speaker-1 (00:02.062)
for junk.

Edit out. Yeah, I make sure we have our water bottle put my phone away. So and then I like to fiddle with a marker why you give you something to play with my point, right? Yeah Obviously, so I'm Nathan here with brotherhood beyond business and today we have dr. Brian with Libertyville wellness group. Dr. Brian welcome No, today we're gonna build that no like trust pyramid for potential potential patients for you. So tell us real quick

Well, thank you for having me. really appreciate it.

speaker-0 (00:34.252)
Who are you? What wakes you up in the morning?

Currently, I'm a dad of two, just had my second one a month ago, which is my current biggest drive. I would love to be a great dad more than just about anything in life, so that's taking away some of the business drive that I had pre-being a dad, to be honest with you. But it's an amazing part of my whole life and it's so much fun to try to build both at the same time. Build amazing humans, build a great business that goes back to community, and luckily I love what I do.

So obviously the family part is extremely important to you. So how are you balancing that? Obviously, like, are you getting sleep? What's going on there with that newborn a month ago?

There's no sleep. You power through. I knew what I was getting into. I'm not a young dad by any means of the word. But I've tried to make it a priority. Wherever I am, that's my priority at that moment in time. And while there aren't a ton of advantages of being your own business owner, I have to be here. I have to be here a lot. But the cool part is I do get to bring my sons quite often. So if we have a slow day, they're coming to hang out. They're coming to hang out with dad all day.

I blocked out my morning for working out. I block out my lunch for my family. And then I'm home every night. I never have to travel. I never have to go anywhere, do anything else other than family, which is great. So I have some advantages.

speaker-0 (01:48.962)
That is pretty awesome. Did you start out trying to think this business is going to be so I can become a family man? Or was it?

So I've transitioned throughout the years. There's always a goal to be a parent for me. It's always something I've wanted in my life was to be a dad. But no, this business at first was to build myself as a chiropractor, build myself as a brand, help people get better was my primary drive. Like number one has always been get people better, get people better as fast as humanly possible. And then, know, step two of that was to be overall.

known in community as a person you can trust and like so that that way we can give back even more.

Awesome. Now you say your number one goal is to help people feel better. Was there something in your past that like drove you to this why? Like no one could take care of you from an injury standpoint? What happened then?

Actually, I had great care as a young person and I got hurt more than my fair share of times. Like I'm not a large human, but I played four sports and I got hurt a lot because I played four sports. So I had a great chiropractor, had a great primary care physician, had a great physical therapist. I mean, I've toured my MCL eight times in my athletic career. Whoa. And meeting with this at the same time.

speaker-1 (03:03.182)
So was all that rehab, all that working back to getting back up to performance over and over and over again. Initially I thought I wanted to be a regular primary care physician, like general practice, because in my hometown, which you grew up in a small town too, they got to do everything. They got to see everybody. It looked like a really cool job. And then when I went to undergrad, I shadowed general practicing MD, and they got to do nothing. And it was so disappointing in that moment in time. I almost like left the medical profession completely.

But luckily my advisors at times like, know you can be a chiropractor, right? And then it clicked. Cause I've been seeing one since I was like three. They've helped me through a ton of injuries. They were always part of my life growing up. I don't know why somebody didn't tell me before that moment in time, I could be a chiropractor. Like they never came to like the career fairs. They were never at like the biology symposium. That stuff was always like MD, DO, nurse practitioner.

nurse, although we're there, but none of the alternative people were there. And then once I figured that out and shadowed a whole bunch of chiropractors and figured out what kind of practice I thought I wanted at the time, and then it morphed quite drastically once I got to chiropractic school.

Okay, why did it morph?

So at first, my chiropractor was a little old school. Okay. So mostly did adjustments. your Yeah. He was great. He was great at what he did. He really cared. He volunteered as like photographer for football team. So he did a lot more for the community, which I really appreciated, but he mostly adjusted and I wanted to do more. And the more I realized that you could combine physical therapy and muscle work and the better results you get from it. Like you just see how much more you're able to do for people.

speaker-1 (04:45.742)
I've always looked at it like a tool belt. And the more tools I have to help somebody, the easier my job is, the more likely I am to help another 10 % of the population.

Okay. So helping people then who's your ideal client? What do you want to walk through that door?

I enjoy challenge. I really do. So if somebody's been in pain for a long time and they've tried just about everything, I'm okay taking that person. But that's probably not my typical. I help a lot of professionals that sit too much of the day, get mobile again, get active again, and hopefully get them back to like a gym setting where they don't need me very often as part of the goal. But then I treat very young individuals as well, which is a different, unique challenge.

everything from like two days old all the way up to 18 based off of what they need time. I enjoy that three dimensional puzzle throughout the day that keeps my brain very happy. If I did the same thing with the same person every day I would struggle.

All right. So you're getting a different challenge from every single person that walks to the door, but you still want that person who was like, you know, they're all that they're wits end and you're, this is cool to, you know, you're like, solved the puzzle.

speaker-1 (05:53.472)
Yes, that's exactly what it is. It's a unique puzzle each time. Even if it seems like something I've seen, I've been doing this for almost 40 years, seen like something I've seen a billion times. I don't take it as something I've seen a billion times because everybody heals differently too. So even if it's the same name diagnosis, it more says they start to get better and then they started to do more, which then it morphs again. And it keeps the challenge very interesting and very unique. like, how do you remember that? How do you remember me? And it's like,

Well, you're your own unique story. And if you keep reminding yourself of that, it's like watching a sitcom for each every patient.

That's kind of a cool way to look at it. So that's very cool. So you mentioned like how you do a lot of things differently. You want to like come with different solutions maybe to get to the solving of the problem. What's your main differentiator though? What separates Dr. Brian and liberal wellness group from the guy down the street?

There's a lot of them. differential diagnosis is the print like and that's a fancy word for I take my time to figure out what's actually going on with you. And I actually care. We're not just going to throw you on the adjustment table and start going. Number two, you're never going to watch like a video here that shows you what a subluxation is or does or how it works. You're going to, especially now the goal moving forward for the next at least five years is you're always going to see Dr. Brian. Dr. Brian is going to be the main provider.

We're not gonna hand you off to anybody else. I don't have any aides. don't have anybody other than massage therapists that does any work on patients in our building tomorrow. It will be me. So you know exactly what quality you're getting each and every time you walk through that door. Which is a big difference between me and other providers. The type of physical therapy we do is different than 99 % of, 100 % chiropractors, but 99 % of most other PT worlds, unfortunately, I've become more corporate.

speaker-1 (07:43.406)
And in the corporate setting, they use like an aide instead of the doctor. And even if the doctor was great, they're supervising five, 10 aides at a time. It's hard to do quality work when you're stretched that thin.

And they would probably see the patient for like five per-

a very limited amount of time, unfortunately. That's the modern setting. And then chiropractic world too, lot of chiropractors just put people to stim, heat, ice, pass modalities that do feel good, but they don't have any long-term value. So we do things that have long-term value that actually change the way a person moves.

Now I would say, personally, think everyone should see a chiropractor. You probably agree with me. 100%. So knowing that all that stuff, like there's probably a huge percentage of population that's never has though. 90 plus really? So you're servicing just 10 % of the population?

Everybody should see a

speaker-1 (08:32.878)
90 plus.

speaker-1 (08:36.654)
I think we're up to 14 to be. So small, but I kind of look at like a gym as well where 100 % of population knows they work should work out. 20 % of the population actually works out. And so I think we're hitting close to the percentage of people that actually will go to the doctor on regular basis.

Okay. What would you say to someone? Cause like I've heard this before. I don't know if you've heard this or rolled your eyes at it. I don't believe. And I'm like, Oh, it's a religion now.

So I heard this a lot and I hear it a lot and I get some of that push back a lot like chiropractic doesn't work, I don't believe in chiropractic. Usually I ask if you've ever been adjusted and the answer is always no. Right, that's step one. So in the 1970s and 1980s, the American Medical Association actually did this whole big slander pursuit. It's called the Clinic of Quackery. 100 % so chiropractors made the front page of every newspaper. Chiropractors were actually...

Being a chiropractor is actually illegal for a brief moment in time in the United States. It still is in like three cities in the whole world. Or countries. So, but they still practice in basically every country, every nationality. And the reason was at the time they looked at it as a direct competition. I remember that when chiropractic started, modern medicine didn't exist. They were literally doing bloodletting and cutting off arms as barbers when chiropractic started.

Stay.

speaker-1 (10:04.686)
The first chiropractic college opened in 1897. So a long, long time ago. And chiropractic, well, it's morphed a little bit, pretty true to its form, most of that way. Medicine's obviously changed, but so they had a lot of misinformation. The most common thing people worry about are cardiovascular events in chiropractic. They think that you're immediately gonna have a stroke. The odds of getting hurt in my office are next to none. My med med practice is like $1,000 a year.

Wow.

speaker-1 (10:34.798)
They do that because the percentages are so low. Odds of leaving a medical office and a chiropractic office are dead even for missing. It's a misdiagnosis is what it is. They miss the signs, symptoms, things, and then it happened, unfortunately. Unfortunately, the difference is they make the front page of the news that it happened at a chiropractic office. It's easy to slander because people already fear cells, as we all know. So that's part of that overall overreaching.

Right. Easy to slay.

speaker-1 (11:04.472)
But the science is sound. We help just about everybody. The odds of you going to the doctor, needing a doctor, hospital, pharmaceutical, all that goes drastically down. If you're seeing chiropractor, on average, we lower blood pressure by almost 10 points. If you get adjusted regularly, it's huge. That's all in the wellness space.

What do you, what would you say to someone then that came in like you're moving out now moving from that 14 % you got that fifth extra 1 % coming in the door. So they've never been here before. How do you calm them down? How do you release that fear?

Oh, that's a great question. So and I actually I would say the vast majority of my new patients have never seen a chiropractor before as a weird thing. Because if you have a bad experience, you're always a bit, especially in my world, a chiropractor or a dentist or whatever, you just don't go back. You don't give another professional a try. Like you just don't. You're like, I'm done with that profession as a whole. So and then you move on, unfortunately. But part of it is.

We take our time in the history portion of it, right? I'm actually listening to the problem. I'm listening to what they need that day. And there are also a lot of different ways to adjust people. So we don't have to do snap, crackle, pop if they don't want it. We can use instruments. We can do soft tissue technique. We do a lot of other things that are less abrupt and less loud. And then we also, I walked them through the process from A to Z the entire way through. never.

okay.

speaker-1 (12:29.4)
take for granted that first day of let's take our time. Let's explain what we're doing, why we're doing.

what's wrong with you not just, well you're coming in the office so you need pops.

So yeah, what's wrong with you, how we're gonna treat it, what that treatment looks like, and then step by step in the treatment, what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, why it matters.

Right, that's important, right? Why it matters, right? Because like, lot of people don't think that their body is out of alignment, probably on any given day.

No, and they, why would they? They don't know why they're in pain. That's not their job. My job is to figure out why they're in pain and then fix them. Their job is to come in the door.

speaker-0 (12:58.306)
Yes.

speaker-0 (13:06.392)
So that kind leads me into my next question. What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding for chiropractic? And then let's go into a second part of this question and to like owning a chiropractic business.

So it's kind of a dual step where chiropractors have stepped on their own toes for part of history, right? Where we've gotten in our own way several times. So DOs is a good example of what chiropractor could be in modern because it started about the same time, at first did very similar treatments. DOs went totally medical. They don't hardly adjust anymore if they adjust at all. They all super specialize now in something else.

DO is Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine for those that don't know the lingo. But they're general practicing MDs for all practical purposes now. throughout our history, chiropractic has really dove into being separate, unique, outside the medical community. Like just drove it down. I had to take eight chiropractic philosophy classes as part of my chiropractic education. So they're really teaching you why chiropractic is.

the way it is and how it works and some of it I like, some of it I don't like and some of, in most things and I believe this kind of goes into politics which I don't love but like, you 10 % of the population is loudest. And those aren't always the people you agree with. And unfortunately in that world, some people went way too far down the rat hole and are burning bridges and making us sound crazy. Unfortunately as a profession.

And people are like, well, because that one chiropractor said it, all chiropractors believe it.

speaker-0 (14:47.854)
Do you think social media has aided in that Sam?

It only makes it worse. just built, like, the algorithm is working for and against you at all times, right? It's gonna be...

Say no, not the thing with bad publicity but like...

Well, you know, these huge videos, like it's a whole viral sensation of like chiropractors like an AI with their patient being thrown out the window and like with AI like or or the adjustments on the people just watching video after video of the crack sound, which we don't care about the noise. The noise is just nitric oxide. It's just a joint fart. What we care about is how what we're doing in that like millimeter space moving one segment at a time.

Do you think your patients think that the sound means something good? Like if they don't get a sound they're like, it didn't work?

speaker-1 (15:34.414)
100%. It doesn't matter how many times I tell him it doesn't matter. Luckily, he isn't pretty good at adjusting. There's a lot of audible when I adjust, but that's not really the goal.

Right. The bump just getting in the bump.

It's getting it to move.

So then what's it like, what do you people misunderstand then from the business owning standpoint when it comes to owning a chiropractic business? What do think they don't?

So selling wellness is one of the hardest cells in the history the universe, as you know, as a gym owner, especially in medical world, you are taught your entire life to rub dirt on it. That'll be fine. To ignore your pain, to ignore your symptoms. Just give it time, rest it, it will go away. That is not the right answer most of the time. And the amount that I can prevent injuries, like an ounce of prevention is worth 10 pounds of treatment.

speaker-0 (16:28.245)
And financially too, it helps.

It saves people a ton of money. Like if they come once a month, that's usually all they need for most people, adjustment wise. And honestly, they will feel spectacular at that interval once we get them to where they can be there. But then the hard part is like in the what I see most times is acute. So you now can't move neck, mid back, low back, shoulder, whatever it is, joint wise, you can't move. come into my door and you want me to fix it. And I do.

And then as soon as you're out of pain, your brain tells you you're good and should go.

Do you feel like you have to sell people sometimes? on, so as a gym owner I have to sell hope, right? That's what I'm selling. It's really a gym membership, but I'm selling hope they're going to go from here.

So there are like three sales processes that I kind of look at. Initial sales, which is you believe that I know what's best for you and then you believe that I can help you. That's sales process number one. Number two is I do a good enough job to get you towards wellness. Number three is then that wellness. We should really do wellness.

speaker-0 (17:33.814)
Yeah, is number three, you think you, and obviously I have no experience. What do you think? Do think number three is already solved in that first appointment? No. Okay.

No. No, because if you try to do number three while you're doing number one, they're going to tell you no. So if I were going, like we walk into Best Buy, if they still exist today, and I want to sell you a TV, and I start giving you all the specs and why long-term this TV is going to be very, you're out the door. Instead, you you what you're there for that day, which is the TV. when you sell you that, like long-term, then I can do like a care package of,

you know, your sound system or whatever, but like I gotta earn that trust. I gotta earn that ability to get you there. And honestly, it usually takes a lot of touches. Like I'll get people all the way better. Then they'll stop for a period of time. And then the issue will come back. We're not in the vaccine. It doesn't last forever, which is a thing we get, right? Like, well, it's going to come back. like, it's cause you're doing the same thing you've always done. Right. So.

that caused the issue in the first place.

without anything different, of course it came back and it came back almost the exact same way. Like we're doing the same thing. we, and you know, four or five, six times at that. And then they realized, well, it's going to save me, you know, six to 12 visits in one sitting to get better, or I could just spread these out and do like six to 12 in a year.

speaker-0 (19:01.742)
Right, and just keep coming, proactive, Living in pain.

I feel better. I don't miss any time work. I don't miss any time with my kids. Their why is unique, which I have to tap into a little bit in terms of what brought them in the office, but then what might motivate them to stay longer.

I don't know if this is hip-hop, but would you say that mostly it's work-related?

Work is a big part of it, but generally not taking care of ourselves. We are very good at taking care of others. We are terrible at taking care of ourselves. And we are creatures of habit. So the way you're sitting, the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you move in three-dimensional space, you've built up since you were a toddler.

in general.

speaker-0 (19:44.934)
And now you've been doing it for another... Oh man, I'm almost 40,

Right? You know, once we're past like 20, it's just you've been doing it for a while and all those little micro injuries along the way alter it and then they alter it and they alter it and they make it harder for you to stay well. And people like love using age as the excuse. Like I'm just getting older. Right. And it's my least favorite answer because you have no control over getting older. You're in an ideal world. You are going to get older. Otherwise, you're dead. You're not here anymore. So our our.

Motivation changes like we want to get you better in spite of that one thing you can't control There's a million things you can control in your life how you eat how you move how you exercise how you get adjusted all like the really there's a huge push towards like genome hacking and Living longer and being young longer and luckily chiropractic is a big portion of that We've been the things that are becoming popular social media. We've been talking about for decades

Alright. People are finally like,

they're not crazy because like some people with Harvard backgrounds that are kind of private backgrounds are not talking about the same thing.

speaker-0 (20:52.95)
Right, like longevity's and things like that.

And all these studies point to what we've been talking about for the last 100 years are pretty accurate.

yeah, for sure. So we're going to transition a little bit from counter factor there to more of the business owner side of things for Dr. Brian. So when it comes to making decisions, how do you make your big decisions as a business owner?

So I am very slow to make a decision. Like I think about the same thing four months sometimes, years sometimes. But once I make my decision, I never think about it again.

Okay. That way you never like second guessing it.

speaker-1 (21:29.448)
It doesn't matter because you can only pivot once you've executed it. It gets like takes so long to execute. The first time, like I'm to put all my best interest in that one new change until proven that it doesn't or does work. Right. Moving forward. So it's a much healthier brain space for me. Otherwise you like are especially early in my career. Like you are chasing every shiny object for a while and that's not very helpful for business. Not very helpful for your own mental space. Figure out what works.

take care of people, everything else will work out.

What helps you

I do have people that I can run things off of, but usually those are more sound boards at this point in my career. part of why I work much better in small business and wouldn't make a terrible employee now is because of that. Like once I make a decision, want to actually, I want to do it today and follow all the way through that decision.

I can agree with you 100%. The idea of working for someone else now is...

speaker-1 (22:32.312)
There's just no. my gosh. I would be a terrible employee because I'd want to do it my way, which is not how that works.

Really bad respect for authority overtop me when it came to that. I don't want to do this. Well, you gotta go through the right channels. No.

Yeah, it's a good thing I didn't decide to go into like corporate America or a billion other things. They would not have worked well with my personality.

So it almost opened up like a different aspect of who you are.

Yeah. And so businesses is a very small part of kind of bright school. They have all these electives you can take and people come in and talk to you about basic overall business. But until you start doing some of it, it doesn't matter until you figure out your own style for each thing. It's not super effective. I've used the same business coach for almost my whole career. So like 13 years. I meet with him once a month and he

speaker-1 (23:27.406)
It very much reminds me of like Phil Knight style, like calm, cool, not Phil Knight. Yeah, he is a basketball coach, but he coached the Bulls and he coached LA to fill something or other. It's sad.

I took a bath, course.

speaker-0 (23:43.724)
Why am I blanking on his name as well? Jack?

Doesn't matter. Everybody knows what we're talking about. In any case, like that kumquat quality that helps you like, and he never gives me answers, which I appreciate. Ever. He makes me get to the answer on my own. Because if somebody just told me the answer, I wouldn't believe them anyway. I just wouldn't.

This is what I'm doing you like I don't feel right

I'm gonna figure, I'm gonna do it my own way, right? There's gonna be a different version of it and if I don't truly buy into the solution, I'm not gonna execute on it very well. You have to fully buy in.

Is he a carpet? Is he carpet himself?

speaker-1 (24:25.518)
So he ran a couple big companies like really big companies and then he went into coaching and he coaches at a very high I met him when he first started this entity like and he keeps me honest almost what feels like charity at this point, but he coaches at like fortune 500 level at this point

nice, and you're still seeing them. Yeah, that's pretty neat. So do you ever feel like it's lonely sometimes making these big decisions? Like you feel like there's someone else you wish you could bounce stuff off of? What do think?

I never feel lonely about it, honestly. It's definitely how my brain works and internalizing it sometimes also helps you not, the more people you're getting opinions from, the more unhappy you can be sometimes.

Or you feel like you're getting... you don't know what direction to go then. So we just became a dad and like we're not a dad again. I remember being a dad the first time people were like Nathan here's a book, here's a book, here's a book, here's a book, here's a book, book, book on how to be a dad and I'm like no. One book! If I don't like it I'm not gonna do it, if I agree with it I'll figure something else out. I like I'm not gonna be pulled in ten different opinions and then not know what to do.

to correct you too much information.

speaker-1 (25:22.539)
Yeah

speaker-1 (25:32.078)
So I think it's almost like three, almost four years ago now. My entire career I've been told to read like hundred different business books. And I went through and I did almost a hundred in a year. Most of them were audio books in fairness. the thing was a lot of them repeat and very few I pulled value out of because I've been doing it for so long. It's not where I struggled. But the ones that did have information on things I

have a lot of reading.

speaker-1 (26:01.966)
do struggling in Iowa, I should probably do more, were very helpful for me at that time. Especially as trying to like scale and grow and do more cool things. They were semi-helpful and it's, even before I was my own boss, like when I knew I wanted to be my own boss, I still had managers at the time because I was working at Sam's Club during cut and break school, right? was like, because it doesn't, I was a stock person, so it doesn't take a lot of brain power and I didn't have any left at the end, right?

I knew it.

I needed something very simple that I could just show up and they would pay me for. And that was it. But I had 20 managers. It's a big corporation. And it's like pulling little pieces out of each. Not what they do wrong, what they do right. And that's how I got started in the business world. It's very easy to point out negatives in every single person you meet. It's much harder to pull it positive. As if you pull out little positives all the time.

Correct.

speaker-1 (26:58.926)
you can learn like everybody has it and it helped me connect with more patients too. Like some patients I've had for a really long time, like we were just to meet on the street 10 years before I was chiropractor. We probably wouldn't have gotten along because we're so different personality wise, but because you can meet them where they are, you can do such a better job for them and know like, well, that person's kind of like this person. This is why we didn't always mesh. This is how to mitigate that that divide.

That's cool. I just, you just made me think of something else. I just, but I think I just lost it. So, but so we'll see if I can come back to remembering about it.

Okay, sorry, long answer.

When you look back though, do you think there was ever a time as a chiropractor you could have bought speed and moved from here to there a lot faster than you maybe could have? What the way it happened?

So I didn't come from like a family of me. And so buying speed was never a thing. Working more is how it was taught my entire life. Like the more you work, the faster you'll get there. The harder you work, the faster you get there. Those are wrong too. But the lessons I learned along the way, the only reason why I was here at first chasing every shiny object and then step two was how to.

speaker-1 (28:13.41)
like build a team and how to find quality employees. What are you actually looking for in a quality employee? What does a quality employee look like? And how do they take care of your patients when you're there or not there? Those are all things that you morph and learn over time. And then the best lessons are the hardest ones, right? The ones that didn't work out, the ones you think about for a couple days that lead to your pity party day that are mentally important but not important at the time.

I had like meeting with that advisor, what he told me just like a couple weeks ago we met, I guess it two months ago now, we met and we had this almost exact same conversation like, Dr. Brian, if I would have told you five years ago that doing scaling the exact same way every other chiropractor you've ever seen wasn't gonna work, what would you have told me?

You're off. You're off. off. And like, you had to go through the process to learn that that's not how you do it.

Okay. Now that's cool because you're obviously a great chiropractor, right? There's a lot of people that are really, really good at their thing, whether they went to school for it, it's their passion, they're excellent at it, right? And they're like, I'm going to start a business, right? They're really good at it, but then they, they didn't, there's like never got the grasp of the business owner. It's like, for some reason it didn't ever click and the business couldn't.

Prolonged, couldn't exist. You've been in business now for over 10 years. Almost 15. Almost 15 now, right? So obviously there's a click for both you as being a great chiropractor and a great business owner. So what were some of the strengths along the way that you felt like I leaned into this and what are some of the weaknesses you're like, you never thought about that and you had to address those.

speaker-1 (30:01.314)
My favorite quote of all time in terms of business is from Mike Tyson. Everybody has a plan until you get punched in face. So it being confident in your decisions and sticking with your decisions long enough to know if they're actually or don't work was a big part of my success. And I've always been fairly hard headed. So that is part of it. And then I've never been able to do just one thing. I played four sports in high school as part of speech, drama, plays.

If there was an excuse to still be at school instead of home, I was probably there. And then I worked a part-time job on top of it, right? So I've always been able to work as my superpower, apparently. I've always been able to do it. Turning that off was much harder for me earlier in my career, like not just doing more. That isn't always the answer.

Right. Because then you're split too much.

too much and you're not focusing enough. especially over the last, I'd say five years in my practice, I've started cutting off things that I didn't enjoy doing. It's not that they don't work, they work super well, but I don't enjoy doing them because I'm not as passionate about them. They're not gonna get the results I want. So I wanna really focus on the chiropractic, physical therapy, massage therapy, that triad of helping people get better in that specific way.

That is cool. So the weakness is also a little bit of the strength.

speaker-1 (31:25.59)
It can be a double edged sword, where, because you are good at most things, you're Jack of all trades, right? Sometimes you lose that mastery of what, or enjoyment. Enjoyment is a big part of it too.

You added quad, you've already physically added modalities, is that the right term? Over the time you've been here, like, compression a modality? What would you consider?

It's still PT. It's still PT adjacent. I'm always looking for new and better ways to help people get better. Like always.

How long does it take you to, like, when you're thinking about a way to fix someone, how long do you research something, study it, and then go, okay.

I want it. So compression a year and a half.

speaker-0 (32:01.934)
Okay. So even the compression sleeve idea a year and a half. Okay. Why? Why does it take long? Is it just because it takes you a long time to make a decision? Okay. Fair enough. And you want the clients to have a positive experience with it.

And then I don't want a second guess at it.

speaker-1 (32:14.282)
And there's no guarantees in any of these things. And especially in probably in the gym world, but in the chiropractic world, alternative medicine world, there's always a new shiny object. They come out with one every year that's going to change the way your patients function work. You're going to get gold standard work without doing half the work every year. It's something different. And most of them are nonsense. And it's just seeing that over and over and over again and waiting to see what the actual results are and waiting to see.

how people actually respond to it. And then trying it out to see if I like the benefits it's giving.

My patients. They're basically trying to filter through the garbage and the quality at the same time.

is always a factor because some of the alternative stuff isn't covered by insurance either. And 85-ish percent of what we do is insurance covered. So if it's not, you really got to make sure it works.

Yeah, trains are working. No, kidding, don't do that.

speaker-1 (33:11.63)
So because they're paying for it out of their own pocket, they expect an almost immediate result.

Okay, true, I guess.

Usually we get pretty mean results even with an adjustment. Like I have a lot of people that barely walk in here and then walk out. Like that's a daily occurrence for me. Probably. Who doesn't want instant results? Like weight loss, getting better at a skill. You want it like tomorrow. if you're not looking for a pill, it's human nature to want a semi-shortcut.

That's the expectation.

speaker-0 (33:43.438)
go hell that'll f*** you.

speaker-1 (33:50.478)
to want a path that you can follow to get you to a guaranteed result. And unfortunately in healing or performance, there's no such thing. There's a tree root worth of stuff you gotta get through to get where you wanna go.

Do you think when people go the longer route, they put the effort in, the results are respected better than if it was a shortcut? Do you think people just don't care?

Especially in pain, because pain doesn't make you a good person.

Makes you irritable.

As as you are out of pain, your whole life changes. Your whole life gets better instantly. So you're not thinking about that long term. You're just like enjoying my first pain-free moment, sometimes years, decades. Some of the people I've helped have literally been in pain for 20 plus years. Been to everybody, done everything.

speaker-0 (34:41.838)
I can't tell you how many times even as a gym owner people have said, well, I just live with it. It's something I'm going to live with. I say, well, if you don't want to live with it, I know a guy.

There is an interesting psychology behind having something that you're working through as well, too, because people give you credit for working through it and being able to still perform at a high level, even though you are restricted in some way. So there's some badge of honor to that as well. And it still goes back to that you're supposed to deal with the mental concept. The mental fortitude to deal with pain versus the mental fortitude to go get help. Asking for help is much harder.

Right. I mean, I come regularly because I want to be able to perform at a high level. And it doesn't matter what age I'm at, I want that performance to always be there. So people obviously have different drive than that. You're saying the usual client is, or patient is pain. It's not actually...

To walk in the door, usually something has gone wrong across the board. Something triggered it enough to make a phone call to book an appointment online to do whatever to then come in the door. So there has to be a purpose of that. And sometimes I do work with lot of performance athletes, especially in the younger population groups. I would say from like middle school through high school is where most of the people that I'm helping are, because that's when their level of intensity goes way up and they're still growing.

Right. So it's a really hard time to do both things. So I see a lot of athletes in those realms and we're helping them, you know, stay injury free, get injury free, prevent injuries. Like I just got done working with like a backhoe player from DePaul. Like it's so much fun over the summer. They had like a minor knee tweak, but like if they weren't able to show up in three weeks, they would have lost their scholarship. Gone. You know, and same like even like less high end, like I had a

speaker-0 (36:30.254)
Cheers.

speaker-1 (36:35.606)
every year for the Chicago Marathon. I have somebody that's been training for six, eight months, a year for this darn race. And that week, something will go wrong. And I have a week to get them ready to go.

for 26.2 miles.

And my percentage of finish is very high. I haven't had anybody stop yet.

Very cool, that's neat. How do you get the new people then? Like what's your main...

referrals right now. Word of mouth has been my personal biggest forever. When we were trying to scale we used like Google and Instagram and now we're gonna do like a big Facebook and Instagram push to see if that works or not. Well the verdict is still out.

speaker-0 (37:15.214)
Well, it sounds like referrals are the main source of income, then people are really, really happy with what they're receiving.

Yes, they are. And our referral rate is very, like we get a lot of referrals from most of our patients. Like I treat whole families. I very rarely treat one person in a family. I treat from their kids to them to,

You see everyone in my family. My five year old wants to be a chiropractor. That's awesome. She's like, want to be like Dr. Brian. I'm like, you know how much school you need to go to.

Yeah, do you really want to your own small business?

Because she's like, don't know. It's like they always get so excited to go Dr. Brian's. like, well, and she's like, I'm gonna be a chiropractor like Dr. Brian. I said, well, that's good. You're gonna go to a lot of school. Just make sure you keep following up. Keep going.

speaker-1 (37:59.182)
Yeah, so that is the cool part. I that is how a lot of people got into carburetor. We've been seeing carburetors forever. They helped change our lives. And then you go to school to do that same thing for other people. It's pretty rewarding.

So then what do you say people would like you step away from or you retire? What do you want to be remembered and said about Dr. Brian and Libertyville Wellness Group?

you know, effort is the key to success, right? Like, I may not always get people better, because that's kind of impossible in our world, like, line of work, period. But I'm always going to give them my full effort in every visit, every time. Every patient gets my, everything I could possibly do that's outside of surgery or medication, they're going to get whatever is the best thing for them at that moment in time that we can do. And if I'm not the right answer,

I guarantee we're gonna get them to the right answer. And that's part of what makes us different too.

So they're gonna know that you cared because you put everything into that meeting. So it's almost like he cared.

speaker-1 (39:07.028)
Right? That is it. You know, that is it. was really cared. He wanted us to get better. You know, they feel that ideally. I think they do. And, you know, staffing and how my massage therapist treat people and how they treat people, how they talk to people, all stuff that we harp on, that we care about. Like we want a very different experience than.

I feel it.

speaker-1 (39:36.206)
There are a lot of big corporations coming into the chiropractic world and that is not what chiropractic started out as.

right? In order to benefit the chiropractic.

Well, it in some ways. I mean, it does in some ways, right? Because they're bigger, they can spend more money, they're getting more people to come in the door. You're getting the experience. And there are great doctors that work for them, right? And chiropractic works. It just does. It works phenomenally well. Even if you're just adjusting, chiropractic works phenomenally well. And because of that, they're at least getting the experience.

and the percentage of the population that seeks care will... And then just a little more piece of the pie for the rural wellness group.

should go up a little bit.

speaker-1 (40:20.338)
Yeah, and you know, I've never looked at them as competition. That'd be like you being competition with LA Fitness or Planet Fitness. They're just different in everything they do, how they do it, why they do it. It's all...

It's Moneyball, have you ever seen that movie? Yeah. Yeah, if you play like the Yankees in here, you're gonna lose to them out there, right?

Well, and I get to do some really cool things because I'm my own boss. Nobody's going to tell me I can't spend an extra three, five, 10, 20 minutes with a patient if I need to. I can just do it. That is not the case if you work for somebody else. Correct. I I did an interview early in my career. I graduated during like the great recession, don't graduate during a great recession. One of the interviews I did, like this guy wanted me, I'd have 90 seconds in the room. He's going to literally time me.

with every patient. Max 90 seconds. You're like, but this is like, I don't think his thing was going to be he cared. His thing was going to be timely efficient.

Or not for me.

speaker-1 (41:23.81)
I probably did three interviews semi like that where they wanted me to see more people in a day than I've seen in week.

Wow. So it's more about just getting them in, getting them out.

Well, if within adjustment, you can move pretty fast if you really want to. But you're not doing any muscle work. You're not doing any stretching. You're not doing anything extra. You're figuring out what to adjust, adjusting it in and out. And you can do that pretty quickly.

There are a lot of businesses that do.

And it's you'll get a pretty good like you'll still get results. This is crazy part. It's kind of like it works.

speaker-0 (41:57.592)
So I know you mentioned earlier that like this is Dr. Brian when someone comes in, they're getting Dr. Brian. There's no AIDS or other chiropractor. Like what would you, is there anything that would that you'd want to exist from this when you do if you step away or when you do step away?

I've thought about retirement and I think I'm gonna retire and fail a handful of times, right? Like I'm not gonna be good. I want to have the financial ability to retire and never retire. I like what I do a lot. Ideally I can do it a little less than I currently do it. But I stopped doing something you get a lot of purpose out of, a lot of feeling out of it. I really like the Gary Vee comments on that. Like he talks about he's never gonna retire. loves what he does. He loves.

to do what you love.

speaker-1 (42:38.946)
how he does it, he loves being himself and he gets to do that every day.

almost like the same way, you never really go to work.

Yeah, that's not true.

Well, the business one, right? The telephone.

You know, if you like what you do, 85 is 90 % of the time you've won. You've won the game.

speaker-0 (42:59.266)
And if you were to do just one thing after you retire, would it just be the, I'm just gonna do my patient care and I'm not gonna worry about business side of things or what would you?

It doesn't really work like that in our world. Like, because if I'm doing my job correctly, the very least, you should see me less. Right. At the very least. Which means I always need new people.

Right. And so like that's cool too. Cause like, when you think about it, like as a chiropractor, as a business owner thing, you're like, okay, to see people more, the business takes more money, needs profit to keep going. But at the same time, I actually want to see you less because I'm motivated by that. That's cool. I like people will know that, Hey, I actually want to see you less because that means you, I'm actually fixing you and it's okay to on the business side of things. I'm just going to get more patient.

I'm just going to get more patients that are in more acute care or people that come back. It's not a rare occurrence on any given week that somebody that I haven't seen in five, seven, 10 years magically come back through the door. Now they heard again.

Right. So they're probably coming back in sooner.

speaker-1 (44:07.374)
They should have, but like they didn't. So you don't want to cost them or like give them a hard time for finally coming back in. You just take care of them in that moment. It's so great to see you. I'm glad you chose us again. Like that means a lot to be chosen again. Like you did such a good job. 10 years ago, I still remember you. Right.

Yeah, say, wow, so good to see you.

speaker-0 (44:26.99)
That's pretty amazing. Like you were open 14 years ago, so like that literally could happen.

Well, it has. It has happened a lot of times. you know, five years, three, five years is fairly common. Five, seven years less common, 10 plus years less common, and it can only go to 14 and a half years.

I think that's so cool to sign off on this is that the most important thing that you could do for them is fix them, not make money off of them. That's awesome. Awesome. Well, and the privilege. Thanks for jumping on the podcast. Let's see how long we were.

I really appreciate your time.