My Journey from Patient to Practitioner to Practice Owner with Dr. Ronnie Simms

Thank you for tuning in to this edition of Catch Up with ChiroTouch. And today, I'm your host, Dr. Ronnie Simms. And I just want to, first of all, talk about ChiroTouch software real quick.

I've been using ChiroTouch for 15 years. I love the software. It's allowed me to scale my business and do things I never dreamed of.

And I just want to also appreciate, or show some appreciation to ChiroTouch for their desire to host this podcast series. As a way to really come along with side the profession, to help inspire chiropractors, to help come alongside you to learn more about business, to learn from the best of the best. And we have been fortunate to have some amazing guests on the show, from Dr. Paul Reed, Stephen Franzen, Bo Pierce, Kathy Colby-Wendland, Nick and Stephanie Rodsater, Mark Mao, Alan Miner.

I could keep going on and on and on. I should say Matt Hubbard too, because we just had him on recently. It was a blast.

But I've been the benefactor, as have you, with these amazing episodes. I find myself taking notes as I'm interviewing these great chiropractors, because there's so much to learn from others. And so for those of you that are tuning in today, I just want to applaud you for taking the time for personal development.

It's the best time you could spend on becoming a better leader, not just with your staff, but in your community. And so today we're going to kind of flip the script, and I'm going to be co-hosting with an amazing chiropractor in his own right, Dr. Brian Blask. Brian and I have had a chance to get to know each other over the last three to four years.

He is the sales director and pretty much runs the sales department at ChiroTouch. And Brian was also a practicing DC for many years as well. So he knows the ins and outs of chiropractic.

And I just want to applaud Brian because I know in my view, Brian is helping more chiropractors right now from where he sits than he was able to help in his practice. Because I'm telling you, when you have the right software, it allows you to operate at your best. And Brian has an amazing sales team and they're bringing chiropractic to so many different people and they're helping humanity in such a huge way.

So Brian, welcome back on the podcast.

Dr. Ronnie, thank you so much for having me. The guests you've had have been amazing. So what you've been able to do here with the podcast is really impressive.

You know, reaching out to that many chiropractors, the platform here, being able to communicate with so many different amazing chiropractors is just helping people we don't realize, right? Through conversations, through, like you said, it's personal development, it's professional development. And you've done a great job and the guests are amazing.

So keep up the great work and really appreciate what you're doing here.

I appreciate it. And Brian, so as we kind of switch roles here, I'm gonna have you be the host and I'll be the guest. Give us a quick update as to what's been going on with your, just with your career at ChiroTouch.

Yeah, so I've been at ChiroTouch for over seven years now, selling software back when we were just the, the installed version. And now we've recently moved to our cloud-based product as well. So now you've got the full cloud offering, which we released last year.

And now I've managed that sales team. So we're able to branch out to so many different offices, show them the demonstration, take care of their offices, streamline their practices. The whole idea of why, we always talk about our why and all that, and we'll get into that later in the conversation, I'm sure.

But being able to help practices, right? That's what we love to do. That's kind of the mantra at ChiroTouch is we want to help you.

We want to see what's going on in your practice, kind of dissect it a little bit through a demonstration, and really help you. Like we want to make you more efficient, and we know that ChiroTouch can fit that if it's the right type of practice. We want to make you more efficient with not only your patient care, but your billing, your flow, so you can see more patients.

We want ChiroPractic to reach more people, and just ChiroTouch as a tool that does that.

That's right. That's awesome. So with that, I'm gonna let you take over from here, and I guess I'll sit in the other seat for a change.

It's interesting for you to be sitting back and being the interviewee now, huh?

That's all good, man. I look forward to it.

So let's get a little bit of a backstory. You're the one always asking questions. You're the one that's always bringing people on and saying, okay, tell us your story, give us the inspiration.

How about you? Tell us your story. Tell the chiropractors out there, who is Dr. Ronnie Simms?

Oh, wow. Yeah, I guess for me, I had to go back to my early 20s, injuring my back, playing sports in college, and kind of stumbling into this whole thing called chiropractic. I was working at a gym, and a lady chiropractor, Dr. Kim Raymont, who was an amazing swimmer and athlete in her own right.

And she was doing a free screening at my gym, and about two days before that, I had injured my lumbar spine doing some squats, and I was in a lot of pain. And again, I had no idea what chiropractic was, and she put me on this spinal analyzing machine and drew the plumb lines and told me I was bearing 15 pounds more weight on my right leg than my left. And I decided to go into her office and go through a more thorough evaluation, and the rest is history.

It was amazing, the results I received within my moments after my first adjustment. And so I decided to change my major from pre-med to pre-chiropractic, and on and on I went. And then from that point, I became an associate with an amazing practice in Long Beach, California with Dr. Gregory Judd, who was a great mentor to me, a wonderful chiropractor.

And Dr. Judd taught me so much about the ins and outs of chiropractic, not just how to take care of people, but how to communicate with them and how to inspire them and how to manage them and how to really help them get the most out of their experience. And so from that experience, I decided to move back north to where I was from, El Dorado Hills, California, about 30 miles east of Sacramento, and started Back to Health Chiropractic in 1996. And that's really how the whole thing started.

And here we are today. I have 15 employees. I'm getting ready to onboard my fourth associate.

So I'll have a total of five doctors, including myself, and I'm just having more fun now than I've ever had.

So everyone always has that chiropractic, ah-ha, kind of like, ah, I'm doing this. This is how I want to spend the rest of my life. This is the avenue I want to go because I can see that this is going to help people.

It helped me. This is where I want to be as a chiropractor. So I love hearing those stories, right?

Mine the same way as I was in college and went to a chiropractor, and I was like, well, people want to come see you. They want to get better. You can use your hands now and really affect the population.

It's a beautiful thing.

So let's talk kind of the business side, right? Is this your dream practice? What type of legacy do you want to leave?

Can you talk me through the mindset there of that type of growth that you've gone through?

That's a great question. I feel like, like many of us, I started out on my own. I really couldn't afford an associate.

I could barely afford a CA. I'd have my wife work part-time, and it was just, the early days are tough for a lot of us. And I remember building my practice through just a lot of effort.

I remember doing a community canvas before I opened my doors for 30 days. I knocked on every potential door I could knock on, both businesses and residents, just to find out about the community and to introduce myself to the community. And it just, I did countless spinal screenings, public lectures, referral groups, anything and everything, I did it.

And I began to build this practice quite rapidly. And I had this inflection point as I was building this practice and realizing that the impact I was having on my community was not as great as I thought it could be. Because I was seeing as many people as I could potentially see.

And I think many doctors, they run into that, that kind of dead end where they're like, I can't possibly see more people. And yet I'm not having the impact on this community like I thought I would. I was making great money, but I was working a lot.

And I was trying to be a coach and trying to do all these things with my children, but it was really exhausting. And so I decided to go visit Dr. Matt Hubbard in San Diego, because I heard all these stories about things Matt was doing. And I went down and shadowed him for a day and a half.

And this is probably 2006, 2007, and maybe 11 years into my practice, 10 years. And I was so amazed by what he was doing. Most of all, I was amazed by how affected his team was.

I found myself watching his CAs more than I was watching him. And he had a wonderful associate at the time, and he had scaled this beautiful practice, but I was seeing these CAs and how in control they were and how inspirational they were. And I just kind of left that meeting with that understanding of I either need to readjust my vision for what I want to do or I need to scale my practice and grow it well beyond what I could do.

And so that was kind of that inflection point where I decided I don't want to change my vision, because like you said earlier, Brian, not enough people are under chiropractic care. And like you said, having a good software program can help you see more people, and it can help more chiropractors see more people, because the bottom line is not enough Americans are seeing chiropractors right now. Not enough people in the world are seeing chiropractors right now.

We need to keep grinding as chiropractors to get a greater degree of population under regular chiropractic care. You and I both know the world would be a far better place when people are adjusted on a regular basis and when their nervous systems are working better. We just know people are happier, they're more vibrant, and they're healthier.

And so that's kind of my current vision is I just want to see, I want to grow my team till I don't have any more energy to do it, and it's time for me to move on. So that's kind of the legacy I'm setting up. I love how I can go to my practice on a Friday and nobody knows me.

I don't see clients on a Friday. I can walk in my adjustatorium and nobody knows me. And that anonymity is really what I'm working toward because I want it to be about chiropractic, not about me.

It's a great point to say that, okay, I want to affect more people. I'm seeing as many people as I can see. I'm busy.

I'm very busy. How can other chiropractors do what you did and scale and see more people? How are you able to affect more people and go down that road of that vision and get over that hump and take it to the next level?

What's that like?

That's a great question. You know, if you look at the as Dr. Franson would say, there's four seasons. You've got the launch of your practice, which is just a lot of blood, sweat and tears, right?

When you launch it and then you're building it. And so many doctors, like you said, they die on the hill of trying to build their practice. They get injured, they burn out, and they just realize, this is too hard.

I can't keep building this thing. And that's kind of where I went and visited Matt. I was still building.

And then I decided I needed to scale it. And we always say, if you're seeing like 175 a week or more, and I was around 250 to 300 a week, you can't see that many more. Some guys can.

I couldn't. I just didn't want to. And then I realized, gosh, I like to mountain bike.

I like to ski. Those are very dangerous sports. And I was realizing I had good disability insurance, but I don't want to live on disability insurance.

And that doesn't do anything for my community. If I'm out, my practice is going to die, basically. And so I started looking at it kind of from a bunch of different angles and decided I need to start creating an associate onboarding program.

And I started hiring associates. And I've learned so much about that. In the beginning, I had everything wrong, but I kept trying, you know.

And then finally I went through some seasoning and got coaching. So I guess to answer your question is, get some coaching. I've never gone without a coach.

And also, you know, don't just do the bare bones minimum CE credits. Go to these inspiring seminars. Go to DE.

Go to ChiroFest. Go to Cal Jam. Go to The Wave.

Go to these seminars that are going to inspire you, that are going to motivate you. And start hanging out with people that are doing what you want to do. That's what I did.

And I don't know about you, but I'm in three different mastermind groups. Two are chiropractic. One is more for businesses and CEOs.

But I need those masterminds. I need the accountability. I need the connectivity.

When I'm isolated, I'm terrible. I am not effective at all when I'm in isolation. So get a coach and inspire yourself.

Push yourself. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations. And join a mastermind group.

And put yourself out there. And then hire an associate to do it the right way. I use a company called Chiro Matchmakers.

Shameless plug for them. But it really takes a lot of the hard work out of the human resource side of things. They will help pair me with the right type of associate for what I'm looking for.

Like me, I'm looking for caregivers right now. I'm not looking for necessarily business builders or somebody who wants their own practice. I'm looking for somebody who just loves chiropractic and wants to take care of people.

And that's really something you got to ask yourself. What are you looking for? Are you looking to keep growing your practice?

Or are you looking to take more time off your practice? I think it really depends on what you want. But I think that's kind of what I would advise people is get a coach and begin to write out your vision and change your vision.

It's okay to change your vision. I mean, I've talked to a couple hikers that have done Everest. They go the hike to get to Base Camp is amazing.

It is so hard just to get to Base Camp. And then all of a sudden, they get to Base Camp, and they have a different view now, a different perspective. So maybe your vision was only Base Camp, and it wasn't big enough.

So maybe you need to re-clarify your vision.

That's a great point. A lot of great points there that I want to touch on. The main one there that really struck home here with me was what I'm doing at ChiroTouch as well is the team building.

You mentioned it earlier with Matt's team, his CAs. You saw they're doing a lot. It's part of his practice and his vision.

Same with you. You're building a team with employees and CAs and associates. I do the same thing.

I have to bring on people to help sell ChiroTouch and reach out to practices and see what they're using, see how we can help them. And hiring is extremely important. Matching who I am and who I like to work with is very important.

It's important to how we build a team at ChiroTouch. This is a career position. ChiroTouch is one of the biggest brands in chiropractic.

And to work here, you have to be the right fit, and you either want to work, and you're going to want to train, and as a team, we're going to work together. And the reason that ChiroTouch has been so successful for such a long period of time is because the product is amazing, let's be honest. The product is phenomenal, but it's a team.

ChiroTouch is a team. There's a bunch of people that work together to achieve goals, right? Setting those goals as high as we can and reaching them.

Working together, having a plan and working that plan, and we scale that way. It's the same thing for your practice, right? You work together, and then you have a mastermind, essentially a team for you, right?

You're able to work around those people that are successful, right? That's how you provide yourself with cohorts, colleagues that are successful. What I'm saying is the sum of your parts, but you want to surround yourself with the most successful people.

It just brings you up, right?

That's right.

Because, I mean, if you hang out with people that are less successful, they're always looking up to you, and you don't grow. So you always want to hang out with those that are like a mastermind, that are people who are more successful or as successful as you, so you can push each other and do the same thing, right? At ChiroTouch and in our lives, we want to become more successful people.

Whether it's your family, your personal life, your friends, those are the types of things that get lost on us as we go through. Sometimes it's a bit of a grind, because of that building of that career. You get to a point and you got to have that vision.

You got to sit back and you got to think, and you need people to do that with.

That's right.

I think it's very important. So moving forward, what are the main things that you can share from the people? Maybe a quick little synopsis here for our listeners that maybe haven't listened to all the episodes with Catch Up with ChiroTouch and all the guests you have.

What are the main points or themes that you've gotten from these guests that you could really just quickly throw some tidbits out there that have really helped people?

Okay, so for me, the big thing is the domains of practice. And you kind of touched on this a little bit with what you're building there at ChiroTouch, is every business in America has to attract customers. And so we always talk about the attraction domain, which for the chiropractor is marketing, essentially.

And we always talk in chiropractic, in our groups, in my mastermind, about you've got outside-in marketing. That could be a spinal screening. It could be corporate wellness.

It could be speaking at your chamber or whatever, being in a referral group. Then you have the inside-out referrals, which are some of those are just organic. They just happen because they happen, but they can also be event-driven.

So you've got the third domain would be digital. And now in today's world, you have to have a strong digital presence and a strong Google presence. And so for us, we have to attract, but then once they come in, you have to have processes and procedures in place to be able to convert them to becoming your client.

And often they come in as kind of seekers, chiropractic patients, they come in, they're not sure often, they're new to it. Maybe not, but if they are, they're kind of seeking it. Then you take them and convert them into being a believer because you give them great results and you give them great advice.

So now you've converted them, and then you have to work on retaining them, which really comes down, retention comes down to conviction and clarity. Like you have to have absolute clarity around your systems in your office, your process, your procedure. So many chiropractors I meet, they have so many different prices and different care plans, and they just, they kind of wing it, you know, and they're not system based at all.

Chiropractors are noted for that. We're very kind of free spirited, and yet you can still be that way within the structure of process procedure, like your day one procedure, your day two, your report of findings, your call to action. And then lastly, beyond attraction, conversion, retention is team building.

You mentioned team building. You have to work hard on building a team, and you and I are both sports fans, and you know, you and I could talk about our favorite pro football teams, and I'm very thankful that the Raiders spent the off season working on building their team. Like they went out and took care of some weaknesses.

And so in your practice right now, as you're scaling it, hopefully, what kind of player do you need right now? You know, what are you looking for? For me, I wanted a lady chiropractor because I knew I couldn't serve a big part of my community in a way a dynamic, passionate lady DC could.

And so that was 12 years ago. 13 years ago, I hired the amazing Dr. Krista on my team. And she's been great.

She's helped me build our team. Then we got an amazing integrator, Jen, who is kind of the Pepper Potts in our practice of behind the scenes, making sure they adheres to the process procedure, training the CAs, hitting the doctors over the head when need be. And so we began to assemble this team.

And then I added a young gun, Dr. Colby, who grew up on my practice. And he's just this empathetic, caregiving, high-energy practitioner. And he's helping me scale to a new level in areas I never could have on my own.

And so as I'm building this dream vision, this dream practice, I know right now I'm adding Dr. Vance. He's my next player. High-energy, high-empathy, but yet wants to be mentored, is hungry, wants to be coached, wants to be poured into.

And so as you look at your team, what I did is I built my dream vision. I wrote that on a paper. I have a vision board.

What does that look like? How many visits? What's my annual revenue?

How many new patients? What does that look like? How many locations?

How many staff members? And I built my dream org chart. And right now I'm in the process of building toward that ultimate dream org chart, which for me is, I really think, eight to ten associates.

And right now I'm getting ready to be, well, I count myself as an associate because I'm one of the care providers. So there's five of us, including myself. So we need three to four more to reach this vision.

So as you look at your vision, and by the way, my accountability group that I'm in are all doctors who are doing very similar things, some even greater. And to your point is, yeah, I mean, the whole tide is raising in our group because we hold each other accountable. And we have a facilitator who gets in our face and holds us to these CEO rhythms that we must follow.

And so I think the other thing would be finance. You have attraction, conversion, retention, team building and finance. How are you managing your money?

Are you putting money aside? How are your collections? Everything finance.

Are you doing billing? Are you not doing billing? And how are you leveraging your software?

How are you leveraging billing services? I know ChiroTouch has an amazing billing service. And what kind of things are you leveraging that are out there in the profession for you, right?

And so those are kind of, that would be my five big things. If I had to give you five rhythms, I think every doctor needs to have going strong in this practice. That would be it.

Yeah, that's phenomenal. I mean, those people that are listening to this just really need to rewind for two or three minutes and listen to that again, because that was beautiful. Some of the things that you touch on there that I love are process and presentation.

Every single business has to have this. You have to have your systems. You have to have something set in place, and you have to work through that.

There's a process that goes into every patient, to your report of findings, the presentation and how you communicate. Patient communication and education is one of the biggest things. It's the same thing that I do.

It's the same thing. We talk about process and presentation every single day. Every day of my life, we talk about process and presentation.

How are you approaching these offices? When we're calling them, how are we presenting ChiroTouch? How are we communicating with people?

I mean, are we asking the right questions? It's the same thing when you're educating your patients. It's very similar in what we do at ChiroTouch into what you do as a chiropractor.

It's very similar. These systems are in place for a reason. It breeds success, so follow the system.

But you have to have that in place. If you don't have that in place, like you said, you're going all willy-nilly, nothing's going to work. You might get to where you need to go, but barely.

If you got the system in place and you're going through the process of presentation, everything is going to work. So let me talk to you about what's next. What's next for you?

What's next for the podcast? Because now that you're seeing all these guests all the time, what vision do you have for that? What vision do you have for practice and for Ronnie Simms?

That's a great question. I feel like I wanted to add one thing to the prior comments. And you made me think of this.

Within those rhythms in our practice is a culture of training. And you mentioned it earlier. How often are you sitting down with your team and role playing?

How often in your practice are you practicing the new patient phone call or the tour of your office or the day one exam process? How often are you training? And I'm not talking about meetings.

And we have plenty of meetings. We have our issues list, and we do all that. But I'm talking about role playing, where you sit down and go, okay, you're the new patient who's calling, you're the person taking the call, go.

And we all sit and watch and take notes. And we train all the time. And so that would be the secret sauce that spreads within those rhythms.

To your next question, what's next for me as a leader in chiropractic? I love doing what I'm doing now with you. I just want to inspire chiropractors to be at their best.

I think we always say what the world needs now more than ever is chiropractors to be at their best. We don't need you operating at 50% of your potential as a chiropractor. And so it's time for you to roll up your sleeves, build your team, and begin to have a greater impact in your community.

And so having all these guests on and having these podcasts, they're evergreen, they're there for you. Go back in to the ChiroTouch Library, if you're watching this today, and begin to listen to these episodes and take notes and journal, right? I mean, so often we go to seminars, right?

We get so inspired and we take notes, and then Monday, Tuesday, then by the next Friday, it's kind of faded again. And then we got to have that annual boost, you know? I got to go back to the wave.

I got to go back. And I'm saying, you know, that's where the accountability groups and the coaching can just keep you engaged. It keeps you hardwired and anchored into what you need to be doing as a leader.

And for me, I think we need more guys doing what, more guys and gals. And by the way, I had Kathy Colby Wendland on, and she's amazing. And I think she's spot on.

I think lady chiropractors are a critical element to the future of chiropractic. So right now, if you're a woman chiropractor, you have no idea how impactful you can be. So I think that's a big part of our future.

And for me, I want to leave a legacy. I want my business and practice to thrive and grow after I'm gone. I know several guys who've done that.

Paul Reed's done that. Stephen Franzen's done that. Mark Mao is gonna do that.

And there's all these guys that are building up these incredible businesses that are not personality practices. And back to your point, you got these process procedures that give you guard rails. And then within that, you can still be the free spirited chiropractor as long as you have those guard rails.

And you can still have your personality be a big part of it. But if you're building your practice on personality alone, you're not scaling it. And it's not worth as much as you think.

When you go to sell a personality practice, you're lucky to get.5 of your annual revenue. Because if they take you out of it, what's it worth? Versus if you do what I'm doing, where you build a practice where right now, I haven't shrunk my load, I'm still one of the top performers on my team, but our revenue is at a point now where I'm less than 30% of the revenue pie.

So if somebody comes to buy my practice someday, they're going to look at that and go, oh, I can replace that. I can replace 25%. We can backfill there.

If you're 80% of your practice and you've got a bunch of associates running around helping you, that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about like for me, my associates need to see 150 a week minimum. That's the minimum expectation on our team.

So to find that, what does that look like? And I don't want, the other thing, my other principles right now is I don't want my associates growing through my dilution. Someday I'll dilute, but that's not how I want to grow them.

That's not a good model. You know, I want to grow them independent of me. And so that's kind of my legacy is I want to leave chiropractic better than I found it, right?

And I know I can't have my head down and my bottom up forever. My discs can only last so long. My carpal tunnel can only last so long.

And I take good care of myself. But I just know at almost age 58, I have the energy. And so now what I'm doing is I'm spending more time working on it rather than in it.

I love that. And so that's kind of my legacy, Brian, is I truly love being a chiropractic CEO. I can't imagine not doing that.

So I think my legacy is to keep building my practice into something that I'm not even seeing clients anymore, where I'm helping run the business as a CEO would. And that's kind of my legacy. And then maybe someday I sell, I retire or the good Lord takes me home, but at least I will leave something behind that's durable.

Right? And it's exitable. How many of you on this call have a practice that's exitable?

Where you're gonna exit with the amount of money you need to live the rest of your days without relying on social security, right? So, that's a long answer to really where my head is, and where I want chiropractors to think this way.

I totally agree. You have to have that exit strategy. And you gotta start working on it now.

You could say it, but you really do. Right now, you have to. And one of the things you said earlier, which I think is a key takeaway from a lot of people right here, is the world's opened back up.

We have these shows, we have this education now that's out there for us, and go back out there, get inspired by other chiropractors. Download the podcast, subscribe. Like you said, you go to the seminar, you get inspired, Monday or Tuesday hit, and you're like, oh man.

Well, guess what? ChiroTouch is releasing a podcast every couple weeks with Dr. Ronnie Simms and phenomenal guests. So you can get that inspiration, you subscribe to it, boom, it pops up on your phone, you listen to it on your commute, listen to it on your lunch hour, you listen to it when you work it out.

It helps you, trust me. I consume a ton through podcasts. It's a great way to educate yourself.

And to inspire yourself every single day.

So true.

Well, Doc, thanks again for being the interviewee. Normally, you are the one asking all the questions. So I appreciate you flipping the script and letting me interview you today.

Hey, it's been really fun, Brian. I always enjoy my time with you. And I'm really excited about all the stuff you guys are doing over there.

And I just think it's a great way for the chiropractor to really scale his business. So I really appreciate. And again, I know this podcast is not about selling software.

It's really about inspiring and educating and motivating chiropractors to play all out, right? To leave it on the field. Let's go, right?

I appreciate it, Doc. And to everyone else, thank you again for tuning in to Catch Up with ChiroTouch. I was your co-host, Dr. Brian Blask with Dr. Ronnie Simms.

Thank you very much. Have a well-adjusted day.

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