June 3, 2022 • 26 mins
Dr. Stephen Franson from The Remarkable Practice joins us to talk about the 4 seasons of your practice.
We dive into each of the 4 seasons and break down the major challenges you face as a Chiropractor and business owner as well as what it takes to overcome those obstacles to continue to build the practice (and life) of your dreams.
You can download Chapter 1 of his book "The Remarkable Practice" to start building your vision and defining what success looks like for you and your business.
Learn more about Dr. Stephen Franson and his group (The Remarkable Practice) on their website:
www.theremarkablepractice.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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You're listening to the Chiro Basics Podcast, the show dedicated to chiropractic practice
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success.
Here's your host, Nick Fisher.
Alright, chiropractors.
Welcome back to another episode.
Today we have Dr. Stephen Franzen from The Remarkable Practice.
I'm super excited to have him as a great group of super successful practices and I just want
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to give him a chance to introduce himself.
Hey Nick, I appreciate you asking me to jump in here, man.
I love wherever more than one chiropractor to get in the same room, we'll talk chiropractic
and talk about chiropractic success and I'm sure that we're going to have a great conversation
and hopefully it's going to resonate with your audience and if even one person reports
(00:53):
back that, man, I heard something, one nugget, one gem during that interview with Franzen
that made all the difference, man, it was worth it.
So thanks so much for creating the opportunity.
Yeah, absolutely.
I follow your guys' stuff.
I listen to your podcast.
I see your videos.
I'm super excited to chat with you because you guys have some really good concepts and
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material that I think could really help all the doctors out there trying to grow and build
the successful practices.
So before we jump into that material, I'd love to hear a little bit about your backstory.
What got you into the chiropractic space?
What led to the Remarkable Practice Group?
And yeah, tell us your story.
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I'm excited to hear that you found us through our podcast, which is the Remarkable CEO Podcast.
I'm always remiss, I should say that in the front end of all these interviews, because
so many people find us through the podcast, but Dr. Pete Camiolo and I do the Remarkable
CEO Podcast for chiropractors, which is specifically for doctors who are looking to turn their
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job into a business, right?
And for them to make that ascension from being the owner operator to being the CEO.
So I'm sure we'll get into that as we get into the meat of our conversation.
But to answer your question on my backstory, Thumbnail Sketch is practicing chiropractor
for 23 years in Boston, Massachusetts.
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My wife, Camilla Franzen is, I should say Dr. Camilla Franzen is also a chiropractor.
We met in the first month of our four year studies at Life University.
We've been together ever since that first date.
And she's been by my side and been my partner in all things as we've just created multiple,
multiple awesome, very successful businesses inside of the chiropractic ecosystem.
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I would say the first was our, the original Remarkable Practice, which is our practice
in Beverly, Massachusetts, just north of Boston.
Camilla and I were blessed.
We ran an extraordinary, really successful practice that, you know, I'll credit the success
of the practice to a commitment to the chiropractic principle, delivering excellent clinical outcomes
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and results.
We're serious hardcore clinicians, really committed to patient education and empowering
people and equipping people to really influence their health trajectory.
And then I'm the systems guy.
That's my moniker.
So we systematized everything so we could create great scalability and durability.
So I build world-class teams.
That's my superpower.
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And a big part of that was our super successful, robust associate doctor program.
So we had 17, excuse me, we had 39 associate doctors over about a 17 year period.
And I like to say it's not cause I'm a terrible boss and they'd quit and I had to replace
them.
But we had like a two year apprenticeship where we had interns coming in to compete
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to get on what we call the totem pole.
And we would raise up and groom and train and develop these docs into just remarkable
chiropractors.
So it was a exam DC and then they became a junior DC and then became a senior DC.
And then we launched them out into the world.
So that's where I fell in love with training chiropractors and coaching chiropractors and
developing chiropractors and teaching them our remarkable systems.
(04:05):
So that's where the remarkable practice coaching program was was birthed.
We eventually sold the practice as the remarkable practice just took off.
We now have thousands of chiropractors around the world in our ecosystem.
And we've been blessed again.
So we have this extraordinary business where we're really getting to not just change the
inflection or the trajectory of the health of people in just one community, but now thousands
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of communities around the world.
So absolutely, I'm the happiest guy you're going to talk to today.
That's a phenomenal story.
I love to hear that you lived and breathe and built this system before you brought it
into the coaching space because it became a proven model.
You were able to work with chiropractors all over, regardless of the stages that they were
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in and really nurture them to become super successful, remarkable chiropractors.
Yep.
And not just chiropractors, but chiropractic teams.
One of the things that we teach in the remarkable practice is you don't have to be awesome at
everything.
You got to build a team that's awesome at everything.
So I think that that's probably our secret sauce is we actually help these doctors take
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that job that they love and turn it into a business that they love.
Yeah, I love that.
So obviously you work with lots of doctors in your program and lots of practices.
What is some of the biggest challenges that you see chiropractors facing in growing a
successful practice?
You know, it really depends on where they are in their career.
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So perfect opportunity to introduce a concept, a construct, a structure that we developed
to organize a conversation that everybody's trying to have in chiropractic, really frankly
in all small businesses.
So we call it the four seasons.
So there are four seasons to the chiropractic career.
There's launch, build, scale, and exit.
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So launch is the first year in practice.
After the first year out, build is when you're in established practice, but you are the owner
operator.
In other words, you're the sole practitioner, the only person in that practice that's delivering
healthcare.
Then there's scale.
You move into scale once you have multiple practitioners delivering healthcare.
So multiple chiropractors, whether that's through partnership or through associate doctors.
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And then the fourth and final season is the exit season, which is where you are looking
for your successor and you're looking to make a graceful and profitable exit.
So honestly, what you see is there's different challenges that come with each of these four
seasons.
So we can have some fun and just sort of take a trip through those four seasons and talk
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about some of the, I would say pitfalls or gaps that we see that are most common in each
of those if you think that would serve this conversation well.
Yeah, I love it.
So the four seasons are, just to reiterate, launch, build, scale, and exit.
So those are the four seasons and the challenges that you face as a doctor is going to change
based on where you're at in your practice.
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So I think we just start from the top and work our way down.
So stage one is launch, the beginning phases of that practice.
What are some of the biggest challenges you see there?
So doctors show up and they always have lots of challenges, right?
But we want to slay the dragon that's keeping them from growing and going, right?
So most commonly in launch, first year out, let's face it, you ain't got nothing but time,
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everybody's broke, they don't have any money, right?
So what ends up happening is you have this, what we call the money gap, right?
And the money gap is I don't have the money that I need to do the marketing that I need
to do to attract the new patients that I need to bring into the office to have new revenues.
So I have no money, so I do no marketing, so I have no patients, so I have no new revenue,
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so I have no money, so I do.
And you can see how it turns into this vicious cycle, right?
It's like an eddy in the growth cycle of a practice, right?
So they get caught in the money gap, right?
So that's a real problem, it's a real issue.
And under capitalization is the reason that nine out of 10 businesses fail in their first
five years, right?
So what we've got to be able to do is we've got to take a look at the other resources
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that we do have.
So we all have four limited resources, Nick, right?
So every human has four limited resources, time, energy, focus, and money.
And if you have no money, guess what, you have most likely have time, energy, and focus,
right?
So you've got to use those three resources to generate new patients.
And the generation of those new patients turns into new revenue, which you can then reinvest
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some of that new revenue into doing some of the right marketing that will help amplify
the business, right?
This is something in the remarkable practice we teach, it's called the slingshot system,
right?
So let's just back it all the way back to, okay, oh, so great, Franson, but I'm broke,
I have no money.
How do I take my time, energy, and focus and turn it into new patients?
Well, we teach something called the referral machine, right?
So it's all about, you know, recognizing that every single one of the people that you know,
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they don't even have to be your patient, anybody that you interact with, you know, they are
most likely struggling with something with their health or somebody that they know or
love right now is struggling with their health.
They have a spine and they have a nervous system, right?
So in other words, they need you, right?
So ultimately we've got to master the ability to help a person understand why they should
come in to see you.
And you need to be trained up very specifically on really how to generate referrals out of
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vapor, whether it's a relationship from outside of your practice and just in your dealings
outside of your practice or from inside of your practice.
And there are very specific ways to address that, but there's, we've identified 54 opportunities
in the first four months specifically to how to ask for referral and generate referrals
into the practice, right?
(09:43):
So you know, exploring those are probably outside the scope of this conversation, but
rest assured when you hear me say 54 opportunities in the first four months of a relationship
to ask for referral, you did this right.
And you're going to see an additional 15, 20, 25 new patient referrals a month, every
month coming into your practice.
We built our practice on that.
And we averaged probably 30, 35 new patient referrals every month, month in and month
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out.
And most of that is generated.
Those referrals specifically internal referrals are generated at no cost or at low cost.
So it's a great way for doctors to get some traction, get some activity going into the
practice, getting some early wins, some revenue and some momentum.
Yeah, that's big, especially in the early stages when you don't have a lot of money
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and you're trying to drive patients into the practice and get some traction that'll end
up coming into the slingshot system.
So you can start earning money and then reinvesting that money into marketing and other activities
that are going to help continue to grow the practice.
I love that.
The biggest hurdle in the launch phase is really just limited resources, typically in
the financial section of the business and trying to get traction early on to kind of
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fix that problem.
Does that all sound correct?
Yep.
You're nailing it, man.
You want a job?
You can come and work with us and help coach this system.
I'll teach you the system that works.
Oh, I love it.
So then the next stage is the build stage.
So let's talk a little bit about that.
What are some of the biggest challenges you see once you kind of get past that first launch
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season of the practice?
Yeah.
Most docs that find themselves in build, they're usually in their second year of practice or
beyond, right?
But what's key to understand is you're an established practice, but you're the owner
operator, which means you're the only provider in there, right?
So most docs feel like, oh yeah, this is where I've experienced success, some great success.
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Most love their job.
They love the work, right?
So that's the challenge with most doctors at this place in their career is like, I love
the work and I love to work, you know, but the truth is, is you're about two or three
questions away from them admitting, you know what, I don't own a business at all.
I own a job, right?
So you know, at this point, this is a great point of exposure for them.
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And what they recognize is, man, I just, you know, I'm doing everything.
It's all up to me, right?
So the up to me part is, you know, usually a sign in the signal that they are probably
feeling a bit overwhelmed and they also feel exposed, right?
They recognize man, God forbid anything ever happened to me, or maybe I want to be home
for bedtime or even dinnertime, right?
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So I know my kids, maybe crazy idea, maybe let's take vacations, but the problem is,
is when you do that, you got to shut her down, right?
So there's a big gap here in like team building.
And I'll say part one in build is just feeling like you can create some level of scale.
So everything doesn't have to be up to you.
Like any growth wouldn't be just more work for you, more time for you, more overwhelmed
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for you.
You've got to learn how to build a world-class team, right?
So we've created this system called the four rights, where it's like I said, you don't
have to be awesome at everything.
You have to build a team that's awesome at everything.
And you take this through this trajectory, these stages and with a very specific plan
as to who you add to your team and in what order and at what level or at what point,
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for example, time or revenue or complexity, what have you.
So you know, it's all about getting the right person in the right seat, doing the right
work the right way.
And the way we teach these doctors to do this is they're leveraging reporting systems and
meeting rhythms.
In other words, scorecards and KPIs in such a way that everything is tied to revenue and
growth.
So there's no risk.
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You're always winning, right?
So as you're going and growing, you're not overwhelmed with overhead.
You're investing in building out a team that's going to help you reach your goals, right?
So I think that the second in the build season, the most common gap here is in team building,
the inability to put together the right team, a team that doesn't feel like you're just
adding more payroll and overhead and killing your profit, but rather being able to invest
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in building the team that's going to help you reach your goals and you'll enjoy enormous
profit.
Yeah.
I loved how you put it where instead of owning a job, it's owning a business.
How do you transition from having the entire business revolve around your presence and
your time and your energy versus being able to rely and build a successful team that can
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get some of that work off your plate?
So you can do things like take vacations or if you got COVID and you're out for a couple
weeks or whatever the case is, you're able, the business can continue and thrive without
being so heavily reliant as you as the doctor doing every little task necessary to keep
the doors open.
That's right.
And that way of practicing is exhausting, very stressful, right?
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And you have no peace of mind, right?
So you're hitting the nail on the head.
The difference between owning a job and owning a business is businesses are scalable, they're
durable and they're eventually transferable, right?
So scalability implies that you've got systems in place so that you can scale and you can
leverage other people, systems and technology to give more, love more, serve more, make
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a bigger impact and make a bigger income, right?
So that's the first step.
The second step brings you into the scale season of your career, which is when you actually
add durability.
Now, durability means you can give more, love more, serve more, make a bigger impact and
a bigger income even in your absence, right?
This means that you've built out a practice that doesn't solely rely on you as the only
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practitioner.
In other words, either adding a partner or partners or associate doctors, right?
So you know, big advocate of associate doctors and doing this right.
When you do it right, it's a giant win, win, win, right?
It's super tricky to do this and I'd say this is the third most common gap as we come into
scale is these doctors inability to establish that durability by bringing on doctors that
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they know that they can trust to continue the work even in their absence.
You know, ultimately docs in scale, what they're looking for is they want to go and grow, but
they don't want to, again, put it all on their back, right?
They want to go and grow and they want to make a bigger impact and a bigger income,
but it can't just mean more work for them.
So bringing in an associate doctor usually means an increase in capacity, right?
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In other words, to be able to serve more people, right?
It also means an increase in peace of mind because you know, you're not the only DC in
there.
It's a most likely, you're looking to claw back some time freedom, right?
So when you bring on an associate doctor, once you have that doctor associate doctor
onboarded and trained up and equipped, now you've you're buying your time back, right?
So you're freeing up your time where, you know, yes, you could be the one that's been
(16:20):
leaning over all the bodies and I know we love it.
I know we, we love to take care of patients, but we all know there's a big difference between
getting to adjust patients and having to adjust patients, right?
So I love adjusting patients.
I love caring for patients.
I never gave that up.
I never owned my practice for one day without being one of the lead docs, but I certainly
wasn't adjusting all the patients, right?
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So and I freed up the two thirds of my time so that I could number one, be a better husband,
be a better father and you know, get, get to the gym, be able to go surfing, you know,
do having an actual, what we call a remarkable life.
And then I could also be the CEO developing my team and developing our marketing and developing
our systems further.
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And frankly, developing my doctor so that they can be even more extraordinary.
Yeah, I love that.
That definitely changes your mindset as a business owner is being able to make the business and
put it in a place that's going to thrive and succeed without you having to touch every
patient and you do every task and building a team and scaling with associates and all
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the things that are going to help you grow.
So that covers the first three stages or the three seasons.
And then the fourth season is exit.
So talk about that a little bit, like, you know, some of the biggest challenges when
you go from being the single doc building and scaling, and then all of a sudden now
you're kind of maybe wanting to exit the business here at the end of your career, you're looking
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to retire or you want to take some time off or whatever the case is.
And you're kind of making that transition.
What are some of the challenges that chiropractors face when they're, when they're seeing the
end of the tunnel there for that practice?
Well, really the challenges and exit actually prove the rest of the model, right?
So because at the end of the day, unfortunately, too many chiropractors try to go through their
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entire career in three seasons.
They try to go from launch to build to exit.
And the truth is, is that build does not exit well because nobody wants to buy your job.
Right?
So too many chiropractors find themselves in a lot of pain at the very end.
And number one, they can't find a buyer.
Or if they do find a buyer, it's a fire sale.
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Like nobody gets the value that they think they have.
I mean, you could spend 20, 30, 40 years building this practice that you think is X number of
dollars of value, but no one in the marketplace does because they don't want to buy your job.
You know, ultimately the best thing to do is to take that job and turn it into a business.
So take a season in scale and take your practice to the point where it is actually a business
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that people will compete to buy.
Right?
So if you build a business that people can look at and be able to say, wow, I'm actually
buying a business here.
I'm not just replacing you in this job.
That's where you're going to see three, four, five times of the multiplier, the value for
that business when you go to exit.
So I would say that the biggest gap there is unfortunately the one that they find out
at the very end, man, this is not really what I thought it was going to be.
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I didn't, I thought this process was going to be easier.
I'm really exposed here because I'm trying to sell a job and nobody wants to buy it.
I don't really have a business to sell.
So that's the first and most obvious answer that I have there.
This is like, okay, take a beat, invest some time, turn that job into a business, take
it to scale and then exit it and it exits so much better.
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If somebody has actually done this and created a business and they move into exit, the biggest
gap there is they don't understand how to structure this, right?
They don't know how to find a buyer.
They don't know how to put the deal together, et cetera.
And there are real corporate strategies, corporate structure strategies and tax strategies that
you need to be able to implement in order to not only optimize the asking price and
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the sales price, but also to optimize how much you keep in the deal, right?
In your pocket, you know, just give it all up to taxes.
So there's some serious legal intricacies to this process.
So to be able to exit gracefully and profitably, you certainly need some help here.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
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You put it really well when you said nobody wants to buy your job because otherwise, why
would they, you know, there's not going to be an interest level there.
There's not going to be a huge ROI for them where if you have the right systems in place,
if you have the right partners in place, the right butts in seats, the right team members
that are built out, the business is much more self-sustaining.
So someone is much more apt to actually want to invest and actually purchase the business.
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There's something there that's actually more valuable for them in the long run.
I think that was really, really well put.
Thanks, man.
And the truth is, is that docs come to us in any of three categories when it comes to
exit.
There's somebody who's like, I want to exit immediately.
In other words, less than 18 months out from wanting to sell.
So that group of people we call the ASAP group, as soon as possible group, or I nicknamed
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them the holy shit group.
So it's like, I got to sell this practice.
And that's usually how that conversation goes.
So there are very specific things they need to do so they don't get beat up in this process
and they can do this as gracefully as possible.
Then there is the group that's somewhere between 18 months and 36 months from wanting to exit.
So let's call it three years out from wanting to sell your business.
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And you're recognizing, wow, I need to put together a plan here.
I need an exit strategy and a plan.
So we'll take those doctors through a very specific program to help them optimize that
experience.
Right?
So not only finding a buyer and knowing what they're selling and understanding the readiness
of their business and what it takes to get there, et cetera, et cetera, but how to leverage
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some of the options you have as far as corporate structure and tax strategy.
That's really a critical thing.
So they're really in what we consider the sweet spot.
And then there's those that are more than three years out from selling.
And I call this group the catbird seat.
So because they actually get to build it to sell it, everybody loves to quote Stephen
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Covey, begin with the end in mind.
So what does that mean?
This is exactly what it means.
Begin with your exit in mind, recognizing whether you're three years away or 33 years
away from wanting to sell your business.
One day you will be selling your business.
Begin with the end in mind.
Why not understand what's going to bring the greatest asset value and market price, right?
What's going to put the most money in your pocket when you sell it and reverse engineer
(22:36):
it, just build it backwards.
Right?
So, which is how I run my businesses now.
I have five businesses now, all inside of the chiropractic space.
So each of these, I'm teaching what we practice, right?
So recognizing one point, a web point, I'm going to sell all of these businesses.
So I've got to reverse engineer what I would consider a giant win when it comes to my exit.
(22:57):
Yeah.
So having a vision for what that looks like in the future for you as a doctor and as for
your business and your people.
And I think that's a good segue into the...
I think you have a resource regarding the vision and helping doctors kind of get a clear
idea of where they want to go with their practice and setting those goals.
Is that right?
(23:17):
Yeah, perfect.
So I wrote a book.
It's The Remarkable Practice.
So this is the definitive guide to creating the remarkable practice, but it's really creating
a remarkable practice as part of a remarkable life, which means that you're going to create
the business that will support your remarkable life, not compete with it.
So this book is special to me because I wrote it for my son, Sam.
My son is 18.
(23:38):
He says he wants to be a chiropractor, which is just awesome.
So I said, all right, that's it.
I finally have the impetus to write a book.
So I wrote this for him, but everybody gets to read it.
So I'll do two things.
We're going to give away a link to the first chapter of this book as an ebook for everybody.
So that's going to help unpack that Rubik's cube concept and the vision story, etc. that
(24:00):
you're alluding to.
But then also for your listeners, whoever is the first person to write, I guess in the
show notes or however they get it to you, Nick, if they write the word remarkable in
all capitals, I'll send a signed hard copy right through the mail to them.
So first, write remarkable in all caps and they get it to Nick.
Nick, you're going to be responsible for that.
(24:21):
You let me know who they are and what their address is, and we'll turn that right around
for them.
Absolutely.
I love it.
Well, thank you for that resource for the doctors.
I'll make sure to include that information in the show notes, the link where you can
send the remarkable so you can claim your copy of the book.
Go get it.
Go get the book.
It's a great resource for those that are looking to really get a vision.
(24:45):
Learn the strategies and go through the four seasons and have that exit strategy in mind
for when you're at that cycle in your business working backwards so you know exactly where
you're going.
That is super, super powerful.
Dr. Steven, I'm super thankful that you could share some of that knowledge with us today.
I really, really appreciate your time.
You guys have a great group, a great system and really great concepts that I think a lot
(25:09):
of doctors are going to appreciate.
Man, it is my pleasure and privilege to speak with you and your audience.
Anytime I get in front of chiropractors, I take the opportunity.
I appreciate that.
If anybody wants to learn more about us and the remarkable practice, just go to theremarkablepractice.com.
The remarkable practice.com.
Check out our new site.
We're easy to find on Facebook.
(25:30):
We've got a robust free private group and then follow us on our podcast, Remarkable
CEO Podcast.
Thanks so much, Nick.
Absolutely.
Thanks again, Dr. Steven.
We will chat soon.
Thanks for tuning in to the Chiro Basics Podcast.
If you liked the episode, don't forget to follow us on Facebook and YouTube.
You can learn more about chiropractic success online at chirobasics.com.
(25:54):
That's C-H-I-R-O-B-A-S-I-X dot com.
See you next time.
You're listening to the Chiro Basics Podcast, the show dedicated to chiropractic practice
(00:08):
success.
Here's your host, Nick Fisher.
Alright, chiropractors.
Welcome back to another episode.
Today we have Dr. Stephen Franzen from The Remarkable Practice.
I'm super excited to have him as a great group of super successful practices and I just want
(00:33):
to give him a chance to introduce himself.
Hey Nick, I appreciate you asking me to jump in here, man.
I love wherever more than one chiropractor to get in the same room, we'll talk chiropractic
and talk about chiropractic success and I'm sure that we're going to have a great conversation
and hopefully it's going to resonate with your audience and if even one person reports
(00:53):
back that, man, I heard something, one nugget, one gem during that interview with Franzen
that made all the difference, man, it was worth it.
So thanks so much for creating the opportunity.
Yeah, absolutely.
I follow your guys' stuff.
I listen to your podcast.
I see your videos.
I'm super excited to chat with you because you guys have some really good concepts and
(01:15):
material that I think could really help all the doctors out there trying to grow and build
the successful practices.
So before we jump into that material, I'd love to hear a little bit about your backstory.
What got you into the chiropractic space?
What led to the Remarkable Practice Group?
And yeah, tell us your story.
(01:35):
I'm excited to hear that you found us through our podcast, which is the Remarkable CEO Podcast.
I'm always remiss, I should say that in the front end of all these interviews, because
so many people find us through the podcast, but Dr. Pete Camiolo and I do the Remarkable
CEO Podcast for chiropractors, which is specifically for doctors who are looking to turn their
(01:55):
job into a business, right?
And for them to make that ascension from being the owner operator to being the CEO.
So I'm sure we'll get into that as we get into the meat of our conversation.
But to answer your question on my backstory, Thumbnail Sketch is practicing chiropractor
for 23 years in Boston, Massachusetts.
(02:15):
My wife, Camilla Franzen is, I should say Dr. Camilla Franzen is also a chiropractor.
We met in the first month of our four year studies at Life University.
We've been together ever since that first date.
And she's been by my side and been my partner in all things as we've just created multiple,
multiple awesome, very successful businesses inside of the chiropractic ecosystem.
(02:40):
I would say the first was our, the original Remarkable Practice, which is our practice
in Beverly, Massachusetts, just north of Boston.
Camilla and I were blessed.
We ran an extraordinary, really successful practice that, you know, I'll credit the success
of the practice to a commitment to the chiropractic principle, delivering excellent clinical outcomes
(03:03):
and results.
We're serious hardcore clinicians, really committed to patient education and empowering
people and equipping people to really influence their health trajectory.
And then I'm the systems guy.
That's my moniker.
So we systematized everything so we could create great scalability and durability.
So I build world-class teams.
That's my superpower.
(03:23):
And a big part of that was our super successful, robust associate doctor program.
So we had 17, excuse me, we had 39 associate doctors over about a 17 year period.
And I like to say it's not cause I'm a terrible boss and they'd quit and I had to replace
them.
But we had like a two year apprenticeship where we had interns coming in to compete
(03:44):
to get on what we call the totem pole.
And we would raise up and groom and train and develop these docs into just remarkable
chiropractors.
So it was a exam DC and then they became a junior DC and then became a senior DC.
And then we launched them out into the world.
So that's where I fell in love with training chiropractors and coaching chiropractors and
developing chiropractors and teaching them our remarkable systems.
(04:05):
So that's where the remarkable practice coaching program was was birthed.
We eventually sold the practice as the remarkable practice just took off.
We now have thousands of chiropractors around the world in our ecosystem.
And we've been blessed again.
So we have this extraordinary business where we're really getting to not just change the
inflection or the trajectory of the health of people in just one community, but now thousands
(04:31):
of communities around the world.
So absolutely, I'm the happiest guy you're going to talk to today.
That's a phenomenal story.
I love to hear that you lived and breathe and built this system before you brought it
into the coaching space because it became a proven model.
You were able to work with chiropractors all over, regardless of the stages that they were
(04:51):
in and really nurture them to become super successful, remarkable chiropractors.
Yep.
And not just chiropractors, but chiropractic teams.
One of the things that we teach in the remarkable practice is you don't have to be awesome at
everything.
You got to build a team that's awesome at everything.
So I think that that's probably our secret sauce is we actually help these doctors take
(05:13):
that job that they love and turn it into a business that they love.
Yeah, I love that.
So obviously you work with lots of doctors in your program and lots of practices.
What is some of the biggest challenges that you see chiropractors facing in growing a
successful practice?
You know, it really depends on where they are in their career.
(05:34):
So perfect opportunity to introduce a concept, a construct, a structure that we developed
to organize a conversation that everybody's trying to have in chiropractic, really frankly
in all small businesses.
So we call it the four seasons.
So there are four seasons to the chiropractic career.
There's launch, build, scale, and exit.
(05:56):
So launch is the first year in practice.
After the first year out, build is when you're in established practice, but you are the owner
operator.
In other words, you're the sole practitioner, the only person in that practice that's delivering
healthcare.
Then there's scale.
You move into scale once you have multiple practitioners delivering healthcare.
So multiple chiropractors, whether that's through partnership or through associate doctors.
(06:20):
And then the fourth and final season is the exit season, which is where you are looking
for your successor and you're looking to make a graceful and profitable exit.
So honestly, what you see is there's different challenges that come with each of these four
seasons.
So we can have some fun and just sort of take a trip through those four seasons and talk
(06:41):
about some of the, I would say pitfalls or gaps that we see that are most common in each
of those if you think that would serve this conversation well.
Yeah, I love it.
So the four seasons are, just to reiterate, launch, build, scale, and exit.
So those are the four seasons and the challenges that you face as a doctor is going to change
based on where you're at in your practice.
(07:03):
So I think we just start from the top and work our way down.
So stage one is launch, the beginning phases of that practice.
What are some of the biggest challenges you see there?
So doctors show up and they always have lots of challenges, right?
But we want to slay the dragon that's keeping them from growing and going, right?
So most commonly in launch, first year out, let's face it, you ain't got nothing but time,
(07:26):
everybody's broke, they don't have any money, right?
So what ends up happening is you have this, what we call the money gap, right?
And the money gap is I don't have the money that I need to do the marketing that I need
to do to attract the new patients that I need to bring into the office to have new revenues.
So I have no money, so I do no marketing, so I have no patients, so I have no new revenue,
(07:50):
so I have no money, so I do.
And you can see how it turns into this vicious cycle, right?
It's like an eddy in the growth cycle of a practice, right?
So they get caught in the money gap, right?
So that's a real problem, it's a real issue.
And under capitalization is the reason that nine out of 10 businesses fail in their first
five years, right?
So what we've got to be able to do is we've got to take a look at the other resources
(08:13):
that we do have.
So we all have four limited resources, Nick, right?
So every human has four limited resources, time, energy, focus, and money.
And if you have no money, guess what, you have most likely have time, energy, and focus,
right?
So you've got to use those three resources to generate new patients.
And the generation of those new patients turns into new revenue, which you can then reinvest
(08:35):
some of that new revenue into doing some of the right marketing that will help amplify
the business, right?
This is something in the remarkable practice we teach, it's called the slingshot system,
right?
So let's just back it all the way back to, okay, oh, so great, Franson, but I'm broke,
I have no money.
How do I take my time, energy, and focus and turn it into new patients?
Well, we teach something called the referral machine, right?
So it's all about, you know, recognizing that every single one of the people that you know,
(09:00):
they don't even have to be your patient, anybody that you interact with, you know, they are
most likely struggling with something with their health or somebody that they know or
love right now is struggling with their health.
They have a spine and they have a nervous system, right?
So in other words, they need you, right?
So ultimately we've got to master the ability to help a person understand why they should
come in to see you.
And you need to be trained up very specifically on really how to generate referrals out of
(09:23):
vapor, whether it's a relationship from outside of your practice and just in your dealings
outside of your practice or from inside of your practice.
And there are very specific ways to address that, but there's, we've identified 54 opportunities
in the first four months specifically to how to ask for referral and generate referrals
into the practice, right?
(09:43):
So you know, exploring those are probably outside the scope of this conversation, but
rest assured when you hear me say 54 opportunities in the first four months of a relationship
to ask for referral, you did this right.
And you're going to see an additional 15, 20, 25 new patient referrals a month, every
month coming into your practice.
We built our practice on that.
And we averaged probably 30, 35 new patient referrals every month, month in and month
(10:06):
out.
And most of that is generated.
Those referrals specifically internal referrals are generated at no cost or at low cost.
So it's a great way for doctors to get some traction, get some activity going into the
practice, getting some early wins, some revenue and some momentum.
Yeah, that's big, especially in the early stages when you don't have a lot of money
(10:28):
and you're trying to drive patients into the practice and get some traction that'll end
up coming into the slingshot system.
So you can start earning money and then reinvesting that money into marketing and other activities
that are going to help continue to grow the practice.
I love that.
The biggest hurdle in the launch phase is really just limited resources, typically in
the financial section of the business and trying to get traction early on to kind of
(10:52):
fix that problem.
Does that all sound correct?
Yep.
You're nailing it, man.
You want a job?
You can come and work with us and help coach this system.
I'll teach you the system that works.
Oh, I love it.
So then the next stage is the build stage.
So let's talk a little bit about that.
What are some of the biggest challenges you see once you kind of get past that first launch
(11:14):
season of the practice?
Yeah.
Most docs that find themselves in build, they're usually in their second year of practice or
beyond, right?
But what's key to understand is you're an established practice, but you're the owner
operator, which means you're the only provider in there, right?
So most docs feel like, oh yeah, this is where I've experienced success, some great success.
(11:37):
Most love their job.
They love the work, right?
So that's the challenge with most doctors at this place in their career is like, I love
the work and I love to work, you know, but the truth is, is you're about two or three
questions away from them admitting, you know what, I don't own a business at all.
I own a job, right?
So you know, at this point, this is a great point of exposure for them.
(11:57):
And what they recognize is, man, I just, you know, I'm doing everything.
It's all up to me, right?
So the up to me part is, you know, usually a sign in the signal that they are probably
feeling a bit overwhelmed and they also feel exposed, right?
They recognize man, God forbid anything ever happened to me, or maybe I want to be home
for bedtime or even dinnertime, right?
(12:18):
So I know my kids, maybe crazy idea, maybe let's take vacations, but the problem is,
is when you do that, you got to shut her down, right?
So there's a big gap here in like team building.
And I'll say part one in build is just feeling like you can create some level of scale.
So everything doesn't have to be up to you.
Like any growth wouldn't be just more work for you, more time for you, more overwhelmed
(12:39):
for you.
You've got to learn how to build a world-class team, right?
So we've created this system called the four rights, where it's like I said, you don't
have to be awesome at everything.
You have to build a team that's awesome at everything.
And you take this through this trajectory, these stages and with a very specific plan
as to who you add to your team and in what order and at what level or at what point,
(13:02):
for example, time or revenue or complexity, what have you.
So you know, it's all about getting the right person in the right seat, doing the right
work the right way.
And the way we teach these doctors to do this is they're leveraging reporting systems and
meeting rhythms.
In other words, scorecards and KPIs in such a way that everything is tied to revenue and
growth.
So there's no risk.
(13:22):
You're always winning, right?
So as you're going and growing, you're not overwhelmed with overhead.
You're investing in building out a team that's going to help you reach your goals, right?
So I think that the second in the build season, the most common gap here is in team building,
the inability to put together the right team, a team that doesn't feel like you're just
adding more payroll and overhead and killing your profit, but rather being able to invest
(13:45):
in building the team that's going to help you reach your goals and you'll enjoy enormous
profit.
Yeah.
I loved how you put it where instead of owning a job, it's owning a business.
How do you transition from having the entire business revolve around your presence and
your time and your energy versus being able to rely and build a successful team that can
(14:08):
get some of that work off your plate?
So you can do things like take vacations or if you got COVID and you're out for a couple
weeks or whatever the case is, you're able, the business can continue and thrive without
being so heavily reliant as you as the doctor doing every little task necessary to keep
the doors open.
That's right.
And that way of practicing is exhausting, very stressful, right?
(14:29):
And you have no peace of mind, right?
So you're hitting the nail on the head.
The difference between owning a job and owning a business is businesses are scalable, they're
durable and they're eventually transferable, right?
So scalability implies that you've got systems in place so that you can scale and you can
leverage other people, systems and technology to give more, love more, serve more, make
(14:53):
a bigger impact and make a bigger income, right?
So that's the first step.
The second step brings you into the scale season of your career, which is when you actually
add durability.
Now, durability means you can give more, love more, serve more, make a bigger impact and
a bigger income even in your absence, right?
This means that you've built out a practice that doesn't solely rely on you as the only
(15:14):
practitioner.
In other words, either adding a partner or partners or associate doctors, right?
So you know, big advocate of associate doctors and doing this right.
When you do it right, it's a giant win, win, win, right?
It's super tricky to do this and I'd say this is the third most common gap as we come into
scale is these doctors inability to establish that durability by bringing on doctors that
(15:35):
they know that they can trust to continue the work even in their absence.
You know, ultimately docs in scale, what they're looking for is they want to go and grow, but
they don't want to, again, put it all on their back, right?
They want to go and grow and they want to make a bigger impact and a bigger income,
but it can't just mean more work for them.
So bringing in an associate doctor usually means an increase in capacity, right?
(15:56):
In other words, to be able to serve more people, right?
It also means an increase in peace of mind because you know, you're not the only DC in
there.
It's a most likely, you're looking to claw back some time freedom, right?
So when you bring on an associate doctor, once you have that doctor associate doctor
onboarded and trained up and equipped, now you've you're buying your time back, right?
So you're freeing up your time where, you know, yes, you could be the one that's been
(16:20):
leaning over all the bodies and I know we love it.
I know we, we love to take care of patients, but we all know there's a big difference between
getting to adjust patients and having to adjust patients, right?
So I love adjusting patients.
I love caring for patients.
I never gave that up.
I never owned my practice for one day without being one of the lead docs, but I certainly
wasn't adjusting all the patients, right?
(16:41):
So and I freed up the two thirds of my time so that I could number one, be a better husband,
be a better father and you know, get, get to the gym, be able to go surfing, you know,
do having an actual, what we call a remarkable life.
And then I could also be the CEO developing my team and developing our marketing and developing
our systems further.
(17:01):
And frankly, developing my doctor so that they can be even more extraordinary.
Yeah, I love that.
That definitely changes your mindset as a business owner is being able to make the business and
put it in a place that's going to thrive and succeed without you having to touch every
patient and you do every task and building a team and scaling with associates and all
(17:22):
the things that are going to help you grow.
So that covers the first three stages or the three seasons.
And then the fourth season is exit.
So talk about that a little bit, like, you know, some of the biggest challenges when
you go from being the single doc building and scaling, and then all of a sudden now
you're kind of maybe wanting to exit the business here at the end of your career, you're looking
(17:46):
to retire or you want to take some time off or whatever the case is.
And you're kind of making that transition.
What are some of the challenges that chiropractors face when they're, when they're seeing the
end of the tunnel there for that practice?
Well, really the challenges and exit actually prove the rest of the model, right?
So because at the end of the day, unfortunately, too many chiropractors try to go through their
(18:09):
entire career in three seasons.
They try to go from launch to build to exit.
And the truth is, is that build does not exit well because nobody wants to buy your job.
Right?
So too many chiropractors find themselves in a lot of pain at the very end.
And number one, they can't find a buyer.
Or if they do find a buyer, it's a fire sale.
(18:29):
Like nobody gets the value that they think they have.
I mean, you could spend 20, 30, 40 years building this practice that you think is X number of
dollars of value, but no one in the marketplace does because they don't want to buy your job.
You know, ultimately the best thing to do is to take that job and turn it into a business.
So take a season in scale and take your practice to the point where it is actually a business
(18:52):
that people will compete to buy.
Right?
So if you build a business that people can look at and be able to say, wow, I'm actually
buying a business here.
I'm not just replacing you in this job.
That's where you're going to see three, four, five times of the multiplier, the value for
that business when you go to exit.
So I would say that the biggest gap there is unfortunately the one that they find out
at the very end, man, this is not really what I thought it was going to be.
(19:16):
I didn't, I thought this process was going to be easier.
I'm really exposed here because I'm trying to sell a job and nobody wants to buy it.
I don't really have a business to sell.
So that's the first and most obvious answer that I have there.
This is like, okay, take a beat, invest some time, turn that job into a business, take
it to scale and then exit it and it exits so much better.
(19:37):
If somebody has actually done this and created a business and they move into exit, the biggest
gap there is they don't understand how to structure this, right?
They don't know how to find a buyer.
They don't know how to put the deal together, et cetera.
And there are real corporate strategies, corporate structure strategies and tax strategies that
you need to be able to implement in order to not only optimize the asking price and
(19:58):
the sales price, but also to optimize how much you keep in the deal, right?
In your pocket, you know, just give it all up to taxes.
So there's some serious legal intricacies to this process.
So to be able to exit gracefully and profitably, you certainly need some help here.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
(20:21):
You put it really well when you said nobody wants to buy your job because otherwise, why
would they, you know, there's not going to be an interest level there.
There's not going to be a huge ROI for them where if you have the right systems in place,
if you have the right partners in place, the right butts in seats, the right team members
that are built out, the business is much more self-sustaining.
So someone is much more apt to actually want to invest and actually purchase the business.
(20:43):
There's something there that's actually more valuable for them in the long run.
I think that was really, really well put.
Thanks, man.
And the truth is, is that docs come to us in any of three categories when it comes to
exit.
There's somebody who's like, I want to exit immediately.
In other words, less than 18 months out from wanting to sell.
So that group of people we call the ASAP group, as soon as possible group, or I nicknamed
(21:06):
them the holy shit group.
So it's like, I got to sell this practice.
And that's usually how that conversation goes.
So there are very specific things they need to do so they don't get beat up in this process
and they can do this as gracefully as possible.
Then there is the group that's somewhere between 18 months and 36 months from wanting to exit.
So let's call it three years out from wanting to sell your business.
(21:28):
And you're recognizing, wow, I need to put together a plan here.
I need an exit strategy and a plan.
So we'll take those doctors through a very specific program to help them optimize that
experience.
Right?
So not only finding a buyer and knowing what they're selling and understanding the readiness
of their business and what it takes to get there, et cetera, et cetera, but how to leverage
(21:51):
some of the options you have as far as corporate structure and tax strategy.
That's really a critical thing.
So they're really in what we consider the sweet spot.
And then there's those that are more than three years out from selling.
And I call this group the catbird seat.
So because they actually get to build it to sell it, everybody loves to quote Stephen
(22:12):
Covey, begin with the end in mind.
So what does that mean?
This is exactly what it means.
Begin with your exit in mind, recognizing whether you're three years away or 33 years
away from wanting to sell your business.
One day you will be selling your business.
Begin with the end in mind.
Why not understand what's going to bring the greatest asset value and market price, right?
What's going to put the most money in your pocket when you sell it and reverse engineer
(22:36):
it, just build it backwards.
Right?
So, which is how I run my businesses now.
I have five businesses now, all inside of the chiropractic space.
So each of these, I'm teaching what we practice, right?
So recognizing one point, a web point, I'm going to sell all of these businesses.
So I've got to reverse engineer what I would consider a giant win when it comes to my exit.
(22:57):
Yeah.
So having a vision for what that looks like in the future for you as a doctor and as for
your business and your people.
And I think that's a good segue into the...
I think you have a resource regarding the vision and helping doctors kind of get a clear
idea of where they want to go with their practice and setting those goals.
Is that right?
(23:17):
Yeah, perfect.
So I wrote a book.
It's The Remarkable Practice.
So this is the definitive guide to creating the remarkable practice, but it's really creating
a remarkable practice as part of a remarkable life, which means that you're going to create
the business that will support your remarkable life, not compete with it.
So this book is special to me because I wrote it for my son, Sam.
My son is 18.
(23:38):
He says he wants to be a chiropractor, which is just awesome.
So I said, all right, that's it.
I finally have the impetus to write a book.
So I wrote this for him, but everybody gets to read it.
So I'll do two things.
We're going to give away a link to the first chapter of this book as an ebook for everybody.
So that's going to help unpack that Rubik's cube concept and the vision story, etc. that
(24:00):
you're alluding to.
But then also for your listeners, whoever is the first person to write, I guess in the
show notes or however they get it to you, Nick, if they write the word remarkable in
all capitals, I'll send a signed hard copy right through the mail to them.
So first, write remarkable in all caps and they get it to Nick.
Nick, you're going to be responsible for that.
(24:21):
You let me know who they are and what their address is, and we'll turn that right around
for them.
Absolutely.
I love it.
Well, thank you for that resource for the doctors.
I'll make sure to include that information in the show notes, the link where you can
send the remarkable so you can claim your copy of the book.
Go get it.
Go get the book.
It's a great resource for those that are looking to really get a vision.
(24:45):
Learn the strategies and go through the four seasons and have that exit strategy in mind
for when you're at that cycle in your business working backwards so you know exactly where
you're going.
That is super, super powerful.
Dr. Steven, I'm super thankful that you could share some of that knowledge with us today.
I really, really appreciate your time.
You guys have a great group, a great system and really great concepts that I think a lot
(25:09):
of doctors are going to appreciate.
Man, it is my pleasure and privilege to speak with you and your audience.
Anytime I get in front of chiropractors, I take the opportunity.
I appreciate that.
If anybody wants to learn more about us and the remarkable practice, just go to theremarkablepractice.com.
The remarkable practice.com.
Check out our new site.
We're easy to find on Facebook.
(25:30):
We've got a robust free private group and then follow us on our podcast, Remarkable
CEO Podcast.
Thanks so much, Nick.
Absolutely.
Thanks again, Dr. Steven.
We will chat soon.
Thanks for tuning in to the Chiro Basics Podcast.
If you liked the episode, don't forget to follow us on Facebook and YouTube.
You can learn more about chiropractic success online at chirobasics.com.
(25:54):
That's C-H-I-R-O-B-A-S-I-X dot com.
See you next time.
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