The Four Seasons of the Chiropractic Career

Welcome to this edition of Catch up with ChiroTouch. Thank you for tuning in. This is Dr. Ronnie Simms, and I'm your host today.

ChiroTouch, the leading chiropractic practice management software, offers Catch up with ChiroTouch as part of its commitment to the advancement of the chiropractic profession. In this ongoing series, we're going to feature a great lineup of engaging speakers and friends of ChiroTouch, who will inspire your personal and professional growth. Our world needs chiropractors to be at their best now more than ever.

So thanks for coming along on this learning journey with me. Today, I'm really happy to be joined by my esteemed guest, close personal friend and my personal mentor, Dr. Stephen Franson. How are you doing, Doc?

Near perfect, as Dr. Sid used to say, roaming the campus at Life University back in 1993. We're near perfect, Ron. Thanks so much for having me.

Dr. Stephen, I'm really excited to be exploring today's topic with you on the Four Seasons of the Chiropractic Career, Launch, Build, Scale, and Exit. Hey, let's dive right in. If you haven't had a chance to meet this remarkable human being, he is one of our all-time greats in chiropractic.

I was so grateful to meet this guy over a decade ago at a core meeting in Sacramento, and just from the start, fell in love with this guy who's like a brother from another mother, and I'm just so thankful for you. Let's get to know you a little bit, Doc. First of all, we all had that point in our life where we said, I want to be a chiropractor.

Where was that for you?

That's a great question, and I remember distinctly when it happened. Actually, my dad dragged me to go see his chiropractor, this awesome guy, Dr. Tom Michelle. If you're listening, Dr. Tom, thanks so much, just inspired me.

It was great to watch this man work, and to be honest with you, just meeting an adult male at that point in my life, from a teenage kid trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life, I knew I wanted to be in health care, I had been just obsessive with studying things for performance, and health, and wellness. It was just something that I had always been intrigued by, and I knew I was going to go in that direction, but I really had no idea what chiropractic was. So my dad brought me to see his chiropractor after I'd actually injured my shoulder playing rugby in college.

I was at the University of Vermont, and I wanted to study sports medicine. I thought like everybody does at that point in their life, oh, I want to be an orthopedic surgeon. I want to go into sports medicine.

That's why I found myself there. Then next thing you know, as an athlete, I get injured, and I went through all the PT. All they had for me was drugs, and then eventually surgery.

I missed the rest of the season, and I started to lose muscle, and I couldn't play my sport anymore. I was just losing my identity. Then in desperation, I agreed to go and see this chiropractor that my dad was seeing when I went home for vacation.

Man, you know what? This guy put up with me long enough to tell me the story. He won my trust.

I started to listen to him, and I was just so amazed and impressed because I was actually getting great results straight away, and I was getting my shoulder back, which for me at that time meant I was getting my life back. So he won my trust, and as I worked with this guy and listened to this guy and really just observed this guy, it was very unique to see somebody who was so excited and passionate about what they did for a living, right? So I'm noticing this guy, he looked healthy, he was fit, he was a big tennis player, and he just loved his life.

He loved his work, and that just inspired me. And I just saw it as like, man, what a unique thing for a young man to see, and it really made an impression upon me. And as I learned more and more about the chiropractic story, and he told me the truth about how the body really works and how the body really heals.

And I was in, man, I never looked back after that. So Dr. Tom, you're awesome. Thanks so much for the inspiration.

And the inspiration came from you just being you and living out your purpose.

That's amazing. So I think at that point, you just randomly picked life, or how'd that work?

No, I was going to the University of Vermont at the time, UVM, and it was freezing cold up there. I'm from Boston. And, you know, it was like Iowa, Atlanta, you know, I actually had asked for reasons.

I was hoping I was going to play rugby down in Atlanta. And little did I know how extraordinary their rugby team was. I just I went down there and I'm like, yeah, no, I'm not going to play with these guys.

This is like world class rugby down there. So it was enough to get me to Atlanta. And, you know, I the more I explored of the school and looking into the school, I recognize that there was something unique.

And once again, it was the passion. People were passionate about chiropractic. And I've always been drawn to that.

I think all humans are how people were so receptive and they were generous with their time. And they wanted to talk to me about how awesome the profession was. Right.

And the school is a great place to get a great start. Right. At Life University.

So and to this day, you know, I'm a big supporter of Life University. And I think we all need to be just real supporters of subluxation based education. Right.

So I just felt the warm embrace of a passionate group of people. And I said, yep, this is the place for me. And, you know, God's hand was on it because in retrospect, now that I've done so much work in chiropractic for the last 26 years, that was exactly where I was supposed to be.

And it was exactly the place to get a great start.

Wow. Hey, beyond all of what you just said, which is amazing, something even more amazing happened to you at Life, right out of the gates, if I remember correctly. Tell us about that.

Oh, yeah, I married up. Is that what you mean? I can remember, yeah, you're referring to meeting my wife at the time, my future wife, Dr. Camilla, who was Camilla Muir at the time.

She came over to Life as an exchange student from Sweden. And I remember walking into registration and, you know, like the old expression, you know, it was love at first sight. It wasn't the first time I had ever said that in my life, but it was certainly the last time.

We had a party every year for the, or every quarter for the new incoming students. It was a big bash. And that was really our first real conversation.

And we've been together since that conversation 28 years ago.

I love that. I love that beautiful story. Hey, so tell me, you know, you kind of transitioned into these intern days.

When did you begin to kind of craft your dream practice in your mind? How did that work?

We were so broke when we were students. We, you know, we had no money. So, you know, date night would be, all right, let's, let's, let's get a really terrible bottle of wine and we'll sit around and we'll start vision casting what we want our practice to be like.

And, you know, we spent a lot of time driving to other practices around, you know, all around the country. She came over from Sweden in high school as an exchange student and was, you know, blessed to stay with a chiropractic family. And turns out this family was, this guy was a legend, a Gonstead doctor out of Fayetteville, Arkansas, Lynne Burr.

And Dr. Burr just inspired her to become a chiropractor. And specifically in his world, there's only one kind of chiropractor. It's a Gonstead chiropractor.

So she was a dyed in the wool gondroid before she even got to school. And of course, you know, I told her, you know, the first night I met her in that first conversation, that she asked me if I, if I was into Gonstead. And I was like, I love Gonstead.

You know, and she said, are you going to Gonstead Club? I'm like, every night. And she's like, it's only Wednesdays.

And I'm like, yeah, well, you're just going to the official meetings. You know, so I, I knew that we wanted to do Gonstead work. We fell in love with the systems approach to taking care of patients.

So we used to drive around the country and whoever was nice enough to let us follow them around all day long and sleep on their couch at night. So, I mean, I've seen everybody, everybody that, anybody that ever worked with Gonstead, I think I have slept on their couch and followed around the clinic. So, we had a great idea of how we wanted to take care of people.

Not necessarily how we wanted to run our practice. I have, I have, I would say I have a very strong business mind. So, I knew how I wanted to run my business.

And I wanted to create the business that was going to be representative of the vision that I had for bringing this type of work to our community. So, just built an amazing practice, the original Remarkable Practice in Boston. And that's where we brought the, you know, sort of the DNA, the guts of that environment, it was the clinical care that we delivered based on the art, science and philosophy of chiropractic.

And we wrapped it all in some great business acumen and had the original Remarkable Practice.

Yeah, and what I love about your story too is how you began to look beyond the walls of Franson Family Chiropractic. And you thought that, you know, hey, I think I could have a greater impact on this profession by inspiring other chiropractors to reach their potential. So, tell us just briefly, because we want to get into the meat of this, but tell me briefly about that segue from Franson Family Chiropractic to The Remarkable Practice Coaching business.

We were in Boston for about 22 years, almost 23 years, I guess. And during that period of time, I mean, we built an amazing practice. We were totally blessed.

And it was built, as I said, on, right, commitment to the chiropractic philosophy and the paradigm, just delivering great work, committed to better clinical outcomes for people and making sure that families had a place to find better health, right, a way to get better health, and then building systems for every part of the practice. So I'm the systems guy. That's my moniker.

Now I like to build systems for everything so that you can have predictable, positive outcomes and scalable and reproducible results. So we built systems for attraction, conversion, retention. And then my superpower, which is team building.

You know, when people ask me, you know, what do you do for a living? I say, I build world-class teams. And that's always been the truth.

And it's definitely the truth today. So I learned how much I have a passion for building those teams and teaching them those systems. And ultimately what that comes down to is I love scalability.

I love scale. I love creating scalability and durability. And so the scalability is being able to do more, give more, love more, serve more, but it doesn't have to all be done by you, right?

So that's scalability. Durability is the tricky one. That's being able to give more, love more, serve more, make a bigger impact, make a bigger income, even in your absence, right?

So even if you're not the one, they're doing it, right? And that, of course, required that I take that job and turn it into a business. I had to grow up from being the owner operator and turn into a CEO.

And that's when I really embraced the associate doctor program, right? So we started bringing in associate doctors, and I wanted to give back to the profession that had given me so much, and specifically to all those concept doctors that put up with me. And we had 39 associate doctors go through our associate doctor program, over about a 17-year period.

And it wasn't like turnover, because I'm a terrible boss, and people would quit and leave, but we had a two-year program that we would skill them up, we'd train them up, and they got to stay for two years, and then we'd launch them out into the field. So that's really where I fell in love with the training other chiropractors, right? So and ultimately coaching them to success.

So, you know, Ron, to be truthful, I got to a point where our practice was bursting at the seams, and I was feeling the four walls of the brick and mortar business, and I knew I'm young and strong, and I wanted to do more on a bigger scale. So, you know, the solution was to start coaching and teaching other doctors how to do what we were doing outside of our four walls. So that was how the remarkable practice was born.

And man, we've been blessed there, too. And again, it goes back to systematizing everything and building world class teams.

I love it, man. You've been a blessing to so many in that way. So in this particular series that we're doing here, Doc, we're going to look at pretty much all the things you kind of touched on there in your story.

But, you know, in chiropractic, we have, as you know, we have obviously a bunch of different philosophies and different practice styles, but yet we all kind of share these common pain points. So as we look at today's episode and we really begin to dive into that, can you unpack kind of those those different seasons of the chiropractic career for us?

If you look at my story, you'll listen to really all four seasons of the chiropractic career. And I hadn't come up with that construct at that point, but I had lived it out through two businesses, right? So my practice was my second business.

But, you know, the ultimately, you know, there's four seasons that are available to every chiropractor through the arc of their career, right? And we call them launch, build, scale and exit, right? So launch is really that first year out of school, first year in practice, right?

So where you're just trying to figure it out, right? You just, you don't know what you don't know. You're trying to figure out just how to be a chiropractor, never mind how to, you know, run a business and, you know, hire employees and, you know, start to market and build your, build your business, et cetera.

But that's launch. That's the first year. And then you move into build and build is, you know, this glorious season of our career is where we're really just focused on attraction, conversion, retention.

Maybe we start getting our hands around what it means to start putting a team around us, right? And this is where we really start scaling, right? So you start leveraging your systems and you really start mastery, like mastering being a chiropractor or mastering your patient education.

You know, you mastering the role of being an entrepreneur, right? But truth be told, you don't really own a business at that point. You own a job, right?

So and the difference between owning a job and owning a business is businesses are scalable, they're durable and they're eventually transferable, right? So, you know, the truth is, is when you're the owner operator, when you're the one that's head down, bum up, and you're the one that's delivering all the adjustments, you're really exposed at that point, right? So God forbid anything happened to you, or you decided to take a vacation or maybe an extended leave for whatever reason, the practice can just grind to a halt if you're not there doing the work, even though we love the work, Ron, right?

Like we love our job, we love the work, but it's a job. And we don't own a business at all. Unfortunately, it ends up where usually the job ends up owning the DC as opposed to vice versa, right?

So, you know, one of the premises of our work is it's about having a remarkable practice as part of a remarkable life, not instead of one, right? So, and that's really, for me, this realization came out of this season of my career, where I had recognized that I had painted myself into a corner, you know, and I had created all this busy-ness that everyone, of course, looked at as being successful. And, yeah, I had the financial rewards and the recognition in a big life, but I was trapped, man.

I was trapped. I was sort of held hostage by this business, excuse me, this job that I loved. And that's where I recognized that it was time to start scaling.

So that's that third season. And third season is when you do bring on associate doctors, specifically. You bring in other professionals that can deliver the care so that you have that scalability.

It doesn't have to all be done by you. And you have the durability, which means it can even be done in your absence, right? So that's the scale season of the career.

And then finally, there's the exit season, which is where it's time to find your successor and sell your practice, right? So and, you know, there's unfortunately, there's a lot of tragedy here as well, because, as you know, so many situations, these docs, they never get to the scale season of their life, right, of their career. And they go launch and they build and build and build and they get stuck and build and they do 20, 30 years and build and then they try to exit, right?

And we all know that exit doesn't, I mean, that doesn't end well, because people don't want to buy your job, right? So, you know, ultimately, the goal here is to move people gracefully and profitably through all four seasons, launch, build, scale and exit. If you scale well, people will compete to buy your business.

You've walked with me through those seasons. And as I look back at my seasons, and I think about the young doctor on the call right now, watching this podcast, and I think about what they're going through and, and you know, we all are at that point where you were and where I was. And so can you just kind of break it down a little bit deeper?

Can you kind of help me understand where people get stuck in each of those respective seasons?

It's a great question. And so and it's not just the young doc, right? So number one, as a young doc, I wish somebody had told me that there were four seasons, right?

So imagine, like, if you started school and they didn't know, hey, listen, there's four years, it's a freshman year, and then you're going to become a sophomore, then you're going to become a junior, then a senior, then you're going to graduate. It's like, OK, great. That's it.

You know, now I have a construct. I have a frame of reference, right? So, you know, part of my mission here is to make sure in chiropractic, we do this gracefully and profitably, right?

So from school, we're teaching them now, listen, there's four seasons available to you. If you're going to own the practice, you can go from launch to build to scale, then to exit, even if that exits 30 years away from now. I hope people are listening to me right now, because when you create a practice, when you build a practice to sell it, man, there's no better practice to own and run, even if it takes you 30 years to decide it's time to sell it, right?

That's a cultural thing, right? So if we look back at this first season, this first year in the launch season, doctors very often get stuck in this phase. It's like you typically see, I'm going to tie it to revenues because I think that that's a reference point that people see.

So from like sort of the zero to 15,000, trying to make the leap from like 15,000 to 30,000 a month, they'll get stuck in that gap right there. And that first gap is what we call the no money gap, right? So the no money gap sounds like this.

I've got no money, so I do no advertising, so I have no new patients, so I have no money, right? So they get caught in sort of this practice eddy, right? So instead of having this nice trajectory they're going, all of a sudden they hit this place where like, man, I just don't have the money to invest in the marketing that I need to do to attract more new patients so that I can get more money to reinvest in my business, right?

So that first one, Ronnie, is really the no money gap. That's a really painful place and that's where a lot of doctors, young doctors meet us in the very beginning. I was like, man, I've got to this point where I'm like, I know I need to do some marketing and some elements to build my practice to the next level.

I also know I need to invest in bringing in team members. I know I need to invest in maybe some technology or better equipment or whatever it is, right? But they kind of get this place where they're stuck and that no money gap, they can really get jammed up there.

So the first thing we do is help them get over that first gap, get on the other side of that. And really, it's a low cost or no cost approach to marketing that you and I were born and raised to do, right? So the idea of like there's so many things that we teach that are low cost or no cost for these chiros to do to get that momentum going, to get that practice base building, that base of raving fans that you can then leverage into other opportunities to do.

Outside talks and spinal screenings and corporate wellness, et cetera. You can start building your virtual tribe with your Facebook forums and teaching Facebook lives and webinars inside of there. There's all sorts of real actual and virtual networking that you can do.

That really drives some content marketing moves that we teach that are really strong that turn people in and they get them right. They bridge that gap to get right on the other side of that money gap. So I'd say that's that first one.

The second, in that second stage, when you get into build, very often doctors will come to us and they'll get stuck. It's that 30 to 45, but they get stuck before they get to the 45 to 60 zone, 60,000 a month. And in that middle, they'll find themselves stuck there.

They're busy, but they're not busy enough. They feel really busy, but they're not as successful as they want to be. They know they're not making the impact and they're not making the income they want to make.

So they get stuck in the second gap we see, which is what we call the replacements gap. And the replacements gap is their conversion process. They have new patients coming in, but their conversion process is weak.

So they end up with weak starts. So they get poor compliance with their patients. And then the patients drop out of care.

And now they have to replace those patients. So now you've got this revolving door effect going on in the practice. So we're busy enough where we can't do some of the things that built some of the real relationships that we started with.

We start getting frenetic in the practice, and we don't build that connection with our patients. And next thing you know, because they got a weak start, they drop out of care. And now again, we're caught in this eddy, the second one of like, man, I do weak starts with my patients.

So they don't comply to the care and follow the care plan. So they don't get the results that they want. They end up dropping out of care.

And now I've got to get more new patients to replace them. So that's the second gap we see quite commonly. And that's the replacements gap.

Dr. Ron, I know you're nodding your head right now. You've been there before. You might see it with one of your associate doctors.

But I mean, this is a tough spot, man. And this is one that people have a hard time overcoming.

Big time. Big time. And so now we move into that next phase of scaling.

And I feel like, again, we can unpack this a little deeper later. But I feel like a lot of people... How's that transition from build to scale?

I mean, that's not so easy, right?

It's not. It's not. And once we get, for example, in that last gap, we fix that conversion process.

People think they have a retention issue because it's showing up as people aren't staying, right? So they think it's a retention issue, but it's actually a conversion issue, right? So we fix their conversion process and their conversion system.

So they end up with strong starts with their patients so that they stay under care. And now what they're doing is they're creating ideal patients and they're collecting ideal patients with each conversion, right? So once we get them on the other side of that, then we get into scale, right?

So scale, usually it's a team building issue, right? So because, you know, you've heard me say it before, 95% of our problems are people problems, right? So it comes down to if you really want to go and grow and build a really substantial practice that's making the biggest impact, right?

So if you want to really live to your potential, you can't do this alone, right? So what's that old African proverb? If you want to go faster, go alone.

If you want to go further, go together, right? So I'm such a team builder, right? So it's like, you want to be surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than you, that are better than you at those tasks, right?

You need to get smaller while your team gets bigger. And I don't mean just by numbers, but I mean their contribution to the success of the practice, right? So it ends up being a team issue, right?

So, and they do the same thing. It sounds very similar to the new patient replacements, but there's a scale gap here where they're not able to bring in the right people, right? Whether they're not interviewing well, or they're not hiring well, or they're not compensating properly.

So they bring in, they get a weak start with a person, the person ends up dropping out and, you know, support expectations and agreements, then they quit, and now you have to replace that person. Man, so many docs that we meet, they're constantly replacing their team members, right? And that just is so frustrating.

It sucks all the energy out of your practice and out of your team, out of the room. And it reflects poorly into your community when your front desk person just keeps turning over, turning over, and you're like, Oh, my gosh, I can't onboard one more person. Don't even ask me to train another person if I have to train another person, right?

So they end up with this, again, another cyclical gap. And it's the scale gap. And it comes down to not knowing how to find an interview, hire an onboard, set up expectations and agreements, and to be able to train your people.

This is our team building process, which is so critically important. But man, Ronnie, you know what? You've been there.

Once you get a world class team around you, and you actually establish that team driven practice, all the energy that comes out of that, and man, that team will build your practice for you. They're not just going to come alongside and support you while Dr. Ron does all the things that makes the stuff happen, right? They're actually running out in front of you, right?

Pulling the noodle, we like to say, right? So that's just when you get them on the other side of that, man, it's the sky is the limit, right? And that's when you can actually achieve that remarkable practice as part of a remarkable life, not instead of one, because you're building the business that supports the remarkable life, not competes with it.

Yeah, that's beautiful, beautiful. And I love that statement. I think, you know, I personally experienced that palpable tension that you described there, not just in the team building part, certainly felt it there, but that palpable tension between building this remarkable practice, as you will, but at the same time, feeling my heart pulled toward wanting to be the best husband I could be and being the best dad I can be.

And I know a lot of a lot of doctors that are watching right now are living that conflict out right now. So is there any other pearls of wisdom that you can give us relative to what I just said about that? I don't even know if I like that word, work-life balance, if that exists, but you know, that that delicate balance there.

I think balance is is a really popular phrase, like when people talk about work-life balance. But let's face it, we're on a mission, right? We're a purpose-driven people and we're trying to save the planet, right?

So you're not going to achieve a life of perfect balance and save the planet simultaneously, at least not concurrently, right? So balance is important, don't get me wrong, right? But balance should be a reference point, right?

So sort of like the way a sailor uses the horizon when they're sailing, right? So the horizon is not the destination, it's not the goal, right? It's just a reference point.

So I think a better, what we actually should be seeking is alignment, not balance, right? So alignment is so critical here. And how good is God, right?

That's the word for what success means. Inside of the remarkable practice, that's how we define success. And nobody can tell you what success looks like, and you shouldn't let anybody try to do that, right?

So that's a real disservice. Too many people are walking around with an image of success or a vision for success that was borrowed from somebody else or worse given to them by somebody else or projected on them, right? So my pastor said something once that really stuck with me, which was be cautious how you define success because you're going to spend a lifetime pursuing it, right?

So I took that really seriously. I found that really convicting because I realized at one point I was chasing somebody else's vision for success, and it was to my own detriment, right? My physical health and my happiness, my joy, you know, stressing my marriage, and it was before we had kids, thankfully, right?

So Camilla and I really got right with the concept of alignment, and what success can live in a place where, and it's sustainable when you have alignment between three things. When you have alignment between your core values and your vision story of success and your behavior, right? When those three things are lined up, when you have alignment, that's where success lives, right?

So it's so critically important that you know, what are your core values? What are most important to me? What are the things that are most important to us?

If you're sharing your life with somebody. And then what's our vision of success? Like, where are we now?

Where do we want to be in five to 10 years? And where are we going next? Like 12 months from now.

And then your behaviors, making sure that there's alignment there, that your behaviors line up with those two things. When you experience that alignment, that's where success lives. And anywhere where there's misalignment between those three things, wherever there's subluxation, that's where you have stress and breakdown and dis-ease, right?

And disharmony. So, you know, that's the key, man, is making sure that you're experiencing that alignment.

Yeah, and it's so beautiful to hear you answer these questions because you know my journey and how I've just kind of lived this out exactly how you said. One other thing, you know, I think a lot of docs, and you kind of touched on it a little bit when you talked about building remarkable teams, you know, they build these personality-based practices that are kind of built on their ego and their personality, but yet they get to this point where they realize they're doing as much as they can do. And so kind of give us some practical guidelines of hiring associates.

You heard me use the expression, paint yourself into the corner, and you know, thanks for saying that Ronnie, because whatever fluency you're picking up on is only because I've lived out all of these mistakes myself, right? So, you know, I'm not one of those leaders that say, you know, hey, you know, I did it all right, and you know, we like to say remarkable does not imply perfect, right? So we teach from scar tissue, right?

As you know, because you know, I'm always quick to share my examples of here. Let me tell you the nine ways I screwed this up, right? And I figured it out.

Let me save you some pain. Let me save you some time, some money, some brain damage. This is the, you know, don't do it these three ways, do it this way, right?

So we've repeated this ourselves and then taught a thousand doctors to do it successfully. So, you know, that's, that's really, you know, that's really kind of the biggest, the biggest takeaway out of that is, is it just, you know, we're, we're teaching from a place of like, we've made these mistakes ourselves. And so whenever you hear, especially I can't speak for anybody else, but whenever you hear me speaking, I'm always thinking like, oh yeah, no, I know exactly what you're thinking about doing.

Don't do it that way. I tried it that way. In fact, let me tell you the seven ways I screwed that specific thing up and then finally figured it out.

So just start where you're at right now and don't get discouraged. Don't feel bad when things don't go as planned, right? And I love what the Navy SEALs say about this, that failure is not the opposite of success.

Failure is part of success, right? So when we hear failure is not an option, Ronnie, you and I did SEAL fit together a few years ago when we thought it was a really good idea to go and train with the Navy SEALs. That was a lot of fun, right?

So if you remember what I remember from that, they said failure is part of success, right? It's win, win, win, fail, win, win, win, fail, you know, it's win or learn, right? So you're going to move forward so intensely on such a mission that you have to expect that failure is going to be part of success, and that way you're not surprised by it, right?

It just lets you know that you're moving forward. So every failure, it's just win or learn. And as long as you're learning as you go, man, you're on path.

That's right. And you said something really profound earlier about, you know, the whole idea of bringing somebody on without having expectations and agreements in place. And so touch on that, but also touch on, you know, is there a sweet spot number where you think a doc should start?

Because you mentioned some revenue numbers. Is there a sweet spot number when a doctor should start thinking about associate?

Yeah. So that's a question we get quite a bit, like readiness. Like when do I know I'm ready to bring on an associate?

I mean, you know what? I wish I could just give you the three bullets that when you take these three boxes, you're ready. I will give you five guidelines to go by.

Right. But, you know, the truth is, is that every scenario is very, very different. And it's going to depend on a few things, right?

It's going to depend on what is your vision story? Like what does success look like to you? What are you trying to accomplish?

Like, why do you want to hire an associate doctor? There's as many stories behind that question as there are potential associate doctors for you to hire, right? So you got to be super clear on what are you trying to accomplish?

Are you looking for scalability? You want to be able to serve more? Are you looking for time freedom and you want durability, right?

Are you looking to reduce your exposure because you, you're the only person in there and God forbid anything happens to you, you know you're exposed. You want to mitigate that risk. Are you looking to plant multiple practices in a pumpkin patch around you and you want to go full on hardcore scaling, right?

Do you want to bring on somebody who's going to help facilitate your efficiency in the practice and somebody who's going to help with examinations, right? Do you want to bring in a doctor that's going to help with marketing? What is, what specifically are you looking to accomplish?

Maybe you're looking for your successor, right? And it's time for you to say, you know, hey, I want to, I want to find, you know, who's going to take this place over so that this practice doesn't retire with me, right? So, you know, that's one of the first and most important things that we ask is, why do you want to hire somebody?

What are you trying to accomplish, right? And then it's, what does success look like to you? In other words, once you hire them, what do you want them to do to help you manifest that vision story, right?

What's their job description? And then what's the exit strategy? Where is this going?

Right? So all of those questions need to be asked before I can say, you're now ready to hire an associate doctor, right? So, but let's double back and let's take the most common example, Which is, hey, listen, I'm in here, I'd love to have another doctor in here so I could serve more people, I can make a bigger impact, make a bigger income.

So the question is, number one, are you ready as a leader? Do you have the maturity to be a leader? You're going from owner-operator to CEO once you hire another professional.

So check yourself. Do you have the leadership maturity to lead another professional? Number two, do you have a mature team?

Do you have a team that's stable? So you don't want to bring another associate doctor in, another doctor into an environment that's a circus, with all this turnover and there's no discipline on that team, so a poor team culture. That's like the parents who decide or the couple that decides, we're having real problems with our marriage, let's have a baby, that'll fix everything.

That's that same approach that so many docs take. It's like, do you have a stable team? Then it's, do you have your processes in place?

If you want to create a business that's going to be scalable, you have to have your processes and procedures in place. You have to have them captured in manuals so that you have a standard. You can hand to somebody and say, this is what we do and this is how we do it here.

Then do you have a training culture? Because you're going to want to train up your doc. Train your doctor or smash your head against the wall, your choice.

You have to invest in training your associate doctor so that they do it the way you want it done. Ultimately, it is the best return on the investment of your time. Then finally, can you afford to have an associate doctor?

The truth is, most docs have no idea what it takes to set up a successful long-term productive relationship. When they do it right, Ronnie, this is a huge win for the owner and a huge win for the talent. It's a huge win for the owning doc.

It's a huge win for the associate doctor that you're hiring. You've got to pay these guys well. These guys and gals are going to be worth their weight in gold as long as you've got your act together and you know what you're doing.

If you're bringing in a caregiver or you're bringing in a business builder, exactly what is their job description? What do you expect from them? Both of them are worth their weight in gold.

If you set up their job description properly, and then you train them properly, and then you set up their compensation plan properly, so they're incentivized and all of it is in alignment. If you mix any of those three up and you bring in the wrong person, put them in the wrong role and pay them the wrong way, not the wrong amount, the wrong way, you're going to screw it up and 67 percent of these relationships fail, which is where you can hear my passion on this topic. We've helped so many doctors do this right and when they do it's a huge win.

Everybody wins and they want to have three and four associate doctors because they're like, wow, I have a business inside my business. Thank you so much. I followed the system.

When they try to do it on their own, 67 percent of these fail and it's messy, man. It's like a divorce. It's painful, it's stressful and it's a time suck and it's super expensive.

Yeah, super expensive. Yeah, you're right. So kind of earlier you touched on and we'll kind of wind down with some of this, but you touched on these Four Seasons and you also mentioned that many docs get to the end of their rope and they want to sell their practice and they're still in build mode.

Versus, so you got that example. So if you could just a couple of nuggets on that, but also can you give us a real world example of somebody you know or have worked with who did gracefully and in a lucrative way exit their practice?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So if you're like most chiro's and you go your whole career as the owner operator, no other associate doctors in there, you're the only DC and you go to sell your practice, you know you have a job and most likely you have a personality driven practice where people are there for the chiropractic tour, not the chiropractic, they're there for the adjust tour, not the adjustment. We've all been there.

I certainly built something like that for five years before. I had the wake up aha moment. So you've got to recognize that the value of that practice is much, much lower on the street than you think it is and I've walked so many people through this incredibly painful experience of trying to sell their practice because they think it's worth this number and the street value on it is definitely nowhere near what they think.

So that is super painful. So what we do, Ronnie, is when doctors come to us in that situation, I'm like, time out man, as long as there's no urgency, let's take your job and turn it into a business. And then if we do this properly, you follow my system, people will compete to buy that business.

And not only will they compete to buy it, they're going to you're going to get a much better multiplier. In other words, what they're actually going to pay you for it. Right.

So that's the big that's that's really the lesson people should take from this is like, if you're thinking you're three, four, five years or even two years out from an exit, please pause right now and say, I need to take this job, turn it into a business so that when I go to sell it, imagine you brought in one or two caregivers, right? And you spent the next two years getting your practice so that it was a system where there was one or two other chiropractors taking care of the patients. You bring in an office manager, you train up to be a COO and you're the CEO.

And now that business is for sale. Guess what? Somebody like me comes in there and looks around and be like, okay, so let me get this straight, Ron.

So you've got three docs, they're adjusting the patients. Most of these patients are on care plans and they're all prepaid for care. Look at this.

These people are on wellness care and they're on monthly EFTs. And you only adjust one third of these patients, is that right? And that office manager over there, she comes with the deal and so do these doctors.

Man, I want to buy his business. And we do that with docs and they're like, holy crap, I almost made such a terrible misstep and I almost wasted the last two years here trying to find a buyer. Then there's a fire sale and they sell it for much less than it was worth because during those two years of trying to find a buyer, the practice is just atrophying and the price is going down.

And everybody smells blood in the water. When you go to sell that thing, everybody knows every month that goes by, that practice is doing less and less and less. It's brutal, man.

And that's terrible. We should all be making a graceful and profitable exit. And the only way to do that is to take that job and turn it into a business.

I love that. Man, I call that a nugget, man. That is so, so good.

And I just want to tell you how much I appreciate you personally. And you've done so much for me, but also for our great profession. And I just, I'm so thankful for you.

And one of the things that you really blessed me with in the last couple of years was you wrote a book. And so I'd really like to make that available to people. Boom.

So give me a couple, like, what's a good call to action for this book? How can I get that book in my hands?

All right. Yeah, you can go on to Amazon and buy the book if you'd like. But you know, you know, I love you, Ronnie.

So here's what I'm going to do. So I'm going to give away an e-book, you know, a copy of it, right? So the electronic version of my book, I'd be very happy if you went on to Amazon and bought it, by the way.

You can buy the hardcover, you can buy the paper, right? But I want you to get this. I wrote this.

Actually, I wrote this book for my son, who says he wants to be a chiropractor, but I'm going to let you guys read it. I'm going to give away the e-book version. I believe we're going to put a...

Oh, I know what we're going to do. This is your first episode. So I promise you, we're going to get great five star reviews for this podcast.

So whoever gives the first podcast review a great five star review for Dr. Ron, I'm going to give you a signed copy, a hardcover book. We'll drop it in the mail for you. So the first five star review that we get for Dr. Ron in this awesome new podcast, you get a hardcover signed copy and everybody else will make available to you a link for the e-book and you can get that for free.

So that's my gift. I hope you find that a blessing and I love to get feedback. So don't be afraid to reach out to me as well.

Hey, let me leave everybody with this if they'd like to connect with me. Follow the Remarkable CEO podcast. So if you're a podcast listener, you are because you listen into this.

Check out Dr. P. Kimiolo and I over at the Remarkable CEO podcast. Otherwise, you can find us on Facebook at the Remarkable Practice.

We have an awesome free private group that you can jump into. If you like this, you're going to love that group. And also Dr. Stephen F, Dr. Stephen F on Instagram.

If you want to follow me on Instagram, Dr. Stephen with a PHF.

I hope that like me, you receive so much from today's time with Dr. Stephen. We're so grateful for you, Stephen. And for those of you that tuned in to our episode today, I just wanted to tell you good job for taking the time for personal development and personal growth.

You will never regret that. And I just want you to know that we have some amazing episodes coming your way. Our next episode will feature Dr. Matt Hubbard, San Diego's finest.

With Dr. Matt, we're going to unpack how to collect ideal new patients. The heart behind this podcast series is truly to help chiropractors reach their full potential. And I resonate with that every day, all day.

And I'm so excited to be part of this. So I wanted to do a big shout out. Thank you to ChiroTouch for this.

And in closing, I just want to make sure you all stay well adjusted. We'll see you later, Doc.

Thanks, Dr. Ron. God bless, brother.

Have a great day, you guys.

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