here for my community. Those kind of things would be the big things that I would say.

It resonates with me, honestly. You say those types of things and you're right. I'm gonna take that to heart and use what I've learned, honestly, from you today to be a better person in 2021.

So thanks again, Doc. You've done phenomenal work already in your career. I wish you the best in 2021.

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

And thank you to our listeners for tuning in to Catch Up with ChiroTouch. We do have to wrap this up. If you wanna find more episodes of our podcast called Catch Up with ChiroTouch, you can find them on Spotify, on iTunes, or go to chirotouch.com/podcast.

Again, that's chirotouch.com/podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Brian Blask. I wish everyone listening a healthy and prosperous 2021.

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