Shift Your Purpose and Find Fuel for Your Journey

Welcome to this edition of Catch Up with ChiroTouch. I'm your host, Dr. Ronnie Simms. I'm so glad you're here today.

I really enjoy doing these podcasts. I've had some amazing guests on, and I've met some incredible chiropractors, heard some amazing stories, learned so many nuggets that I've applied to my own practice. And I'm just so grateful for the opportunity to host this.

I wanna thank ChiroTouch for the spirit behind this. I believe ChiroTouch's intent here is to come alongside chiropractors, not just their clients, just to support them, to give them some leadership training, to really begin to speak into what some of these practitioners have done in the world and how we can learn from those that have gone before us and how we should all remain lifelong students. And so today, in that spirit, during my journey, I've met some amazing chiropractors.

And the guy I have on with me today, Dr. Tracy Wilson, out of Lubbock, Texas, is one of a kind. This guy has got a huge heart for his family, for his community, and really for the world, if you really look at Tracy's work, which he's gonna tell me about here in a second. But hey, Doc, welcome on, man.

Hey, thanks for having me.

I've been kind of researching you and looking at you, but I'd really like you to tell our listeners a little bit about your chiro story, and then I have a few little questions I'd like to hit you with.

So I started out as a patient. That was where my journey began. I was a seventh grade kid playing on a house in New Mexico.

My brother and I, we didn't get much snow in southern New Mexico, and it snowed, and we were sledding off the back of our house, and we made this big old pile of stuff, and we'd jump onto it. And we were so excited, and I toppled the wrong way. And I went down the front of the house and hit the edge of my mom's truck, and so I really injured my back.

My mom took me to a chiropractor. She had had a previous bad experience with one, and it said, swear she'd never go, but I was hurt, and so she ended up taking me. And I went to the chiropractor, and I found out that I had either caused it or before a spondylolisthesis.

Started getting care, which kind of resolved a lot of my back trouble, I was given, but when I was severely, was a severe asthmatic suffering kid. Couldn't run from first base to second base. I couldn't do all this.

I loved baseball. I actually had a really big skill at it. I went on to play college ball, and I went on to travel to Cleveland Indians.

It wasn't my gig. God called me to be a chiropractor, so that's what I'm doing. But I had this great time with this hand-eye coordination in my life with being a baseball player.

But it all started because I had this experience with chiropractic, and it gave my life back. And through breathing, I literally couldn't breathe to save my life. And so, through all of that, I just, I had this incredible passion for chiropractic at a young age.

I just, I went every single week. I started mowing yards to pay for my care. When the chiropractor found out I wanted to be a chiropractor, I wrote a research paper that year.

I didn't really write a research paper. That's such a BS. I copied brochures.

This was before the software was created. I just got a brochure out of his office, and I just wrote up a bunch of stuff. And I said, I want to be a chiropractor.

So then I went on from there, and I applied to chiropractic when I was in high school. And the application, obviously said you need to go to college first, you get your undergraduate, but we'd love your initiative. And so it kind of sent that back to me.

And I thought, well, crap, if I'm going to be a doctor, I might as well be a real doctor, right? In my head. And so I started going down the pre-med pathway playing baseball and baseball didn't work out.

ROTC didn't work out. They dropped me because I had a history of asthma, but it radically stopped. I tried to explain to them my chiropractic.

And kid you not, I did what every good college kid does when his life direction is. I got drunk and I was stuck with one of my best friends, woke up to song playing, and it was these three little birds. And I opened the door to these three little birds from the porch, didn't fly away.

And I just knew I was supposed to do that. One hour later, Fabrizio Mancini, who's the assistant to Jim Parker, calls me and says, I'm the assistant, I always tell this story. I said, I'm the assistant to Parker College.

I'm calling him, if you know Fab, he just has this great Colombian accent.

He was the assistant at the time, he calls him. So I go to visit, I'm standing in the neuro lab, and I just said, Chiropractic was choosing me. It was just one of those things.

And so it was that time where we all have, where it's just kind of the moment, you're gonna do this. And so I went into it and I always had this great backstory, but it was just such a lightning bolt shooting out of your butt experience, going through school there. And about halfway through school, my daughter was born, and she was, we were in a hospital, this was way before any type of pediatric certifications or ICPA or anything was going on.

And we didn't know what to do. She was in ICU, she wasn't breathing. But I remembered, Michael Hall, from a neuro lab, was talking about this subluxation and this function, and something in my spirit was tugging me.

I'm in school long enough to spell neurology, most of the time, chiropractic. And all of a sudden, I'm being, I've got this child with this really severe problem in ICU for nine days. So we check her out of ICU, take her to a pediatric chiropractor.

I literally had to sign her life away. I was young, I was scared, but I was somehow weirdly confident that something on the other side of this adjustment was gonna change. So I took her to this pediatric chiropractor, and then my first problem happened when it was hard to find.

You know, it was just like you open the book, it was that time he had yellow pages and it was like he both had unprovised, but seven signs and wonders, all these things and nothing about life function and vitality. But I met it, but I got a referral, I went to a guy, knocked twice, winked once, got in the door, and sure enough, he adjust her. She was on a monitor at the time, sleep apnea monitor, and the monitor normalized right in front of her eyes.

And I knew I was in the right profession for the right reasons. And that little girl is 27 years old today, and she is a light of our lives. She's fostered and adopted a little girl.

She's birthed another little boy. We have two grands from her, and her life has meant the world to us. She's made impact after impact after impact, which would have never been the case had she never got that first adjustment.

And so I see my legacy, my thought, my life, my purpose through that lens. If one kid today, our efforts, our thoughts, our social media presence, or whatever it is, is built to meet that one kid who's in struggle and suffering, do we have the capability of changing their life? And so we've put our life work to that, and everything that we've done has been through the lens of there are hundreds, if not thousands of Summer Wilson sitting somewhere within miles of us.

As we're having this conversation, there's somebody who's going to the emergency room right now with an asthma attack, just like I would have, and they're getting drugs and they have no idea what we do. There's another mom who just lost their child in ICU somewhere in this country, probably within 100 miles of us, and that didn't know that we were an option. And so, I just press our team and I press myself.

I press, I work out four days a week. That's not because I love to work out, it's because I want to do this as long as I possibly can. And so I want to be able to lean over that table with fitness and with life and vitality.

And so, I love junk food, I do, but I can't live on it. And so it's those things, right? I just, but the lens always comes back to pediatrics and just knowing that there are people in this world that are suffering dramatically.

And so we, in fact, one of the craziest things, I'm sure you've experienced this too. We have done a lot of things over the years to put the message out, but about five years ago, we went all in on social media. And we kind of saw this thing and said, man, our first handshakes are going to happen, half of our first handshakes, there's going to be referrals.

But we did, so we started doing these things and now we're doing more. Anyway, we have a reel that's been posted eight days ago and as of right now, it's got over 15 million views, almost 90 something thousand likes, thousands of comments. Some have been removed because they're not very nice, but a lot of them.

But here's the thing, almost 7,500 people sharing the message with somebody else. And you think about something that took us less than 30 seconds to do in our office, that's reaching 7,500 people, that 15 million people have viewed and 98,000 people have found that. Now, I don't know what those metrics are, but that's freaking amazing.

That is amazing.

We'll take some trash from that. And we're just consistently pushing that boundary of what it would be very tastefully, very in our version of what Chiropractic is. But man, it's been so amazing to see just what cool can happen out of the reach of where social world is today.

So beautiful. You know, as I listen to you, I think that that's a pretty big why, right? That's a pretty big, that's an awesome thing to anchor your life to.

And I get your point, how why would you step away while you physically can? And how you get used by the good Lord and you just do your thing. But I love how it's tied to your daughter.

And so that legacy for you is pretty cool because what you've shown is through the new world, you can influence people in a positive way toward chiropractic, halfway around the world. And so you look outside the walls of your office, that vision. So I guess my question within that, because there's a lot of docs on the call that right now might be stuck on, like, what is my vision?

And where do I go? And then they hear what you just said. It's like, it blows your hair back a little bit, right?

To have the faith and the courage to take your child to a pediatric chiropractor, or for somebody to bring their child to you and to trust you, despite all the negativity out there that's not true. And so you have such a big why, and you're tied to that why. And so for that doctor out there, two things I know for you that came early, right?

It came really early, and that's powerful how that happened. And to be the benefactor of that and not waste it is a life well spent, right? You've taken that gift and you've used it in your health, and you got people around you.

So two questions. One is becoming somebody who gets out of the office walls, not just through social media though, through public speaking. I know you've spoken around the world.

So first of all, how important is that? Second thing I kind of felt in there was, you're not doing this alone. You got a pretty good team helping you out, right?

Oh yeah.

Yeah, so speaking to both of those, and then I got a couple other questions I'm sure will come out of that.

Community, yes. So when I got out of Parker, you know, it was 25 years ago, it's starting my 26th year, which is insane to think. But when I got out, I just remember a guy saying something one time from Parker stage, and he says, No one's gonna drive by because you hung a shingle out and decided to spend money with you. And I just thought about that.

I thought it was really true. And even though I didn't understand what hanging a shingle out, I kind of got the idea, put a sign up and said, I'm a chiropractor and everyone's gonna come running. And I took my internship seriously. And I took my internship seriously enough that I wanted to run it like I would have practiced.

And what I realized is that I was really good at what I did, but there was a gap. Like there was a gap in people's knowledge and thought process. And so I saw early on that I did this.

And here's what's funny. When I was a kid and I had been helped by asthma, I used to climb up to this space and I get really frustrated. I don't know if anybody remembered doing this as a kid.

You get really frustrated at your parents because they whip your butt for something you well deserved. But I'd run up this space and I'd just look out. I remember one day I closed my eyes and God just showed me a vision, stand on the stage with people in front of me.

And I didn't know what it meant. I had no idea what it meant. I just thought, that's weird.

It's way weird. I didn't even know what I saw actually. In fact, I didn't even know what I saw.

I just saw it and I was like, hmm, that's right. And it just kind of kept reoccurring in these little moments in life. And I get asked to, when I get to the town, I just thought, no one's gonna know who I am unless I get involved.

So I get involved in the rotary group. I get involved in the chamber, small town. They're hungry for people.

They're hungry for speakers. Would you speak at this? Absolutely.

I get up and tell the story and I get up and tell these things. And I just started getting into rhythm. At the time, Mark Victor Hansen was probably somebody I had heard multiple times.

I realized that Mark Victor Hansen is a good speaker, but what Mark Victor Hansen was good at was storytelling. And so I realized if I could be a good storyteller, then I could deliver a message, but it's really about telling a story. I wanna tell a story about chiropractic, but what I need to do is tell a series of stories that lead someone through an experience in their mind that would be almost that they could see as a movie.

And I just began to really try to perfect this idea of stories. And so I became a good storyteller. And if I could link story to story, or I could leave a story open and get to another one, I just saw it as I just need to get this four-sided box and put a bow on it by the time I was done.

And I need to open it. I need to have some juice in the middle, and I need to close it. And then just stick a bow right on the opposite, the opportunity for them to make a decision in their life that could change it.

And so I just began to think about that. And when I opened my practice, I did 45 talks in 45 days. Now listen, sometimes it was to two people, sometimes it was to 20, but sometimes I didn't have many patients in the first 45 days, so what did I fill my time with?

Meeting people. And I just went out and I just said, hey, I give these talks, and sometimes I talk to two people as secretaries, sometimes I talk to the whole fire department, but I just put myself into an arena that no one's gonna know who I am unless I go tell them. And it wasn't long till I was in the chamber, it wasn't long till I became chamber president, I wasn't long till I was rotary president, same year by the way, president two organizations running these things, meeting people, shaking hands, kissing babies, the whole thing.

And I got a front page article that says he's enthusiastic. And it was this whole article about this young chiropractor who's blowing up the town, making changes, involved. And it got sent from one of my patients to the college.

And so I get a phone call from Jim Parker that says, would you like, and that's a, by the way, this is the president of the school you go to, right? And I'm in my first year graduating and I'm thinking, oh, Nike's did my, did my diploma not go through tonight?

I do something like that, I'm nervous.

And so I thought, what is it? Because I need you to come back and speak to the college, would you come back and speak to the assembly? And I was like, I've been to a lot of assemblies, I don't know if I have anything to say to the students, because I hear you have a lot to say.

And so I get up and I do this thing. And so he comes off, he's come to my office. He said, we do a thing called serendipity, and it's to get future speakers, because you have that talent.

And I looked at him, I said, for Parker seminars? And he says, yep. He said, I want you to be here in April and put you on the stage.

And I was like, that wasn't like, can you be here in April? Does that work in your schedule? Do you have enough money?

Which I didn't. I mean, do you have enough money for the hotel room? No, I just graduated.

No, I don't have anything. But opportunity shows up in a lot of weird faces. And so I was like, yes, I'll be here.

And I show up. And what was really strange is my buddies, who I went to school with, were sitting on the front road heckling me. And I was telling my guys, this is a serious moment for me.

They're like, you've always taken your speaking a little bit more serious than all of us, so we'll be good. But it was one of those things. And I spoke and then I got invited.

And so for the next 17 years, I traveled all over the place with Parker doing that. And I just got an opportunity. And so then we did cash practice and pediatrics.

And it really just all stirred from the story that I shared. And God slayed this in my life for a lot of great reasons. You know, through challenges comes growth and that growth gives you opportunity.

And because that opportunity showed up, I just made sure that, and when I went, the Dr. Ashley, who I started with, had been in practice 42 years, he took care of everyone in town except for kids. And so when I saw that opportunity, I went after the whole kid market, which he had no interest in. He's too old, done it too long.

He does not wanna mess around with them. I was young and I said, this is who I wanna serve. And so I developed programs to go into schools.

I developed relationships with all the people who made decisions. I developed a relationship with the nursing. I was speaking inside of the schools, ADHD and sensory issues way before it was cool to do so.

And so it was just one of those things that we just kind of just used a gift that I didn't even know I had. Until one time I was at Parker, and the image I saw as a kid was the image I saw in front of me. And I realized what I was being set for.

And so I can't take a lot of credit for where I'm at, other than maybe the obedience just to follow what was put in front of me.

That's beautiful. I love that word too. That's a true servant is obedient to a call on their heart.

And that's been clear in your life. And I love how you, you know, really telling the modern doctor that you guys still do these things. Maybe it's in a different format, but you haven't stopped doing these things.

And I think I can say it because so many doctors now are afraid to get outside their walls and to get out in the community and to go to groups. And yet they sit back, like you said, hang the shingle and think, gosh, why is my practice not taken off as I expected it to, you know? Build it and they will come.

And I just love how you got outside your walls and now you're creating it with a digital platform and all that. So back to the story of how you've done this, you've been blessed, you haven't taken that blessing lightly, you diligently wake up and go and serve, but how important has building your teams during those seasons been for you? Because I know you can't do that alone.

What's that look like? Because teams change.

Yeah, teams change over the years a lot. And so, I'll give credit to Dee Martini. I listened, I got a chance to go through a breakthrough experience with him.

And one thing I walked away with was really powerful, was a process in which he built his teams. And I made it mine, and I'll give my version of it, but it was just, what do you value? What are you really good at?

What do you wanna do in your life that you're really good at? And so I did some homework once that was recommended in this format. It was like, what happens every day in the office?

Now, this is hard for me. It wasn't easy for me to do this, but I sat down and penciled out every single thing I could possibly think of that happened inside of an office. And I came up with 98 things at the time.

It's like taking messages, picking up the mail, like everything I could think of at the time. And I came up with the 98 things. And then I asked myself, put a star by everything that you love to do and you're good at.

So that was a really tricky thing. I love it, and I'm good at it. And so I found seven things I love, but I only found three I was good at, that if I identified, I was good at.

Well, that leaves 95 things on that list that someone else needs to be good at and love. And so what I reverse engineered was I reversed and engineered through personality training and communication, which now a lot of people use, but this is 25 years ago. I learned it in the marriage class, and I thought if it works in marriage, it could gotta work in these because it's still a relationship.

So I just backtracked it and said, what if someone loved that role so much? So we began to take the skill sets and put them in the natural abilities, and we call the job descriptions. And so I would map a reverse engineer to map out that based on personality typing.

And so then we would go and hire people that were that type of person, do those type of roles, they could love it, feel great about it as well. And that has been a formula that has worked dramatically well for me over all the years. And so I think the thing though, is even though they're doing a job they love, even though they're doing something they're naturally good at, there's always the things they're not.

And it's the things that keeps us going, the thing that you said, I've had bad days, I've had bad reviews, I've had bad, you know, a patient didn't go well, we've all had that stuff. And what keeps you going is your why. It was, that's what wakes you up, that's what puts you to bed, that's what wakes you up in the middle of the night.

And if you don't sleep well, you still go to the office, you don't wimp out, you don't go on tired, you just grind and serve because that why is inside of you. And so the greatest challenge with teams is making sure the why is inside of them. And so we call it a software installation.

And I think we've had seasons of really doing this well, and we've had seasons of not doing it well, but the seasons that I do it well are the seasons that I can install that why in them. And I'll tell you, we have a new hire, and she's like, I listen to your video, I listen to your stuff. It's fluffy, it's out there.

But what I'm learning is you're the real deal. She's worked for Endodontics, and she came from the dental world. And she's like, those doctors are all about the finances.

She's like, you're all about the people. And it's my job to take care of the finances. She's like, so I'm hired to work in my gift of taking care of the finances, and you stay out of it.

You just want to see the people. And I said, that's my gift. I'm staying in my lane, and you stay in your lane.

I'll never ask you to come back and adjust somebody, and don't ask me to come do your job. So you do your job really well, and we're gonna have a great team. And so part of it is in identifying them and getting that culture installed, I think that is probably the secret sauce for any office that is doing it well, is when those people are waking up and thinking about the same mission that you think about every day.

And that means something different for people and different seasons. I probably have 20 employees that were ex-employees that for some reason had a kid, needed insurance, whatever they might do over the years, they changed out, but they're still patients in this office. And it's amazing because the staff always goes, it's amazing how many people that used to work for you still are friends with you.

And they live this life, and many of them give you credit to how they raised their kids, how they done it. I'm like, listen, we're a culture building team. We must build it inside of ourselves first, and then we build inside of the practice space.

And that leads to deep integration inside your team, and it leads to deep integration in your referral base. And it's those relationships that have been with us for 20, 25 years, that speaks volumes to anything that we do.

That is brilliant. I too have experienced that, where you tie your team to the purpose on a regular basis, where you're regularly dipping them into what that looks like, and redefining for them that, look, you might not be the one releasing interference in the adjustment area. You might be the one helping their finances be in control, that they don't have any issues there, or that their referrals can get seen, or that they get to workshops, whatever we do.

How do you celebrate with them to remind them that they're an integral part of that? That they really are a big part of that?

So as I told my story of baseball, I don't watch much baseball, but I love the game, and when I watch it, I analyze it way too much. And I think I always said I'd either I'd either want to be a chiropractor, a coach, or a trauma surgeon. Those would be the only things I think would just ever excited me.

And I'm just glad I'm a chiropractor, but I have an inner coach in me that would love it. And so we get a game ball. And I took a baseball, wrote game ball, wrote GHC on the back of it, logoed it all up, had a lot of fun with it.

And every single week, we go, we start our team meeting with wins. What's our wins? And this is the chance that everyone can brag on everyone and then layer down through the practice.

But somebody will leave that team meeting with a game ball. And so whatever has happened through the week, and sometimes we give it to the team and said, this is a team win this week, man. There's just no standouts this week.

You all perform well. But I listen and then I add, and then we just take away somebody who's performed extraordinarily. And maybe they did something really well.

Like we had this last week, we're having our new team member that's just done incredible well with auditing care plans. And so she's gonna get game ball tomorrow.

Nice.

She's gonna get it, so I already know it. And it's gonna be on my win. I've just watched it.

She's done really, really well. There's other times I have a pretty good idea who's gonna get it, but we hand that out every week. We try to do quarterly celebrations where, and we do monthly dinners.

If we do something really well, we go out to monthly dinners. I love wine. I've gotten into it over the years.

I've just been pretty snobby about it. We have members of a lot of places in Napa, places all over the world. And we have a great wine cellar, great stuff.

And so they see this stuff coming in, and they have their thoughts of what things cost. I get it, but that's okay. That's my value system.

But it's fun to break that open. I cook for them, open something that they'll never taste, in their life. And they're not gonna pay for this kind of wine.

And so it's fun to open that up and teach them about it, give them a little experience at our house. And my wife is always fantastic for doing that. And so we open our homes, or open a restaurant that has bottle service, we can bring some great stuff.

And so we celebrate that way. And sometimes we do stuff together. We just go to the, the last one we went to a little golf place, those little, you just whack it out in the middle of nowhere, and there's little digital images where it goes.

Yeah, like a Topgolf.

Yeah, Topgolf, Fordgolf, those kind of things. And we did that and just, you know, paid for all the food and all the drinks. And, you know, it's 300 bucks, and it's a night full of fun.

And they have a hoot. We all laugh. We all get to learn to somebody who's got really good talents.

Like one of our new girls, we had no idea she had a beautiful golf swing. Didn't know she used to play it a lot. And one of them had never swung golf before, and was it by the end of the night was having fun.

So those kinds of things that just deepen your relationship, get you knee to knee, sharing stories, sharing history, sharing time, sharing laughs, break down those barriers a little bit. They really, really goes a long way for team culture.

I love that. Thank you for that. A lot of docs are at that place in their life where they're just ready to exit.

But for the younger docs, like a lot of those guys aren't prepared for that. And their practice isn't worth what they thought it was. And so, as far as just finances, what can you say to somebody who still has time to start investing, putting money aside, using self-control, you know?

Speaking of that, as we close this.

So listen, every financial person, every financial book is gonna give you some very sound advice, right? And it's that you gotta put something away on a regular basis that you're not emotionally attached to. And there are tons and tons of tools to do that.

There are tons of means to do it. For me personally, I'm not a big market street person. I'm just, I don't love the market.

I don't love Wall Street. It's just, I don't understand it. It stresses me more than excites me.

And so I don't do it. I just don't do anything that gets into that. I've had some money markets over the year that might have dabbled in some of the high stock dollars.

But when I learned that those are the same ones that are selling drugs and selling fetuses for those, I'm out. And so for me, morally, I just got out of it. I just don't want to be of any part of it at any small level, big level, anything that thing just for me, I want to go to sleep at night with that.

I found mine in Whole Life Insurance, and I found mine, and this is before Garrett Gunnerson hit the ground on his stuff. I just had a guy tell me about it. And so years and years ago, I started doing it.

There's a book called Become Your Own Banker, and I read it, it made sense to me. And I did it. Do two things with $1, give my family my $5.

It's expensive product. You're paying that broker a lot. So that's why people don't like it.

Your term is cheap, but at the same token, it's forces my hand, and that's what I needed. I needed something to force my hand. So I never liked IRAs, just the idea of being in bed with the government didn't make sense to me.

And then when Garrett came out with his Kill and Take Your Cows book, I was like, man, that was cool. I felt that before I even read it. So that was cool because I wasn't in that game.

At the time, my wife had an account that her company had done. We ended up cashing in on some of the things with it, just took the pill and we just got out of it before the pill had hit us later in life. So that was our choice.

But what really made sense to me is when you reverse engineer your life. And I think at a young age, you really don't know. Where we are now, we have a pretty good idea of the monthly income that we need and we want.

And those are different things. And so we have a need base. Our need base now is different than what it was 20 years ago.

20 years ago, man, we were, I remember being so hungry that I worked six days a week for two years. And I did anything I could to meet people and get them under care and get my passion going. And I was at a reverse swap percentage at that time.

I was only taking home 40% of what I was doing and no money if I didn't do anything. Like I made nothing, if I did nothing, then 40% all the way to 10,000 and then 50 after 10,000. And I had to write the check to him.

So you gotta think about writing that, you make $10,000, you write a $6,000 check away. That was painful. But he had read the practice, he had done it.

I realized that's where that youngness in me was realizing welcome to real life, because you're gonna put payroll and taxes and everything else and building and costs and supplies and everything that was in that place didn't just show up magically. There's a cost base to that. And so if you can run that kind of practice for a while, and so it was a great lesson for me.

And when I started out, I just really, I really tried really hard to keep myself in that 50, 60% profit margin. And so we just drove a really hard line in the business side of it. I just got a little bit more business smart.

I just wanted to be smart with that. And then over the years, I can say, I mean, we spent more since 2020 and 2021 in wine than I've ever spent. We had fantastic years, and we were since super successful, and that's what we want to invest in.

And I use the word invest lightly. It's an investment to an experience, more invest into some kind of future dollar, I'm gonna sell that bottle of wine away. But we also have properties.

I understood properties a long time ago, and I realized if I had something someone else was paying down, it'd be like me having a 401k and someone else paying for it. Or I had an investment account, someone else paying for it. So property just made sense to me.

And so we invested in a lot of properties. And now we're on the end where some of those are paid off and many more are gonna be paid off soon. And so those are net incomes coming back to us, less taxes and insurance.

And so we are in that game so that we have the mailbox money coming in. So our exit strategy is that I, but it all started with this vision. I wondered what it would be like to give my practice away and not to have to sell my practice.

What would it be like to put someone in a position to walk in and just take over and take that threat base off? What if I could build something so iconic that I could pass it on, maybe to one of my kids or maybe something there? What would it be like?

I don't know if I'm gonna do it, but what would it be like? What would I need to earn somewhere else? How could I earn something somewhere else using some other talent, some other skill?

And so multiple streams of income made sense to me. I did a lot of that over the years. I paid for college with a lot of my speaking dollars and products that we built early on.

I had a cash practice kit, a personality kit. We did all kinds of stuff. In fact, we sold almost 8,500 personality kits in six different languages.

Lots of stuff that all went back to their college funds and wedding funds. And so we just took all these little pieces and said, what would it be like? And I think it starts with that question.

What would it be like if I could do that? What would it be like if I could drink a hundred dollar bottle of wine and not think about it? What would it be like?

And there was a season in my life, I thought, don't be dumb as to drink a hundred dollar bottle of wine, right? It was a season, I thought that. And now I'm like, I see why people do that.

And so it starts with the question, what would it be like if I could fund that? What would it be like if I didn't have a question? Now, did we set hard boundaries for our kids?

Did every kid work through high school, pay for gas? Yeah. Did every kid, did they get a set limit for their college fund?

Yeah. And so we gave them the same rules. I challenged each kid to save $10,000 before they graduate high school.

Like you're living in my house, I'm paying for your stuff. Why can't you pay for yours, right? So we did, and every kid did it.

And so my son just, he's 19 now, and he graduated 18. You know, it was $15,000 saved. He invested 10 of it.

Two days after he turned 18, he invested 10 of it in the stock market, because he loves it. And he wanted to see what it would do to invest in money at 18 years old. And I said, man, if you keep going down this path, because I'm gonna be so much more wealthy than you are, I don't like do it, man.

Just go do it, because you're starting so much earlier than I did. So it's the same pattern that we've all heard. It's not hard.

For me, I think forced is better. A mortgage kind of forced you to pay it. You buy it, run it, run it.

They kind of come and get after you if you don't pay it. And so those forced investments are just, to me, that's the key.

Yeah, that's beautiful. I love that. That's a great, and everybody's story is different with finance, but there's principles that are ever interwoven through your story with other stories.

So I appreciate you sharing that. And that'll motivate some young docs. It might make some docs on the call feel like, oh, I wish I had done a better job at that.

And so even for those guys, it's never too late to start, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I didn't start right off. I mean, we had to pay for things early on.

My first 10 years, I don't know that we saved more than $20,000. I mean, I'm telling you, we just, I paid off my student loans. I bought a house.

We upgraded our life. We did all the things that a lot of people tell you not to. And it was really the last 15 years that we've really done our accumulation.

And it's a beautiful story because it really all goes back to what you said to open our time together about your why. When you began to cultivate the soil and the way that you cultivated early on, and same for me, as we do this longer, we began to reap the harvest. And I love your vision of giving your practice away.

I'm gonna keep that one of my prayers, buddy, for you. But hey, overall, I wanna thank you for this. This has been really fun spending time with you.

I see having you on as a regular, if you don't mind, because I think of the chiropractors you're helping right now with this. So I really appreciate you, Tracy, for doing this. And I also wanna tell Chiropractic, I appreciate you for hosting this.

I love the spirit behind this, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to host this, because I've been a benefactor. Right now, I was taking some notes on stuff you were saying. I love the game ball.

That's a good one, man. I give different gifts away, but I'm a baseball guy too. But that was great.

And I look forward to getting to know you in the future and sharing some good wine together. And once again, I want to thank you, and I want to thank ChiroTouch. And most of all, for those docs out there, time spent on personal development is never time wasted, and the world needs you at your best right now.

We need chiropractors to step it up. It's our time potentially to step into that fold. People are confused.

People need us right now. And so again, we're behind this, and ChiroTouch is behind this. So once of all, take care of yourself.

Make sure you're getting adjusted, and have an amazing day. We'll see you soon, okay? Okay.

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