How to Build a Great Team for a Successful Chiropractic Practice

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.

This series represents ChiroTouch's commitment and love of the chiropractic profession, and is an extension of their desire to help chiropractors reach high levels of success in their practice and their career. And so our idea with this ongoing series is to bring you engaging speakers and friends of ChiroTouch to help inspire your personal and your practice growth. Chiropractors need to be at their best now more than ever.

So I wanna thank you for joining me on this learning journey. I'm looking forward to our time today, where we're gonna be really diving in deep and talking about how building a team around you is one of the best things you can do to build your dream practice. And so helping me today kind of lead this conversation is one of Chiropractic's great leaders, one of Chiropractic's great success stories, a mentor to so many, myself included, and that is the remarkable Dr. Pete Camiolo.

Dr. Pete, welcome on, my friend.

Dr. Ronnie, it's great to be together with you, sir. Man, when you reached out to me and you told me about this and what you guys were doing, and you invited me to be on, I was like, oh man, I can't wait. So I'm excited to be here today, excited to talk about Teams.

And just for all the listeners of this, this is a big, big piece of the puzzle. So I'm really excited. We're gonna dig into it today.

Oh man, I couldn't agree more. Hey, before we dive in though, just real rapid fire here. Let's help docs kind of get to know you a little bit.

So when was that inflection point or that epiphany when you said, you know what? I think I wanna be a chiropractor. So what was that like for you?

Yeah, so my story actually goes back to when I was in high school, actually, my brother Jonathan was very sick growing up, and we went to traditional medical route for a lot of his health issues, and he wasn't helped. Actually, he progressively worsened over the years to the point where he was told that he was dying, essentially, he had cirrhosis of his liver, he had all sorts of health issues that had gone on, he had done the medication route, surgery route for different health issues. I'm not gonna get into that today.

Long story short, he ended up finding chiropractic. My mom and dad found chiropractic and what we now call functional medicine. So more nutrition and chiropractic as a strategy for helping cleanse his body, detox his body, bring healing and restoration to his body.

And it was through his healing and his story that transformed my life, it woke me up to the fact that there was a way to help people with their health, not reactively, but proactively. So I was very much attracted to chiropractic as a modality, as a strategy for helping people stay well and get well naturally. It wasn't about neck pain and back pain for me from the beginning.

My brother dealt with migraine headaches and allergies and sinus trouble and liver issues and digestive issues. And so because of those things, these were all visceral issues that he got healing through chiropractic and lifestyle. And so that attracted me to become a chiropractor right out of the gate.

So that's really where my story began back in high school. And then through undergraduate work, I studied healthcare, and then I moved on to go to grad school and study chiropractic. But really out of the gates, even as a chiropractor, right away I was committed to the whole body, the whole person.

I wanted to transform people's entire life because I knew what it did for my family.

Wow, that's beautiful. So who were some of those kind of early mentors? Once you got out, I know a lot of us come out of school and we're not quite ready, but who were some of those early mentors and coaches that came alongside of you?

Yeah, so I mean, I had a few people just they'll throw out there. First was Dr. Fred Rossi. He was really my first chiropractor ever adjusted me.

He was the first chiropractor I associated with when I graduated school as well. He took my family under his wing and he was a principal doc out in New Jersey. So Dr. Fred Rossi, give him a shout out.

I love Dr. Fred. And then Dr. Ben Lerner was another guy. He came out to my college and he had written a book called Body By God.

I read that book. It really stimulated me because God is and always was a really important part of my story and my journey. And he's always been at the center of what I do.

And so when I thought about how the body works and who I wanted to be as a chiropractor, I always wanted to be someone who spoke about the healer, the real power, the real source. So that was a big part. So he was a mentor of mine because not only did he have that piece in place, but he also had run many successful businesses and practices.

So I linked up with him and Dr. Greg Lohman, who is another one of my mentors and early coaches. And these guys coached me early on in my years. I hired him even as a student, actually.

I hired him as my coach as when I was still in school. And I started being mentored by them. And they really helped me out of the gates, get going.

And then I had other mentors when I was in chiropractic. These doctors called the Yachter Brothers, Dave and Dan Yachter. I loved working with those guys and learning from them.

And another mentor who has already left this earth and went up to be with his creator, Dr. Charles Majors was a great friend of mine and also mentor. There's many others, Dr. Joël Bohemier, he was awesome. There's many, many names that come to my mind.

But those are just a few who, I remember they stood out, whether they were standing on stage teaching or we were in a room breaking out, training on our scripts for some sort of thing, or we were just rubbing shoulders in the hallways or having lunch together or we were on a phone call, whatever it was, these were the people that early on in my practice really pulled me forward. And this, I actually said this to my wife the other day, Ron, I'm gonna tell you, I said, you know what they helped me do more than anything? They helped me find my voice.

That's beautiful.

They helped me find my voice because I had a passion, I had a heart, but I didn't have a voice. I didn't know how to communicate it. I didn't know how to express myself effectively.

And when I think Ben and Greg and Charles and Joelle and Dan and Dave, what they did for me was they helped me discover my voice and from there, move forward. Another one that comes to my mind is Stu and Terry Warner. They were people that I interned with.

They also came and spoke at my school. They were brought in for an event. There were John D.

Martini. He came and spoke. These are some early mentors for me that were just powerful.

Joe Sweery is another name. He was one of our professors at Northwestern. Rob Scott used to be the president of the chiropractic college.

He's now the Dean of Life in Marietta, Georgia. He now runs that school. So yeah, these are some of the people that really, I think, influenced me in a really positive way early on in my career.

And I think it's wonderful, Doc, how basically it sounds like you were a sponge and you really wanted to reach your full potential and you were willing to be coachable. And I think that's one of the things that I love about you and the Remarkable Practice Grouping there is you guys all are coachable guys yourself. I think the greatest coaches, the greatest mentors are lifelong learners.

And when I talk with you and I hear you speak, I just get this sense that man, you're just not done learning yourself. And I love that you're giving back in so many ways. And we'll dive into that a little bit more as we go, but I just loved hearing that about you.

And I'd never heard you answer that question before. So thanks for giving me a little bit more of a look under the hood of your life. And I just think it's a wonderful story.

And so let's go a little deeper on this. When we first started this, our first guest was your colleague and our good friend, Dr. Stephen Franson. And he painted this beautiful picture about the four seasons in the chiropractic career.

And in our last two episodes, I asked our guests, Dr. Paul Reed and Dr. Matt Hubbard, this question of where are you as it relates to those four seasons? And I know you and I both know these guys, and they both are at a place where they could easily exit, but they don't want to yet. And they both had the same answer.

It was fascinating. They both said, you know, doc, even though I could probably exit, every day when I show up, my mindset is I'm in build mode. And they show up with that passion because they know that to keep their teams on purpose, they have to show up with that energy.

They have to show up in build mode. So I love that. And so having said that, I know that you totally embodied that in your practice.

And so I want to kind of have you tell the listeners, how did those seasons play out for you? And how were you able during those seasons to keep the energy really high and really fierce to the end?

Well, I'm going to speak to what you just said. I think this is a really important subject. So while we understand the framework of the four seasons, launch, build, scale, exit, the key here is when you transition into scale and eventually into exit, you never take out the underlying best practices of build.

That's the key. Actually, I'm so glad you brought this up. The key is when you hire a team, and we're going to talk about team today, your team and you are always in build mode.

While the business as an entity is technically in scale, the people are always in build. Does that make sense? So my mindset as a member of the team is I'm building, building what?

Well, I'm building towards the next and the ultimate. What are we building toward? We're saying, this is what success looks like.

This is the next mountain to climb. This is the next battle that we're going to go into, and we're going to win. And so when I'm in build mode, I'm always in build mode.

So even in my journey of exiting, the reason why we exited so gracefully, and profitably was because I built to the last day. To the last day that I was there, I was still running that marketing calendar. We were still executing our team meetings, executing our team trainings, not as a owner operator, but as a CEO.

I was still in there showing up, knowing who my role was until that transition happened, and I gave the keys over, and they gave me a check, so to speak, until that transaction happened. It was my responsibility. I was accountable.

And so the mindset has to be, guys, here's the thing, we're not trying to escape. We're not trying to get out of it. I'm not trying to, I never got out of practice.

People use that language, like, oh, you got out of practice. I'm like, hell no.

Yeah.

No way, man. I'm in it as thick as I've ever been in it. I'm in more offices than I've ever been in.

I'm more rolled up my sleeves. My brain is more check, check, about all the details of running a practice. The only thing I'm not doing is I'm not setting atlases.

I never got out of it. I just graduated into another part of being in it. It's just a slightly different way.

That's beautiful.

And that's how I've experienced it, Ron, because for me, it wasn't that I chose to leave. I made the choice to leave. I did, but it seemed like that's where everything was moving.

So I just went with where ultimately I felt God was leading me. It's what aligned with my core values. It was what aligned with my vision.

It's what aligned with the season of my life, because you have your four seasons of your career, then you have your seasons of your life. Overarching your career is your life. And you're going to have multiple seasons within your life of the four seasons, potentially.

Yeah, that's fascinating.

So it's not even like you'll exit once. You might exit multiple times. And so to me, it's really having a holistic view, a real vitalistic view of your life.

That's why we say you have to know what's your life vision. Then you build your business vision. If you put your business vision here and you try to fit your life into it, it's out of alignment.

So we teach you can have a remarkable practice as part of a remarkable life. Look at the language, a remarkable practice as part of a remarkable life. It fits in like a Lego piece, but it's the life first.

Yeah, I love it.

And sometimes as business owners, we get backwards. We try to squeeze our life into our business, and it doesn't go well for your family. There's a lot of casualties along the way, starting with you, and then the people closest to you, your family, and the next people closest to your team.

Those are the people that suffer the most. Guys, we gotta get this right. So the build mindset is not a mindset of scarcity.

It's not a mindset of fear. It's not built on poverty or some other limiting belief. It's based on I'm pulled by my mission.

I'm pulled by my purpose. I'm pulled by my vision. I'm pushed by my mission.

I build because I'm alive.

That's right.

I build because I exist.

I love that. And what's beautiful is that in some ways, you're impacting more people with chiropractic care than you ever conceivably could have done by yourselves or with your team even in your practice, by what you're doing now, by pouring into and inspiring and educating and holding accountable so many DCs out there. So your impact, I love how you said that.

I'm telling you, we just stop right now. We're good. But I wanna go deeper on that because there's a lot of stuff in between there.

But no, you're absolutely right. And so as we look at these four domains of the attraction, conversion, retention and team building, we always talk about how those are threaded together so beautifully and how four cords are not easily broken. And yet so many docs that I meet and so many docs that I know you meet, it is as if they're spinning plates on every extremity.

They, oh, you gotta attract new patients over here and, oh, now I gotta focus on conversion because now I got new patients and then, oh, they're all going away. I gotta work on retention and they never get those threads corded together like they could and should. And I feel like for you, that secret sauce was building that remarkable team around you.

And so kind of help the doctors on today's call kind of understand all that you just said and how important your team was to you during that.

My team is everything. I think that one of the advantages I have is that I'm good at some things, but not at a lot of things. And I knew that I needed help.

I think the first step is just recognizing that I can't do it all. And so I'm not. I just decided that I couldn't do it all.

So I wasn't gonna do it. And so I had to have somebody to help. So early on, my goal right out of the gates was build a fast practice so I could hire people to help me as soon as possible.

Yeah, which you did.

It's exactly what I did. I knew I can market and I knew I could adjust. So I was like, well, I'm gonna go ahead and get people to come in and I'm gonna convert them and I'm gonna take care of them.

But then the rest of the stuff, I'm not gonna touch it. So I didn't get stuck in launch. I went straight from launching to build very, very quickly.

And I immediately outsourced and I hired a company like TRP to find what systems work. So I didn't have to reinvent the wheel, Ron. I didn't try to like figure out the systems that were gonna work best for me.

I said, what systems work? What systems work that align with my practice model, my philosophy, my convictions? And immediately what I did was I found a system that worked.

I hired a coach who's gonna hold me accountable. I built fast and I brought a team in as quickly as possible. And yeah, the first couple of hires, I didn't get it right, but I eventually figured it out, like you said.

But I valued having a team right away because I was committed to not doing everything. Because I knew I couldn't, because I knew I wasn't that good. I knew I needed help.

So I started with that.

And you began to assemble this team. And I feel like for some docs, it's a reactive mindset. And when you're growing fast, sometimes it's just gonna be.

Where you don't have the team in place to scale the amount you wanna scale. You're always kind of behind, right? And so how can docs kind of know where to start?

I mean, where do I start building my team? What's that look like? And what is the most important player to have on my team out of the gates?

If I'm hiring my first employee, what does that look like?

I mean, there's no doubt that your first employee is a front desk manager. I mean, they're gonna be the front desk check-in CA. There's no doubt.

Because at the beginning of the practice, it's all about energy, right? It's energy is everything. It's all about energy.

So I don't want an analytical person. I want an energy person. And I'm willing to let the details slide initially, and I'll trade that off for growth.

And then I'll pick up the pieces later. That was my mindset. My mindset was, yeah, we'll make a mess in here because we're both builders.

We both want growth, meaning me and my first CA. But what happened with my first CA was she actually developed really into ultimately, she could have become the office manager. She didn't because of the fact that she didn't have the, in her schedule, she didn't have the ability to work the hours that I needed.

That was what happened. But she remained as a CA at the front until I brought her into the back to become a tech CA, actually. And then she became that person and she did that for a while.

So you kind of figured out what her strengths were.

Exactly. I had people cross-trained, obviously, in a young practice when you have a smaller team, everybody kind of has to be cross-trained. And I like that model and I still encourage and keep to that because I think there's a value in having cross-training, but there's also a value to having people have a very specific position that they're hired for.

That they can be the best in the world at, that they can win at. And so, but early on, yeah, I had a front desk CA who checked people in, checked people out, but really their job was promotion and compliance. It was getting people to show up for their first visit.

It was getting people to show back up for their second visit and getting people to keep showing up for their adjustments and promote, promote what we do. So that was really the goal of that person's role. And it helped me out because I could hand somebody off to the front desk and tell them this is Ron, and I want to see Ron back to first available appointment that I have tomorrow where he took x-rays today.

And I'm suspecting that we found subluxation in his spine. I want to get him right back in for my first available appointment tomorrow for his report of findings. I can drop that person off and Brittany can look me in the eyes and say, Dr. Pete wants to see you back first available appointment that he has tomorrow.

I have got this appointment on this one, which one works better for you. And boom, she did that. Like that, just for me to be able to have that ability to do that handoff to a person really raised my authority as a doctor immediately.

So having that first player really brought me to the place where I needed to develop my ability to communicate with another team member and be able to transfer authority to that person and then that patient then having respect for my team. So then we built that dynamic. So it started with Brittany.

Well, it really started my wife, Mary, and then Brittany, and then we brought in our next players. And there was a bunch of them early in the days, but my next one that really stuck around was Rachel. I mean, these people, Brittany and Rachel, are with me.

These are my first hire, Brittany. She was there for probably four years. First hire.

And she's a chiropractor now running an awesome practice.

I love it. So I don't want to brush over something you said earlier. I feel like when I talk to doctors out there that are young in practice, and I feel like a lot of them do not put the process and systems in first.

Rather, they hire their first CA and say, oh, well, they're going to help me build all that. Can you speak into how that's a bad idea?

I recommend that you find a system, a proven system that works, and you follow that and you study that and you master that yourself. And then you invite your team to come in and they study it, and then they develop mastery with you. That's what ultimately is the best strategy.

If you're trying to figure it out and build it as you go. And Ron, you know this, because I'm on calls with enough chiropractors that I know what the other side looks like. I have my way of doing it and I'm kind of figuring it out.

And there are a few people that have that ability. They're very systematized brains and they're very organized. Those people, I'm like, go for it.

But it's when I meet with the doctor who doesn't have that skillset and they're trying to do it, I'm just like, you are gonna spin your wheels until the end of your career. You have to surrender and you need to submit to a system and to a model. You must.

And when you do that, you will experience so much freedom and joy. And by the way, your team will finally stay.

Yes.

You'll keep your team. You'll empower your team. You'll be able to manage their team.

You'll be able to bonus your team because you're gonna grow and then good things are gonna happen. So you're gonna grow your practice. And the majority of us, majority meaning like 95%, that's what they need.

Yeah, and I've often heard, Steven's often said a comment that stuck with me is, you can take a B chiropractor and pair them with an A team and have just a mega successful practice. But if you flip it around, it could be quite the opposite of that. And so having said that, as you began to build this team around you, how important was training and your meeting rhythms?

How did that work for you? And how important is that to the doctor on that call right now that's thinking about, I don't want to do more meetings and they know what they're doing and things are going okay. But kind of speak into that.

If you ask my team today, if I had you call all my CAs, and some of them are people you have access to right now, because they still hang out with us in TRP, they would tell you that my highest priority was training with my team. From my first day in practice, my number one priority was training with my team. And I trained with my team three days a week.

We were committed to excellence. And the reason why I know is because when we went to seminars, guess whose team was the team that was training the other chiropractors teams? My team.

Hey, I love that. So differentiate between trainings and meetings, because with you, training wasn't just sitting around talking about all the things you need to do. So what did your training look like?

Training is role playing. So it was actually walking through the actual client journey for real and creating scenarios and working through those as a team with the intention of actually getting better. The goal isn't to get through it.

The goal is to get to it, as we like to say. The goal was to drill down into whatever the process or procedure is, the procedure from our side, the process from the patient side, whatever the element was that we were training on, whether I'm training with my CAs or I'm training with my docs, whatever the domain was, if it's an attraction or a conversion or a retention procedure. I always compared us to the NFL and I said, we should train Monday through Friday and just adjust people on Sundays.

We could adjust a thousand people on Sunday and then Monday through Friday, we prepare. I was like, I would be cool showing up one day a week and adjusting a thousand people. I mean, I adjusted 400 in a day.

So all I gotta do is double my numbers and bring a couple other docs and help me out. I thought training was so important that I wished that we could train more. And we trained as much as we could realistically with our schedule, with the volume that we saw and with the size of my team.

I started breaking into departmental trainings. I mean, as we got bigger and we had more doctors and more staff and then more interns and we developed different training schedules as we went because my team grew and it expanded. And when we opened other parts of my business, then I had to train with my nutritional company, then I trained with my fitness company, and then we had a lot of things going.

So we were training, training, training all the time.

You said something earlier about how the mission is what pushes you. And it sounds to me like your teams and your training rhythm is the engine that really pushed the mission forward, right?

It was what held us accountable. Because every time we showed up, we had to be reminded of why are we doing this? Because guess what happens when you train?

You get uncomfortable. So you have to be reminded, like, why are we doing this? Why are we putting ourselves through this?

Why are we not eating lunch and putting our feet up and hanging out right now? You have to see the vision and you have to remember the mission. So we're pulled by our vision and our purpose and we're pushed by the mission because we're in the mission.

The mission is what we do. It's what we're doing right now. It's the actual day in and day out work.

That's mission work. We do mission work. If you remember, I talked about the opportunity zones where there is a distressed area, we show up.

Well, guess what? All of our communities are health distressed areas and every one of us is opening, who opened a practice there is a mission. You have a mission in a territory where there is a distress of health because people don't understand what health is and how to be well.

This is such, such an important topic. So to take it one step further, as we talk about teams and one of the best things I ever did in my career was hire a coach and then get into a mastermind group. So can you speak to that chiropractor out there that is isolated, that is alone, they're struggling and they just aren't connected.

So speak into that team from a different perspective.

Yeah, I mean, if you study the art of war, the tactic the enemy always uses to victory is to isolate.

It's true.

So if you find yourself alone, you need to get out of there as quickly as possible. The idea behind a team, the idea behind coaching and masterminding, that is just wisdom.

It is wisdom.

It's wise. All those things when you say, why would I bring myself to somebody and talk to them about my ideas and get bounce off ideas and get strategies and be accountable, because it's wise. Why would I circle up with a bunch of people and talk about my business and kind of talk about my issues and challenges and then share some of my thoughts and ideas with them?

Because it's wise. And so the reason why we do that is it's wise. Why would I be intentional about hiring a team of A players and surrounding myself with that team?

Because it's wise. And it's also, Ron, it's mature. It requires humility to lead.

And it's the same humility to lead that it is to follow. So when we learn how to follow well, we learn how to lead well. And that is significant.

If you want to build a remarkable team, learn how to be led.

That's beautiful. That is significant.

You are essentially being called and charged as a leader, and you cannot lead people where you haven't gone. And if you haven't learned how to be led and you're not being led, it's very difficult to lead and to lead well. And in creating a culture where we want our team to be the ones who lead ultimately, and lead the movement, lead the charge of the mission, it's not only for you, but you transfer that to your people, and then they transfer to the patients, and they transfer it into the community, and now your community is being led by the people that come out of your practice.

They're the ones leading in the school systems, leading in the churches, leading in the community, because they came to your practice. Do you see how this works? So the layers and layers and layers of legacy that you leave starts with where you are.

Doc, that's so beautiful. And so, you know, you made me think of this earlier as often we refer to this as, hey, I'm in practice. And yet the reality is we're in the game.

And so one of the things we added, thanks to you guys, and my team loves this, is a scoreboard. I played sports my whole life. I was always looking at the scoreboard.

The whole game, I was checking the score. And so, and I know this ties into a giveaway you have for us. So talk to how important it is that you have a scoreboard in your practice.

I mean, just even right now, I mean, everybody knows we're doing a podcast. Guess one of the things we're looking at? Time, that's on the scoreboard, as one example.

So with a scoreboard essentially is, it is what it is. Like Ron, if I came over to your house right now and we were like, hey, let's play some pickup basketball. Just hang around, just a couple guys, just say, we're just gonna play a little bit of pickup, little two on two.

Hey, let's just have a little game. I guarantee you we're keeping score. If we went down to the beach and we said, hey, let's set up a net, let's hit the volleyball round.

I guarantee you after a few volleys, we'll be like, all right, let's play. And what are we playing? We're playing a game.

So what are we doing? We're keeping score, right? So the reality is Ron, I never played a game as a kid without eventually saying, all right, let's play.

And when we said, all right, let's play, we all knew what that meant. That means like, all right, let's make a team and let's keep score and let's go, you know? And it was like, what are we gonna play to?

21, 15, what are we playing to? You had to set parameters. So if you show up to work and you don't know what the game is, what's the game we're playing?

What's the score?

What are we playing onto? I'll tell you a quick way to burn out. I'll tell you a quick way to lose your team and to just spin your wheels.

One of the most transformative things that ever happened in my practice was the practice scoreboard, which is why I wanted to give it away. When you asked me, you said, hey, is there anything you'd love to bless, you know, a folks with? And I was like, listen, if I can give a chiropractor one thing today, take the scoreboard that you get from this, wherever they have it, you're gonna get a link, you can download that thing.

Get the scoreboard, watch the videos. I walk you through it, okay? I explain it to you.

So I'm not just throwing it out there and be like, figure it out. No, I will help you figure it out. And if you have any questions, just reach out.

But it'll literally, if you can start to implement this one tool in your practice, I guarantee you this, it will transform your business. If you implement this and you use it the way it's designed to be used, because Ron, it's exactly what you said. I saw you even, you did this with your eyes.

You glanced up. Guess what? It keeps everybody on the team.

What time is it? There's this many minutes left in the half. This is the score.

All right, we know what player we're gonna run this time. We know how we're gonna defend. We know how we're gonna be on offense.

We know what we're gonna do on defense. Why? Well, because we know where we're at in the game.

We know our strategy. We talked about this. We train on this.

We plan for this. Now it's time to execute.

Beautiful, Doc. Man, I'm so thankful that you came on today. There were so many nuggets in there.

I was taking notes the whole time. And I just wanna thank you so much, Dr. Pete, for coming on. You're truly a godsend to me and so many others.

So I appreciate you, brother. And for those of you that tuned in today, I'm sure this material was just a pure blessing for you. And I'm just hopeful that you'll take this to heart and put this into action and begin building that team around you so that you can have a maximum impact in your community, because our communities need us to be at our best now more than ever.

And I also wanna say a big shout out to ChiroTouch, our profession's leading practice management software company for their willingness to just help the profession. That's the whole purpose of this. And so we're gonna keep episodes coming your way.

We are gonna continue to have engaging speakers that are going to inspire you toward personal practice growth. So I just wanna thank you once again for tuning in to this episode of Catch Up With ChiroTouch and make sure that you stay healthy and well adjusted. Thank you.

See you next time.

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