3 Awesome 👏 Lessons Learned from 2021

2021 kicked serious ass 🔥! 

Yes, for many outside of our practice, our profession, and our style of people (of which there are 100+ million, see below)… it was a chaotic, stressful, and toxic year. 

But if you were inside the rapidly expanding circle of influence we live in and lead from, this year was freaking fantastic 😃 !!! 

I wake up every single day not only committed to living full out this incredible life God has granted me, but also getting the perspective and actions steps that led to it shared with as many of you as possible. 

So in that light, here are the 3️⃣ most impactful, most helpful-to-you lessons I learned in 2021.

Read on, learn, and if inspired… get after these three things like never before in 2022!!! 

1. If you focus too much on math 💰 and profits, you lose your meaning and purpose. 

Like all things in life, running a business (practice) means always seeking to maintain a delicate balance. I like to refer to this as the “sweet spot” and it very much applies to the financial 💰 aspects of your practice. 

For quite a few years leading up to 2021, we were heavily invested in traditional chiropractic coaching and management. Every single quarter we printed out all of our stat sheets 🧮 and financial numbers, and spent a weekend pouring over them with a fine-toothed comb. 

Now I gotta admit, for well over 10 years I was the biggest advocate of this stats and data-heavy approach to running a business, and I still am. It’s just that I finally learned how to truly find that “sweet spot” a whole lot better in 2021, after losing sight of it big time in the previous years when I was firmly entrenched in the coaching and management world. 

Back then we were continuously told by the analysts and experts who would look at our numbers that we were “too cheap” and that specifically our family wellness plans were just not “profitable” enough to sustain a healthy practice and life. 

I gotta admit that when I put the blinders on and looked at the Google Sheets only, it made sense. I suppose it’s sort of like the the kind of math big medicine and politicians do, where they bend and twist the numbers 🔢 however they need to in order to fit their predetermined narrative. 

 But there was a big problem with doing this for PWC 😬 .

Heck yes we want a profitable and successful practice, and certainly if I look around at my life the last decade plus… we’ve had just that. But more than anything what we want badly is a highly impactful practice first and foremost, and a profitable one after that. 

So in 2021 myself and our leadership team made a very conscious decision to NOT focus on one specific number especially, our Office Visit Average or $OVA.

After years of tweaking, changing, and increasing our fee schedules we had come to realize that we had gone too far. We actually lost just as many (or more) wellness patients and families with these moves, as we gained in profit margin. 

For years ahead of this coaching-dependent and stat-obsessed life we had gone into we routinely grew 25% or more year over year. But once we went too far into that life, our growth had stalled to just 10% or less. 

The more we focused on money 💵 , the less we made.

Getting rid of that $OVA obsession this year not only made for a freaking fantastic, enjoyable, and less stressful year for myself and our leadership team… but guess what? We broke our annual Value Exchange (Collections) 💰 record once again, and increased our $OVA by four dollars 💵 anyways! 

How could that happen without focusing on it so intently? Because we focused on the actual things that drive up value and profit margin anyways — increasing our patient results and experience, and building trust at the highest levels ever with our community! 

When you lean into purpose and miracle ✨ and making with all you’ve got, the profits and money 💰 will come at a higher rate than ever. 

Summary Statement:  

If you obsess over profit margins and KPIs more than you obsess over your mission and meaning, you’ll likely have some short term success… followed by long term pain! 

2. Momentum is on our side, not medicine’s 🥼. 

To get in alignment with me on this one, it will require you take a deep breath 🧘‍♂️ and really be open to a perhaps a different perspective than you have now. It will also require you to take a bit of a breather from your own social media feed, which is something for us chiropractors that is not all that different than if we were always tuned into traditional TV 📺 and media. 

Our news feeds are filled with just as much noise, stress, anger, and yelling… we’re just yelling it back in their direction, because we’re mad (rightfully so) at all the BS they send in our direction. 

But I want to let you in on a little secret, that I bet you already knew if you look 👀 at things just right — we have momentum, not them. 

The level and amount of distrust in traditional medicine 💊 🥼 💉 is at all-time high! 

It’s growing at a faster rate than most anything else. 

And then awesomely on the “other side” of that means the rate of growth happening in natural health and things like yoga 🧘‍♂️ , mediation, organic foods, fitness 🏋️‍♂️ , essential oils, vitamins and supplements is soaring through the roof as well. 

And, so is principled, neurologically-focused, pediatric and family chiropractic!!! 

I can speak for back pain, rehab, and laser-focused chiropractic. But our kind of chiropractic is experiencing growth 🧨 like we’ve never seen before! 

The top two problems our Pediatric Experience docs face right now are finding space in their schedule for more New Patients, and finding Associate Doctors to help keep up with the insane growth they are experiencing! 

Legit, we are focusing on the wrong reality even on our side of the fence. Do you know that only 60% of US citizens have chosen to get the Covid jab. 

And do we really believe traditional polling anymore these days after what we’ve seen on the bending and expanding of stats by that side of the fence?

That adds up to 130 million people who roll the way you roll! Meaning, they know better than to roll up their sleeves and go down that road once again. 

They know better, and they’re ready. Ready to go in a different direction, and choose a different kind of doctor 🙌 to be in charge of their family’s health and well-being. Millions upon millions are absolutely ready to choose YOU, their local badass PX Doc for that job! 

The lesson I learned here in 2021 is that WE need to continue to get our collective crap 💩 together and be ready, and be better for them. 

It’s time to increase our certainty, branding, communication, care planning, analysis, adjusting, systems, and patient experience at levels never seen before. 

As we step up and get better, they step OUT of traditional medicine and INTO our offices! 

Summary Statement: 

Stop staring at your social media feed and current ‘scoreboard’ and instead look at what’s actually happening in real life day-to-day. When you look 👀 there, you’ll see parents and kids leaving traditional medicine in droves and looking for YOU. Are you ready for THEM? 

3. Your dream 💭 is in your team! 

We all want this kind of practice — one that continues to grow in its size and impact year after year, without requiring more and more from you!

Meaning, you don’t have to wear every single hat 🎩 in the practice. 

You don’t have to do your own scheduling, run every system, and even sweep 🧹 the floors at the end of each shift. 

There is a strong movement in our profession to get “smaller” for the sake of less stress. And on the surface I absolutely fully empathize and understand the “boutique” practice movement. 

I’ve got four beautiful and wonderful young kids, and a 20.5 acre gorgeous farm full of lawn mowing and outside projects 🚜 I love to do as much as possible. 

But, while I’m very clear on how much joy 🤩 those things bring my life… I’m also very clear on how much struggle and pain is in the lives of so many kids and families in my community, and all throughout the world. 

So while I could get down with a small, boutique practice on the surface. I certainly can’t get down with making a smaller impact. 

Meaning, I had to find a way to get both — less stress and more free time, and still increase our practice’s impact and growth month in and month out! 

And, we did find it! It’s called team and leadership. 

Now most mistakenly think that more team (CAs, Associates, etc.) means more headaches, stress, and problems. But that’s only true for one group of practice owners — poor leaders. 

We want to blame them, not us. We use misguided statements like this again and again to back up our feelings… 

“It’s so hard to find good people these days.” 

“Oh man those darn millennials just refuse to work hard.” 

“No one wants to work hard any more.” 

Well what 2021 taught me once again is something I thankfully learned years ago — yes they do. Many, many, many people are out there right now who desperately want to work their faces off for a badass leader with an incredible mission and vision! 

Right now more than ever, a kick ass and on fire 🔥 Pediatric Chiropractor can not only attract a larger tribe of patients than even before… but you can do the same with CAs and Associate Doctors! 

THIS kind of on fire 🔥 Pediatric, Prenatal 🤰, and Family Practice is the EXACT place that thousands upon thousands of people in your community want to come and work. 

This year we saw a wildly successful, top 1% kid chiropractor sell their practice and pack up their life and move from Colorado to Illinois to saddle 🐎 up with PWC and be our top adjuster 🙌 . 

This year we saw multiple world class humans leave their high-paid positions in the corporate 👩‍💼 medical world to join Team PWC. 

This year we saw some of the most influential natural health influencers in the world reach out to us and want to collaborate online 🖥 and through live events. 

People is where all the power is my friend! When you seek out and add more phenomenal freaking humans to your team, you not only can see your practice grow at unheard of levels… but you can then earn more time off to be with your family, de-stress, and enjoy 😁 life at the same time! 

You truly can have it all. But you’ve got to be strong, courageous, and committed yourself first. 

You’ve got to commit to go big and bold, in order to get big and bold returns. 

You’ve got to commit to leveling up your leadership skills, and stepping into a space that may be uncomfortable at first… but soon becomes your greatest joy 🤩 if you just let it. 

PWC set records across the board in 2021, and that was with me “backing down” to just two shifts per week and doing less “busy work” things than ever before. 

But that doesn’t mean my role or impact with the practice decreased this year — it actually increased. Because first it simply changed. 

Summary Statement: 

I highly encourage you to change your perspective on the role and value of team and leadership in 2022, and know that you can go bigger than you ever knew possible… all while seeing your stress decrease, time off increase, and enjoyment explode!