I’ve been learning to surf since 2005. It’s tough since I don’t live on or near a coast - so I have to travel far and  wide for surf. Both the east and west  coasts of Canada have surf (brrr) and  we’ve fallen in love with warm water  surf of Central America.

Despite not being able to surf on a regular basis, I’ve seen some great improvements in my skill with the investments of time and money that I’ve made so far, yet I’m not where I want to be. There is still lots of surf I can’t handle, and sometimes my surfing gets worse instead of better (Re: My Christmas Vacation in Costa Rica). 

Yet here are the things I’ve learned from surfing that apply directly to succeeding in chiropractic practice.  And as a chiropractic coach and consultant, I work with chiropractors day in and day out on these challenges as they show up in practice. Whether you surf or not, you’ll get this:

• Success and mastery won’t just come to you. You have to create it.  It is not a matter of ‘luck’.
• Your head space and mindset matters! Your subconscious mind is always looking to validate what you believe to be true. Check your head or get a coach to check it for you.
• Get clear on your big vision and keep it in the forefront of your mind, even when you are not getting results. Keep perspective.
• Set realistic goals to reach your vision.
• Don’t be so hard on yourself. It doesn’t help you get what you want any faster or easier. It probably makes matters worse.
• Plan your work and work your plan. Consistent action is the only way to achieve your goals. Actions are the small things that create the BIG thing: Success!
• Repetition is key. Just because you’ve done something once doesn’t mean you don’t need to practice.  
• Recognize the first step is unconscious incompetence: you don’t know what you don’t know. A scary place!
• Next is conscious incompetence: you know what you don’t know.  At least you can seek out answers and get help.
• Then comes conscious competence and you start to get the mechanics of the skill. Ahhhhh finally! If you want to be mediocre, stop here.
• After hard work and refinement, it becomes unconscious competence where you don’t have to think about what you are doing because it is so ingrained in your nerve system - and you are on your way to mastery!
• As soon as you think you’ve got a skill, something will happen and you’ll be back at square one again. Shake it off and go again.
• Patience is key - you can’t rush nature and you can’t push the universe.
• Be prepared, develop strong foundational skills and work hard - the opportunity will come to you when you are ready.
• Results don’t happen immediately!  Real successes are not quick fix solutions. Get to the cause.
• Don’t always do what everybody else is doing. Be exceptional.
• Be grateful for what you have and what you are given! Gratitude every step of the way is key.
• Take responsibility for everything.
• Get back up. Paddle back out.
• Everything has a Dip: excitement phase, frustration phase, uphill battle phase, and then success.
• Don’t start something unless you want to push through The Dip to get to the other side - otherwise it is a complete waste of time and money.

Chiropractic practices always have a Dip, whether it be starting a practice from scratch, buying an existing practice, or changing your practice from a pain-based model to a wellness model.  We get excited by the idea and we start the process.  We soon get frustrated by the lack of immediate success, wonder what we got into and either quit or press on.  Those who continue to keep their vision big and take action on their plans eventually push through The Dip.

Your DIP could be building a dream team staff, it could be breaking through the glass ceiling of the volume you’ve always maxed out at, it could be starting your practice, or changing your chiropractic practice to a wellness model. Or something else entirely.  But your good idea starts to seem like a bad idea when you are in The Dip. That’s when you know you need help!

If you want support getting through The Dip, email me.  I’d be honoured to help coach and consult you through the process and help you get the success in chiropractic practice you are looking for!

Tweet This Post 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tags: communication, Success, Surfing, The Dip, wellness practice management

It’s easy to be mediocre.  A mediocre person, a mediocre mother, a mediocre friend, and certainly it is easy to be a mediocre chiropractor.  Look around, most everyone is doing it.  Mastery however is difficult.  Mastery takes hard work, dedication and keeping a big vision in the forefront of your mind and the stamina to follow through.  To be an overnight success takes 10,000 hours of work.  It means you have to push through The Dip. 

What does it take to be a master in the art, science, and philosophy of chiropractic? Even more importantly is what does it take to be a master of communication about our truth of health, healing and chiropractic?  As a start you need to understand personality types and communicaiton/behavioural styles of people. You need to LAASR your Visit 1, Visit 2, Daily Interactions, ReAssessments & ReReports communication to lead people forward.

Do you know what the common denominator of all successful chiropractic practices have? Chiropractors with certainty.  They are clear on their vision and how they are going to achieve it.  They know what they bring to the table.  And they speak their truth boldly and in a way that people can hear them.

Are you the best chiropractor you can be?  Are you communicating chiropractic to the people in your office and community so that they ‘get it’?  Can you turn people on to a healthy lifestyle that includes chiropractic care for them and their families for a lifetime?  Write down what having mastery in your chiropractic career would look like. Then write down the things that would need to change or improve to get there. What support do you need?  A coach?  A consultant?  Practice management tips?   An action plan? Accountability?

Most people get successful ‘enough’ and help ‘enough’ people.  They hit a plateau and get comfortable.  Are you pushing yourself towards mastery?  It’s your life. It’s your practice.  You get to choose. Let us know if we can help. There are too many people sick and dying in your community because they don’t know what you know.

Tweet This Post 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tags: 10000 hours, Chiropractic Coach, Chiropractic Coaching, chiropractic profession, coach, communication, consultant, LAASR, Leadership, mastery, mediocre, mediocrity, Motivation, Practice Management, Success, The Dip, wellness chiropractic practice management

It is time for our chiropractic profession to shift.  It is time to tell the truth to the world and to ourselves.  It is time to stop fitting in to a medical infrastructure and practice model and to stop selling ourselves short by selling ‘pain relief’.  Aspirin or Tylenol is way cheaper than your services.

Here’s to the crazy ones ~ the chiropractors who want to push back against the status quo.  The ones who are standing their ground, practicing wellness chiropractic and not the treatment of symptoms, sickness and disease.  The ones who are becoming leaders in the wellness revolution, the shift that is unstoppable.

The medical system in many countries around the world is on the verge of collapse with regards to the percentage of GDP spent on health care and the increasing statistics of disease and death.  Ready to burst at the seams as soon as the baby boomers are ripe.  It’s a faulty premise to use sick care as health care and it’s not working.  

And people want something different.  They just need to know that chiropractic is a better way.  And that you are the one who will care for them with honest, loving, authentic service.  You’ve got to have enough value for your service, enough confidence in your skills and the communication level to share the truth… and the guts to do so.  

From my favorite ad campaign of all time… Apple in the late 1990’s called ‘Think Different’.  It is time to inspire yourself and the people in your community to Think Different about health.  Are you willing to be the ‘Crazy One’ in your community?

“Here’s to the crazy ones.

   The misfits.
    The rebels.
     The troublemakers. 
      The round pegs in the square holes. 
The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules.
   And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, 
  disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. 
    Because they change things.

They invent.    They imagine.     They heal.

 They explore.     They create.    They inspire.
      They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones,
    we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think
    they can change the world, are the ones who do”.

Tweet This Post 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tags: Apple, Better, chiropractic, Choice, Crazy Ones, Different, Different Way, Disease, Health Care, Medical System, Medicine, Pain Relief, Service, Shift, Sickness, Status Quo, Symptoms, Think Different, wellness revolution

As St. Patrick’s Day has come and gone and the green beer hangovers are just a memory, it has left me pondering the concept of “luck”.  Is success in life a matter of luck?

In a wellness model of practice, a great concept to get across to people is that Health Is Not a Matter of Luck. It depends on their commitment and consistent action towards it that creates change and sustained health.  If you didn’t run an internal promotion in your office for St. Patrick’s Day this year, put it in your marketing calendar for next!

In the same sense, success doesn’t just happen to people who want it, but sit around and wait for it.  Success is not luck, karma or circumstance.  Could they be factors in your success?  Sure.  But success is created by you knowing where you are, knowing what you want and where you want to be and then making a plan of action to get there.  Oh, and the big secret:  it depends on your commitment and consistent action towards success.

Forget what success means to anyone else, it’s about how you define success that matters.  We need to know what it is before we can create it.  So work with your friend, colleague, or coach to figure out what it is to you and then do what it takes to go and get it.  If you are not as successful as you want to be, time to create it!

Tweet This Post 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tags: action, commitment, consistency, create, Dreams, luck, responsibility, st. patrick's day, Success

President Obama visited Canada yesterday on his first out-of-county excursion since being sworn in as leader of the free world.  Since the inauguration, I have been reflecting on Obama’s rise to leadership and the accomplishments he’s made with such a short political career and humble beginnings. The more and more I learn about the challenges he faced throughout his lifetime and the obstacles he has overcome, I am impressed by his vision, tenacity and leadership.

I am reminded that you don’t have to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth to reach success.  And that for all the naysayers and  fear-propagators who say it’s not possible, President Barack Obama represents hope and the power of realizing a vision, no matter how lofty it seems.

So the big question is, “Will you be the one”?  Will you be a leader in your community? Will you step up and shine as a beacon of light through these dark times and give hope to your world?  Will you be the one to speak your truth about how chiropractic affects people’s lives, not just that it can ease their pain?  Will you step out of your comfort zone to do what it takes to build a successful wellness practice?  Will you be the one to cause transformation in the people you care for, your family, your friends and most importantly yourself?

You are where you are, not because you deserve it.  The opportunities, the education, your position in the community to affect lives… you have created for yourself. Will you use these achievements to be mediocre, or will you rise up and be the one?

Tweet This Post 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tags: deserve, hope, Leadership, Obama, one, opportunities

Tweet This Post 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tags: Challenges, encouragement, Motivation, Obstacles, Quitting, Taking Action

I don’t know about you, but I am getting really negative with all the negativity in the world. The media, the markets, the general consensus, even with chiropractors… I am tired of it. 

I recognize it’s a hard battle not to get sucked into the negativity. All the nay-sayers, the fear-mongers and the ones who say it’s not possible. I catch myself and course correct when I feel myself getting beat down by the attitudes and beliefs of society. I feel the pull to the ‘dark side’ and to say I keep it at bay 100% of the time would be a lie.

But I am ready to take a stand against the status quo. Against what ‘everybody’ thinks or what ‘everybody’ knows. Against what society says is possible and to live BIG, not when the external environment is supportive of leadership, but now, when things are tough. Why? Because you and I deserve a magnificent life. And because we were not put here on this earth to be mediocre.

Maybe it’s just my personality that when somebody says ‘that can’t be done’ I’ll do my best to do that very thing. Not out of spite (well I do have an anti-authoritarian nature), but to show them what’s possible. So the next time someone tells you that your goals and dreams are unrealistic, that it’s impossible to succeed at what you are setting out to accomplish, say, “Watch me”. There are always people doing what others said was ‘impossible’. Are you ready to be that person? I know I am.

The time is now to take a stand. It’s time to remember your dreams, find the fire inside, get creative, get curious, think outside the box and take risks. Because the people of the world need hope not negativity. And chiropractors are the ones to bring it to them. If you don’t, who will?

Tweet This Post 

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Tags: Dreams, Leadership, Negativity, Positivity, Status Quo