You know what you just described reminded me of how you came about with DC Mentors, how it evolved, how the needs in our profession were exposed, where the patterns of needs kept showing up.   You saw a need that you didn’t anticipate.

Dr. Sovinsky:  My original inception of coaching was Chiropractic Mentoring Experience, which evolved with Dr. Cecile Thackeray and Dr. Douglas Sea into DC Mentors.  And the combination of that, as far as a spearhead moment, is the conception and inception and inspiration and the alliance with Michael Gerber as a co-author and using the E-Myth principles saying here’s how they fit in chiropractic.  Because chiropractic has some universals, but it also has some quirkiness because there are some strange and wonderful people in Chiropractic.  

The evolution, for me, in the beginning with Chiropractic Mentoring Experience was an understanding that there are 3 relationships that shape the body and we talked about that in the book, “Life: The Manual, When the Pursuit of Happiness Makes You Miserable.”  The three relationships are intertwined like a Venn diagram, the relationship we have with ourselves, the relationship we have with others, which includes the stakeholders we talked about in another session, and the relationship you have with your business and money. 

I thought that everybody had chiropractic business systems.  I was very naïve.   I thought I’d work on the soft skills, the interpersonal skills and bring out the best and the discipline in them.  And what I ended up finding is that not only were people without systems, but the systems they had were not so good. The systems they had were so ancient, the systems that they had only worked to a certain level of chiropractic practice.  Then the evolution was,  “We’re going to build and innovate systems for chiropractic business – not just say here’s the way I did it in business, here’s the way I practiced, but what’s working today.  We are in a sense true management.  We innovate, then we quantify what that is and then we orchestrate as a dynamic flux, based on principles but also current with what’s going on in the world today.

Dr. Wade Anunson:  So, success, today, is being able to serve your community in such a way that we increase accessibility, we become more patient-centered with our business systems.  We create them to truly serve an individual’s needs and allow more people access.  We also have successful relationships, self, others and the world.  We become better communicators with our communities, with other professionals, respecting the work they do, and not trying to duplicate that, staying within our confine of what we do best as chiropractors.  It’s a neat package to hear all that tied in, which makes it a win, win, win. . .  because now we want to be winning.

Dr. Sovinsky:  All you do is what?

Dr. Wade Anunson:  All we do is win, win, win, no matter what.  It’s nice to have a system that really, really does recognize all the details and isn’t it heavy business, high agenda.  It’s solid business, it’s smooth systems that serve everyone in it, the staff that runs it, the chiropractor that’s doing it, a business that’s not dependent on the chiropractor always doing it, doing it, doing it, and a consistent experience for your customers, clients, patients.

Dr. Sovinsky:  It can get a little complex when you look at all those levels that you were talking about and a simple truth is of the E-Myth mindset is that your business is there to serve the community and, therefore, your business exists because it either serves a community in a way that’s extraordinary or it serves a community in a way that’s ordinary.  Chiropractic business really has a natural growth process from infancy, for instance I took a table and I put it into an operatory at a dentist’s office when I start my business.  That’s how my business started, that was an infant business.  Then as it turned into adolescence, I said I need some other people, maybe to answer the phone, and to bill and collect and schedule.  The natural progression would be for a business to reach maturity where the doctor is actually free of the business and choosing to either extend and expand with associates or expand it on an enterprise level and more about that in The E-Myth Chiropractor.  There is this natural process: infancy, growth phase of adolescence, and growth phase of maturity, but most chiropractic practices, as most businesses, are locked in adolescence.  There’s where the doctor is kicking and screaming, where the doctor is really frustrated.  And that’s where most chiropractic practices continue their entire 42 year career, stuck in that adolescence.  DC Mentors and The E-Myth Chiropractor are actually asking you to step back and ask, “What does my business need me to do?”  Because if I solve that with a formula then it will allow my business to support me, then I allow my business to make me free.  I become truly free of my business and that is a mature business.  And if you’re free of your business you may still choose to be a chiropractor, and that’s great, or you may choose to have another expression of your creativity because we are natural creators.

So from a seasoned chiropractor‘s position, clinicians that have been out for 3 to 5 years, they’ve had some success in practice, their practices are growing, they have an influx of new patients - maybe not quite what they anticipate or would like to see – or maybe they don’t feel quite as impactful doing what they’re doing . . . doing it, doing it, doing it. Or maybe they’d like more balance in life, they’d like to improve the interface between their home life, “if I have to pour everything into my chiropractic practice then what’s my family life going to be like?”  There seems to be, in our colleagues, this getting the feet wet, developing a practice, but not having it go in the direction they want it to go in. They feel that in order to be successful it absorbs too much of their personal life and what I found refreshing in The E-Myth Chiropractor was how you make a distinction between that interface. Can you elaborate a bit on the point, “we are our practice.” That if we’re acting one way in practice, we’re acting that way at home too and how those two really don’t change – it’s all connected.

Dr. Sovinsky: Well, there are a couple big points there. The first one is the idea of the stakeholders. We rarely think in terms of the stakeholder position. The stakeholders are everybody around you and in your life, your sphere of influence, that are directly, or indirectly, impacted by the success or mediocrity or failure of your business. Obviously your first stakeholders are your spouse, your life partner, your immediate family. And your chiropractic assistants are stake holders because if the practice isn’t there and solid will they have a career that they are excited about or will there always be struggling? The stake holders are the people who loan you money, the stake holders are your vendors, the stake holders are your chiropractic coaches that work with you.

We tend to think that we can compartmentalize ourselves. We think we’re really charming and great at work and then we come home from the office and we think that we’re able to carry that home. We try to protect our family from some of our struggle, but they can always read us and what that ends up happening is an inauthenticity that occurs because there’s a trust factor, people can read us. But we think we’re doing the big thing, I’m just going to put my big girl / big boy pants on and suck it up, versus just say the day wasn’t that great – not to go home and whine, not to go whine, and not to go whine, but to share. You also share the wins. So they are stake holders. You can try to compartmentalize, but the cost is a choppy life. “Wherever you go there you are.”

Practice the art of being real. Practice the art of being authentic. So the stakeholder chapters in The E-Myth Chiropractor are the ones where most people get like a big cold fish slapping them in the face. The aha moment. They see that they really need to go and work on the fact that they can’t be struggling at home and successful in the office, or they can’t be successful in the office and struggling at home. There is no way to separate that.

We’re here with Dr. Frank Sovinsky, co- author of The E-Myth Chiropractor.  Dr. Sovinsky, you’ve seen chiropractic evolve.  You had a huge practice for years, your journey and your mission has changed to influence chiropractors on how to be better at all facets of the game of chiropractic.  Number one in making a change in how many people we can touch and serve.  What do you think the biggest stumbling block for new chiropractors coming out is in this whole evolution of chiropractic and where we stand today?

Dr. Sovinsky:  Well that’s fairly simple and it’s much more than just being a good chiropractor and being a good clinician.  The E-Myth mindset talks about that the “E” meaning entrepreneur.  A doctor, in E-Myth terms, is a clinician or technician.  They are excited about what they do and excited about showing people their product, showing people their service.  They get turned on by that and want to take that out to the world.  The entrepreneurial myth is that it’s a business person who goes into practice, not a technician.  That’s very essential because if we think like a clinician when running our business, then we have the tyranny of simply thinking in terms of the business of chiropractic only from a clinician standpoint.  It’s at the heart and soul if we can get that definition.  And one of the things that Michael Gerber was brilliant about is identifying those three personalities that are in us: the entrepreneur, the manager and technician.  So a new chiropractic graduate or someone who is starting a chiropractic practice is going to need to realize that they probably don’t have experience and training as an entrepreneur, therefore they need to get that.  They need to get that essential understanding that it’s not just what we do, but it’s how we do it and why we do it and those are the essential components of an entrepreneur.

Dr. Wade Anunson:  Beautiful.  So in other words, the skill set of a chiropracTOR, we come out of school with that knowledge, but the learning about how we apply that knowledge to the world is a whole new skill set that we’re not expected to learn in chiropractic college.  The educational system isn’t geared around the entrepreneur, it’s geared around a successful, competent clinician.  Is that correct?

Dr. Sovinsky:  Well, that’s the mindset, if I get good results and I’m really, really good at what I do, my business will take care of itself.  My money will take care of itself.   The brutal reality is that money never takes care of itself, and business never takes care of itself.  Especially today, that is why I’m really passionate about co-authoring with Michael Gerber because the passion of the E-Myth is that the chiropractic profession’s health will be a result of the health of every cell in chiropractic, each individual cell – you, as a chiropractor in Madison, you as a chiropractor in Toronto, you as a practitioner in San Francisco.  The health of your chiropractic business will feed and assure that the mission and vision of chiropractic and the dream of chiropractic gets met. 

In order to do that we can no longer rely on reimbursements that fixed everything in that realm.  We have to really look at things now from a business perspective, from a playing field.  The E-Myth Chiropractor is the message we need in the post insurance apocalypse.   I’m going to call it a post insurance apocalypse, I’m happy for it, but the apocalypse could be because doctors aren’t prepared or unwilling and unable to make the changes.  Changes which say you’ve got a service that is transformational, can you make it scalable and can you make it affordable, accessible, and hassle-free?   

And the other essence of this is to look at your business as a chiropractic entrepreneur, with a passionate, inspirational vision for what those two words mean.  The combination of those two words and the subtitle of the book, “Why Most Chiropractic Practices Don’t Work and What To Do About It” says that the chiropractor is doing all the work that the business, itself, should be doing, that the systems should be doing and, therefore, the doctor ends up doing it, doing it, doing it all themselves.  And then the next staff comes in, the next staff goes out and the doctor ends up going back doing the things that the business should be performing and not back to the essential part of the healing essence and the teaching and inspiration that we do.

Hi, I’m Dr. Frank Sovinsky and welcome to another DC Mentors’ V-blog. We’ve been talking about some of the lofty ideas of philosophy and then the science and then the application called the art in your practice. In our book, The E-Myth Chiropractor, Why Most Chiropractic Practices Don’t Work and What To Do About It, there are some beginning chapters that talk about planning strategies because we start in practice without a real plan. We just sort of make it up as we go along. It’s vital. It’s critical. Make sure you get the book, make sure you apply it.

What I want to discuss with you in the context of the philosophy that we’ve been talking about in these last episodes is this: Everyone of us have had miracle things that we’ve seen happen with patients. And we’ve also had family members or even our own health struggles at times when we might add something to the mix of taking care of ourselves, we might add acai berries, for instance, and all of a sudden, after all the care that we’ve been under ourselves that our migraine seem to clear. Or we might add a laser therapy to a shoulder problem that nothing else helped. Whether it was physical therapy or chiropractic, you name it, and now (with that new found essence of I found the theory of everything) when I do this, this and this it helps me, or it was a miracle for someone else, so I can apply that strategy to everybody that comes in to help them too.

The problem is we build a business around us, the problem is we build a chiropractic business around a case versus “what can I be the master of?” What can I use as far as my knowledge base that I could then apply or even refer people to, whether it’s a laser center, a acai center. I just want you to get very clear with your business vision. The whole thing that we continue through the book, The E-Myth Chiropractor, is that you do something that’s transformational for a human being. Can what you do that’s transformational be scalable? In other words, can you reach enough people to make an actual difference in your community? Not just a difference in your pocketbook, not just a difference in your financial freedom. Although, hey, why not? What I’m talking about is making sure that you get very refined. If you look at the case that I was talking about, somebody that added acai berry or a particular pilate stretch or a FitBall exercise and all of sudden after a lifetime of chiropractic that episode that one thing, “fixed” them. Well, if you look at reason, you’d see that you have had a lifetime of chiropractic care and then you added that one thing on top of it all. Do you see what I’m saying? You have to see what you’re saying.

Hi, it’s Dr. Frank Sovinsky with another V-Blog from DC Mentors.

We’re still here atop beautiful Eagle Rock and we were talking about philosophy, about science, about being inspired to do what we do. We were talking about the theory of everything, the big T.O.E. and we left our last episode we were talking about this thing called Chiropractic that came into being, as it is. Yes, people adjusted. Yes, people stretched spines. Yes, they did traction. Yes, they did all those things, but it is the intent that D.D. Palmer wrote and talked about.

So this whole episodic event that we’ve been discussing isn’t about just adjusting. It’s about being clear as to why you make an adjustment. And when you look at somebody “with a condition” you might think that in the pure essences of chiropractic philosophy they may not fit because our job is to align the body and not to treat a disease or a process. You’ve got to find your way there.

We can have diversity, we can have disparity on both sides. The point is there was a miracle thing brought to the planet. Instead of looking for the next trend, why don’t we look at what we have. We have something very powerful. If you are on a desert island and you had a group of people, let’s say a tribe of 250 people, and you were the doctor and your resources were your hands and your philosophy and the science that you already knew and the art that you could express – could you take care of that multitude, that tribe by doing the thing you do called chiropractic? Could you analyze, could you test with your hands? It doesn’t matter whether you have an instrument or not. You have pisiforms, you have instruments, you have digitations. The island is a theoretical problem. Is that every going to happen? I hope not. But having you refine and define, refine and define, to say, “This is the most powerful thing I do.” And it’s the most powerful thing I do because this, this and this.   Instead of looking for Hz on C5, I look for what needs to be restored- that could be an adjustment at T1, that could be an adjustment at sacrum, that could be an adjustment at coccyx, that could be an adjustment at the TMJ area.

So, keep playing with this. The inspiration part is that it will wake you up at night, you might need to write. Put a recorder next to your bed, or a pen and paper like B.J. Palmer use to do. We are inspiring you because if you can’t be inspired how are you going to bring other people into this thing, this miracle of the theory of everything? And reality is, no one healthcare has all the answers, but what we do is so profound. Get into it.

Hi, I’m Dr. Frank Sovinsky and welcome back to another DC Mentors’ V-blog.

We’re continuing our search for the theory of everything here at Eagle Rock.  Mankind continues to search for the big T.O.E.,  the big Theory Of Everything.  I read our chiropractic journals and I see that there is a theory of everything – a particular substance to take, whether it’s Acia berry or it is a gooseberry or is it adding light to places that are dark, called laser therapy, or using electrostim to enhance the healing process or separating vertebrae so that we can decompress.  All these strategies have great intent and they can get great responses, I just want us to look from a philosophy standpoint and from an understanding of the business of chiropractic, being very clear on what it is you want to promise and deliver to your patient.  Can you deliver everything? 

I’m reminded that when I’m reading the brochures, for instance, I’m just going to use the laser therapy for now, not to pick on laser therapy.  There’s a lot of great research on it.  That being said, what I really think as I read the brochure is that it says “neck pain.”   OK, at these Hz, do this, take away pain and inflammation.  My ankle hurts, I do this and take away the pain and inflammation using these Hz.  If I have cervical pain or shoulder pain I do these Hz to take care of that pain and inflammation.  Good protocols, likely good research, but you know what?  What Dr. Sovinsky?  Do you know, back in 1895 the Palmer’s discovered that there’s this law of life?  The Palmer’s discovered this misalignment, a thing called a subluxation. Whatever word you use to define it, that was a miracle treatment at the time. Nothing was added to the body, nothing was taken away from the body,  a strategy to say, “How do I restore the natural processes?”

And that’s a theory of everything.

Hi, I’m Dr. Frank Sovinsky and welcome to another DC Mentors’ V-blog.

We are here at Lake Tahoe, on location, at the ancient, volcanic neck called Eagle Rock and I’m here to show you what an inspiration nature is and to, also, inspire you as a chiropractor to dig in to your chiropractic philosophy, this lover of truth of what health and healing are about.  I want to inspire you to enjoy science from the perspective of improving what we do, not proving what we do.  I want to inspire you to hang out with this thing we call the art form of delivering a specific chiropractic adjustment. 

Why do you adjust?  I know we get our “why” on.  We’ve talk about being here to help people with their needless suffering and eliminating that, but the “why” on is also the why you make an adjustment right there, at that angle, and when do you stop, how do you know when to let go, when do you know when to adjust more. 

But I want to pull back a little bit on the philosophy because mankind has always struggled with this idea of dis-ease or disease.  As a matter of fact, the ancient Greeks looked at the word influenza as a malady from the stars, in other words, there was a divine intervention that created that persons ill health, therefore there must be a divine intervention to heal them.  We really haven’t solved that because today you can read magazines, you can read articles, and you can read books that say that AIDS, for instance, is God’s way of punishing promiscuity and/or relationships that are “not in the book.”  So that part of the philosophy answers the question, “Why do I intervene and how do I intervene,” and is it that nature, or the body is lacking something or is there some interference from the restorative power that is in the body.  These are things that I know you’ve read about and you maybe just put aside but I’m going to tell you, if you don’t solve this in your head how are you going to lead people?  How are you going to know what your promise is to people? 

So, if you are going to inspire them guess who has to be inspired first?  You.

Hi, I’m Dr. Frank Sovinsky and welcome to another DC Mentors’ V-Blog. I’m here with a statue of Mahatma Gandhi outside the Golden Gate ferry terminal in San Francisco.

I would like to use this as a metaphor today to describe to you and to seer into your brain the idea that, in very real sense, you are a social reformer. You happen to be a chiropractic entrepreneur that’s a social reformer, we call that a social entrepreneur.

Look at the life of Mahatma Gandhi, his passion to save humanity from financial, emotional and spiritual slavery in every sense. Look at your life as a compassionate healer, as someone who wants to convey your passion for people. When you look at a newspaper headline that says obesity is out of control, when you look at a new headline that says 4 out of 5 people in the next ten years will have diabetes and it is a natural process of aging, you look at that and you go no, no, no something’s off, something’s off in trauma, toxins and thinking. A social reformer, you’re a chiropractor, you think very differently than most, don’t lose that passion.

The idea of compassion is to communicate your passion in a way that the people that you want to serve and protect and help and reform can get the message and use it. That’s your job, that’s what we call Care-tactics, not scare-tactics. Our Care-tactics highlight the idea that we want to make the decision process easy, so easy, because people in a very real sense are under social, sympathetic overload. Their nervous systems are just fried when they come in, fried. You need to help them cool their jets down, give them step 1, step 2, step 3. Make it easy. You are a social reformer. Show your compassion by communicating your passion with judgment, but not judgmentalism, with strong guidance, but not ruthless scare tactics, and you will and we will and together this profession will finally take care and change a broken healthcare system.