140 - Becoming the Chiropractor Your Patients Need

[00:00:00] When we talk about growing your practice and the numbers and all that kind of stuff, when I talk about it, and my staff know this because I've just drummed it into them, is when we talk about how many patients we see a week, we are talking about how many people in our community we help.

[00:00:28] Hello and welcome to Build Your Remarkable Practice podcast. This podcast is dedicated to chiropractors who are in the seasons of launching and building their practice. Join myself, Dr. Lona, and my co-host, Dr. Bobby, as we have conversations each week as it relates to building the practice of your dreams. And remember, you can have a remarkable practice as part of a remarkable life, not instead of one. We are here to lead you on the way.

[00:00:59] Welcome back to Build Your Remarkable Practice podcast and I am back with Dr. Andrew. How are you doing today, Andrew? Doing all right. Went to the dentist. It was all very exciting today. But you got to do that maintenance, right? Do you got to... That's right. And I'm not getting teeth as shiny and white as yours without getting in there for the scale and clean. Just the right lighting. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure.

[00:01:24] You know, I love experiences like that, like whether it's going to the dentist or I went and had a Thai massage at a new place this last week and just having a new patient experience somewhere is always rich for things that you notice, things that you don't notice and can bring it back to the team and just kind of be like, let's unpack this. Like, what do we, you know, what's our experiences when we go outside of chiropractic? Yeah. And I love, you know, this is kind of awful.

[00:01:50] We want to talk about, we just kind of landed here, but you know, like you go to, when you go to the dentist, they never, they're just like, yep, this is what it costs. And that's what you needed. And you go, cool. Right. But, you know, it's really funny because as chiropractors, we're like, oh, like, I'm really apologetic about, you know, this is what your spine needs. There's not many other professions out there that are health professions that are like that. Do you know what I mean?

[00:02:18] Like you go and see an orthopedic surgeon, they're like, and you know, we can argue about whether or not what you think about what they do, but like they just go, yep, this is what we're doing and this is how much it costs. And. Yep. Straight facts. Yep. Yep. But you know, like for the new grads out there, especially if you're the dentists, they don't water their recommendations down based off what they think you can afford. The surgeons, they don't do that either.

[00:02:46] They go, well, this is, you know, based on your findings, what I actually need or what you actually need. And this is how much it costs. And that's up to you to sort out. But you can never x-ray your patient's wallet because a dentist doesn't. They just go, yeah, this is what I found and this is what you need. And don't change your recommendations based on what you perceive as their financial situation. Base your recommendations on what they truly need. So good.

[00:03:13] And honestly, one of the things I think about is usually the person who is more financially constrained, them really understanding what they need in a chiropractic office is one of the smartest financial decisions they could make as it relates to what it could cost. You extrapolate that out, right? Like if they let things get worse and they end up in the medical model. Yeah. You know what? If you don't do it properly now, dealing with it now is the cheapest it will ever be. Exactly.

[00:03:43] For them. Right. I will kick the can down the road 12 months. It's only going to get more expensive. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're coming off of recording some, if you go back and listen, if you didn't listen to the last couple of episodes about doing day one, doing day two, like really getting into the patient story and their life effect. And then how do you properly lay out recommendations so that the person can make an educated decision about what's going to happen next for them.

[00:04:10] And so Andrew had a great idea of just chewing through some of our favorite kind of experiences and really being the doctor and doing our job. Right. And so Andrew, I don't know if you want to tee us up with where we're going today. Yeah. So we're kind of calling this podcast episode, this is your job. Right. And it came off an epiphany that I actually had today.

[00:04:36] And we were going to talk about day three today, but we're going to bump that to next week because this is just such a great topic. And obviously we've talked about really connecting with people on day one, day two. So we thought just on the fly, what's going to be a great episode is us talking about people that we have actually connected with who weren't your standard or your regular case that's walked into your practice and really building out the life effect.

[00:05:03] Because what happened to me today was while I was waiting at the dentist, I got a notification that someone had inquired about coming into the practice through our Facebook ads. And we've got a team that takes care of that. But I just was like, oh, I'll have a look. And I noticed that this person had said, this is severe. I'm a very complex case. So I thought, well, I'll send him a message before my staff do and just kind of check in.

[00:05:31] And he's like, yeah, like I've got severe sciatic pain and I'm a really complex case. And we built it out a little bit more. And he said, oh, I've got metastatic bone cancer. And I was like, oh, this is a job for, this is where we need the most experienced hands on the team to jump in. So I actually messaged my front desk and I said, this guy's come through. I've had a quick chat to him. I'm going to ask him, I'll see him.

[00:06:01] And I think my next new patient appointment is maybe like three or four weeks away. I said, oh, this guy's in severe pain. I said, I'll see him outside of my hours. So they put him at the start of my shift and I came in a bit early because that's actually our job, right? Our job is people care and looking after the people that need it. And, you know. Say that one more time. What is actually. I can't even remember what I just said. Just rewind that and watch it through again, guys.

[00:06:30] Our job is to take care of people. Yeah. That's our job, right? And a side note, hilariously, we're onboarding a new tech CA this week and she's doing great. But, you know, I had two new patients today, including this wonderful guy. And neither of them were like simple. The other one was like a teenager with like some significant neurological stuff.

[00:06:56] And I was like, and I'm just going off book and I'm adding tests in and I'm taking tests out because they're not safe to do on a patient with metastatic bone cancer. And I'm describing with, she's like, how do I spell that? So, you know, she adapted great. But anyway, this beautiful guy, he had been, he's been battling cancer for 10 years. And he's actually kind of winning, touch wood. It's the cancer's stable. He still has immunotherapy and radiation every once in a while, that kind of stuff.

[00:07:25] But stage four kidney cancer that spread to his bone, it's stable. It hasn't progressed anywhere over the last six months. So, huge win for him. The loss is that building has been significant sciatic pain because the metastasis is in his sacrum. And basically, so he's, you know, fought to get his life back. And now all his life looks like is all he can do is lie down. Because it's too painful to sit. It's too painful to stand. He's lying down all the time.

[00:07:57] And we adapted our exam process for him as much as possible. He came in with some recent MRIs and previous MRIs for comparison. And I was like, you know what? We're going to give this guy and I'm going to use the phrase and adjustment. And I've actually, one of my tech CA's is in her final year of chiropractic. And I briefed her before we went in, in our pre-shift huddle. She's like, what are you going to do? And I'm like, I'm going to give him the biggest side posture you've ever seen.

[00:08:27] I was like, what do you think I'm going to do? You know, she's like avidly, you know, this is very, very, a very interesting case for her because, and like we mentioned before we started recording, university kind of scares the life out of you. But your job is to help people. And can I manually adjust his sacrum? No, that's definitely not safe. I'm not even going to drop piece this guy.

[00:08:55] But can I still give him an adjustment? Yeah. And, you know, based on the exam and the images, I sent him away from, for some fresh x-rays because he doesn't have anything standing. But we gave him a little adjustment because I, this is the most severe sciatic pain case I've ever seen. So I was like, I'm not going to send, I'm not turfing this guy out. I'll see you tomorrow. Come and get these scans. I'll see you tomorrow.

[00:09:18] But first using some gentle category blocking, we gave him a little bit of relief for those of us who are familiar with SOT. Now, the, and I said to them, this is not a quick fix. This is not going to be an overnight thing. And they said, we, we understand that. Obviously, he's battled cancer for 10 years. They were just grateful that somebody was willing to touch him because as much pain, he's been hospitalized for his back over the last two weeks. He's been in hospital because of the pain. No one has touched him.

[00:09:49] All they've tried, opioids, oxy, fentanyl, you know, and I said to them, well, let's call a spade a spade here. Your best chance of you continuing to beat this cancer is that your body is as healthy as it can be. And while you're polluting it with all of these drugs, you know, this is putting more stress on the system. And they're like, absolutely, I don't want to be taking them anymore. They don't do anything. And so, so everyone's been too scared to touch him.

[00:10:20] And I just had this really, it was a great way to start the shift because I was like, this is my job. Yeah. The procedures and the processes that we talk about, the system, the systematization, that's a hard word to say, that we love with TRP. It, it, it all just helps us do our job, which is this. It's to look after the people that need to be looked after. And so good. Yeah. So important.

[00:10:50] And I, I dare say there's a lot of offices that bypass a lot of people they could help because of fear and because of maybe not trusting that. I think it's a, I think it's just true humanity. Like I used to think about this a lot as it relates to like, if I had fear overseeing someone from what you learned in school or what have you. And don't get me wrong, there's healthy fear too of just like discernment of like, don't put your hands there.

[00:11:19] Actually, we need to do something else here. Let's not thrust on a, you know, on a litigation. But I really would think about like, if I was in this person's shoes, what would I want? Right. And then, you know, obviously make sure that that's the same for them. But like when they thank you for just seeing him and being unafraid to at least entertain the idea of helping him and go the next step further. Like to me, that's just being human.

[00:11:44] We need to really think about that as doctor, doctor as teacher and doctor as someone who's serving humanity and serving your patients. It doesn't mean you have to see everyone, but what have you been put here for? Is it just to help people who are easy? Like, I don't think so. Definitely not. When we talk about growing your practice and, and, you know, and the numbers and all that kind of stuff.

[00:12:11] When I talk about it and when I talk, and my staff know this because I've just drummed it into them. And we talk about how many patients we see a week. Like, we are talking about how many people in our community we help. We're not talking about, we're not doing this for our own self-aggrandizement or anything like that. The reason why I have actively sought after scaling a practice is so that we can help more people.

[00:12:39] And I see kind of these conversations in our profession now where some people are talking about leaning out the practice and seeing less people, but still being able to pay yourself really well. And I'm like, that's cool. But my mission is to help as many people as I can. And that's my clinic's mission. And so we're not going to stop trying to build and grow because that's our clinic's mission. And that's where my energy is. And that's what energizes me.

[00:13:07] Because I tell you what, it was a great shift after that because we really like clicked in and present on exactly what our job was. And yeah, I'll keep everyone posted on how it's going. Awesome. Awesome. It's so good. One of my favorite speakers to listen to is Dr. Jackson, who, Sigafusen Jackson, he teaches like an occipital technique, but he speaks at New Beginnings and stuff.

[00:13:32] And he said this from stage one time, and he spent very high volume for like 30 years, like very high volume, right? And he said, you know, what if every once in a while someone got on stage and actually we celebrated them because they're seeing so many people that they actually were able to reduce the fee of the adjustment for people? Because they could just serve that many more. And I thought, okay, nobody says that, right? Nobody says that.

[00:13:59] And I'm not necessarily advertising for that, but I think the heart of it was in the right place, which is that I look at it like chiropractic has transformed my life. Our philosophy and the ability to access this thing called chiropractic has transformed almost every aspect of my life for the better, right? And that's basically because I had the ability to know what chiropractic was, right? And then end up pursuing it as a career and going deeper into it, right?

[00:14:27] And then seeing what it's done in my own life and the people around me and obviously the people we steward. But that's the thing that for me sometimes it's like, yeah, I can get tired too. And I'm sure you do too. But there is this- We got three kids, both of us. Well, I got two kids of technically five when my stepkids are there. So yeah, it just depends on the weekend what's happening in my household. But I think it's that.

[00:14:54] It's realizing we are still a very small profession and worldwide tiny, right? And then the ability to lay in a principled practice, first of all, that is going to adjust you and understands the adjustment and understands what Andrew just shared there of like, hey, someone came here and needs help. And like maybe it's my duty to figure out if they are subluxated and how I could help, right? That's a privilege.

[00:15:19] And so I do think an on-purpose chiropractor understands like you're one of few right now that can do this thing. And so it doesn't mean you have to, but you do get to. Yeah. And that's pretty special as well. And, you know, I've actually got another patient on this and she's in a wheelchair.

[00:15:36] She's got very high grade Ehlers Danos and she's actually in a wheelchair because, you know, with the connective tissue issues, she needed a hip replacement and the surgeon cut a nerve. And, yeah. And she and I, I've looked after her for so long. We have the most beautiful relationship and she'll give me shit for running. Oh, I'm not supposed to say that on camera.

[00:16:05] She'll give me a hard time for running late. We just bleep that one out. And I'll be like, come on, hop on the table, Lieutenant Dan. And, you know, like beautiful, banter full like relationship. But I remember one year she gave me a Christmas card and, um, and I'll try not to get teary thinking about it, but she'd written me a poem that essentially said,

[00:16:33] And whilst I can't take all of her pain away, it's nice to have me on her team and, and take the edge off. You know, this is somebody in significant pain. Yeah. 24 seven. Um, but she's definitely one of the most tough people I know, but every time she comes in, it reminds me that, and, and there's, there aren't too many people that are super,

[00:17:03] keen to touch her before she came in to see me. She'd had quarter of quina syndrome twice. Um, she's come in with dislocated shoulders because of the connective tissue issues. I've been the one to relocate there, all, all of that kind of stuff. And it's a very special opportunity that we have as chiropractors to have a relationship where we get to put our hands on people that are in dire straits. Yes.

[00:17:30] And them know, Hey, we've got you and we're going to, we're on your team. We're going to do everything in our power to, to help you in this circumstance. Now you're holding out on us because we talked about this. You've got a couple of stories like this. Yeah. Well, I just want to say as the young chiropractors listening, like maybe you're in your first year or two of practice and Andrew, I'm sure you can think about this for yourself too.

[00:17:54] I think some of those first experiences like that, where you felt that like, Oh my gosh, who am I to help this person? Or can I help this person? Or is it right for me to try to like adjust this person? Because you do have that cautionary lens in the back of your mind. And then when you see like, Oh my gosh, things changed.

[00:18:19] And it was through the power of like giving this care that really builds conviction and certainty, which then lends itself to what we do with everyone. Right. You know, it's like a muscle that's built. And yeah. And I think that I'm known for being a pretty firm adjuster in our local chiro community. But for these people, I shelve that, right?

[00:18:45] Like I'm, you know, like I joked about, I'm not coming off the top rope like a Mexican wrestler for the people that that's not appropriate for. I think, you know, for those young DCs or even those ones in fifth year and you're kind of feeling a bit scared about this concept is find a way to help them find a way that is appropriate for what they have going on. Find a technique. If you don't know that technique, go and study it.

[00:19:10] We have like this crazy profession where there's just technique after technique. And if somebody comes across your desk and you don't know how to help them, just go and learn. Find a technique and master that technique that could help that person. Do it for your patients as well as do it for your professional development. Do it for the people that are coming in to see you.

[00:19:35] If I hadn't have done things like SOT, activator, that kind of stuff, would I have those extra strings to my bow? Right. No, all of that knowledge came from just making a choice that, oh, I'm going to learn this stuff. And then I'm going to use this stuff on the people that it's appropriate to use it on. I agree. And I don't think that I'm any more exceptional than anyone else who's actually listening to this podcast.

[00:19:59] Because if you're taking the time to, you know, tune in with us every week, you're already great because you're trying to grow. So just if you go, if you think, I don't know how to help this person, don't hand pass them to somebody else. Become better so that you can help that person. Oh, so good. I'll share one last story and then we can round this out. And I love the heart. We can talk. This is a great podcast episode. This is what we do. Okay.

[00:20:27] So one of my earlier practice members, she's been here for now probably 15 years. She's in a wheelchair also, diagnosed with CP, you know, upon birth and has, you know, obviously Tony City differences because of her diagnosis of CP. And she had come in and said, I would really like to come in, but I have been told by other chiropractors that they won't see me because I have a shunt. Right.

[00:20:55] And so, you know, luckily at that time, I had enough of like a philosophical understanding where I'm like, well, she still has a spine and a nervous system. And that's unfair. Fair. That's not fair. That doesn't mean that we're going to do everything we do with someone who doesn't have that complexity to what's happening. But let's just see.

[00:21:17] And so came in, you know, did an exam, realized, okay, I think we can do some different things with her, but I'm going to start very gentle and we'll go from there. And so she had migraines that were debilitating at the time and had for years. And as she went through her like initial care, her headaches got like radically better. Right. And so I just remember having these conversations with her.

[00:21:43] She's just like, I'm so just grateful that I could get adjusted because she thought she was someone who couldn't. Right. And then she was in a terrible car accident a couple of years later. And luckily we had a great relationship already. And so part of her healing then was like me going up to visit her in the hospital and getting to work with her. And then, of course, as soon as she was out, she was back in the office and healing up.

[00:22:13] And you talk about somebody who is, I'm like, never count her out. She's going to heal from almost anything. She's got a great outlook. But I've probably learned more from my experience with her than almost anything because of getting to witness how innate's on the job, trying to heal always, giving we have different limitations. And I've learned a lot, too, where a lot of times, you know, if she has something kind of different, she knows to go get her shunt checked. Right.

[00:22:39] Like if there's different symptoms going on, that that could be a sign that her shunt is blocked. Right. Right. So we're always in this dance kind of of like she needs to be checked and adjusted. And she is adjusted manually at this point. But she goes and get her shunt checked regularly to make sure nothing else is going on. And knock on wood, like she's done fabulously. Yeah. Over 15 years with chiropractic care as a huge part of her team.

[00:23:05] And I just think to have even if we couldn't adjust someone and they could just learn the chiropractic lifestyle piece and the philosophy of your body is incredible in how it's trying to navigate and always try to thrive. Like that's worth a lot to have someone on your team like that. So there's like two pieces that are like irreplaceable when we just check out of somebody's care team. And that's teaching them a new paradigm to view their like options. And then, of course, the ability to get adjusted.

[00:23:34] So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And look at you. You just you had the courage to do it. You found a way to do it. And like you said, if it's a different problem, she's going to get her shunt checked. Yes. You're still only looking after the chiropractic side of things. And I don't want anyone to think that like we're doing anything outside of what a chiropractor actually does. We just want you to have the courage to actually try and do what a chiropractor does.

[00:24:02] And just know that there are people out there that are grateful for you to try. Totally. But, you know, be safe. Pick that right technique. Right. And and let let that confidence sort of catch up. And remember that there are there are people in your community that have written themselves off because they don't know that you can help them. And you can. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:31] Oh, I love this. Thanks, Andrew. It was a great episode. What a great way to wind my night down. A great way for you to start your day. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. All right. We'll see you guys next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of Build Your Remarkable Practice podcast. Remember, what the world needs now is chiropractic and what chiropractic needs now is more successful chiropractors. If you like the podcast, please subscribe, share with your friends and leave us a review.

[00:25:00] And if you'd like to connect with us personally, please click the links in the show notes to schedule a call. How many of these are? How many for you? And what can I do so? How many for you? Well, you rather not.