Reigniting Purpose

Welcome to the Align your practice podcast is Dr. Joe Esposito. I'm excited to have a guest today Dr. Brian Bord, Brian, how you

doing? Fantastic, Joe, thanks for having me. Are you welcome

this this episode, Brian, we're going to be talking about reigniting purpose. And I thought you were the ideal person. Because you just spoke at a club, you're fired up, you've I've heard you, the fire in your belly whenever we talk about this profession, about helping people just about, you know, the journey that we're on. So I just wanted to wanted to welcome you. And I'm excited to hear some of the dialogue that we'll go through about purpose today. Okay, I thought Brian, like when we get into purpose, to me, it's when we look at it's the how, I'm sorry, it's the why it's a why you get up in the morning, it's the why you start a business the why you got into chiropractic, the the why is so essential for us, when we're building a business, or in fact, a relationship, personal, intimate relationship. When you have children, there's a why when you start a business, there's a why when you any behaviors, there's always a why. And that's that's purpose. So the more convicted we are in our purpose, the more chance we have to gain success. And we all know the chiropractor that had this life changing adjustment, right from from rejuvenation of their life or reduction of disease or from disability to function. It's easy to build a practice when you have that, why story that strong. But the other side of it, I realized is when we don't have the how we don't have the system, we don't have the pathway, we don't have the course, that purpose begins to get damaged will withers then it gets it gets less transparent. And there's less precision on the focus around that purpose. And we start to lose ground. You since you've been alive. If you've been scaling and growing, you're just such a convicted person. And I'd love you to tell a little about your story. Well, first, tell us how you got here. Well, you've been in practice for a while, give us a little background.

Yeah, so I have been in practice for over 23 years now. And the first 19 years of my career was spent, really in a series of opening up clinics, I started out in my own practice, which i i purchased from a chiropractor up in Northeast Ohio, who had basically set it up and then just stepped back. So I stepped in very, very early in the life of that clinic and ran that for about three years as a personal injury to workers compensation clinic and then moved down to Charleston, where I worked in a wellness clinic with a number of massage therapists for a while. And then I spent a couple of years after that working for a different franchise, and went from there to more of a kind of a holistic medical practice that was relatively short lived, and then opened up my own mobile chiropractic service. And it was at that time that I was kind of discovered and recruited into the Allied life family. And it had to admit, it did take a little bit of of time for me to kind of come around. But I am extraordinarily happy that I did. And it's been a fantastic experience the entire time.

That's awesome. So you've had it's interesting. You've had the wellness experience, the medical integration, the mobile, I mean, you've touched so many different different types of opportunity in the industry. So you have, you definitely have your share of scar tissue on the journey. And when we met, I knew you had some hesitation because I know you've been with other franchise groups and other models and whatnot. And I knew it took a little bit for you to warm up to the idea of unifying what when we talk about purpose, I feel in energetically from when I met you to now even the last two years, you are so empowered into the purpose. You're grounded more as a chiropractor, your journey more success. What do you feel is the gap between it's the same purpose, right? It's not like you lost. You came out of school. You didn't want to be a Cairo or you weren't focused right? What helped to refine and we build a reignite as this podcast is about reignite purpose.

Well, it's kind of like what you said before where you can come out of chiropractic school with a crystal clear purpose, and a drive and a vision to where you want To be, but if you don't have the systems in place that you need to, to guide and to focus that drive and that in that direction, then what you wind up doing is the passion will quickly get burned out. And I found myself getting burned out on multiple occasions to where I was frustrated on a daily basis that because I knew what I had to offer, and I knew what chiropractic was, what chiropractic could do for people, I just had no idea how to effectively bring that message to people and to really effectively translate that message when they got into my office. So what they knew was pretty much on the ground, what I was giving them at the time. But without the overall framework that I needed to make sure that I was doing everything that I needed to do to not only get my patients physically improved, improve their overall health, that they were going to see that on the most fundamental kind of shallow level. And then if we didn't have the framework in place to make sure that everything was being done on a granular level every single day, then the message was either going to be just not heard in the first place or completely lost.

Yeah, no, that makes so much sense. Yeah, when we talk about, you know, purpose. And you say burnout, burnout occurs, it's not the amount of work that creates burnout, burnout occurs when we're not living our core values. So if we're doing things we don't want to do, that don't honor our values, we burn out meaning we have less energy, when we're done than when we started. So what I always loved in practice is I left my office at the end of the day with more energy than when I came in, in the morning. And that's because you're living inside of your value set. So first is the value set is making sure and one thing I'm really excited about in the line life is when we meet new doctors, we used to try to define success. For people, this is what success looks like this amount of money, time and effort. And we're like no, two years ago, I made the change, that we're gonna allow the doctor to define success based on their values, and then we decide if we can serve their definition of success inside of their value set. So it's a whole different model. And it's weird in a franchise model, because can franchise is known as consistent outcomes, right? We still get the same outcome with the patient. But we may deliver in a different contests context, to honor the doctors values. And the last thing I'll say about that is the frustration we experience in life from where we are to where we want to go inside of our purpose, I want to have a million dollar clinic, I want five clinics I want, I want to be off by four o'clock, whatever it is you're trying to accomplish in your practice, the frustration occurs from where you are to where you want to go, and not having a clear path to get there. I could be 400 pounds, and I want to be in shape. Well, I know my purpose, I want to be in shape, but I don't know the path to get there. So in a line life, our goal is to find out your value set, and look at the context of how we can get you to honor your values by by looking at how you define success, and sometimes we even help a doctor redefine success, because they're caught in the success of what their mommy said their dad, their, their neighbor, their teacher, their preacher, whoever it may be defined success. And they're actually living under the concept of somebody else's definition, success. I mean, how many of us have seen miserable wealthy people that may have money, but they have no value of the number one currency in life, which is happiness. So when you came into my life, tell us kind of the journey. And I gotta compliment you, you are a systems guy, more than myself. And I wrote a lot of system. I mean, you follow systems here, you're speaking, you speak with such conviction, I think you're one of the better speakers we have in your organization. When you speak, it's, it's just so refined. You're just and you have so many of these skills, and the average person would think you know, that, on success, people that don't reach their potential, they didn't have the skill sets, you had the skill sets, but put it all together, give us three or four pieces inside the alignment system that you felt grabbed all of your values, or I'm sorry, your strengths. And boom, allowed you to scale to one of the highest income producing clinics per square foot, the number one in our organization, which we'll talk about on another podcast about the per square foot. But tell us what three or four things help you bring your, your strengths together.

Well, the biggest thing and this is something that I've actually thought about recently, this is something that I never realized until I connected with you, and you started to, to work with me very, very closely. One thing that I did not realize, I mean, obviously, every chiropractor that graduates from chiropractic school brings different strikes to the table, some might be absolutely excellent adjuster, some might be absolutely excellent speakers. But one thing that I did not realize is that it's, it's foundational, there is a foundational difference between many, many chiropractors, and we have different classifications for that some, some chiropractors are caregivers, some chiropractors are practice builders, some chiropractors are managers, some chiropractors are full blown CEOs. And to not realize this and to have that frustration to where I believed that, you know, I've got all these skills, I've got so much that I can bring to the table, why are I able to take this next level. And as it turns out, I'm a caregiver. I'm a caregiver chiropractor, which means that I'm the one that's going to be putting hands on patients, and I'm going to be educating them. And I'm going to be giving them the actual adjustments, and doing all the work in hopefully a very empathetic and compassionate way. But one thing that really strikes me about what allied life has to offer is that the systems that we're working within, it doesn't really matter what direct kind of chiropractor you happen to be, the system itself, is going to use your strength to be able to build it up in a much more effective manner, which is the whole reason I mean, I've working in the in the space that I'm in, you're right, it's been absolutely amazing to me to see the growth that we've managed to achieve in the space that we are the space that were given. But that just is a solid, solid proof of the effectiveness and the strength of having that framework, because I can tell you right now, if I did not have that system in place, then there is no way that I be seeing the overall level of success that I am seeing right now. So that's been the strongest thing that I've seen. Second thing is that there is an absolute feeling of family and support within the aligned life system. And having been in Charleston for the past 19 years. This is something that I came to realize recently as well that I know, fairly well, a total of six chiropractors in my area, I'm sure that some of that is my fault, but for the most part, chiropractors tend to be a relatively solitary lot. So I know six chiropractors in the area, and four of them are allied life. Yeah. Is that right? And it is absolutely insane. And it's, it's, it's been definitely very refreshing and very reassuring to know that whatever help I might need on a daily basis, with whatever it is that I have, that I know exactly who I can get on the phone, to help me out and overcome that hurdle on a moment's notice. So I mean, that's been fantastic. So those are, those are, those are two of the things that just kind of popped into my head as being very, very prominent. And really what makes a huge difference between everything that I've experienced up until now.

If first parts interesting, because you said like, like, even myself as a CEO, we want to judge us we're all by judgment, right? We judge so I'm a visionary. And if I don't know systems, I'm not as good at systems. I would judge myself, you were saying your caregiver until you knew your caregiver, you was kind of like maybe I should be a CEO, maybe I shouldn't be this maybe because we all live in constant self judgment. And I like that what you said because my, my my life purpose is to help people through self awareness reach their potential, that's my life purpose. So it's really exciting because very commonly in franchising, the mindset is, well I don't want to be cookie cutter I don't want to be and what I've I feel we've done really well is take the concept of systems and put it package it into an individualized method of deliverable because we're all different people. Now we don't have to answer the phone different. We don't have to run our analytics and our data different we don't have to do the digital marketing different. We don't have to have different colors on the walls. But we have to in a line like what we committed to is authentically honoring the human and where they sit which what you just said made me feel like we're honoring that which is you're a caregiver, you've scaled being a caregiver. And that doesn't mean you can't manage because you're soon going to be training doctors, right? You're going to be doing other things over the next three to four years that are going to bring more value. But it's all within your innate genius, which is, which is so exciting. So that was the first thing and system so you are able to use this systems and get scale on that. The second is family. And yeah, we live in a fragmented industry, stereotypically yet chiropractors aren't there more scarcity and more fighting each other and supporting each other. And that's something I committed my life purpose to. To bring together is chiropractors is let's work together. I like the abundance mindset where, you know, we're feeding each other patients, we're helping each other. We're not like, that's mine. I don't like the concept that we own people. We own patients, it's like, let's serve the community and make it healthier. So I do appreciate the family thing, because I built a line life because I want to be around people that honor my values. They're healthy mindset, proactive thinkers, you know, and guess who all my friends and half my family and I'm around chiropractors. So it's, it's just I think it's healthier that way, because we honor the same value system. You did? You did say you worked in another franchise system, which we don't need to go into details. But is there any differences on this style and another business model and alignment?

Yeah, and the absolutely, because, like you're saying, that's the way to be able to really effectively use the individual strengths of the doctor, where as the, the franchise model that I was working with before was basically volume, it was just pure volume, basically, get them in the door, get them hooked up, and turn them into regular clients. And the the personal strengths of the doctor, that was an aside, it was an afterthought. The actual strength of the adjustment was an afterthought, there was no real training in how to use your strengths, how to talk to the patients, how to have them understand why it is that you're asking them to come in on a regular basis. It's purely a pain based model. And really, it's it's not gonna say dehumanized humanizing, but it is devaluing. It's devaluing for the doctor and as devaluing of chiropractic itself for the patients. Because it encourages reflexive behavior. So I'm going here on a regular basis, because this guy told me to, and that's it. And then the second that the person loses focus on why it is that they're doing what they're doing, then they disappear. And they've had a mediocre to bad experience with chiropractic. And that kind of sets the tone moving forward. So it's kind of, it's kind of interesting to see that now that I'm working with Lyme life, and I have the the ability to really be able to communicate with my patients, I get people that had had that experience before. And I'm able to take them to that next level, and really make them understand, you know, turn them from you know, maybe they're like a low level believer, but turn them into understand errs and know that they are in the right place. And that coming to see me on a regular basis, is what they need to do if they want to be healthy and reach their personal goals.

Yes, same thing is an interesting the same thing we're doing with you to reach your personal goals. It's the exact message. So that's a culture of aligned life, you're helping them reach their goals. So it's, again, you're not defining what their goals are either, just like I'm not defining what success looks like to you. When you meet a patient, where what are you trying to accomplish? Right, that's what you do. And then you kind of build a plan to get them to whatever it is that they're trying to accomplish. So it's so authentic. I really, I really love that. So really in align life if we were to sum it up, but I know we're coming towards the close of this discussion. It's about outcome. And when we talk about purpose, we also have talked about philosophy and the Align life philosophy as we focus on outcome. Well, what outcome is it? Well, we're looking at the outcome of the Doctor, what success are you looking to achieve? We have some doctors that come on at one To build five clinics in five years, we have some clinics that a woman who wants to have a child and they want to have compressed times and hire another doctor so they can have their values met. So the first question we have to the doctor, is, what does success look like? What are you looking to do? And then figured out, how are you wired? And then third, what's the plan to get there? But what's interesting, and you just helped me see this realization that culture carries to the patient. When you see a patient, you're asking them, What is your goal? What's the problem? What are you trying to solve? And then you're building a plan to get them to reach their goal. Right. I mean, that's, that's a difference of a different group that may in chiropractic that may be feature rich, which is come get adjusted. It's about the actual service, the adjustment. Our mindset is about the the outcome. Would you agree with that as an overall differentiator?

No, absolutely. And then that's why we ask the question on the first day, we we base all of our future discussions with the patient off of their personal health goals? What is it that you want to achieve that may or may not be related to the symptom that brought you in the door here today? And whatever it happens to be, if it's within our power, we're going to help you reach that goal.