Learn How to Turn Your Job into a Business

Align your Practice podcast with Dr. Cliff Fisher where your best practice and life awaits you. Are you tired of running a practice on your own? We want to come alongside you with experts to help you create your dream practice in your dream life. Here is your host.

Alright tribe, welcome back. I'm super excited for our conversation, Dr. Joe today on a job versus a business. I just wanted to touch on last time, man, if you missed last episode, you definitely want to go back when we talked about exiting, how to exit a business gracefully versus like losing all that value, you know, spent your whole life working up to it, and you don't have any value. And so today that we want to talk about a job versus a business and Dr. Joe, I know we talked right before this and had some great concepts and ideas. So where's your head at right now?

Yeah, I think it's such this is such a good conversation. Because it can help those students that are thinking about owning a business or getting being employed. It can help those that are in the middle of their practice, career, or those that are an exit. I mean, this is a, this is a big one, it may spill over into five episodes. But let's try to get that framework of this thing out. That's fair. So my my accountant called owning a business, a velvet prison is beautiful. It's classy, it's nice, but you're chained and locked inside and you can't get out. And that's not how a business should be. But he was an accountant. He owned his own business. And he sat there, I'll never forget his desk. He had piles and piles of paper and he was sitting there and he was never left that desk. 1012 hours a day, and he was the business and he called it. This is a great, it's a velvet prison. Remember that term? And think about that? And dissect your own business and say, Are you in a velvet prison a beautiful place that you can't actually get out of? And Cliff you and I both know, that's not what a business is. That's a job.

Yeah. Yep. And everybody's built for a certain thing. Like there's a space for a job. And there's a space for a business. And so I think that's the conversation. I'd like to go into, you know, we talked about like the different types of chiropractors. And I think, in chiropractic, there's always been one thing up, you need to own the business. And, you know, one of my, the funny things that you and I both heard, I'm what I know, I heard it from Dr. France, and but it was like, You never hear a brain surgeon say, Man, this sucks. I don't own the hospital. I'm just a brain surgeon. But yeah, chiropractors will say that all the time. And I think, you know, 10 years ago, that was probably appropriate. But now I think there's the compensations. Right? The opportunities are right, the partnership, like there's all these different opportunities that are becoming available if you're in the right situation.

Yeah, it's a shame because it's become a was a rite of passage that you or it's like the mecca of, of when you graduated, you have to own a clinic. And I guess it's not, I can't fault anything, because 20 years ago, the compensation wasn't strong enough. Doctors were not treated. In a career based mindset. It was like a starter process of like, Hey, you go work for me. And two years later, you leave because compensations? Right, and you're right. The professionals matured, compensations have scaled literally 3x what they were like three years ago, 3x. So it's a different game. So those of you who are not wired for business, you should not own a business. Because the the profession is now taking care of it's the practitioner, which you and I both enjoy. So I guess, you know, when we look at ownership, I believe it's about 70% of chiropractors own the business. And when we look at the profiles that we see, we look at profiling, we profile over 100 and something doctors and organization over the years is there about 30% are wired to own a business. Meaning that like when I say wired is the brain is wired with a level of dominance and system and compliance and the way you behave is designed for business. So about 30% of people should own a business in the field of chiropractic and about 70% do well. And that's why we have 40% about that are suffering, can't pay their bills can't understand marketing or some business don't like hiring. They're not making enough money. They're struggling and paying rent and they're in pain. Yeah, and you and I want to help doctors edify the practitioner first, that being a practitioners field is a beautiful thing. And it can be very prosperous, right and we want to honor a doctor. But then we also want to support the doctors that want are wired for business and want to own right and appreciate both sides. Right?

Absolutely. 100%

So, let's let's get into this a little bit on being an employee versus an owner. Because there's trade offs. It's not all glorious as an employee. It's not all glorious as an owner. There is a trade. Yeah. So let's talk about that. What is the risk and the benefit of an employee becoming a doctor who's employee? Let's do benefits first. Alright,

so I think benefits are you have security, you don't have to take work home with you you don't have you're not worried about team members, you're not worried about people calling in sick. There's different benefits as far as like sometimes I pay for malpractice, insurance 401k, there's different things, depending on the office. So

I'm not taking on more debt. Yeah, now the 300,000 on interest, not just 300,000, you have interest on that. So it's like the other half a million dollars in debt. That's huge. You're not responsible for lawsuits, a patient malpractice lawsuit, a sexual harassment lawsuit, a business lawsuit, a partner lawsuit, any of those risks that can really eat you up, not for a month or a week. But the years of pain in a lawsuit. That's big. The unknown of trying to get this thing off the ground, the pain of startup, the launch phases, yes, is grueling to launch a new business, any business.

Lot of work, a lot of stress and financial stress are two big things that come up for me stress to the family

can hurt you relationship can hurt your kids can take time away from your children, when they're playing sports or dance or doing whatever they're doing. You have less vacations because you don't have enough money. While I'm getting scared Cliff this is this is painful.

So, so the front end of that is that's the benefit of being an associate, you know, especially in these days and times, like I know, when I did my associates ship, I went out of school, they paid me $500 a month, I got to work 80 hours a week and I was probably honestly overpaid.

So So what we're saying is that it being an employee, is this compensation packages, right? The cultures, right? The team resonates with your value system energetically as well, technique culture, and you got a good compensation package with scale, meaning if the clinic grows, you get upside ability, there may be a chance for partnership down the road. That's a viable strong opportunity in the profession these days, right? I mean, overall,

Oh, yeah. Yeah, way better than it was 20 years ago, when I started or, yeah, 25 years ago. And I think chiropractors are, you know, we are maturing as a profession. So then I think the opportunities are starting to shift to, you know, even like not even necessarily have to own but still be able to participate in profit share and stuff like that.

That's huge. So let's go over the owner now, like if you own a clinic, what is the benefits? You make your own hours? That's what I want

it Yeah. You hire the people that you want to be on your team? You make them think there's a bigger upside? Yep, you make the rules?

Yeah, a bigger upside the right. If you do end up scaling the business, if you do, we'll go over those stats in a second. If you get the upside to beautiful thing. Let's stop for a second. It sounds like we're anti business. But this is all reality. I just want to put it on the table here. It's what percentage you and I just pulled these stats up before this. You put this together. And I think both of our jaws dropped on this. But yeah, percentage of businesses that around 15 years later, what's that number

was 25%.

So 75% of businesses are out of business within 15 years. That's crazy. So let's open those stats. So this isn't the guys this is business period. But it was 20% fail in the first two years. Why did they fail in the first two years? What do you what would you what would you be your? What's the main number

one? My number ones is my number two, two things would be under capitalization and poor leadership. Yep,

it's not enough cash, you say I'm going to do a shoestring and he's doing 100 grand. And he said, I don't want to do I don't want to go on for 250 or 300,000 Well, you don't get a loan for 300,000 Because you want to spend 300,000 You're gonna loan for 300,000 Because you want to spend 180 or 200, then you want to not take the last 100 Or give it back. But you don't want to not have it. You don't want to you don't want to have exactly the amount of dollars that you say you need. That's silly, because if you run out, you close your doors and you lose all 200 And you go back, yeah, you want to get more than you need. So 20% fell in the first two years 45 In the first five years 45% almost half in five years and 65 in the first 10 years. That's crazy guy so so it's known Joe to own a business. It's not for everyone that's listening. It's something that's only if you're wired for it. So if you reach out to align life, and you go through our process to learn about business, learn about the deliverables that aligned life also provides will also help you understand if you're wired or not wired for business. And that doesn't mean will deter you from doing so. But will guide you on what type of team you need. If you're not innately designed with the behaviors for business, then we have to guide you on what team you should build around you. Right?

What do you mean by that? So like, I think we break it down to there's three types of doctors, there's a caregiver to a doctor, there's a business builder, doctor, and there's an entrepreneur, doctor, so So as a caregiver, Doctor Who's you want to be around you.

So if your caregiver doctor, that means that your lower dominance, you're not as extroverted, and you you're good at systems, and you're pretty compliant, and you want to provide care, you're obsessed with the clinical side, which I was, I just love to giving care, love, love, love it, I know you were too. So you can progress years later to an entrepreneur, if you grow and your consciousness expands. But you won't change your personality, like you won't become dominant overnight or something like that. But you will mature a little bit. So if you're a caregiver, you're gonna need someone who is who can be a marketer who can shake the trees and bring in the business. So whether it be manager that is dominant and extroverted, but you just got to be careful, if you're low dominant owner, with a high dominant manager, you have to have a really strong connection, respect and relationship that you nurture, so that you can manage that because it's very hard to manage a dominant, if you're lower dominance it's in it could put you in pain if you try to own a business, but you're going to need someone that can hold the business together. And I've seen this work, where the manager has such respect for the clinical conviction of the doctor that's lower dominant, she has such admiration and honor, for the skill of that doctrine, even though they're in a highly dominant, that they respect them to that level that they can have that dominance and control the business. Does that make sense? Like, but you got to have some 100 more than just an employee, there's got to be some connection.

Yeah, and it's got to be also written out in that scorecard, like, you know, when you're that lower dominance, the way to bring, you know, the transactional relationship, because, you know, the caregiver is going to be more relational, to bring that transactional leader out, it has to be kind of filled out inside of a scorecard job description, these are expectations, because then it's easier for you to fall back on that

that's such a massive point. The lower the dominance you are, if you're managing people, the clearer the expectations have been because there's less conflict needed. And know that a high conflict, high confrontation creates simplicity, low confrontation creates complexity. How do you confront you deal with safety, you read the book, Crucial Conversations, how to crave safety and have those crucial conversations, which is high conference Conversations. I'm from New Jersey, when you say hi confront, I will head back to you, and then you until you get my point. That's not the way to do it. When it's doesn't mean abusive. It doesn't mean steamrolling. It doesn't mean and I learned this because that's how I approached unfortunately, in the beginning, but crucial conversations taught me how to create safety. So the person you're talking to could go into a position of vulnerability, and they would open up and we would learn together. And again, what I said last time and one of the one of the books I was reading is the person is not a direct report where you reporting the person above you, but we like calling with direct support. I don't know why that resonated. I brought it up on the last time I love it. Term. Yeah, support, like someone that's guiding you not hurting you, you know, or or disciplining you but but but D hassling us what they use in the book to D hassle your your people. But that was great. So anyway, that's that's big man that is really big about how to build that relationship. And the scorecard. Think about it, if you don't know what the expectation are. And you're low dominant. You can't, you can't handle that. Because you got your screw trouble, you're in trouble. So, so,

like for me, Joe. So I think when it comes up for me, for a caregiver, they need a strong office manager, and they need a strong marketer, that can be the same person or they can have two different ones, but also back to your money conversation. One of the places where like, oh, it cost us 180 To build everything out, but they don't put any money to cover overhead or to market so then they can't figure out why they don't grow. So again, if you want to grow to 250 500 You need to be spending, you know, four to $8,000 a month to grow that.

Well. You need a good point if you're a character If your personality profile is different, and you got to hire these people, you may have to hire them day one. So you may be wider budget, which is going to be scarier initially, but safer within three to six months. Because you're going to, you're going to move fast. If you're low dominant, usually high compliance and high systems. For that you're going to have a good system, just make sure you honor what Cliff is talking about. And what he teaches. Inside of the Align life system, when we go over team building, is what you teach, and scorecards and making sure that there's really clear accountability, because low dominance requires really clear accountability and really refined expectations, and you can run the business very successfully.

Yeah, great. So um, so

let's, let's define what you brought this, you started with this, you started with a job versus a business. So what is I talked about my accountant, he called it a velvet prison. And he called that some business. No, that was his interpretation of business. And that is a job, he owned his job. If he left, got away from that desk with piles of paper on it that I saw every time I went in there, then he didn't make money. So he had he bought himself a job, he bought it. I mean, he put the money out. And then he just sat there and did the work. And if he left, he made no money. So let's talk about if you want to own a business, and now you guys are mature, hopefully, you've been listening to this podcast, if you haven't, go back and listen some of the previous episodes. But those stages, we talked about launching a clinic to get off the ground. And we talked about building the clinic, scaling it, which is leveraging it bringing on more doctors opening more clinics, and then exit. My point, and then let's talk this through clip, is if you don't want to scale it, meaning bringing on more doctors or opening more clinics, because that's the leverage. That's when you stop exchanging time for money. Even though you make a lot of money for your time, you're still having a job, you're exchanging time for money. And build scale is when you leverage if you don't want to scale. And you're not planning an exit. Don't do launch. don't own a business. Because the stress in a launch is designed to help you appreciate the scale, and the revenue and scale of freedom and scale and the ability to have value in an x. Right. That's it

100% I like and just double click on that. Because when I first heard that, it was like when we first started having these conversations, this was months ago about this, like, huh, I never thought about that. But if we don't, if you don't want to scale, then don't do those other ones. Join a team find somebody who does want to scale and create because with a 75% failure rate, it's not a good gamble. Like most chiropractors want to have a career 15 to 30 years. And so 75% of businesses go out, like, why put yourself at that risk. I mean, it's not even like it's 5050 odds,

ya know, and in a line life, what I love, the process that we go through is people that want to go through our discovery process, which is discovering the, the asset value of the line life opportunity is we start with two things. We look at your business behavioral profile, to see how you're wired, and are you wired, innately for business. And then we look at your core values. And then we have a discussion. These are the values that you want life. That's that's how you define success. That's how you define in essence, happiness, or these values. And then we know how you're wired. And then what we do, it's a beautiful process, then we look at the different tracks that we have available in line life. Internships, Business Builders, caregivers, clinic owners, enterprise doctors, with multiple locations, whatever it is, we look at your values, we look at the way you're wired, and then we have a meaningful conversation to help you on your direction your career. And for new doctors. I can't tell you the value of that conversation. But it's a million dollar conversation because it can actually influence and help guide you to the path that is innately designed for who you are. And that's not how we did it the first 10 years it was more like this is the way to be successful. Because what we thought is we felt we define success. And that's a foolish proposition. You cannot find success for another human being and I'm speaking to choir talking to clip on this because he can write my book songs. But you can't define success for someone and when you open a business you got it you got to know how to define your success right?

Yeah, their vision has to fit inside. You know, if you're going to work for a doctor your vision has to fit within that like it has to be in the same direction. Otherwise,

so it aligned like you know what we wanted do is we don't care where you want to be, you want to be an employee, we have opportunities for employees where you can run a clinic, you want to be a partner, we have doctors looking for partners. You want an investor, we have opportunities for people to invest in your clinic, you want to own a clinic, you can own a clinic, 100% you want to do multiple clinics, we can plan that day one, five clinics and how we can help you lay it out. So it doesn't matter. It's just we attach opportunity to who you are what you want. And in line life, really, I love the slogan of we can have you in business for yourself, but not by yourself. So you own a business. Yeah, but you're not sitting there by yourself. And that's what I didn't like, you know, owning the business, especially in the beginning stages. I'm just such a team player kind of person. I like being amongst other chiropractors. My all my friends are Pyros, amen. My business, Cairo's by, you know, my association. My family's got Cairo's it's, you know what I mean? It's just I love the camaraderie personally. So I like tribes and groups. That's another reason why we put it together.

Yeah, I felt like I was watching. You're like, Who do I hang out with? Yeah. So when you're talking about a line line, I think one of the things like there's different vehicles to do different things. And you know, some people say, oh, a minivan sucks. Not if you have four kids that minivans awesome. But if you have, you know, but if you're going on a date, and minivan kind of sucks, but if you want to, if you have a convertible yet, eight kids, the convertible sucks. But if you're going on a date, it's awesome. And so I think the six tracks that we have inside of a line life will allow you to get to your destination in the most effective and most efficient way. And so for me, it's like identifying who you are in which vehicle you should be in, will allow you to reach the most success. And I always go back to what Buffett said he says the best way to get rich is not lose money.

I love that. And you know I backtracking cliff on what I was saying is if you don't want to do scale and exit, then don't do launch. Don't on the business. But there are creative relationships out there that let's say you want to open some clinics, let's say in the line life, you say I love launching, I love opening? Well, you could open and put doctors in place in an employee relationship. This is unique. On a general stereotypical stance, what I was saying holds true, which is, if you don't want to scale and exited a business, then don't start just being a boy. But I just want to contradict myself a little and say that there is unique ways in which we can take a value of like I love opening clinics. And there can be unique creative ways of creating an employee relationship where you're opening clinics or you get a piece of the exit. So really be expressive, and open and vulnerable and communicative in your discussion in an employee relationship and tell them what your true desires are, it may not fit in the organization you're with. But at least express it what I what I was doing is challenging my thought, like I just love opening new clinics have the conversation. Because things can be built around your values, if it's a mature organization, they want to serve your needs, really. But as a general rule, don't if you don't like launching, and I mean, if you don't want to scale and exit then don't don't start. Now if you start an employee relationship, you may mature three years later with experience and you may become a your confidence that was blocked due to fear, may your innate self may come out and things could change. So some of the profiles, they usually you are who you are. But there could be some modification if there was so much fear and unknown in the relationship. So that's something to be aware of, as well.

Yeah. And I think like, I'll put the six tracks. So if you guys go to this podcast below, there'll be the six tracks inside of align life. So you guys can kind of see what those are. But one of those is planning to partner plant, you know. So that's what that relationship is like, I don't quite have the business acumen yet. But I if I have the right leader, then I can gain that. And that's a, you know, 12 to 36 month process. And then then you're like, okay, cool. Yeah, I got it. And that's one of the relationships I have right now. Like the doctors, a great doctor, he's a driver, he's a business owner. He's, you know, probably that top 5% business entrepreneur, but didn't quite feel comfortable with the business acumen, and didn't want to put his family at risk. So then we partnered up, so I can teach them over the next three years to be a CEO. So this

way, he's not putting, like helped me understand. But so he's not putting up the money. He's not taking the loan himself. He's not responsible for paying the staff like that first year. But he is, in a sense, holding the framework of this thing together and learning and building, right. I mean, he's, he's doing the work of an owner without risk. So he pays for the risk later in a reasonable exchange, because he didn't take the risk upfront. And he gets to scale faster versus being an associate for when he wants to be a business owner for a longer period of time and then having to start fresh in 10 years. Right? He starts now, because of your guidance and leadership.

Yeah, like, by the time we're done, he should be, like 10 years of experience versus, with the three years of him and I together, so he'll gain seven years of growth and our three years,

I think that's awesome. And it's all inside the line life system. So he's still leveraging the systems, the tools, the trainings, the market, the brand, and yeah, that's beautiful. So that is another relationship that can be exposed and utilize. So yeah, if anyone's interested in going through the stages of the discovery process, which is looking under the hood, of the deliverables, and really spending the time which none of us spend enough time looking at values, and looking at how we're wired and looking at some of the profiling of ourselves, so we know ourselves better, and we know our values better. And then we can see which track is best for us in our career. I think that's a great conversation.

Let's just tee this up for the next week. So next, next week, we are going to be diving into core values, and why those are important. So we start with personal core values, and we'll dive into business core values. And so, but today, I think the biggest takeaway, like really, like Joe said, understand who you are, and what role to put yourself in because I think that's where chiropractors go sideways, they they, you know, they put themselves in a situation, if everything goes right, they'll succeed. But if one thing, one thing goes off, then the whole thing goes sideways. And that's where these businesses fail. And so what we're saying is, don't put that at risk. Figure out who you are, you know, talk to an expert, talk to Dr. Joe Esposito. Figure out like, who you're hardwired to be, and then go into that situation and be happy and healthy for the rest of your life. Enjoy

the journey more every single day and not wait for the outcome. Don't wait for tomorrow. Don't wait to be happy. At the end. Don't wait for success. At the end. Be successful every day, have prosperity every day, enjoy your family every day. Have a harmony in your life every day, as much as you can. Because we're all gonna go through adversity. But mitigating those problems, limiting the scar tissue, even though you're gonna gain some in your own right, just in your journey through life. And if you own your own business, take the test step out of the business on Friday, and not show up for two weeks. And let us know how much what percentage of your income was sustainable. You sustained 80%? When you walk out that door for two weeks, 70 6050? None? Do you lose money, you still gotta pay overhead. So do you lose 15 grand a month because you have no income, but you got to pay your bills, what would happen if you left now for two weeks, that's what I want to know. And if and if it's a negative number, meaning you still have a lot of expenses and staff to pay for but no money, then you don't own a business. You bought yourself a job. And you have to learn how to mature that because you're still in your career, you're still in business. And you have to gain awareness of how to turn that job into the business that you created that you deserve, that your family deserves. That creates freedom, prosperity, durability, transferability exit opportunity, there's so much beautiful value if you own the business, but too many chiropractors are suffering with buying themselves a job and they never really had a true business by definition, that it's that they don't have to live inside of it. So if we can help in that realm, if you're suffering right now and you're you know, you have a job and you just want some insights. Let us have a short conversation and doing so if your student Cliff everything you said I'm saying up right and enjoying the journey. It's

our you guys killer episode today. Joe, thanks for your insights. Next week, we're gonna be talking about core value. So I look forward to seeing you guys on that one.