Hiring Your Chiropractic Dream Team

Welcome to this episode of Catch Up with ChiroTouch. This is Dr. Ronnie Simms here as your host today. I'm so glad that you tuned in.

These episodes and this podcast in general represent ChiroTouch's ongoing commitment to the chiropractic profession. Our goal with these podcasts is to educate you, inspire you and to give you some direction. And we know right now what the world needs the most is for chiropractors to be at their best.

And today I'm super excited to have a repeat guest on, one of my good friends and one of my mentors and one of my favorite people in chiropractic, the extraordinary Dr. Allen Miner. Allen, thanks for coming on again.

Thanks for having me, Ronnie.

Yeah, looking forward to our conversation today. And today we really want to kind of look at building out this dream business and really focusing on people. Human resources.

And Allen, it's been real fun to watch you. I know we watch each other, but it's been fun to kind of see what you've been doing in your career. And it's really fires me up.

And I love that old Bible verse that says, let us consider how we may spur each other on. And I will say that you are one of those guys, every time I'm around you, you just seem to spur me on. So I really appreciate you, brother.

First thing I want to talk about, I want to kind of touch on a topic, and that is money. And so we're going to talk about building out our dream business. And for me doing that, I need key people.

And so I would love to hear your input on this, and that is, how do we go about determining the proper wage benefit package? Just the whole idea of how do we compensate not only our docs, but our CAs, so that we can build out this vision and not lose these high quality people. So can you start there?

Absolutely, there's a lot to say about that. So I'm the CEO of Chiro Match Makers. And so every day we're talking with offices who are, we're helping offices, hire CAs, hire office managers, hire associate doctors.

For a very different, you know, there's people who want associate doctors to, because they're too busy and they need help. There's doctors who are just wanting to buy back some time freedom. You know, they've been in practice a long time.

They're not ready to get out of practice, but they'd like a few days off. And there's a lot of docs who are starting to plan their exit. And so, you know, they might be thinking three, four, five years down the road, but they're looking for that person who can eventually take over the practice, which side note is hands down the best, easiest way to do that if you've got a bit of a runway before you want to exit out.

Just so much easier for a person to really spend time learning the practice, the people. That's probably the simplest transition we see. So within that, compensation comes up frequently.

And Ronnie, I'll just pull back the curtain a little bit. You and I are in a mastermind group of very high level, top performing chiropractors, most of which who've built a successful practice, and now they've moved on to another business venture within chiropractic or multiple practices. And so we had a speaker there who is somebody you're connected with who really summarizes this conversation.

And this gentleman, I won't say names, but he's the CEO of a $9 billion publicly traded company. I Googled his net worth as he was talking, and you said, actually, it's about 10x what that number is. And as he was talking, what applies to this conversation is, I forget the exact numbers, but they have how many employees?

Several thousand, 10,000 or so. 22,000, and they moved their turnover rate for employees. At its high, it was like 40 something percent a year, 30% people were leaving.

And they got that down to almost single digit numbers, which you can do the math. If you have 40,000 employees and 40% are leaving a year, they're hiring 15,000 people. And so anyways, he gave a lot of wisdom in his talk about what he did to keep these teams together that applies to the chiropractic practice, even though we're not operating on that scale.

And it was really where my work started on this, was after a couple of failed clinics personally. And I was in a CEO group called Vistage at the time. And I really took to this plumber in the group who just had this beautiful business, Ronnie.

It was a $20 million plumbing business. He'd been in, I was going to say in practice, in business, I guess, for 30 years. And every one of his plumbers had been with him over 20 years.

And I started kind of looking at what he was doing and comparing it to what I was doing in the practices. And I saw a really big gap. And the first thing he was really clear on is his plumbers were plumbers.

And he was real careful to say, you know, a lot of my competition has the plumbers trying to, they try to have them upsell different ongoing plans. And so now their plumbers become salespeople. And he said, my plumbers do what they went to school for, what they dreamed of doing, which is being a plumber.

And I pay them better than anybody in the city. And that's why they all stay with me. And he said, does it cost me a little more money?

He said, yeah, but he said, and he regularly would leave town for two, three months. He's like, I've got great people. I don't have to babysit this business, and it's worth my freedom and flexibility to pay these people.

And so, and that was another key part of how the billionaire business owner we just talked about got that rate down. There are many pieces to that conversation, but one key one was taking good care of his people. And so chiropractors, as you alluded to, have traditionally been on the other end of that spectrum.

I mean, I think I was paying my first CAs 20 years ago, five bucks, six bucks an hour. And what hit me recently, maybe last year, was Carl's Jr., the fast food place, is paying $18 an hour. I thought, we always tried to stay a few dollars an hour for CAs above Starbucks.

Well, Starbucks is, they used to be at 15, so we tried to be 17. Now these places are all 18 to 20. So, that's a $40,000, $45,000 a year income for these CAs.

But the job market's tight, a little data, Ronnie. This is actually in 2019, so before all the craziness of the Corona stuff, our average placement time on a CA was about 45 days, and our average placement time on a DC was around 90 to 100 days. And I was looking at our stats from last month here in 2022, and we were as high as 150 day placement time on Associates.

We've seen that come back down to 130. It's starting to come back down, 130 days. And we've been at about 60 days on CAs, and we're starting to see that finally come back down.

But the truth of the matter is, there's not so many people in the marketplace, in the workplace these days, and they're not even sure why. They thought it was all the extra financial aid, but that's dried up, and people haven't come back. And I've read theories that a lot of moms have decided to stay home with kids, so they're not in the workforce.

A lot of people retired earlier than they planned, so they're not available in the workforce. But whatever the reason is, there are fewer people to go around. And so one very obvious strategy is if you got great people on your team now, pay them more so they stay.

I guarantee it will cost you far less money to bump them up a few dollars an hour if they're a CA than it will to have to try to replace them. You're gonna pay somebody else that much anyways. I mean, try putting an ad out on Indeed at 16 bucks an hour, and watch the quality of people that come to you.

It just, very few people will apply and they're probably not who you want representing your business. And so on the other end of that spectrum is the chiropractic associate doctor. By our numbers right now, we're running about five openings for every available DC.

And we see that around the country. And so, yes, that is, right now we're talking about war in the Ukraine and what's the result of that decreased supply in oil? Well, gas prices are going way up.

Well, we sort of see something of similar phenomenon. There's a decreased supply of associate doctors. So what's happening?

We're seeing salaries go up. And I'll tell you, the fastest way to, if you're looking for an associate and you don't have 130 days to find them, the fastest way to change that is pay more. We're seeing the low end of the market now, associates are commanding around $80,000.

There's obviously still some that are working at 50, 60, but as soon as they see those other jobs now, they jump really quick. And there's a lot of jobs that are paying six figures now. And if we've had a job sitting out there for three, four months at 100,000 and it's not moving, it's amazing that job goes up to 125,000, all of a sudden we have six applicants.

And so it's painful for the clinic owners right now because we haven't had to pay those extra wages, but stepping back, it's probably healthy for the profession, Ronnie. Something had to give when these students are coming out of school with $250,000 minimum student loans, either that number has to come down or compensation has to go up. And so we're seeing this split in our profession of really successful practices that are growing and attracting great talent.

And we've got a lot of failing practices right now. And over the top of that, I'll share another inside scoop. We had four calls yesterday with enterprise clients, people with 10 or more clinics.

And probably every other week now, we're getting a call from some group with a lot of money. It's usually private equity and hey, we've got 50 million, 100 million. We want 100 clinics in three months, six months.

And it's like, well, get in line. You know, there's a limited market here. And so these people are starting to pay more money.

And so in what you're seeing then is some consolidation. Those groups are these practices that are really kind of struggling and failing. These groups are buying up.

And a lot of these docs are like, you know what, forget it. I'll go on a nice salary and turn over my practice to them. And it's something like dentistry went through this about 10, 15 years ago, and they just consolidated these practices and built these groups.

And now something like 80% of dentists go work for a group. That is amongst us and happening right now in chiropractic. And so, you know, it's not uncommon in other industries, but because of that, because of the limited supply of doctors, it is really important that your office is running tight, that you've got great EHR software, that you have great systems, that you have a training process.

Ronnie, here's another one. I can't tell you how many great people will choose a job that pays a little less but has benefits. We never used to see that in chiropractic.

We've always said, hey, your benefit was your family's under care. We'll provide their chiropractic care. Well, now it's like, thanks, but I also want the health insurance and the 401K, and I'm willing to take the $90,000 job or the $20 an hour versus the $100,000 with no insurance or the $22 an hour, no insurance.

And so, you know, another simple litmus test we hear all the time is docs say, gosh, I don't know. Two years ago, I put an ad out on Indeed or LinkedIn, and I had a hundred people apply, and they're calling us because they put out that same ad and they haven't gotten a response in the last month. So the market has changed, Ronnie.

And with that, please, let me take it wherever you want to. Last thing I'll say is chiropractors need to be raising their rates. You know, after COVID with inflation, your customers don't mind a $5, $10 bump.

They won't flinch at it. It's happening to them everywhere else. You know, it's okay.

Let me just give the green light to chiropractors. It's time to raise your rates to make, to cover for these expenses. You're gonna be able to pay more to the people working for you.

You're gonna be able to attract better talent. And at the end of the day, that's your Google reviews. That's a reflection of your business.

And I'll tell you, Ronnie, it's a lot more fun to work with A, people who really know their stuff, who are on top of their game, who show up. You don't have to motivate them versus working with people who are late and inconsistent and really don't care that much. And so...

So the days of these straight percentage relationships, those are gone forever, probably.

It depends on the behavioral makeup, Ronnie. If somebody's more entrepreneurial, they will be more willing to work on a percentage or production, a conversion rate, something like that. The problem is if somebody's really good at that, they're hardwired to go do their own thing before long.

So they're gonna stay with you. A lot of us, you know, I was guilty of this. I'd complain about my doc who I'd send to a spinal screening and sign up one people and I'd go and I'd send up 20.

And I thought something was wrong with him, you know? And it turns out he just was a caregiver. He wasn't a marketer.

He didn't like being out there. And I was really down on him. And looking back, it was like it was the opposite.

He was a really stable, loyal, predictable person. And guess what? The guys who would go out and the women who'd go out to the screenings and sign up 20, 30 people, I'd be really excited about.

And then six months later, they'd leave me to go buy their own clinic or start their own clinic. And so, 60 to 70% of our profession, Ronnie, are hardwired as caregivers. They're clinicians.

They could have been engineers or architects or CPAs. They like detail. They like predictability.

They're patient. They're loyal. But those people do not like bonus systems.

It stresses them out. Give me a good, solid salary. Let me know exactly what's expected of me.

What's my job description? Train me really well on how to do that. And their satisfaction's really high.

And like those plumbers, they'll stay for decades in a practice and be really happy with it. And so a lot of students now are wired that way. And so, you know, there's always this battle of their hands aren't as experienced.

They don't have the bedside manner. So doctors don't want to pay them as much. But the flip side of that is the docs who are more seasoned.

You've really got to determine, you know, why are they bouncing around jobs? So anyways, there's a lot to unpack there. But yeah, students are, we're seeing average students now, or you know, it's pretty standard, $75,000, $80,000, $85,000.

Now, it's fair that some offices will do like a 90-day training period where the salary is a bit lower. But you know, once a person's up to speed over three months, then they're off and running. So that's really the standard we're seeing right now in the industry.

My goal, and this has been working for me, is to have it so that they're paying for themselves within one year of being in our practice. And we've been hitting that on every associate. So can you elaborate on that?

Do you think that's realistic? Or what should docs expect on that?

Yeah, plug in your numbers as you want. But a general rule of thumb is rule of thirds. What that associate doctor generates in revenue for the practice, you should pay them a third of that.

A third of that should go towards the overhead of the practice, and a third of that should be profit for the clinic. And so, you know, generally speaking, we tend to use the math of an average adjustment being fit, or an average office visit collecting $50. So if that associate is responsible for 200 visits a week, that math comes out to roughly $500,000 annually.

And you should be willing to trade $150,000 for $500,000 all day long. And that should be, you know, they make a great living. Part of that goes towards your overhead, and part of that is profit.

And once stocks sit back and consider that, then they go, okay, because, whoa, you just scared me at $150,000. It's like, well, time out. Let's look at what they're supposed to be doing.

And, you know, if an office isn't ready to pay that, then it's like, all right, well, maybe you need to look at adjusting your fees and growing this another 50, 100 visits a week. The problem, Ronnie, is when that money comes out of the owning doctor's pocket, you're making $200,000 as an owner, and you bring somebody on for $100,000, and now you're taking home $100,000 less. That doesn't go over too well at home, and that's very demotivating for the owner.

So, you know, there's a lot of our calls at Chiro Match Makers are telling owners, you're not ready. Your practice numbers don't support an associate doctor yet. Get this built up another $150,000, $200,000 a year, get this built up, so many patient visits, and you'll be able to pay that person, you know, to hire a really high caliber person who's going to help build your practice, buy back some of your time freedom, and should generate revenue for the bottom line.

And the exchange of that is, you know, there's a lot of docs out there who are very happy to show up, be a chiropractor in a great environment with great systems, procedures, and know that they're making a really good living, that they can, you know, afford a house, pay for their kids to go to a good school, you know. You don't have to get crazy, but, you know, honestly, in this time, doc, who can live off of $50,000 with a chiropractic loan? The math does not add up, and because of the scarcity of people in the profession now, they can command that.

I mean, just, we always tell docs, before you go post your ad, do a Google search or search a search engine for what people are paying in your area. And you'll see pretty quick, you know, what you're up against, so, you know, just don't be surprised when you hear those numbers. Look at what's out there, and you'll pretty quickly see what you're up against.

The other option is a lot of times we work with folks who are rural communities, and so there's not other jobs to pick from. But the challenge now is for this younger generation, you're gonna have to pay them enough to want to move out to the rural community or away from the city. So even there, we've seen wages go up quite a bit.

So back to that one scenario where you're not paying them enough, and they become a flight risk, or perhaps you hired the wrong type of person. How expensive is that mistake?

You know, there's a lot of research you can find out there from all kinds of universities. They usually range from three to five times the salary, you know, and I'd say that's pretty. When I had to close my clinics, they were doing 300,000 in revenue.

That's just one number. But, you know, I had the wrong docs. They leave, practice closes, you know, let alone, I don't even know how I quantify that exactly.

But, you know, that's why, here's what's interesting, Ron. We get this like with our home, that's an expensive asset. So that's why we get it inspected.

We make sure everything's what we think it's gonna be. The most expensive thing that you pay for in business in a chiropractic practice is the people that work for you. If they stay there five, 10 years, they're gonna cost a lot more than the building if you bought your building than any equipment you use.

So paying a little bit of money on the front end to get this right, to make sure you're hiring who you think you're hiring is, you just, I don't even know how you quantify how you make that back. And then the other side of that too is, we're chiropractors, we're great clinicians, we're great at healing people. You don't have a degree in HR most likely.

And so, putting an ad out, vetting the resumes, using different assessments to look at their cognitive ability, predictive behavioral assessments, the interview process, onboarding them. Most people aren't experts in that. And we see docs trying to save a few bucks and it's where they get it wrong.

And then you get that wrong. It looks so bad, Ron, when you've had like three people at the front desk over a year. You know, let's be honest, your patients are wondering, what's wrong with Doc?

Must be a jerk to work for. Like he can't keep anybody around here. And not to mention, here's something else.

I don't even know how you quantify. What about all the Google, the bad Google reviews you get from your bad team members? Like those stick around for years and people might choose the next person on the list because they're reading what a jerk your front desk person was or your associate doctor.

So Google, we can't afford to be bad in business with Google anymore. And I think it's the same with your people. So it's such an important thing to get right.

Most docs are always looking for the best script, the best system, but it's really the people that I think are the thing that build these really stable, successful practices, Ronnie.

Yeah, and I love what you said to open this conversation about doing some introspection. And I know you and I talked about this a little bit the last time we were together of really, like my friend said, close the door, go in and look in the mirror and determine what it is you want and what it is you're looking for. And I will say, you and I have talked about this, one model is you got to be really, really good at saving money and just have a solo practice, keep your overhead low and save, save, save, save, because we know that the typical practice is not worth anywhere near what that doctor thinks when they're 100% of the revenue, versus this other model that you've adopted and that I've adopted, that's more of an associate driven practice, that's a true business, if you will, that is scalable, durable, and ultimately, exitable and transferable.

That's something that you and I can gracefully leave at some point, or not. But talk into that a little bit as to helping docs kind of clarify that vision and having that moment of, what do I want?

Yeah, I had a call last week with a doc who had a nice little practice. It did 15, 18,000 a month, and it cost him $3,000 to be there. That's a good living.

He's in there three and a half days a week. The problem is he wants to move out of state and he wants to sell it. Well, he's finding it hard to sell because there's no CA, he's the CA, he's the only person in there.

So unless he finds somebody who wants to step in and do exactly what he's doing, it's not so transferable. It's been a good living for him. But if you've gone through all the stress of owning a clinic, we teach you should be paid three ways.

You should get a salary, you should be paid distributions on a quarterly or annual or monthly basis. And when you sell that business, you should profit from the sale of that business. And so this doc has been getting a paycheck each month, but there's nothing transferrable there.

He's got a base of people. And because of technology, like ChiroTouch these days, you can run an office with just one person and with phones and text messaging. So that's a lot easier to do.

And not a bad way to go if you're just trying to keep something simple and you wanna make a decent living, but you're tied to it. It is a job that you've created. If you ever get to the point where you don't wanna be there, but you'd like to keep the business going, you're gonna have to cross that bridge that you have, Ronnie, which is building a practice around successful systems and people.

And it's really, again, you can build a very simple life, which is very appealing to a lot of people with a simple practice. Again, Ronnie, I say this every chance I get. Chiropractors oftentimes, I think, lose sight of what a brilliant business we have.

You charge 50, 60, 70 dollars for something you can do with your hands that takes a couple of minutes. And I see so many docs get distracted with everything under the sun, with, you know, and we work with a lot of them, you know, with different MDDC practices and functional practices and modalities, and that stuff can help a lot of people, but I think sometimes people just do forget that, you know, you look at a massage therapist, they have to spend an hour with a person and charge what we charge for one adjustment that takes a couple of minutes. It's a brilliant business model.

It really is. There's no other service industry that has fixed expenses. You know, whether you took care of two people today or 200, your expenses really don't change other than when you need to hire another CA.

What's your variable expense? Face paper, you know, that your cost is your cost. So it behooves you to make that thing profitable and to serve as many people as you can, and then to build in the right systems and to have some redundancy so that, you know, if you get to a point where you have an associate doctor, you've got some freedom in your schedule and a few staff members so that it's not all on one person's shoulders.

And I'm a fan of that, you know. That to me is something also that when you go to sell that practice, if there's an associate in there, oftentimes it's appealing for them to buy it, but even if it's not, you know, that's appealing to somebody buying a practice because the staff's all staying behind. If you're the one who built the practice and you sell it and you leave, the value you think you have in that business does not exist because you are the engine in that business and you're leaving.

So, you know, we work with a lot of great practice brokers because a lot of people hire us because they're looking to put an associate in because they want to exit out in a few years, which I'm a big fan of, but we get to chatting with them and it's just interesting how often these offices are really, you know, the average EBITDA, that's profit. So after all your expenses, put back what you paid yourself, that's EBITDA, earnings before taxes, depreciation and amortization. Most offices think they can get three times earnings.

So, you know, let's just keep it simple. If it was, I don't know, a million dollar practice and there was 250,000 in earnings, you'd think you could sell it for three times those earnings, which would be $750,000. But the practice brokers today are telling us it's on average 1.5.

So really that it's not 750, it's 375 that they're selling it for. But if you sell it in house to somebody who's been there, you typically can command a higher multiple on it because they know the business, they know what it is. It's not as risky for them.

And you can get two and sometimes three EBITDA when you're selling it in house. So again, but you got to pay people well, so they stick around, so that they build a stable business, so that somebody wants to buy this thing down the road.

That's right, that's right. But let's say a doc is listening to this right now and has decided that he does want to create a true business that's not so personality based, that is multiple associates and they really want to go all in on that. And the first thing is, and I know you're doing this, and I know my friend did this, is to plan with the end in mind.

So how important is that exercise to you in what you're doing right now as far as reaching that vision? What's that future org chart look like? And then as I look at that future org chart, because I have mine in my head right now, and what is the most important first hire for that doc that says, you know what?

Maybe he heard you speak at a seminar and he realizes that he's not gonna get what he thought for his practice. And maybe his vision's changed, where he wants to help more people, but he doesn't wanna be the chiropractor doing all the adjustments. And so what is a good way to go about that future org exercise?

And then what's the most important first hire?

There's a lot of variables, Ron. It depends on what they're looking to do down the road and where they're at today. You know, we kind of tend to say, look at now, then next, then this ultimate of what it looks like.

So now might be different depending where people are at, but you know, I'll tell you how we do it. We start our practices out with just the doc for the first 50 visits. And it's good because it's great for the doc to know how to run a payment, know how to schedule somebody.

That's just never a bad thing. And oftentimes helpful if somebody doesn't come in or something for a shift. Usually around 50 visits, we bring on the first CA.

And then, so now think specialization. Initially, when you're young in a business, you gotta wear all the hats. But as you get a little more established, you can start to delegate.

And usually as an owner, after the first couple years, you start to know what you're really good at and energized by and what you love doing and what things you don't like doing at all. And so that really determines where are you moving in this business? Some docs like doing the marketing and the networking.

Some docs like doing the clinical part of it. Some like doing the exams or the reports. Some like being off the floor, back behind the scenes, looking at the finances and the billing.

Where you're going is determined by what are your strengths, what gets you excited. But then I also believe, as you have more success and grow, you've got to do the same with your employees. And so initially that one CA that's doing the front desk and the back desk and the tech stuff, eventually you have a separate tech CA and a separate back office person or maybe an assistant.

And then eventually, a lot of times, it depends on techniques, but then once there's enough money, like I said earlier, to pay these salaries to an associate, then that's usually the next step because it does give the owner, they're able to have a sick day. They're able to leave for a week on vacation and not shut the practice down. They're able to take a couple half shifts off or go leave early to pick up the kids from school or go to sports or coach stuff.

And then it just kind of depends on the scale and vision. We work with some three and $5 million practices that have four, five, six docs in there and a team of 10 or 12 CAs. And we see different models.

Some of them where each doc kind of has their own people they take care of. We have other models where kind of the practice shifts around and shares people. There's a lot of ways to do that.

A lot of times it depends on services offered and techniques. Is this a PI clinic? Is it a sports injury clinic, a pediatric clinic, a general family-based practice?

Is there a lot of rehab being done in the practice? Is it a functional practice? Is it multidisciplinary with other practitioners in there?

So, you know, it kind of, it branches in a lot of directions, but I think again, it goes easier if you really hire great people at every step of the way who are in line with the vision, who all have really clear, a clear understanding of what's expected of them and the job description and the training to bring them on. And if the owner knows where they wanna steer their role in it as time goes on, it really is helpful. So I'll share, I just retired, we've been joking the last few weeks, but I, we have practices in New Mexico and in Texas, and we're opening more practices in Texas.

And so most of my time is spent as the CEO of Chiro Match Makers. And so I've got some great people that are on our executive team that oversee our clinics. But I just, I finally hit a point with my bandwidth where I went, you know, I was only in there three half days a week, but I, as things got busier, I needed some more time in my schedule.

And so I always knew that eventually I'd like to be on a role of what I call the chairman of the board, where, you know, I'm kind of the advisory guy, but I'm not, I'm no longer in a clinic adjusting. We've got a call center staffed up that our team oversees. We've got a whole CA training department, a DC training department.

And we have people that operate and run that. So it's been 20 years slowly building that. But now, you know, in theory, I just need to meet a few times a week with my key people who are overseeing our other people.

But that was my vision. You know, we want to scale this up to multiple offices. And so we've slowly been moving at that direction.

So there's so many ways to do it. You know, we've got a great friend who's got a really successful house call business, who knows he's not going to be able to sell it someday probably. As a matter of fact, our vet just, we got a letter that he wasn't able to find anybody.

He would come to the house. We loved it, but we got a letter. Hey, I'm retiring.

I couldn't find anybody to buy my practice. So I'm shutting it down. You know, it's a little harder to transfer something when it's a one man show, one woman show.

It's a little easier to transfer something when there's people in place doing the different roles inside of the job.

My personal belief and my hope for the profession is that more docs will begin to look at the legacy that they're leaving behind. And you know, that's a bigger calling than just making enough money to retire. I mean, how am I going to leave all these practice members behind?

And so back to what you said earlier, you know, and again, I love what you're saying because you're really reminding me that the profession has so many different ways you can go with it. And there's so many different personality types and what you're doing isn't for everyone. And I get that.

But as I look at this and I look at again, people being the key human resources and having the right people in the right seat, doing the right job, the right way for the right reasons, all the rights, as you look at this process, can you speak a little bit more into the actual testing and the different things we should consider so that we don't make mistakes in the hiring process?

Yeah, there's just, this came from my failure. I had a good friend who was hiring a company, show me what they used. And I realized, oh, these publicly traded billion dollar companies aren't just hiring off of gut or an interview.

They're really measuring people. So they take the time to define what is this role? What's the job description?

And what are the ideal behavioral traits a person would have who would excel in this role? And then I learned a couple other tools. I'd seen a chiropractor years ago had a system with something called the disc.

Most people have heard of disc, and it's a simple behavioral assessment. And there's a lot of those. There's hundreds of those out there.

And what I didn't realize though, is there's this other subset of these licenses that have been used now for 50, 60, 70 years inside of these Fortune 100 companies. And they're just accurate on a whole other level. They only take a few minutes to do, but the way they get down to assessing a person is just something most chiropractors have never seen.

Why would we? No chiropractor is gonna buy a license for 100,000 or $200,000 when you hire once or twice a year. But these companies like the public billion dollar, multi-billion dollar company, and they're hiring tens of thousands of people a year, they're using these constantly.

You don't even have time to waste to sit down in an interview if the person's not wired the right way for the job. And then the other side of that is the cognitive side. And most of the owners on the line, if at some point had one of two things happen, either you hire somebody and you train them, and then they don't seem to really get it.

So you train them again. And they are a little better, but then it's like three months later and you're going, are they dumb? Like what's wrong?

I know I've shown them how to do this thing, 15 times, and it's not sticking. Well, that's cognitive ability, and you can assess that on the front end, and we use a bell curve, and we know people on the back half of the bell curve can in a very measurable way, we can tell you how quickly somebody's going to onboard and learn your procedures. Probably most people, if you've been in business a little while, you've had somebody who were like a week or two in, they seem to know everything.

That's cognitive ability, and they've had people three months later, they know nothing. And that's cognitive ability on the lower end. So you can measure that.

Also, a lot of times owners have had the experience of you think you're hiring one person, and three months later, you're like, who is this person? Like, this isn't who I interviewed, what's going on? And so that's where these behavioral assessments get into the levels of stress, how people are adjusting their behavior, their personality.

That's why hiring off gut is a really, sometimes you get lucky, we all have, but you can really misstep, because just because a person's presenting themselves one way today, they might be adapting to the stress in their life right now, and that's why they're coming across that way. And anytime somebody's changing jobs, they probably have some level of financial stress, work stress, let alone family stress, relationship stress, health stress. So we all adjust our behavior and our personality based on that.

So when you're paying the numbers I talked about at the start of this, you can't, and if you get it wrong, the fact that it might end up costing you three, four, five times that salary, you just can't afford to get this wrong, Ron. And when you get it right, and you don't have to worry about the people working with you because they're on point, they're on purpose, and they're the right person. You know, we have multiple clinics.

I don't step foot in them, but my people are there every day. I trust them. I know they're executing our systems.

I see their reports each week. We talk about their reports and adjust accordingly based on numbers and metrics. Not everybody works into that system.

And so I have to measure people before I waste a second of my very valuable time to actually sit down and spend time interviewing them. And the problem too is once you interview them, we're emotional. We're chiropractors.

We're really good at bonding and connecting with people and finding the good in people and mentoring people, encouraging people, and that can really work against you if it's an employee-employee relationship because some of those things, behavioral traits, you just can never train. They're hardwired with people.

So true. Hey, Allen, speaking to the actual interview process, so let's say I've done the right thing and I've either hired a company or I've spent a great deal of time of doing the testing and the cognitive piece. And let's say they fit that, what I'm looking for.

Walk through what your typical interview process would be like.

So somebody wanted to geek out and really go deep, you know, top grading is a book you could go read and learn about. But the general, the way we generally do it is we assess everyone, we know the parameters. So if they're not the right behavioral mix of who we're looking for, or, and the right cognitive, then we don't even have a first anything.

We don't have time for that. If they match and they look to be a good fit, then we'll typically do a very brief phone call of about five minutes. And all we're trying to do on a high level is just figure out, do I want to spend more time meeting with this person face to face or no?

You can usually get a read on that from, it's not a long interview, it's just really quick, one to touch base, why are you interested in this job? Why do you think you might be a good fit for this job? Great, and you're just trying to decide, all right, I've got however many people to choose from here, I'm trying to whittle this down.

So that's the next step. Then we'll move on to in-person interviews. Hopefully, if the behavioral and the cognitive is right, then we're only meeting with four or five people.

Something to maybe bring up here, Ronnie, that the profession is still, I still see on Facebook boards that's really archaic is this group interview. Chiropractors do it because they didn't have a lot of time and they're trying to weed through 40, 50 people, see who stands out and just save themselves time. The only reason to ever do that is if you're looking for an extreme extrovert, maybe if you're looking for somebody to go out in the community and market for you.

That's who excels in that environment. And there's so many other nuanced behavior traits that you will miss and go right over those people by doing that group interview. And so this technology takes the place of that.

It cuts down your time of not having to meet with 30 people. You're only getting on the phone with people who are really good fit on paper, behaviorally, cognitive. So anyhow, then we like to do an interview and we have a whole slew of different questions.

Again, most docs are interviewing questions or using old interview questions like when they got interviewed once that just don't tell you. The point is to really get to know this person. And I guess another piece of advice I'd give on the interview is don't sell yourself.

Too many people spend the interview trying to convince somebody why they should work for them. My attitude is I'm trying to find out all the reasons you're not a good fit for me. And so I'm really grilling them.

And a lot of our interview questions are aimed at getting deeper and why they're not a good fit. I like real-time questions. If I need somebody to help me with a lot of special projects that I'm bringing them on for, I wanna hear examples of how they dealt with special projects.

If somebody is interfacing with the public and they might have some difficult interactions, let's say unhappy patients or collecting money or getting people back on schedule, I wanna hear about how they've handled some uncomfortable situations with customers in the past and how they handled it. If somebody came in upset or angry, how did they help to make it right? So I try to get them thinking and talking situationally.

If that goes well, then we typically invite them back for a working interview. Easy to do with CAs and associates, harder to do with other roles, but if you can just have them hang out at the front desk, how are they interacting with people? Are they jumping in?

Are they engaged? Are they deer in headlights? You know, that kind of, usually really A caliber people.

The measurements are good, the interviews are good, and then you put them in and they jump right in there and they're willing to help. And then if that all goes well, this comes from top grading, and boy, we've really saved some bad experiences. If the person has a significant other and you can get out to dinner with your significant other and them, and if you don't or they don't, then still you can get out to dinner.

And if you drink, if you can have a few drinks, boy, that's really, you know, you're out to dinner now with their spouse and you got a glass of wine or two, you'll see a whole different side that you never saw from those people during the interview, which I think is really good. You know, I wanna know who this person is that I'm gonna be spending this time with and working with. And so that's kind of our process.

And then we always, always, always, we provide this at Chiro Match Makers, do a criminal background check. If your state allows it, a credit background check and a license check. And I can sit here and tell you horror stories about, well, you've got a good horror story.

I won't tell here online, Ron, but yours is one of the worst. Of just, you know, these things would have come up if people would have looked back in their past and saved an awful lot of pain. It's a simple thing, but most docs are so eager to get somebody, they skip over that, and all of a sudden money's been stolen or is missing, or they're having all these awkward interactions with prob, and it was right there in the background check and they missed it.

So it's important that our, you know, again, you're paying an associate 75, 100, 125,000 a year and they're with you for 10 years. It's a million plus dollar investment. Spend a little money to get this right professionally on the front end.

Yeah, I completely agree and I will never not do this. I need that support. Man, time flies, you hit on so much.

I just really appreciate you. I know we could keep talking and you know, a lot of docs in this call are gonna have more questions. It's almost something we're gonna have you back for a webinar on this because it's so important.

And this is really what's been lacking in chiropractic for years. And I just love that you're scratching this itch and I don't even hesitate. And I think you guys could charge more for your service, but and I'm not doing this as a shameless plug for Chiro Match Makers, but I really has been a big part of my success.

And I really appreciate what you guys are doing with that. And I really appreciate you taking the time to be with me today. If there's any last nuggets you want to throw out before we end this, please feel free right now.

If you got anything else you want to add.

No, just that encouragement that there's no better service based business than chiropractic. We impact lives. It doesn't take, you're using your hands.

You know, many of your people come in, you're the only person that ever touches them in their life with all this technology. It's just the metaverse. It's like only going to get worse.

We have what the world needs. And you know, maybe Ron, where I'd say is, look at how many people chose not to get the COVID vaccine. What is it?

Roughly 30%. That's a big number. I remember hearing when we didn't, you know, we didn't vaccinate our kids and they were born.

It was like 92% vaccination rates. And so I've got to believe that there's a bigger group of people that are thinking like chiropractors. And again, I see it with some of these really successful clinics that we get to interact with.

And so, you know, just own the profession, have confidence in your service and what you're doing for humanity. And at the end of the day, that's going to allow you to bring on people and give them a great living and help them make an impact in the world. And it's really at the end of the day, if we're providing for our families, you feel better about what you do, and that is better for the profession as a whole.

Totally agree, and I really appreciate you. And for those of you on this podcast, I just want to celebrate you right now and tell you good job. No better time spent than on your own development.

So I applaud you for that. I just want to thank ChiroTouch for their spirit in doing this podcast. The reason for this is to help chiropractors thrive and grow and reach their full potential.

And like I said before, and like Allen just said, right now the world needs us more than ever to be at our best. And so with that, I want to thank you for tuning in. Allen, thank you for spending time with me on this.

And I hope you all have an amazing day and make sure that you're taking care of yourself, that you're staying healthy, that you're getting adjusted and that you're spending time on self care. And so once again, I appreciate you and have a great day.

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