speaker-0 (00:34)
Rustin,

who are you beyond the owner of Topsoil Chiropractic?

speaker-1 (00:39)
It's good question. a fitness enthusiast. I'm somebody that is constantly pursuing high levels of performance in all areas. There's a lot of different ways you can break down the different facets of who you are as a human being and different areas of life. But the system that I work around, it splits it into four. So there's love, health, career, money. So love includes your relationships, your spirituality. So that's kind of the top level. Who you are as a human being, I'm very

speaker-0 (00:46)
Okay.

speaker-1 (01:05)
Christian and very religious, so your relationship with God is always first, who you are as an individual, and then my wife comes next, who am I as a husband and a relationship with her, and then all the things that life brings, that all falls into the love category. Health is all of mental health, physical health, spiritual health, so who am I, am I taking care of myself in all the various ways, am I pursuing the next level, are you always improving? If you're not improving, you're probably blacksliding. There's not a whole lot of...

Still, right? It's boring. Yeah, no, life does not stay still. So that all falls into the health category. then career is obviously me as the chiropractor, me as the business owner. And then money is just being free, being able to have power, is being able to change the things that you want in your own life.

speaker-0 (01:46)
Yeah, it you more control.

speaker-1 (01:47)
So those are kind of the four areas, but that's me. I'm a husband, I'm son of a loving father in heaven, I'm a friend to hopefully a lot of people, and that's kind how I define myself right there.

speaker-0 (01:57)
Right on, I felt like I knew that about you when I met you. The first time I met you when you came into Breakaway. And I think Silas had told me that you had come in a couple of times, but I wasn't there or I was in middle of a workout.

speaker-1 (02:09)
I

think you were in the middle of making people work hard.

speaker-0 (02:11)
Yeah, dude, and I'm like, who is that guy? I don't want to talk to that guy. I'm trying to work out right now or whatever I was doing. But I would say you're probably the first business owner locally, one of the first ones who just came in and had a conversation. But I could tell, I don't know, I could tell that you knew what was going on. Like I could tell that we would have more conversations after that. And that just from that first conversation that we probably shared some similar values too. Yeah, absolutely. I was like, I'm gonna call Rustin back.

Let's talk about chiropractic. what originally, let's start from the very, what's your story with chiropractic care and why you got into it, how you got into it, what drew you to it?

speaker-1 (02:49)
Yeah, so I was fortunate. I had an uncle that was a chiropractor. So I just grew up as a kid. Like was just part of my routine and I didn't really, you know.

speaker-0 (02:57)
As in like you went to your uncle or he adjusted whatever.

speaker-1 (03:00)
So we lived close by and my parents made a priority that we went pretty regularly to get checked out and I didn't really fully understand why or what other than that I went.

speaker-0 (03:10)
just

like going to the doctor, right? ⁓

speaker-1 (03:13)
A

little less scary because chiropractors are usually a little more chill than... Yeah, but it's just something I grew up doing and later in life as a teenager, I kind of narrowed down. We had moved a lot, so I actually didn't go to lot of public school. I was either homeschooled and I did go to high school. I actually graduated as a sophomore because I thought it was dumb. And so I started doing online college courses and I was drawn to...

speaker-0 (03:16)
than a regular member.

Okay

speaker-1 (03:37)
actually working in one of two directions. I knew I either was going to do like constitutional law, because that's what I was fascinated with. I read all the founding fathers books and all this stuff. Or I realized that I was also super fascinated by just the human body and how it works and how amazing it is. And so as I got older, I realized I don't really want to live in DC. And honestly, that environment of law and the way that I had thought about practicing, was like,

speaker-0 (04:01)
How did you come to that conclusion? Did you live there for little while?

speaker-1 (04:05)
I talked to some people that either were attorneys themselves. I talked to some people that knew friends that actually did that type of law. And it sounded like it was going to be a constant uphill battle with not a lot of progress and results. I realized, which is fine, like somebody's got to do it, right? And doing hard things is always valuable. But I realized the lifestyle that I wanted to build was just not conducive in that environment. Yeah. And so I realized, OK.

I want to do something where I'm in control, where it's my schedule, I can do what I want, I can grow how I want to, I can take care of other people the way that I want to. I don't want to work in a hospital. I don't want to be on call. I'm not a fan of the allopathic medicine, of pharmaceuticals and all that fun world. And so I realized, hey, wait a second, my uncle was a chiropractor. Let me learn a little bit more about that. So I started asking him questions. I was living in Raleigh at the time.

speaker-0 (04:41)
Yeah.

unique

relationship. For chiropractic, I don't think it's as common as, I don't know, my mom was a nurse or something like that.

speaker-1 (04:58)
Yeah.

There's not that many of us for sure all across the country. In fact, in North Carolina, my license number is like 5,700. And we've been around for a long time. So there's not that many in Carolina. But I was able to ask him questions. And then I actually had a very influential young men's leader through my church at the time in Raleigh who was also a chiropractor. I had a couple of really good resources that I was just able to talk to and get a realistic look of what is it like.

speaker-0 (05:15)
⁓ no.

okay.

future like

speaker-1 (05:31)
Does

it provide the lifestyle that I want? Is it fulfilling? All that stuff. And so I pretty much knew from the age of like 14, 15 after asking and following up the research on both of those avenues that that's what I wanted to do.

speaker-0 (05:43)
Did you ever think, did you ever start doing it? Did you ever have like an internship or shadowing? Like you're doing it and you're sitting there thinking to yourself, don't, this is kind of different. Like let's say you do a lot of shadowing or I guess you're probably not legally allowed to put your hands on people until you're licensed. like let's say you're hanging out in this office with somebody who's mentoring you, who's teaching you. Was there ever a point where you thought to yourself, I don't know if this was the right decision?

speaker-1 (05:48)
So I did a lot of sh-

speaker-0 (06:08)
Like, I don't know if I could do this day in and day out and that be fulfilling or drive me to keep pushing to better my life to improve like you're talking about.

speaker-1 (06:16)
I was fortunate that I was able to shadow at multiple different clinics because part of the, and this applies to you too, when you're a business owner, even in the medical world for chiropractors, there's a lot of leeway in how you do things. You can create the environment and the experience and the practice that you want because I shadowed some offices that you could tell people just weren't excited. people came because they realized it was good for their health and everything. And the doctor like,

enjoyed being there and he always cared for his patients but some of the offices there just wasn't that drive. There wasn't like a spark where you could tell that everybody was super engaged. They were always trying to get better at what they did and helping people and the overall environment wasn't nurturing to make people want to not just feel better but become better people, right? And then I had other offices that that was the experience and so a lot of it came down to, okay,

speaker-0 (07:04)
you

speaker-1 (07:05)
I want to have an experience like this office, so how do I recreate that? Because you can have, in any business, you could have, it's there and it's somewhere people go, but it's not really growing, it's not thriving, it doesn't change people just by being there in the environment, right? So I found offices that I was like, okay, I could do this every day, all day for my entire career life and be super happy.

speaker-0 (07:14)
Yeah.

That's the coolest thing about entrepreneurship is you get to control that. Even if it's something that maybe, let's say you could have, I don't know what kind of task, but it could be a mundane task that you do every day and you get to control the environment. That's why I love owning a business.

speaker-1 (07:43)
The though, the flip side of that is that... It sucks, have no one to blame.

speaker-0 (07:44)
You didn't burn it all burned down.

No, no, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. Tell me more about, like I work with my wife, but she is a nurse. So she still does that because she loves it. She's very compassionate. But you're here like with your wife all day, every day. What's that like, what's that dynamic like? I mean, did you guys have any?

as deep as you're willing to go. Did you guys have any struggles early on? Did you get that figured out? Like was there, is it mainly communication? Like what's that like for y'all?

speaker-1 (08:14)
We were very fortunate. We actually met when we were 17 at like a church summer camp. We've known each other for forever and we actually dated a little bit. Our senior years of high school kind of went our separate ways. We both went on like church missions that were long-term. Like I was on the Native American reservation for two years actually doing service work. She was in Las Vegas working with the Hispanic population. So she learned Spanish and helped translate and all that cool stuff. We met back up in undergrad.

speaker-0 (08:19)
Yeah.

That's it.

speaker-1 (08:40)
We started dating again and actually got married pretty quickly. We were 21. We got married like within nine months of meeting back up. So it worked out really quick. So we've been together for a long, long time. We went through undergrad together. We went through all the chiropractic school together. We actually worked as associate doctors in the same clinic for two years in Ohio. we've been together for a long time. so I think we got a lot of the, because anybody who works with their spouse, the amount that we do, if they say that there was never any bumpy.

speaker-0 (09:07)
There's always going to be some bumps. No way. Spouses are going to be the most honest people in your business. Correct.

speaker-1 (09:08)
They're lying, like there's just no...

And we are very different in how we learn things. remember even in chiropractic school, people are like, you got a built-in study buddy. And I'm like, not really. Because we would study on our own, and then we'd come together to quiz each other or to go over stuff before an exam. We learn very differently. So there's definitely been a process of figuring out what is my thought process? How do I work through things? What's her thought process? How does she work through things? But even now, we're still learning about.

speaker-0 (09:26)
Yep.

speaker-1 (09:38)
because there's projects that we have that you're looking at multi-year projects or six months. And so there's going to be a lot of time, there's going to be a lot of reviewing, overhauling it completely, starting over, whatever. And so we are even now figuring out, this is how I communicate, this is how I think, this is how she communicates, this is how she thinks. And the benefit is that we both have very different viewpoints, obviously from the male and the female perspective, from different life experiences. And so I would say at this point, it's nothing but an advantage.

It definitely requires a lot of work to figure out how you both think and how you deal with things. I would say now we've, we're constantly learning, but we've got to figure it out pretty well to be successful working together.

speaker-0 (10:17)
I think I could tell a very similar story. Even though we're not together every day all day, I would say when she first really came into the business in like a supportive type role and now she's a nutrition coach, so she's a major part of the business out, you know, like front-facing, which is her face is much better than mine, so it's good to have her. It usually is, know. Yeah. It was, think the communication's the most, probably the most important part to really focus on, because we didn't, just learning

signs of like, how are we feeling today? How are things going today? What's my tone like towards my wife? Because that tone as the owner can't necessarily be the same as it is to my other staff members. Because she's going to perceive it the way that she communicates and the way that she thinks like you're talking about. She's going to perceive it differently. That was a learning curve for me for a long time. But now we kind of roll. I wouldn't trust anybody as much as I do her in my business. Let's talk about...

leadership. So what's at least one thing that owning a business taught you that you didn't expect?

speaker-1 (11:16)
you

think one of the main things that I learned, especially because you mentioned leadership, I think the harsh reality that maybe I kind of knew but didn't fully understand is that nobody cares as much as you do.

speaker-0 (11:28)
Like as from a staff perspective

speaker-1 (11:30)
Correct.

Well, and a business like, cause we have to work with other people. mean, I've got my guy that does my printing. I've got my guy that takes care of my x-ray machine and all this stuff. To you, everything matters. And to you, everything is important. There's urgency with everything because it's my business, well, our business. It's ours. And so we want everything to be the best possible. I want to have the best experience. I want to be able to offer the best rates. want to have the best everything, right? So to me, everything is high priority.

speaker-0 (11:46)
Yeah, I got it.

speaker-1 (11:58)
I want to do my best in every single little thing because every single thing matters. To a lot of other people, that's not the case in their own lives, much less when they're in or working or helping out in your business, right?

speaker-0 (12:14)
So did you learn, when did you start to, maybe you did this early on, I mean related, because that was a big lesson for me also, especially hiring staff and teaching them systems so that we can implement something to as close to my quality as possible and understanding where like what's considered, what's going to be satisfactory as opposed to like what I would do.

Where?

Where did you learn, because you were saying that's not necessarily how they operate in their own lives, right? Did you start to realize, like, wait, I'm actually different than a lot of other people because I chose to put all the risk on my shoulders and go this route. Did you start to realize that? Was there a point? Your brain is different. You know what I mean?

speaker-1 (12:53)
I think one of the first times I realized that is we've gotten our business, like, we've gotten all the background stuff good to go. We're ready to start opening and get running, right? We hired an employee to be there when we first started so that she could focus on front desk stuff and we could do our job. Because obviously when you first start, a lot of it's just about growth, getting up off the ground, right? And so one of the really cool things that we do for our employees is we're part of a coaching group.

that has a lot of resources available, not just about how do you run a chiropractic office, but the basic premise of it is if you want a high performing chiropractic clinic, then you want it to be full of high performing individuals that then come together in a team. And so to us, culture super, super matters. One of my favorite books I read early on is the Culture Blueprint. How do you build something that you can hire someone that maybe...

I hate to say like maybe they're just kind of an average, know, they're just, going through life. They don't have a whole lot going for them, but how do you take that person and then develop their inner qualities? Cause I think everybody has something valuable. Everybody can grow and everyone's unique. They've got something special, but how do you bring them in and you've created a culture where it automatically, we call it like phantom pressure, where it's not like I'm harassing people, but they just feel because they're around other people that care and that are high performing individuals. They naturally that.

heart of themselves starts to grow and be nourished. And so I realized early on because we had all these resources available through our coaching group, we actually were actually going this weekend to a seminar up in Minneapolis and we pay for the whole team to travel. We pay for everything. And yes, it's about chiropractic offices and how to be better and help more people, but it's also about you as an individual becoming better. How do you become better in your relationships? How do you become more disciplined in your personal life? How do you

handle money better? How do you invest and set yourself up for the future to be successful? So we're huge on all this. And then I realized because, and we've had a few different employees here, but you provide all the resources in the world that they have never had access to before. They didn't even know they existed and they don't choose to take advantage of any of it. And that just surprises me. One thing, if you're just ignorant, like you don't know that there's another level possible, but

speaker-0 (14:55)
It's

speaker-1 (15:00)
when it's shown to you what's possible and not just like an abstract, well, you could potentially, but it's like, no, like these are other people that are in your exact same place in life that are doing the exact same position you're in. And this is the amount of money they're able to make. This is the lifestyle that they have. This is the future they're setting themselves up for right now by making smart decisions.

speaker-0 (15:18)
Yeah, here's the path. Like, here's laid out, it's been done.

speaker-1 (15:20)
It's

step by step by step. And then they choose just not to take any steps. blew my mind. If you don't know, that's one thing, but now you know. And then the same thing with you start working with a lot of, I mean, we're a medical clinic, so there's a lot of background stuff. There's a lot of licensure. There's a lot of certifications. There's a lot of inspections. We have to go through a lot of hoops because it is, people's health. So it's serious. And you send paperwork out to get something moving.

And to me it's like, okay, I got it, let's go, let's go. For like two weeks. Okay, can I at least get an acknowledgement? Like you got it, so I know you're good, or do you need anything else from me? And it just, a lot of things move super slow. And it's because it's not theirs. They're working a job, usually especially if it's for like a...

speaker-0 (15:46)
Yeah. And they don't even respond.

Yeah.

speaker-1 (16:02)
We shouldn't even get to talking about politics, but if it's like a county government or something like yeah They've worked there for maybe 30 40 50 years There's no sense of urgency there because again, it's not theirs. So they they don't care other than they're doing their job Those were some of the early on getting us started and then with staff. It just made me realize like okay, everybody They don't and

speaker-0 (16:15)
That's all.

Everybody wants that pressure.

They don't want it. They're fine with it, which is okay for them. I would say that's the next part of it that took me a long time to learn because I just, my path changed. Like what I wanted changed. It used to be I wanted five to 10 locations and I was gonna go that route and now that's just changed. That's not what I want to fuel my family and my future.

At one point I would have called myself a failure or not living up to my potential because I wasn't, because now because of what I'm not pursuing now, I'm just doing it in different ways. Like I'm more interested in real estate and investments. Yeah, that's a big lesson.

speaker-1 (17:00)
Some paths are better not to take.

And I don't think everybody is cut out. They don't want it, but I think the reality is a lot of people are just not cut out to do what we do. There is a lot of risk, and there's a lot of pressure. And some people just don't want to or can't handle that amount of workload. And that's fine. And they can be successful and thrive in whatever they want to do. It's just not this.

speaker-0 (17:19)
Yes.

No. No, and it, it's equally fulfilling as it is stress inducing, I guess. But I wouldn't really live a different way. No.

speaker-1 (17:26)
Well, there's I

wouldn't either but there is there's always like a certain level of sacrifice like if you want this you're gonna have to give up this yeah and so it's just a choice of what do want because if you choose to work an entry-level position your entire life well then the hard you're picking is that down the road your lifestyle is not it's gonna not gonna be super comfortable

speaker-0 (17:46)
No, and you're probably more easily replaced. Right. If it's an entry-level

speaker-1 (17:50)
You

just choose what you want to sacrifice, what you want to pursue, but there's always a cost.

speaker-0 (17:54)
Yeah, it's usually time. Nothing more valuable. At this point in my life, there's nothing more valuable because that time can be given to God, as you said, your wife and your kids, if you have kids. it's just, that's where everything matters to me. That's why we immediately said, we just went on that cruise and I was like, now I want to take our kids on a cruise. Because we want to get those memories while they're still small. Because we got one that's taller than me. His voice is as deep as mine now. And then we have two that are like this tall. So it's just.

you forget even what the older one was like when he was this small.

speaker-1 (18:26)
wasn't that long? No, was it

speaker-0 (18:27)
Ten years ago, but you can't I can't even remember. I mean I remember certain things but So lots of good stuff I can appreciate your perspective. I really like where your mindset is what is What's the mistake you made early on like specifically? Let's let's gear it towards like owning a business. Let's hear it towards like maybe when you started or even like a few like how long you guys been open now, just I thought I knew it wasn't too long and

speaker-1 (18:46)
just over like a year and half.

speaker-0 (18:50)
You did not own a practice in the Raleigh area,

speaker-1 (18:53)
No, so we graduated, we worked as associates for two years in Ohio, and then we here to set up our clinic. I lived in Raleigh for a long time, but we actually looked at going there, but I was like 15 minutes from the beach, Raleigh.

speaker-0 (19:04)
Yeah, I think you put that the right way. So a year and a half is really new, honestly, in business owning world, right? So what's another lesson you've learned in terms of not where we were going with the last question, but more of a mistake you've made or anything related to that, just something you had to change?

speaker-1 (19:05)
It was a real tough decision.

speaker-0 (19:25)
Maybe you were head on about like this is the process of when a new client comes in. You call them patients or clients? Patients. So when a new patient comes in, they're gonna go over here to that, what was the table called I was just on? They're gonna go to the intersegmental traction and then they're going to come over to X-Ray or they're gonna go through this and then maybe part of that is change because maybe you were leaking thousands of dollars every time or something. Like is there any?

speaker-1 (19:37)
Yeah, so the roller table. The inter-segmental traction.

speaker-0 (19:51)
lesson like that that you've learned or policy.

speaker-1 (19:53)
I mean, there's so many things we've overhauled and refined.

speaker-0 (19:56)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (19:56)
One of the first mistakes I made early on was you think because you did it that it was good because we don't like to condemn ourselves or view ourselves in a negative light. And so you're working on projects, you're getting things done and you're like, okay, I finished it. Awesome. And then you go back a few months later and you look back at it and you're like, that was absolute trash. So early on, I think during the first six months,

I wasn't harsh enough about, like this process needs to be better. This system needs to be followed more closely. And so I think for the first six months was really just figuring out, cause when you practice as a doc for like two years in another clinic, like I was doing pretty well there, seeing quite a few patients, helping a lot of people. And you realize though that

you were winging more than you thought you were. You're just kind of relying on your skill set or whatever, rather than having a systemized approach to everything. so having systems and procedures, but then you actually have to follow them for them to... Like you can't veer off, otherwise the results aren't consistent, right? You have systems for a reason. And so realizing, okay, no, I need to stay in line with the systems and the procedures, even if that's not how I naturally would do something. It doesn't matter how I would naturally do something, this way is better.

speaker-0 (20:48)
work.

No.

speaker-1 (21:05)
So I'm gonna force myself to do that. So that was one of the big mistakes I think I made is not arrogance, but thinking, okay, like I've been doing this for a while. I know what I'm doing. It's fine. I can do it this way. Even though, especially after joining, cause we didn't join this coaching group until we started our clinic. When we were associating.

speaker-0 (21:19)
I

was gonna ask you that, like, how long did you operate?

speaker-1 (21:21)
We were associate docs, we didn't have access to any of that. And part of why we wanted to work at another clinic is so that we could learn the business side of things, because they don't teach you that in school. And what little they do teach you is like garbage. It's the same. So we're like, OK, we'll learn, we'll grow, we'll be nurtured by this doc who had a very successful practice. And then that'll help us be ready to set up our clinic and know how to work with things. He was so busy.

speaker-0 (21:32)
That sounds like my industry.

speaker-1 (21:44)
keeping the business running and seeing his own patients, because he was still actively in practice, that really everything we learned was just from trial and error, from our own experience. And so, yeah, it kind of worked, and I got in the groove of making it work. But then you get shown a better way.

speaker-0 (21:58)
Yeah, you didn't know if there was a better way. Right, we had no clue. You just knew that way.

speaker-1 (22:01)
We had zero clue and luckily I had a doc that was, he had a cash only practice, he didn't do anything with insurance. Just super, super successful guy. And he's like, look, if you think you can achieve high levels without a coach of some sort, you're just fooling.

speaker-0 (22:14)
That might have been some of the best advice you ever got. I look back. I never got that advice. I got lucky with it.

speaker-1 (22:20)
talk to him regularly and every single time we talk I'm like, thank you for telling me that, you're not smart enough to figure it out on your own. At least if you want to do it quickly or... Figure it out.

speaker-0 (22:28)
efficiently like that's yeah those are the two

quickly and more efficiently right so and consistently correct

speaker-1 (22:33)
So that was like the most life-changing advice I ever got. But then again, like that I should have more quickly just said, okay, yes, this is how I've done everything. There's a better way and just immediately just really dive into what I was being taught and applying it more quickly.

speaker-0 (22:49)
Even after you started with coaching so you were somewhat still somewhat resistant. Yeah all the

speaker-1 (22:53)
materials

are there, but it's like, okay, well he wants me to do it this way, I've done it, so maybe I'll hybrid it, you know, like, and then you come to find out, like, he's right every time, like Courtney and I laugh all the time, because the name of our coach is Tory, and we're like,

speaker-0 (22:58)
Been doing it

.

speaker-1 (23:12)
Frick, Torque was

right again. Just all the time, because he's already made it so far and now he has like hundreds of docs that he mentors and that he coaches. He's got this whole group worth of experience where he handles calls on every topic you could possibly imagine all day. So of course he's seen thousands of scenarios that I will never see.

speaker-0 (23:20)
Yeah,

When he's even getting scenarios like of people that have probably done it better than him and then he can use that information to help everybody else.

speaker-1 (23:36)
So I think that was one of the biggest mistakes I made was that after being shown what's possible and this is how you do it, being like, okay, well, but I've made it work and then you just don't swap over immediately. That was probably my biggest mistake in my first six months. And then like, especially with marketing, never owned a business before. No, but not being taken advantage of, but other people are out for themselves.

speaker-0 (23:51)
Yeah. We don't get taught anything about marketing in school.

speaker-1 (23:59)
especially in business. So say like there's a marketing company that they fully believe that what they do is valuable for businesses. Like we do offer this service, this is how we get your name out there, it's super valuable. And they believe that. And it's not like they're bad people, but they're confident in their product and so they push and they sell. So there's a couple things we did early on that zero return.

speaker-0 (24:00)
What do you mean, like other people?

Like zero. There's a lot of marketing, it's very hard to measure.

speaker-1 (24:26)
Right, correct. And so it's like not a single person came in as a result of that. And it's not that they're bad people or they're trying to do their job, especially if it's a small marketing agency, it's their business and they care about it they're trying to make their business grow, right? So just understanding that even if people think they have your best interests at heart, not trusting people that they don't fully understand your industry, they don't actually know how to help you, they don't actually understand, they're just kind of out for

Which again, I'm here to grow myself and my business and help people by doing that, which is great. I love what I do, because everything I do is helping people achieve their goals and be healthier and happier, so it's great. But there are other people that they're trying to take care of themselves too. And so just learning not only who to trust, but who actually understands and knows what I need to be able to help me to get there was something that, since I'd never done it before, we didn't know early on.

We ended up dropping a lot of the things that we were doing. So a lot of like, for example,

speaker-0 (25:21)
Like what was one thing that you knew immediately was no ROI?

speaker-1 (25:24)
Yeah, there's a few things like, one example is there's a company, and I won't drop names or anything like that, but there's a company, they do some digital marketing by, they have like ads, almost like screen saver-styled ads, right? They just cycle through different local locations all through North Carolina.

speaker-0 (25:39)
Yeah, I what you're talking about.

speaker-1 (25:41)
It was like, okay, cool. We'll use this. It sounds great. I actually had talked to a couple of business owners, small business owners in the area that had used them and had gotten a lot of return on investment from it. So I'm like, okay, cool. lot of other. Exactly. And they said, hey, we get at least four or five calls a week because they mentioned that they saw us on this thing. So I'm thinking, okay, cool. But. Well now I'm shocked. like, I don't know how you do it.

speaker-0 (25:53)
like digital signage and businesses.

That's surprising.

What are

you talking about?

speaker-1 (26:09)
Because now I'm like, okay, well we didn't get a single person who because we everybody every patient who calls we ask who can we thank for referring you because most of our patients are referrals from either existing patients or they've seen us somewhere or a doc recommended or whatever, right? And so we always ask where did you find us or who can we thank for referring you? Like not a single person.

speaker-0 (26:27)
I dude, I was sitting in this restaurant and I saw your ass. Cause that's why I go out to eat.

speaker-1 (26:30)
saw you out there and it made me call. Yeah,

exactly. So not a single person. And so that was another harsh lesson and mistake is realizing, okay, well, it has to be what works for my industry. Because what works for you is not going to work for me. so figuring that out. And again, those business owners that recommended this service, they did it with good intentions and they've had success with it. So of course they're excited about it. They're like, hey, you should definitely give them a call. It's been awesome. They had zero bad intentions, but just for them, it worked. And for me, it didn't.

And so understanding that that's okay, that you just have to figure out what works for you and for your industry. So we ended up dropping a lot of similar things that we were doing early on to get exposure. again, is can't track that, which is another thing. I don't love things that you can't track data now. I'm like, no, if it's intangible, I'm not interested. No, not when I'm gonna pay. I mean, there's very few things, right?

speaker-0 (27:08)
Like brand awareness exposure.

I'm not gonna cost money. Generally, I mean...

billboard because it's so in your face, but then you're, that's a significant investment.

speaker-1 (27:30)
So there's a lot of similar things that, or like we were using a business that anytime someone buys a house or moves in and registers through USPS, like they get something in the mail. They're like a welcome packet, right? Like we were in those and same thing. Like chiropractic is just different. No, there's no way to track it and no one ever mentioned it. And again, it's different from, hey, I got a coupon for Jersey Mike's in the mail.

speaker-0 (27:46)
Unless they physically brought it in, there's

Yeah, I'm hungry. gonna go. Yeah, I can just do that right away.

speaker-1 (27:56)
Right,

that's easy, that's very, very low pressure. no investment. Correct. With what we do, you're trusting someone with your health, with your physical body. It's just a higher investment upfront in energy and time. And so small things like that just didn't work for us. we just didn't know that.

speaker-0 (28:12)
What do you get the ROI on? The most ROI on marketing wise, do think?

speaker-1 (28:16)
Our first year, our first partial year, like the first six months we were open in 2024, actually over 25 % of our new patient that came in was because of we actually do like either events or we have like a, it's called, we call it like the new patient generator where it's a packet. It's in some information about who we are, what we do, things that we help with, and then a gift certificate that makes it so they can come in and get whatever problem they have checked out at no charge.

Yeah, because I don't do insurance. If I did insurance, actually legally wouldn't be able to do that. But because we exist outside of that, I can do an exam, I can do x-rays, I can work on them a little bit that first day and then show them, based on what you got going on, this is what I'd recommend. And I can do that at no charge. And so the large percentage of our early patient base came in because of that. At this point, the majority of new patients that come in are all direct referrals from existing patients and family members and friends, which is awesome because that's no charge.

speaker-0 (29:10)
I mean,

is that generally the biggest driver in a business like this? Referrals like, cause you know, in my industry it's always about, you started out, you relied on referrals. But then you had to get this process in place to do this consistently and this process to market this consistently and then you started looking at paid ads and then maybe you hired somebody for paid ads or you it yourself. Is there a point where you, in order to get to whatever level you want to get at, do you have to do more or is there a paid version of it or?

in a clinic like this, is referrals really gonna be?

speaker-1 (29:36)
It depends on your clinic model. There are some chiropractic offices that like they exclusively work with say like car accident patients. Those people, they see the patients for a set amount of time to recover from their injury. And they don't really do like a long term wellness or preventative. it's you come in as a new patient because you've had a car accident. We treat you until you're fully recovered and you're good to go. The case is closed. We never see you again.

That model relies very, very much so on getting to those people before they go somewhere else, right? And so those people are very almost, right? But there's also strict laws in place where me as a medical provider, I'm not allowed to directly contact someone who's been in an accident for 30 days following the accident. for them, they have to spend a lot of money on brand awareness, on being on the bus, on the bill.

speaker-0 (30:10)
Like the ambulance?

speaker-1 (30:29)
Correct. Those people spend a very large amount of money on marketing, that's because that's what they do. So they have to. Right. So a lot of it depends on what's the business model. Our clinic is mostly like wellness preventative where people come in with a problem. We help them resolve that issue. Or if we're not the right fit for them, we refer them to someone who is. Right. And then our goal is that we help people stay feeling great and prevent future problems into the future. so we want

speaker-0 (30:53)
So attention is very...

speaker-1 (30:55)
I would love that 70 to 80 % of the patients I see in a day are not in what we would call an acute care plan where they're coming in. Because it's the same with exercise. When you're first getting started, any trainer who tells you you can work out once a week and make significant progress when they're out of shape is just lying to you. It's about the repetition. It's about the exposure, the physiological exposure and stimulus. Over and over Correct. And there are probably thousands of workouts behind from where they should be. And it's going to take hundreds of workouts realistically to get them to where

speaker-0 (31:17)
over and over.

speaker-1 (31:25)
they can afford to do more of a, which I hate the word, like maintenance. There's different phases in life, you can develop more time and less time depending on where you're at. But in the initial phase, that acute phase, the repetition has to be more. So when someone first comes in with a problem, I'm seeing them a lot. After that, adults usually are seeing anywhere from like weekly, depending on how bad their problem is, to every other week, every three weeks, everybody's a little bit different.

speaker-0 (31:31)
Yeah, I mean it's a thing though.

speaker-1 (31:51)
Our goal is that 70 to 80 % of the patients we see, we're just helping them slow the degenerative process, feel great, and stay feeling good into the future. So for us, our goal is to be predominantly referral-based because it costs me zero money to just provide an amazing experience that people want to tell their friends and family members about. And then I'll do a little bit of marketing. We're moving more to like, we will do some paid ads on Facebook and Instagram. It be kind of our other thing that we do.

And there are clinics that that's the main driver of their new patient base is they're like spending thousands and thousands of dollars on social media to pull people.

speaker-0 (32:28)
I'll be interested to see cost per lead with a chiropractic clinic. I feel like it would be somewhat similar to my business. We both have the same focus just to somewhat different ways of doing it. Because we want people, longevity, we want people to be happy, healthy, and fit for the rest of their life. And retention is, it's interesting because I hadn't thought about how important retention is for you. And I'm interested, is that a discussion you have? Do you have a churn rate or?

speaker-1 (32:33)
convert.

speaker-0 (32:53)
Do you guys track your retention percentage, like how long a client stays with you? Things like that. Is there a standard that's considered good or great in your end?

speaker-1 (33:02)
We

have benchmarks of how many people that come in to get checked out of that percentage, how many of those patients then choose to actually start care and follow through. Because we're very transparent upfront with people. Because of how we do things, we just tell people flat out. Like if you're 60 years old, you come in, you've had chronic low back pain for 30 years, you've got numbness and tingling down your legs, you can't stand for more than 10 minutes. Like that person...

I'm gonna do all the, yeah, I'm gonna do all the exam and x-ray stuff. I'm gonna sit them down on their day two appointment, we call it like the review of findings. I'm gonna sit down with that person and I'm just gonna lay it out and be like, look dude, based on other people that I have worked on, you're looking at a three to six month process. Here's how much it's gonna cost for the whole thing. Here's the therapies we're gonna use. That person is definitely gonna do the non-surgical spinal decompression, because that's a gold standard for people with radiating pain, like nerve pain down an arm or down a leg. So I'm gonna lay it out and be like, look dude, here's the program.

you're either gonna commit to it, or I can recommend that you seek care somewhere else and I can give you a referral, but I don't do the whole, well, yeah, let's get started and like see how you do. Because that person, that's just, you're doing them a disservice. Because even if you get them feeling better after a couple of weeks, maybe a month, then they disappear or they're like, I'm good now. No, tissue heals as fast as tissue heals. And that person, research-based, is looking at three to six months, if they want long-term results.

You can get them feeling a little bit better, sure, but if you want them to actually feel better and be better and be able to do more in their daily activities, that's a three to six month deal. So I'm very clear with people upfront where I lay out, is what it costs, this is what the schedule looks like, this is what you're committing to for this period of time. If you want, we can get started today. And they just decide after having all the information, they decide if they want to start or not. So there's a percentage of people that come in and get checked out that will end up actually saying yes and starting the acute care plan.

A percentage of those people at the end of care, we do the same thing. like, hey, look, based on my experience and your condition and what research shows, this would be a good supportive thing to do in addition to you need to exercise, you need to have good sleep and recovery, your diet needs to be improved, all those other things. All the good stuff. All that is also important. But I tell them, hey, based on my experience, your age, your degeneration, your condition, this is what I would recommend. If you'd like to do that, great. Here's how you do that.

this is what it would cost. And again, it's just like, this is what I'd recommend if you want to do it, great. And so there is a percentage of people that come in, they get checked out that we're shooting for that actually start their care plan. And usually if they don't start, it's because I didn't explain or educate them well enough, or they just don't understand the seriousness of it. Even if I do everything right, they're just like, or there's obviously there's the people that they're like, Hey, that makes sense financially. I don't know if I can commit to that right now. And I say, okay, well don't start if you don't plan on finishing.

because the worst thing you could do is literally get like a quarter of the way through and then all of sudden you realize financially it's not gonna make sense for you. It's like, well, I'd rather you just keep your money, save, wait, because again, even if I get you feeling better, I don't care about that. I care about the physiological result that we're shooting for. So wait until you can actually commit to that, But there is a percentage of people that finish their acute care plan that then transition into preventative wellness care and we track all those metrics and we have benchmarks that we shoot for. So usually-

Yeah, so it's a percentage. the goal is on average, somewhere upwards of like 25 to 35 percent of people that finish their acute care plan will then go into a structured wellness routine. There's lots of people that they're like, great, I did the whole thing. I feel way better. We've made a lot of progress that is long term because of the way we do it. It's not like they're going to fall apart in a month. Yes. We do things the right way. But there's a lot of people that will then choose. They're like, OK, well, let me just call like.

I'll get tuned up every once in a while when I want to. There's a lot of people that choose to do that also, just because they don't like the structured, they don't want to commit to something, even though that's what's best for them, is that it's structured. Let's be real, if you... Right, exactly. If people wait until they're hurting, pain is the last thing to show up and it's the first thing to leave, generally. So it's like, okay, having something structured, they don't have to think about, it's automatic.

speaker-0 (36:49)
accountability in that.

speaker-1 (37:04)
they're gonna be much better long-term and they're gonna get much better results.

speaker-0 (37:07)
I would assume you guys would follow up even if they choose not to have a structure, right? It's time to call them. They're probably getting stiffer.

speaker-1 (37:12)
Yeah,

right. I send out a lot of like, I do a lot of handwritten mail. We do Christmas cards every year. We touch base once a quarter. Yeah, we have a lot of methods that we just check in on people because at the end of the day, like it's kind of tricky with both of us with what we do because there's the business owner side of things, but there's also just like, care about people's health and longevity and we both know.

speaker-0 (37:21)
That's what I was thinking.

speaker-1 (37:36)
what happens over time for people that don't take care of themselves the way that they should.

speaker-0 (37:41)
people

you're super excited about, you're you're a great fit for this place. You're gonna contribute to the culture, like I'm gonna enjoy working with you. And they do it for a while, and then all of a sudden, without any warning, they just don't answer texts, or you know what I mean? like, slow, you told me how stressed out you were and how you get busy and we're here to help you stop. Think about yourself a little bit, then, they just weren't ready. There just wasn't time yet.

speaker-1 (37:55)
It's tragic. It's so sad.

One of the sayings that has helped me out a lot that I heard, actually just recently, I think it was like six months ago, it was like, what you have is not for the people that need it, it's for the people that want it.

speaker-0 (38:14)
Yeah, they're in that stage of readiness where they're ready just to go for it. ⁓ Because we don't move enough elsewhere. We're not all hiking all day. We're not all in physical labor.

speaker-1 (38:17)
Because the reality is everybody should work out.

⁓

And

then on our side of things, talk like people ask me all the time like who would benefit from going to a chiropractor? Well, do you have a spine? Yeah. there's some level of benefit. You may not need as much care as someone else who is absolutely just destroyed. But my goal is that your back is never the thing that gets you in the end, that you end up with a walker or wheelchair wearing an adult diaper because your low back nerves are getting crushed to the point that you have no control of your bowel and bladder movements. Yeah. And that's a very common story, unfortunately. So that's my goal.

everybody, I'm like, it just kills me because I see people I'm like, okay, okay, go, go keep taking painkillers, go get your injection every six months for the rest of your life. Yeah, that just kills me. But, you know, not everybody's gonna do what's best for themselves.

speaker-0 (39:07)
So somebody comes in, you go through your process, and then you are painting a picture of a future result. And then it sounds like it's massively, I've been real heavily on business questions, is I'm interested in it, but it's massively important to create the expectations and the perspective of how long this should take. Not like how long it could take necessarily, but like.

this is what you can expect, so we're going into this with the right mindset. It's not just, hey, you stop having pain, go about your business, that's the first thing to go. We gotta make sure it doesn't come back.

speaker-1 (39:45)
If

you're an average adult that comes in with say like you've got low back pain or neck pain or whatever, right? And it's been going on for a couple of years or long-term, whatever. If you're an average adult, say you're like between 20 and 40, within like the first third or first half of our whatever treatment plan I recommend for you, you're usually feeling pretty dang good. And so almost inevitably somewhere around there, they're like, okay, well, are we gonna start spacing out yet? Like I'm feeling pretty good now. I don't have this, this isn't bothering me. I'm increasing my activity. And the answer is no, because

Yes, I care about how you feel, but at the same time, I don't care how you feel because everything I do is physiologically based. it's tissue remodeling and that takes as long as it takes. there's always inevitably, but that's why I'm so clear upfront. Like I'll come check you out for free. So there's zero barrier to entry. I will walk you through what it legitimately looks like physiologically. And a lot of people are like, my chiropractor wants me to come two to three times a week because they just want my money. like,

speaker-0 (40:17)
evidence to back what we're

Yeah, it takes a while.

speaker-1 (40:39)
It is. that which is so strong. And it's because chiropractors suck at explaining it to people. They don't know how to communicate effectively why we're doing what we're doing.

speaker-0 (40:48)
Would you say that that's communication or should they, or maybe they've gone too far this way, should they have more sales training?

speaker-1 (40:58)
I think it's both. It's a communication issue. It's a...

speaker-0 (41:03)
or are they too heavy on the sales side of business? You know what mean? I'm assuming you've had sales training because you have a mentor. And because of the way you explain that to me, at least in my head. But I don't mean that with a negative connotation. It's massively- Everything is-

speaker-1 (41:04)
Okay, come on.

It's oldest profession in history because yeah, you have to be able to clearly communicate this is what you need. I have the solution for it. Here's what it costs. You have to be able to lay out clearly, if I understand you correctly, this is your problem.

speaker-0 (41:20)
I tell my older son that all the time.

That's what you want and I have the solution.

speaker-1 (41:35)
is what we do to get that boom. Okay, like that's the oldest profession ever. And I don't care whether you sell an actual tangible product or a service, it doesn't matter what it is. You have to be able to figure out what they need, what's going on with them, offer a solution, and then be able to follow through. Like that's, that's all business. Yeah.

speaker-0 (41:50)
100%. That was the biggest, was there a learning curve there for you when you got into the industry? I feel like there was for all of when we trying to help people. Selling a future, generally. You might be able to actually get somebody and make them feel really good initially. So maybe they could get some immediate results, Which is called pain relief, whatever you would call it. I could make somebody sweaty and get their endorphins though.

speaker-1 (41:56)
Well, right, because in our mind...

Yeah,

but that's not significant enough to get them to commit for long term. People, especially we're trained now with social media, with how fast everything is. It's such low grade retention. It's just, everything's fast, it's short, it's brief, on to the next thing. Like, that's the world that we live in.

speaker-0 (42:13)
No.

People

are being influenced by hundreds of people a day based on that stuff too. You can feel a certain way and form a certain opinion and then all of sudden somebody has a compelling enough argument or their way would work. like they were. Because they're very charismatic. They can get you. So let me switch gears here a little bit. I mean we kind of went into some of this stuff but from your perspective,

speaker-1 (42:38)
What they knew was great.

speaker-0 (42:53)
Let's talk about men specifically. What do men consistently ignore about their health?

speaker-1 (42:57)
I think they put themselves, are naturally protectors and providers, right? Like that's what we do. And so they're always thinking about other people, their family members, providing, working. And so in their mind, usually they've already had a negative experience with someone in the medical field realistically, because they go in and they get told repetitively how

what they're doing like isn't good enough. Like they're like, your blood values are terrible. You need to be doing this. You need to be this, this is awful, whatever, blah, blah, blah. They're just doing their best usually, right? And so it's usually a matter of they've ignored it and they become really, really good at pushing through things. And so they're like, because nothing is, the wheels aren't falling off, I'm fine. And I'll wait until a future date when it gets so bad.

that I have to take care of it, that's when I'll take care of it. And so usually men, they look at big picture, but they don't realize if you zoom in a little bit, first of all, you don't have to experience whatever problem you're experiencing. Like there is an alternative. That's just not how life is. every time I hear someone say, you're gonna fall apart when you turn 30, I'm like, you're so dumb. It drives me crazy.

speaker-0 (44:01)
It doesn't have to be normal. That's not the norm.

No, it's not gonna happen. It's

on me.

speaker-1 (44:10)
So people, they don't think that there's an alternative, first of all, and then they don't realize that it's not gonna be that hard actually. They think it's gonna be this huge ordeal. I'm like, look, it's not that hard and it's not that much money to get it taken care of now. And it's never gonna be easier and cheaper than it is right now. If you fast forward 10, 15, 20 years, it's going to take longer, it's going to be more expensive, and your results are going to be lower.

Because you took another 10-20 years of cumulative, right? Like I think that's the biggest thing is that they fail to see the big picture of what cumulative wear and tear looks like and So it's like look dude by the time you wait till you're 50 or 60 I can I can help you But not nearly as much as if you would have just when you were 30 Made some choices when you started feeling a little bit worse And so I think that's the biggest thing is that they put it off because they think that because I can push through it

And it's not that bad, it's not serious.

speaker-0 (45:07)
Or

that it won't get worse. Correct. It'll stay.

speaker-1 (45:10)
I'll pray to the, it's like the death by a thousand cuts thing. Like they just don't, they don't worry about it. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're worried about other people.

speaker-0 (45:17)
I would say, yeah, I'm sure there's areas in my life where I'm exactly the same way. Even though it would be contradictory to how I would treat the physical aspect of things. nobody thinks that way with their money, generally. No. You know what mean? No. Even if we weren't taught about money, we know that it was important to start investing early for compounding interest.

speaker-1 (45:37)
I was taught all about that when I was a kid. How many people, they learn the principle of compound interest and then they immediately go set something up or even if it's like like Robin Hood now, you can set it up, it's like five bucks a week. Automatically invested. And everybody knows compound interest sucks. Like we all learn that credit card debt is brutal to get out of because of the compounding effect, right? So we all learn the power of it one way or another. But how many people then take the next step and say, okay, even if it's small, let me get the system in place.

Yeah, every paycheck, yeah, every paycheck. Even if it's a, you can play with the percentages later. You can increase the amount down the road once you're in a better place probably, but it doesn't matter. You have to start like from the richest man in Babylon. He's like the first principle is the first portion of all I earn is mine to keep, right? That's one of my favorite books. But then the next principle is start your goal to multiplying. So you have to learn that you work hard. You take a little person, even if it's small, you take a percentage of that for yourself and for your future self.

speaker-0 (46:06)
I

speaker-1 (46:31)
and then you set it up automatically so that there's no way to mess it up. Because if your plan is contingent on you doing something in the future, it's probably not a great plan. You have to automate it if you can. But as soon as you get that set up and it just rolls, great. But how many people actually set that up after learning about

speaker-0 (46:48)
No, took me way too I I did when I worked for somebody else, but yeah, I waited way too long. All right. Let's see. I got a few more here. We're already like an hour in. I do too. I just like hearing. I like learning and asking questions and hearing from people.

speaker-1 (46:59)
I gonna say I love to chat, sorry.

speaker-0 (47:06)
You've been married since before you guys opened this, right?

speaker-1 (47:09)
Yeah, 10 years actually this upcoming April.

speaker-0 (47:12)
Right on, congratulations. you. That's got me thinking. I've been married. We got married in 2011. I think we're on the year 14 coming up. maybe 15, 2026.

How do you think being a husband changed the way that you approach work? Or did it? And responsibility.

speaker-1 (47:25)
Yeah.

You know, it's interesting because we got married pretty early on when we were still in school, right? And as someone who went to a large amount of schooling to be able to do what I do, because most people don't realize it's a full undergrad degree and it's four years of graduate school. The first two years are identical to med school. It's just then when it splits off and they branch into pharmacology, we branch into

working on people and technique, right? But the sciences are all the same. The level of pathology, all this other stuff, it's identical. In fact, there's some areas we get more in, there's some areas they get more in, but like the credits are virtually identical, right? So we got married early on in school, and as someone who went to a ridiculous amount of school, I think the current academic system does a serious disservice to the majority of students in that it teaches them that someone else will take care of you.

speaker-0 (48:11)
you

speaker-1 (48:14)
like student loans is just, it's so easy to get. They give you almost as much as you want. Yeah. Without, I mean, when you're an 18, 19 year old.

speaker-0 (48:24)
was

completely irresponsible with my school loans. Dude, I bought wheels for my truck and tires with the extra, with the extra, rather than just use it for gas and food or whatever.

speaker-1 (48:33)
So,

and I hope that that's not intentional, but the cynical part of me believes that that is a way to get people started off very tied to the system and not thinking for themselves. So, but anyway, so we got married very young and I fell prey to that too. Like, I mean, I always worked all through undergrad, all through grad school. I still had a job, right? Like, cause I was like, I've got some extra time. Let me try and make some money. But all of a sudden you're done with school.

And I will say, especially it hit me when we started a business, because I pretty much started working as an associate right out of school. it was more money than I'd ever made before, but it still wasn't that much money.

speaker-0 (49:07)
Things change, You have more expenses?

speaker-1 (49:09)
But

all of sudden, no one is taking care of you anymore.

If you're going to have money, if you're going to survive, if your business is going to stay open, if you're going to be able to afford to survive and live and have a place to live and a vehicle and all that stuff, that's I feel like when it really, really hit me is that, OK, like it is my responsibility to sacrifice the parts of me that are lazy, that seek leisure, that want to satisfy my own desires or whatever. Like that has to go. I mean, there's that scripture that, you know,

speaker-0 (49:39)
to die to self. It's

a very similar paradigm.

speaker-1 (49:43)
when you're a grown man, you put away with childish things, right? That's when you truly become a man, is when you put away the childish parts of yourself, right? So I think that's when it really, really hit me, which I think is sad that it took that long to really awaken and figure that out. Because I can say, I I worked hard as a student. I graduated with really, high scores and everything. I made sure I worked hard in school, but you look back and I'm like,

that doesn't mean a whole lot. School was never really challenging other than you're balancing a lot of things, at least for me. The material was never that difficult to understand. But I look back and I'm like, man, think of how much wasted time where I could have been doing things. I could have prepared better. I all these little things. so that's a really rude awakening call. And it didn't hit me until all of a sudden there is no one but me.

that's making sure that things work out, that's when I was like, okay, I gotta wake up and actually start being a husband, being the head of our family in that way.

speaker-0 (50:39)
Yeah. It

probably took me longer than that, I would say. I mean, I would say I was just coasting through undergrad. And then I went, I did graduate because I just, at that point I figured out I liked to learn, but like I was not, I didn't really know when I was going to graduate undergrad. And then my wife got, then we got pregnant with our first son. I was like, uh-oh, I got to step it up.

speaker-1 (51:01)
You

speaker-0 (51:03)
I remember getting recommendations from my teachers and advisors for jobs and I'll never forget the one, there's a guy named, say Christian Bynes, because he was from, I guess Australia and that was how he spoke. But he was at UNCW. I think he's still there. But I'll just never forget, because he wrote, said, once Joe found out that he was going to have a son, everything changed. And it's that moment. You have to step up. I don't think there's very few things that are a better calling than that, like when it clicks.

when you realize it, because then you got something to drive you, even when you don't feel like it.

speaker-1 (51:32)
And I think having a, I've talked to a lot of my buddies and I think finding out you're gonna be a dad is like a big opportunity. think like starting a business was that for me. Like, okay, there's no money coming in just like automatically. Right, like I gotta go do something, right? So I think there's those moments. I do think it's kind of sad that number one, people don't have that wake up aha moment.

for themselves, like before getting married or before having kids or before doing something really challenging.

speaker-0 (52:00)
Yeah, some

people do, I feel like they do really well. know I mean? You're like, that guy had that moment.

speaker-1 (52:04)
Amazing

when you see someone that started early on they had that moment. That's just amazing. Yeah, and then you would think that okay getting married Like you're committing to this other person. Mm-hmm Ideally that if you haven't had it already ideally that would be like a moment

speaker-0 (52:18)
It should be. I would say I was still probably quite selfish for a long time after I

speaker-1 (52:22)
Same, all through undergrad, all through grad school. Because again, everything's just being kind of handed to me. Besides, yeah, I got to work hard in school, I've got loans every semester, it's fine. I'm taken care of, we've got money, we've got food, we're good. You would think that that moment would happen earlier, but it didn't for me.

speaker-0 (52:39)
I think it comes from having the right men in your life. I mean, it could come from a woman too, but I didn't have a strong male, I mean, my dad was great. And then my stepdad after that, he's always done anything for me. Maybe I was too immature to realize it at the time. But I don't know that I had a specific male role model mentor as I was coming up. I think you may have been.

You were fortunate because you had, it sounds like you your uncle. And then who else? had somebody else you knew as a chiropractor. And he was through church also, which is also very, very important. Because that's probably where we should all draw our earlier role models. Ideally would be from some sort of like maybe starting youth and you come up and you get into a men's group. I think that's where we probably should draw that. But when I met with you a few, I don't know, was that like a month ago? When we met at the coffee shop?

speaker-1 (53:04)
for the young men's

speaker-0 (53:21)
You you talked about, I talked about the brotherhood and what it was for, right? Like it's not just, like you have a business mentor and we would get into business stuff. We might talk metrics, might whatever we do with the brotherhood. But the goal is for it to extend beyond that with faith, with money, with life. And then it's called a brotherhood for a reason because I think that all men need some kind of support from other men. But you want it to be the right kind of men.

and you mentioned something similar or that you were looking for something like that. So why do you think something like that, like the Brotherhood, like why is that needed?

speaker-1 (53:55)
I think it's needed because over and over and over if you read

personal development, success books and all these things. You are influenced by everything in your environment. What do you tolerate to be around you, whether you like it or not, has an influence on you. And so there's that obvious, like people, most people have heard this. like, okay, well, if you want to know what your income looks like, well, look at the five people that you're closest to, look at their incomes, and that's a really good predictor. And it's because we tend to spend time with people that vibrate at the same frequency, so to speak, right? And it is hard.

to find high performing, God fearing, family focused, but successful in business and in money, that combination is hard to find, especially now. And there's not a lot of ways.

to find that organically, at least that I've found, especially because I'm so busy grinding on my own business that where would I find those people? Like I don't drink, so I'm not gonna go to a bar really. Like it's just a personal decision for me. So there's just not, the way that other people meet people, I don't wanna spend time there because most of the people there are not what I'm looking for to be close associates with.

speaker-0 (55:04)
It could be in any one of those aspects, whether they're God-fearing or they've been financially successful or they just manage their time.

speaker-1 (55:12)
Correct. They're disciplined. talk about things. Sports is a good example. I like sports just as much as the next guy. Especially like a good college football game. I'll watch that 100%. But my life doesn't revolve around a sportsman.

speaker-0 (55:25)
I'm

the same way. mean like I love the Carolina Panthers like I have specific memories of like when I went to my first game All that I just got to watch them playing the playoffs in the middle of the main deck on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean Which was I was on a cruise so but yeah, I'm not going to If my kid has a game to play

I'm gonna go to that over watching that game. You know what I mean? Like, I'm gonna go watch, there's nothing better than watching my kid play sport. I love watching, I would put my life almost around that when it's my own child. But yeah, I think that's a good point.

speaker-1 (55:55)
especially not even just their life revolves around it, but when they allow outside influences to determine how they're going to feel. Like my team lost, so this entire week is just terrible. I'm like, how weak is that?

speaker-0 (56:06)
That's something I did when I was like 18, 19, 20.

speaker-1 (56:09)
They don't

know you, they don't care about you. You have your own stuff to take care of. It doesn't matter what happened to them. It's entertainment and you get to work basically.

speaker-0 (56:16)
Well,

they're always going to be there. If we're talking about sports specifically, like they're not going anywhere.

speaker-1 (56:20)
So finding people that have that same mentality is just really hard, especially someone who has all of that, because I know great people through church, but there's not very many of them that are also very, very driven business successful people that can then get both perspectives simultaneously. So it's easy to find people that in one of those areas they're doing well.

speaker-0 (56:39)
There can

almost be like a cognitive dissonance there, like God and money or success that some people, you can define success by money, you can define it lot of different ways, but they can be kind of tugging at each other too.

speaker-1 (56:49)
The whole, the concept of like being poor is a way to be like pious or righteous. I've never really understand it because it's the love of riches that is the root of all evil. It's not having wealth because the reality is money can reach further than your hands. If you want to help people, well then number one, you should take care of yourself so that you have the resources to then help other people. But

I may not have the opportunity to fly into the other side of the world and provide service after a humanitarian crisis. Maybe I don't have the time to do that. But if I have the resources, I can take care of myself and my family, and then I can give to worthy causes, you will help way more people doing that than being someone who is poor and broke and can't afford to take care of yourself, much less other people. It's always been my thought.

speaker-0 (57:36)
There's a guy that mentor, he always says, says, money doesn't solve all your problems, but it solves money problems. Right. And it does. And it can solve money problems for other people too.

speaker-1 (57:45)
And having the basics of food, shelter, for... It's hard to do anything worthwhile in life when those concerns obsess all of your time and attention.

speaker-0 (57:50)
It's Hacker.

And we're called to work. If you're a Christian, you know that you're called to work not to be a sluggard. And there's no retirement really in the Bible. There's just inheritance that you pass on.

speaker-1 (58:07)
I always tell patients, because the patients I've seen retire the fastest are the ones that retire from work, they don't, they're not physically active. They don't have a group of people to hang out with, they don't go out of the house, they don't do service, they don't help other people, and they just age instantaneously. Really fast. So my favorite phrase is, I'm you don't retire from something, you retire into something. You just, that time that you were spending with that, you just can divert to other things now.

speaker-0 (58:29)
Yeah, it's a new season of

speaker-1 (58:32)
phase. yeah, I don't plan on slowing down.

speaker-0 (58:34)
I don't think I'm retiring. I'm gone. mean, there's gonna be something. There's gonna be real estate. There's gonna be something at some point. All right, we'll say this is last one, because we've been talking for a while. What advice would you give to a man who, this goes with this, maybe we just answered this, but would you give to a man trying to build both a successful business and a life he's proud of? So mean, really, to me, that's more like a personal life he's proud of. Right.

speaker-1 (58:56)
I think it all starts with being honest with a self-assessment of what type of person are you. And then I think you can't have something if you can't describe it. So I think you should take the time to really look at, who am I? And who you are is what you've done, right? Correct. So who are you? Clearly defining in detail

speaker-0 (59:10)
You're right, your identity.

speaker-1 (59:17)
what attributes, what type of man, what type of lifestyle, what type of life do I want to have? And then I'm a big believer in writing that down physically, like actually putting that down, paper to pen, fully describing it. And then you make the choice that you're gonna become that person and you're gonna have that lifestyle. And not just like, I've decided, like you've decided, you've committed that that's your goal. You've clearly defined it, that's what you're going after. And then finding the resources of how do you do that. So whether that would, for me, like finding coaching was a life changing thing.

finding other people that are either already doing it or also on the same journey as you that you can be accountable to, I think is the next step after that. But if you don't have the personal conviction and the honesty with yourself to be okay, this is the life I've built, this is the person I am right now, clearly defining what type of person, what lifestyle you want to have, and then you actually start doing something.

speaker-0 (1:00:05)
And then you define the actions that it takes to get there. Or you read about them, or you learn about them, or you ask somebody about them. And then you have to do those actions and it's very uncomfortable. most... Yeah, it's uncomfortable. Because it's going be hard. It's going to get you out of what is comfortable. And your brain always wants you to be comfortable, right? Have you ever read on how people, when you're going through that, when people are asked who I...

speaker-1 (1:00:16)
You're doing it right anyway.

speaker-0 (1:00:30)
identify with their future self, like how much they struggle with it. So they've hooked people to where they measure essentially like brain or different levels of frequency in your brain. And when they showed them, they asked them to picture themselves and let's say this side, whatever part of the brain it was that was activated, let's say it was this side. And then they showed them a picture of a stranger, this side. And then they say, want you to think of yourself in five years. And for something like 80 % of the people in that study,

the same side as the stranger side is what lit up. Because they cannot picture, they cannot identify with where they want to be. Like you have to literally identify with where you want to be, otherwise you won't be taking those actions. It's the same way in weight loss. And being more physically fit and happier. Like if somebody doesn't like how they look in the mirror every day, it's very hard, even when they've achieved every physical goal they've set to change how they perceive themselves in the mirror.

Like they literally tell themselves, like almost, there's better words, but like trick themselves into appreciating themselves.

speaker-1 (1:01:30)
Yeah, I think that goes back to too, like, people are so obsessed with what their senses are telling them. is the right now? What's their perceived reality right now? Like, senses, I would say, like, senses versus your mental faculties. Like, I don't want to care what my senses are telling me. I want to worry about my will, my ability to reason, my memory. Like, those are the things that actually matter. And so I think it goes back to, like, faith is kind of the same way.

speaker-0 (1:01:38)
feelings.

speaker-1 (1:01:57)
If you focus only on how things currently are, well, that's probably what you're gonna continue to gravitate to and continue to perpetuate into the future. Like you have to realize the truth is this. That isn't, I can't see it yet physically, but that's what I'm creating and that's the reality. Currently, this is just me getting there, but this is what is actually the truth, this is the reality. And I think it's easier.

people that have faith in God because I've never seen him personally. you know, if you already have that basis, it's easier for you to say, I can, this is reality, I can achieve that. And so I think people are, they do have a hard time. Like just, they're so obsessed with what their senses are telling them, they can't think about and imagine what does actually the future look like, which is unfortunate, but. Yeah.

speaker-0 (1:02:41)
Yeah, and I think that's good advice. I mean, that's something everybody could work on. They could create the habits to get better at that. Which sometimes is just how you talk to yourself. Yeah. I mean, that's a big one that I've learned over the years. Well, cool. Russ and I appreciate your time, Yeah. Thanks for filming this. Yeah, it was awesome. Good talk.

speaker-1 (1:02:59)
We probably could have gone for