Where is Your Chiro-Potential: Finding Your Success Within Our Diverse Profession

Okay, welcome to this episode of Catch up with ChiroTouch. I'm your host, Dr. Ronnie Simms, and I'm so glad you took the time out of your schedule to tune in today. You're not gonna regret it.

This is gonna be a fantastic time together with a really awesome guest who I'm gonna talk about here in a second. This podcast series is ChiroTouch's commitment to the chiropractic profession. They would love to see more chiropractors reach high levels of success, and that is what this is all about.

And so as we go into this particular series, we are talking about things that you can do to reach a true lasting level of success in our beloved profession. And today we're gonna specifically talk about, you know, that step that you take once you've gone through a period of self-discovery. If you tuned into our last episode, we had Dr. Alan Miner on, and Dr. Alan talked about all the different breeds and species within our wonderful profession.

No two chiropractors are the same. And he also kind of unpacked some of the different potential directions you may go in your career. Chiropractic is beautiful in that there are so many ways you can go, and we're really gonna dive deep into that today.

And we're really, really blessed to have this amazing leader, one of the most inspirational guys in my life for sure, a guy that feels like a brother from another mother. To me, I feel like we're on kind of parallel life paths, but this guy is awesome. He's also a hooper like me, so we have a love of basketball.

And so I'm really excited to have Dr. Mark Mouw on today. Just if you don't know Dr. Mark, Dr. Mark has a huge, thriving, vibrant family wellness practice, Mouw Family Chiropractic. He has his wonderful wife alongside of him as his integrator COO.

He even has his own son in the practice, which I think is just a beautiful thing to see. What a legacy there. And he has this huge, vibrant practice, but he also on the side, if he's not busy enough, he is a wonderful coaching consultant for the remarkable practice.

And to go one step further, he decided he wasn't busy enough that he would get with his buddies and co-found Chiro Match Makers. It's not a dating service, but it definitely is a wonderful business that I've used and essentially, it helps chiropractors like me build their dream team. And so he'll talk a little bit about that today too.

But gosh, Dr. Mark, I'm so glad to have you on, brother. I'm looking forward to this. So welcome.

Man, I am super excited. I know that you and I hooked up a couple months ago to get us prepared for this. And I tell you what, I couldn't wait to get on with you.

Dr. Ron, I love you like a brother, man. It's been just been so great the last couple of years to be able to run into you five, six, seven, eight times a year now at the remarkable practice events and UAC events. Even though I know you're out in California, I'm over in Iowa.

Seems like I get to just see you so much more and what better than to run around with people that we appreciate core values and the same really direction in chiropractic and what our offices are doing and having multiple associates and having some of the same headaches, but having some of the awesome responses in those areas. So I appreciate number one, who you are, but number two, that you're doing this. I know you're a busy chiropractor.

I know you have an amazing team and it takes a lot just to step out and do podcasts like this as well. So thank you for what you're doing. Thank you, ChiroTouch, for what you're doing as well.

And I can't wait to jump in today with you, Doc.

Oh, I love it. Hey, and let's just dive right in. I know we have a lot to talk about.

And so as I mentioned, we had Dr. Allen on last. And now you and Allen are colleagues, you're co-founders of ChiroMatchMakers and you're also really close friends. And he kind of, like I said, began to unpack something that I think was new to most of our listeners, Mark, and that is there are so many different genotypes of chiropractors.

We are a unique profession. There's no two chiropractors that are the same. And so because of that, Allen kind of urged doctors on the call to go through a period of self-discovery to truly find out who you are as a practitioner.

So many doctors don't do that, nor have they ever done that. I never did that till recently. And it's pretty amazing what you learn about yourself.

And so in the spirit of that, I'm just gonna dive into my first question for you. And that is, after doctors have come out of this, sometimes painful process of self-discovery and they're scratching their head and they have that deer in the headlight, kind of look, what are some practical steps they should consider in helping them kind of begin to take appropriate action?

Well, what a great question. I mean, deep question. We're gonna dig into it.

I think giving you just a little bit of my background would be helpful. So I met my chiropractor in chiropractic school, my wife, and we came out of school. She was a year in school older than I was.

She came out and she's from Canada. And she was like, oh, we should work for somebody first. And I was like, no, let's go.

I wanna open up my own practice. I'm ready to roll. And she's like, I'm graduating first.

So I'm gonna do an associate and then we'll figure out what's going on from there. And she did a great associate with a doc that was looking at opening up a practice. So what we did is we opened up best of both worlds.

We were associates, but open to practice, foundational ground up zero patients and got to open this practice in a different city for the doctor. Now, I'm speaking from scar tissue because there was a lot of great things we learned, but there was a lot of other things that we were really taking advantage of financially in those situations. And that's not the way it needs to be.

There's this associate-doctor relationship that should be great synergy. There should be a win-win, and I'll talk a little bit more about that today. But due to that, the contract that we had in place, after about 18 months, I knew it just wasn't the right position for us, and we were ready to open our own practice.

So we moved down to Council Bluffs, Iowa, right across the river from Omaha, Nebraska. And we really came into a community neither one of us had any ties to. And we went from zero to 350 on literally just pure will, guts and striving in the first nine months of building that practice, then all of a sudden it got to the point that we started to need team.

And I think what, as chiropractors, we're great at taking care of patients, right? We know how to diagnose and put a plan together to get a patient well. That's what we learn in school.

They teach us those things to be doctors, but what business did we learn in school? I don't know about you, but I didn't learn any. Then all of a sudden it got to be like, oh jeez, I got to start to hire team members?

All right, I got to hire some CAs and trust my business, my baby, right? With other people that aren't just my wife and I, right? So you start to add CAs, and by 18 months in, we were 400, 450, and then we had to hire that first associate.

And I learned a lot from that experience. I hired an awesome guy right out of school who came in and really started to crush it in our practice. But a couple years down the road, I was like, oh, this is easy.

We'll open another practice, put this doctor into the practice. And a year later, that practice is seen 70 a week in the practice. And I'm like, what's going on?

What's wrong? He was great in my practice, but he wasn't great in that practice. Luckily, he started to date one of my other associates and she was a builder of a practice.

I really saw that in her. So I was like, we had a three year buyout. Let's move her to that practice, move her over there.

Boom, the practice took off. And I was like, ooh, note to self. I learned something there, right?

And then come to meet Dr. Alan Miner and Dr. Stephen Franzen, and coming into Chiro Match Makers that they had already founded, and really helping move that forward has just been so fun for me because of the scar tissue of 13 associates, 11 great hires, two really bad hires that I learned from before I understood the process. But I think going back to that question, Ron, when you start to ask these types of chiropractors, what we really see is there are three types, and I know Alan spoke about this in the last podcast. There are entrepreneurs, there are business builders and caregivers.

And to be honest, there's different types of each one of those, but we have more caregivers in our profession than we've ever had. So many doctors want to come out and be able to work for somebody, but there's a lot of business builders and entrepreneurs that are out there as well. And what I've seen in the profession, what I experienced myself was that when I was eight, nine years into the profession, so probably eight, nine years ago, so 18 years in my own practice, I was kind of bored, to be honest with you.

I had maybe outgrown just the chiropractic part of the business. I truly didn't understand that I was an entrepreneur or business builder at that time. And to be real honest, we had sold a couple clinics at that point.

We had had our mother ship, I called it. And literally I was thinking about selling that practice, leaving, moving to go to Canada to work with my brother-in-law in real estate. And the reason why is because I thought I had done everything at that point.

I had opened a practice, I had a practice of 500 visits. I just really hadn't found myself until I really, to be honest, joined UAC and got around people who had a bigger vision than I did. So I guess the first thing I would express to doctors is that I think what happens is we get so focused in our communities, and we live in our communities, and it's our people.

And what happens is sometimes we can outgrow the community in what we are meant to do, like what our legacy is. And I think just getting out and going to seminars to make you see that there are people doing more than what you're doing inside of your practice. I think that's the number one step, Ron, and I think you probably noticed that through your years in practice, wouldn't you say?

Absolutely, and I think back to what you said there, Doc, and I think what really happened to you is you had to re-clarify what your vision was, right? Your vision was more centered around what you and your wife could do, and having reached the end of that vision, now what? And so I think, doors opened up for you to join UAC, where you're swimming in a sea of guys that have done three, four, five X what you're doing.

You're like, whoa, okay. It's kind of humbling when you first start with that. But then I think what you did is you took that and re-clarified your vision.

Is that kind of what happened to you? You just said, hey, my vision was too small?

Or what was it? I'll go back to the doctor who was my mentor before I went to Chiropractic school. I mean, he ran a very successful office in this little 5,000 person town that I grew up in, right?

And his success was 100, 120 visits a week in this practice. I would go in and observe him. So I was like, wow, a year or two into practice, we're seeing 350, 400.

I'm like, I conquered Mount Everest because I didn't know. I mean, I heard doctors doing these big numbers, but I had never been around it. I had only seen 125, really, because I wasn't one, I didn't go, I didn't go to other doctors' practices.

So I guess one of the things I'd say is go to other doctors' businesses and practices that are doing more than you have. All of a sudden, it'll grow your vision. So I think that's exactly right.

All of a sudden, what happened is I got around people that were going like, oh, you know what? You have a really great job, Dr. Mark. You know, you have a few of associates in there, but you literally are the one still chopping wood every day in the practice.

And from what Dr. Allen talked about is entrepreneurs, business builders, and caregivers, in our ProScan, it's a behavioral assessment I built as an entrepreneur. And what I was doing is I was getting burnt out, and I know that's one of the questions we'll talk about, so we'll deep dive into that. But I was getting burnt out because I was being more of a caregiver in my practice than really a true entrepreneur.

So that's where it said, okay, it's building more practices, maybe having a couple of businesses, bringing in associates to start to do what they're great at, and then me backing off and starting other businesses and creating other value for our patients is really what I had to have clarity around. But it was when getting in that pool with a bunch of sharks, and I was just a minnow at that point inside that room, a lot of times it's like, well, okay, they're doing things that I'm not. All of a sudden it helped me step up and go like, yes, I have a really, really good job.

It was a business because I had scaled. We can talk a little bit about that as well. But what happened is I really did truly had a business because yeah, I was a little bit scalable.

I was a little bit durable. I may have been a little bit transferable, but it was still the Mark Mouw show.

Yeah.

And I talk to my clients all the time and I'm like, you know what? We are hurt when a patient wants to see one of the other doctors in the office. I had it happen to me when I was a leader and my name's on the building and oh, I'm the head chiropractor.

You want to see the associate? Oh, I felt bad. Now when patients see that I'm in one day a week now, now when patients say that I'm like, oh, that's awesome, love it, high five, because what I did a few years ago is four or five years ago, I literally took my name out of or my face off of any advertising, any marketing, because I didn't want it to be the Mark Mouw show.

I would tell you now, we have patients coming to our practice that don't even know I own the practice when I'm there, and that's what I love. That's when I truly know I do have a business.

No, that's a beautiful story and I've experienced that too, where I walked through my lobby a couple of Fridays ago to get an adjustment, and there was quite a few people there and nobody recognized me, not a person knew me, and I thought, okay, that's a great sign. Okay, now that's beautiful, so what's that?

Into a lot of people in our profession, because that adjustment, there's so much gratification to getting somebody well. What happens is that's their personality, that's their goal, that's who they are. They're built by getting the results, but that's a really good job, and you're okay to have that.

There's a lot of chiropractors, solo practitioners, God bless you, keep doing it. But if you want, if you're stuck, and you're burnt out, and you're the one who is the personality of the practice, it's probably because you have a personality driven practice, and you really don't have a true business where it's scalable, durable and transferable, which is the true business sense of chiropractors, right?

Oh no, yes, that beautiful flow, and so you made me think of this next question. I want you to speak to two specific groups for me. The first group is that student who is just getting out of school, finishing their externship.

And I know Dr. Allen would say first step is to go through a period of self discovery. So I'd love to have you reinforce that. But speaking to those three categories, let's say I go through a pro scan, let's say I do some self discovery, and I land in one of those three categories.

You know, where do I start? What do I do? And then the second group would be, and it's very similar, is speak into those docs you already mentioned.

And that is the practitioner that's either stuck, kind of like you were, or you're like, man, I've climbed Mount Everest here, even though you didn't know it was just base camp. You climbed this massive hill, and you're going, wow, whoa, there's Mount Everest. But talk to that doc, because I think too many doctors are leaving the profession because they're a square peg in a round hole, they're in the wrong spot.

And so kind of speak into that, the doctor that's stuck and the newbie.

I'm going to start out by something that you know and have heard many times around the people you hang around with as well. It's the four rights, when it comes to knowing what you're supposed to be doing. It's the right person in the right role, doing the right work the right way.

And it takes all four of those, no matter if it's you in a position or your employees in a position, team members, there's still the four rights. And if you get one of those rights wrong, all of a sudden, there's gonna be discontent. So when you're talking about what should a student do, I think most of the time students think there are two really roads, to be an associate or to open your practice.

Well, at Chiro Match Makers, what we've done is we've actually come up with a program. I know Alan spoke about it on the last podcast. It's called Next, and it's really the next step.

And we just launched it over at Life in October. And what it is, is there's actually 10 tracks that a student or a doctor that's in the profession don't know if they're in the right spot or didn't realize what they were doing, maybe it wasn't for them. It's actually a 10 step track.

It's about six and a half hours long. It's recorded and they get a pro scan with it. It's literally teaching them from, there's no right or wrong.

We're not telling them what one's right, what one's wrong. We're just saying, hey, these are the 10 options from the entrepreneur, the extrovert who wants to run their own business. That's probably the most costly, which is what we call the number 10, buying a practice or starting a practice from scratch, all the way down to the caregiver who's adjusting patients because they're the doctor who's built as a caregiver and they just love to diagnose and adjust and do re-exams and just love to get people well, but don't want anything to do with the business.

Neither one is wrong. They're right for a certain person and there's eight steps in between that and the path. So a student can jump on the Chiro Match Makers website, there's the next program, and with through the next program, you also get a pro scan to see how you're, you actually are built to behave.

How are you built to be a doctor? I know Alan spent a lot of time on that one on the last session, so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on that, but this is our certified license behavioral assessment that we spent a lot of money on the license. It's what corporations use to hire two, three, four hundred people a year, but it actually tells you what you're built to do best.

It'll put you and direct you and to start looking down the two or three options that would be best.

Take that same conversation to that doc who's out in the field, eight years in, disillusioned, they're gonna go to Canada and sell real estate. Talk to that guy.

You know, I often see this when I'm taking calls for Chiro Match Makers or even in the remarkable practice when I start coaching with someone is there. You know, I get the entrepreneurs that just love business, but literally they're stuck behind a table adjusting because they're scared or they were burnt by having an associate and it just didn't work out, so they're then timid to jump back in the water to try it again. So they're literally an entrepreneur, a business builder that's stuck behind the table adjusting every day.

But then you also have the caregivers who are in the office and they open their own practice and they're adjusting and they're struggling at 80, 90 visits a week, barely meeting overhead because all of a sudden they're like, man, I probably should have worked for somebody because this really, the business acumen, I really don't care about. It's frustrating. I don't like the marketing.

I don't like profit and loss statements. They suck. I just want to take care of a patient.

The awesome part is that in both of those situations, there's career opportunities for you everywhere. I mean, 90% of the doctors were hiring your caregivers. You know, 20, 25% of those have had offices.

It just didn't work out for them. So they're jumping into these great positions to be on a team, to be successful, to be able to be the right person in the right role, doing the right job, the right way as a caregiver. It's not failure.

Don't think of you pivoting out of one opportunity in chiropractic to take another one. It's not failure. What it is, is it's being educated on who you are.

And when you're actually doing that job that you're great at doing, man, you get to go home and have this amazing life with your family and your career and everything's up. But when you're not in the right position, not doing the right role, not doing the right job, taking that circle and trying to put it into that circle into the square peg, man, it's miserable. You see chiropractors leaving our profession.

It's hard. We don't have enough chiropractors already, let alone leaving the profession. So I think in that doctor who is dissatisfied, finding out how you're built, or if you have business acumen, that you're like, man, I just need some direction.

There's a lot of different opportunities out there that they can be helped to get those opportunities in front of them and make sure they get right on the road instead of riding in that ditch though time, right? Preferable sticks.

Man, I sit here and I think about our beautiful profession and how much more effective we would be in our communities, in our society, if doctors were to go through this process, instead of leaving the profession or being in a practice where they're burnt out and patients know when you're burned out and you start seeing the practice shrink, you know? And I see these doctors, especially in California, selling their practices right now and they've lost all momentum and their practice is nowhere worth what they think it is. And I just see that, man, this should almost be mandatory process for a student coming out of school, right?

I mean, think if I could have gone through this and, you know, the Lord blessed me and I found my way where I'm at, but I just think, man, wouldn't this be great if this was mandatory, if this was a class at the end of school? And how many doctors would have saved $120,000 SBA loan if they just would have realized, man, I'm really at the heart of caregiver. I don't like spreadsheets, like you said.

I don't wanna have board meetings. Board meetings for me are boring. I just wanna adjust people.

And they had this vision of the business being a lot easier, I think, than it really is. Just give us an idea of what it takes to run Mouw Family Chiropractic as a business. And there's so many things you gotta think about.

Yeah, well, as you know in our vernacular, as the CEO, COO, right? So I have a great CEO, my wife, who is a chiropractor, but stepped away when our daughter was born for freedom purposes 14 years ago. So she's not adjusting over a table, but she's really built to be a caregiver.

So she makes a great CEO in my practice. I'm the thruster, let's start this, let's start this, let's do this. She's like, hold on, we need systems, procedures and processes.

So it's a great yin and yang in my life. But you have vision casting and you have goal setting. We just had our board meeting for our team here a couple of Fridays ago.

There was three or four hours of presenting on mission, vision, purpose, premise, product. And then we moved into high level conversations about goal setting and then the marketing calendar and then the meaningful metrics, which you know is vital signs. And then we went into our scoreboard and our scorecard, which is probably not even in most chiropractors vernacular, but that's what we use to make sure that we're on track with our metrics.

And we look around attraction, conversion and retention and we really build the knowledge around that and each person has accountability in the practice. Even though we're all responsible, each person has a certain accountability depending on what position they're at inside the practice.

I'm thinking right now to myself, just how much goes into running and operating a chiropractic practice. And there's just so many moving parts, you know, and I love how you eloquently stated that. You made it seem a lot easier than it is, but it takes time, it takes energy, but it takes a hard wiring in my personality type, in my spirit, that is thrives on this kind of stuff.

And you kind of made me think of this whole concept of red zone leader. I think you're a red zone leader like me. And Lynn is definitely the integrator.

In other words, I'm great. The 90 day project planner, ideas. I get ideas on the field, but I quite frankly, I'm terrible between the 20s.

Once she gets it back in the 20s, I'm good at punching it in with her. But man, without my integrator and without specific training for her, I have her in a mastermind group because I wanna build her up, protect my integrator. She loves it, but I just don't want her to burn out and I want her to really feel the spirit of the big picture.

And so I think it's wonderful how you're painting this. I think if more chiropractors establish their practice with this type of rhythm that you mentioned, we would see a much broader impact into our communities with chiropractic lifestyle, which you and I both know is the lifestyle that we all should be living right now. It's just not enough passionate, influential chiropractors out there.

Okay, so, Doc, kind of elaborate a little bit on part of what you just said there, because I'm a little overwhelmed. I'm thinking about doctors on the call right now, or they're going, what did I get myself into here? Kind of speak to those two groups again of, where do I start?

What do I do? Who do I hire?

Yeah, so I mean, I'll take a look and say, okay, students and maybe doctors that are a little unhappy with where you're at in the profession right now. Maybe you guys are looking for that next step. And like I said, we do have the next program, which would help direct you.

You get a pro scan. If you're looking for a position, or you have a lot of help finding it, what's awesome at Chiro Match Makers, we have 11 full-time recruiters. We love it when docs reach out to us looking for positions, because we have available positions.

We are looking for docs to fill those. So what you can do is understand who you are. We'll get a pro scan of you, find out what and how you're built, where you're looking at going, what type of practice.

What we really do, we're called Chiro Match Makers for a reason. Like you said, we're not a dating service, but we are a service that matches owners with associates to make sure that they want the same thing. And I can talk a little bit about that in my next comment is, if you're an owner, and you want to make sure that you hire right, not only in chiropractic, but I will say across the board in any organization, the most expensive part of doing business in most cases is building a team.

It's hiring, training, onboarding, equipping, retaining, and then a person leaves you in six months, it's very costly. Top grade says that losing a key employee will actually cost you three times their salary that year. So imagine you have a CA that's making 40 or a chiropractor making 90 in your practice, and they leave you the impact that has.

So hiring the right person for each role in your practice is what we do at Chiro Match Makers for both CAs and DCs. But for your owners, I always talk that there's pitfalls out there. And I say, when we built Chiro Match Makers, we really looked at looking at it saying, chiropractors in most cases in general suck at hiring.

The reason why is we have such big hearts. We go by gut, right? Like, oh, I like that person's gonna be great.

Then all of a sudden, six months later, they hurt my feelings. Why did they leave me? What happened?

We broke up. How'd it go? I would say we hire on gut and we fire on behavior.

But we have a certified licensed assessment that Alan spoke about in the last podcast. And what we can do is we can actually blood type you to find out who you would match with better. And what we do is we do this discovery process.

Because you know what, when we lack clarity inside of our HR department, which none of us have like a corporation does, when we go to hire somebody, who, what, when, why, what's the culture of the practice? How do you adjust? How many hours are they in the practice?

How many patients do they need to see? Some people are successful at 80 visits a week in a practice. Some people need 300 people taking care of.

So there's so much difference. And then business builders and caregivers, they're compensated differently. So how do we do that?

So we actually help build that out for you. Ron, you and I spent time of doing this process. The reason why is you want to hire the right associate because you know the importance of that, which is great.

And then what we do is we actually help find, we help vet to make sure they're a good match both culturally and behaviorally. We help out with contracts. So what we're doing is we're protecting the doctor because I'm going to be honest with you, there's not very many chiropractors out there, number one, that are good at hiring.

Number two, there's not a lot of chiropractors out there that have extra time on their hands, but they love to go out and post ads and do this and take calls and the associates not even close to being a cultural match, they're a manual adjuster and they want them to do activator or vice versa, right? So what we do is we really take that heavy lift off of the owner when we get that associate process moving forward, which we call the placement process. So what we do is we really take the heavy lift off their hands.

We help to process, our team really follows through and what we do is we just send our doctors, cultural matches, behavioral matches, and they can go through their professional matching interview process. But we really take that heavy lift off and that's what's been so satisfying and gratifying to see inside of the profession for me personally.

Oh, and as a client of that particular business, and again, this isn't an infomercial for this, but it's just more of a opening doctor's eyes up to how important this is. And what you said as far as the cost of making a bad decision is daunting to me. I mean, I was always a 3X a CA salary, $120,000 mistake.

And the whole idea of using your gut, I was always a gut heart leader, and I still am, but now with, I'm on my third match with you guys. What I love about it is they show up to me, I know they're a fit, I see their pro scan, I know their techniques, I know their goals, I know they don't have warrants out for them somewhere. I know they are financially, somewhat financially stable, so it certainly helps me to have that massive layer of objectivity in place, so that when I do meet with these potential candidates, then and there is when the gut can come in handy.

Using the gut before then is a disaster. I've proven that to myself 10 times now. But anyway, I appreciate it.

I'm not giving up on it. I don't want doctors on the call. If you're on this call right now, and you have had an associate relationship go bad, don't get discouraged, don't give up on it, and begin to hire for this and take that part away.

It's worth every penny I spend. And again, I don't want to do too much of an infomercial on that, but it's very, very important because I've lived this. And everything you said in there, I've experienced.

So, okay, go back to one more group for me. Speak specifically to the Mark Mouw and Ron Simms on the call. Those entrepreneurial spirits who are just driven toward business.

And we talked about scaling. We talked about durability. And we ultimately talked about exitability.

I heard you mention earlier, it was very intriguing. I caught that, that I'm only seeing patients one day a week. There were some docs on the call that just went, I want that, I want to wear the CEO hat four days a week, and I'll go and be a caregiver one day a week, because they still kind of like it.

And they've got their people that will only see Dr. Mark, even though the associates are just as good, if not better. But speak to that group.

You know, I think one of the things that changed in my life is really two things happened. Number one, there was a doctor in our community who passed away in his early 60s. He was a chiropractor.

One of the ones that had been here a long time, 30 years in practice. His father actually practiced in a town next to where I grew up, which is three and a half hours away from where I practice now. And he was a great doctor.

And his wife worked in the practice. They did an all-activator, was an awesome practice. And, you know, he passed away.

And he had never had an associate in his practice and never brought one in. In the end, he was, you know, he was in a wheelchair. He was, he just activator.

So his wife was doing some of the checks and he was adjusting and so forth. And he passed away and the clinic sold for less than $10,000. And to me, it just hurt me so bad because you, I knew the family and I knew, you know, his wife could have used a sale of, you know, a half a million or $250,000 and it was sold for $10,000 because there was no exit strategy, right?

To me, that comes in to number two, which is legacy. And not all of us have the opportunity to work with our son across the room. And I know you said that earlier, but my son decided to go to chiropractic school.

I pushed him away, pushed him away. Even though I think it's the greatest profession in the world, I didn't want him to think it was easy because he saw what I was doing. I wanted him to make sure he truly wanted to be a chiropractor.

And he's awesome. He's a rock star. I love having him in the office.

It's just an awesome adjuster, business builder, loves people, and I'm going to be honest with you, he's a better doctor than I am because he's built more as a doctor and less as an entrepreneur. He's more of that business builder, right? But it's really cool to know that three, four or five years down the road, when I do step out more full-time and move into these other businesses that I'm involved in, that there's legacy there.

And I know not everybody have children that are going to be in that legacy, but it's still cool that in the transferable, the exit of your practice, that there's value there. Your blood, sweat and your tears, and I would go back and say, hey, go back for me in 2005, when we opened our practice, the building didn't even exist yet when we signed the lease. You saw the building go up, and you know we remodeled three times in between there and the team you had and the patients you've seen and the ones that you've seen 500, 600, 700 visits.

All of a sudden, if that sign came down and it closed down and it wasn't worth anything, to me, what would I have done the 20 or 25 years of my career if that office didn't continue? Because I've seen the offices that do continue. I just spoke with a doctor helping him hire.

In his office, his grandfather started the practice, then his dad had it and he had it and he's 62 years old. So this practice is almost 75 years old. And he doesn't have any children going to chiropractic school.

So he hired Chiro Match Makers to help him find the next chiropractor that he was gonna bring in, train up over the next three to four years and sell that practice to them to have legacy. It almost gives me the chills as I'm talking about it because I know that practice is gonna be there for a hundred years or more in having impact. You know what?

True impact is outliving you, right? You can have impact yourself, but I tell you what, you have impact when multiple people are around you. We all know when something exists longer than you do, that's truly a true business.

So any doctors that are out there that are looking at exiting in three, five, seven years, I'm telling you, we are helping doctors bring in the right associates to help that stabilize and then be able to sell it. Maybe not to that associate, maybe it's that caregiver that's an asset to the office that comes along with it, and then they sell it to a business builder or entrepreneur, but it's really truly about having that legacy long-term. That's what I really love about what Chiro Match Makers can do as we take doctors through the system and process.

Wow, now that's beautiful. And I love what you guys are doing. I appreciate the work you're doing.

And quite frankly, I don't think you guys charge enough for that service, but don't raise it on me yet. Okay, so this has been wonderful. I had been taking notes.

And so I know we have some assets for our guests. In fact, I think you have a beautiful flow chart for doctors considering the hiring associates. So that will be available to you in the show notes for those of you that are on this call right now.

And Dr. Mark, I just can't tell you how much I appreciate you. You have such a giving spirit. You have a beautiful spirit of humility about you.

You've created a beautiful practice that is going to lead, you're gonna leave that someday with momentum. It's very clear if you hang out with Dr. Mark's team for any time at all, you can just feel that there is a strong sense of legacy that's gonna live well beyond you and your son. I can just see how you're setting this up.

And I'm really proud of you. I'm so glad that you've come into my life and I'm so glad to have you on the show. And I'm so excited for the doctors that are gonna tune into this.

They don't know anything about this yet, but they're gonna tune in. They're gonna watch this. And that light switch is gonna go on in their head and they're gonna take action and they're gonna do some of these things.

And it's gonna really help chiropractics. So I really appreciate you, brother. And I'm so glad we were here together.

And so for those of you on the call, I just wanna applaud you for taking the time on personal development. There is no better time spent in your calendar than on time spent with improving yourself as a practitioner. And so began to think about these things and began to look at hiring a coach or hiring a chiro matchmakers to help you navigate this.

Don't try to do this on your own. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. It's already been done for you.

And so I think it's time for you to really create a durable practice and to be able to leverage your time and to really leave a chiropractic legacy and not be stuck with your fanny up and your head down 24 seven, because you might enjoy that, but you're going to burn out and you're going to get hurt. And so make sure you're taking care of yourself. Make sure that you are getting adjusted regularly if you're by yourself and make sure you take action.

I hope this call helps you do that. To ChiroTouch, I just want to thank you again for your spirit in this. I think it's wonderful that you're giving back to the profession this way.

And I'm behind it 100%. And I'm so honored to be the host of this podcast. And I look forward to doing many, many more of these.

And so once again, thanks for tuning in to Catch Up with ChiroTouch. And I just pray and hope that you have a wonderful day and that you continue on in this journey of chiropractic that is so fun. Thanks, Mark.

Thank you, Gary.

See you, brother.

Thank you. Father.

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