From Recession to Revenue: Dr. Austin Cohen on Chiropractic Growth, Systems, and Strategy [Episode 120]

Molly: Welcome back to the show, my friends. Is it like summertime? So excited. Today's episode, I think you're really gonna like, to me, the whole thing felt like this big, like locker room pep talk. Like I was like, like I was like ready to go. So it's with Dr. Austin Cohen. He is a chiropractor and let's, let's say chiropractic business coach.

I mean, I should have his actual bio pulled up, but like, I just hate reading bios. 'cause to me I'm like, it's just so flat. So, yeah, so he's a chiropractor in the Atlanta area. I first heard him speak at Chiro Wealth Con back, uh, last October, and he was just very fascinating the way, way he has scaled his clinics.

He also has a really cool software called Chiro 180. That, well, you'll hear him talk about it on the episode. The key takeaways from this episode, I feel like is he talks so much about community building and relationships and networking. He opened his first practice as a young buck, right? In 2009, if everybody remembers.

I do. I graduated college in 2008, so I remember it's when the recession hit. So he grew this practice during the recession. Um, he talks about building assets and how you can think long term about your business value and not just like the short term. Income. He talks a lot about creating systems and experience.

Like consistency, persistence, all this kind of stuff. So like I said, I felt like this was just a very, like I said, pump up pep talk type episode. Also with some really actionable things that you can do from this. There's one thing he talks about that's really gonna make you think, woo. It's about like the people that you surround yourself with.

It made me kind of how I was like, oh my gosh, thank God I have like these amazing people who are in my inner circle, and how like the people you surround yourself can really make or break your business too. So. I really think you're going to have a lot of takeaways out of this episode. As always, please DM me because.

Again, like little old me just sitting by myself in my house recording to my computer. So, you know, anytime you DM me and give me feedback, I love it. I'm like, oh, someone's listening. I mean, I can see all the downloads. I can't remember the stats, but we're in like, we're doing great. Like we're doing some top percentages with downloads, which is really exciting.

So anyway, I hope you guys love this episode. Oh my god, did I just say you guys, my southern grandmother would be rolling over in her grave. I've lived out of Alabama too long. All right. I hope y'all have a fantastic day. Thanks for letting me be in your ears and enjoy this episode with Dr. Austin Cohen.

Hey, welcome to Holistic Marketing Simplified. This podcast boils down to the fact that we wholeheartedly believe that more humans need to know about holistic health solutions, and you didn't go to school to learn how to be a. Full-time content creator and show up on Instagram and do all of this marketing stuff all day, every day.

So let's come hanging out while we chat. All thanks. Easy in your marketing and my goal is that you shift your mindset around your marketing from a quote, should to a I get to more dream patients and clients. Yes, please.

Dr. Abby: Hey, I am Dr. Abby chiropractor in Apple Valley, California, and I listen to the Holistic Marketing simplified podcast.

Trust me, you'll love it too.

Molly: Alright, Austin, I am so excited to have you on the show today. I got to first hear you speak when I was at Chiro Wealth Con back in Miami and in the fall. So yeah, glad to have you here.

Dr. Austin: Thanks for having me. This is fun to finally reconnect again. I would love to be in Miami right now, by the way, that was a great place, great location to be at.

Molly: Oh, I know. The day we flew out, you know, 'cause the weather was terrible, right? Like, when we were there, it was like, not Miami, Miami eating. Um, but that last day it was nice. And luckily my flight wasn't out until the afternoon, so I was like, oh, I'm going to the pool. So I told my husband, I was like, when we're in the th throws of Ohio winter next year, we're just hopping.

We're just gonna look at flights and hop on a flight and go to Miami for the weekend.

Dr. Austin: I mean, listen, if anybody want, if anybody's listening to this and you wanna have a sold out event. Do it in Miami and like November, December, you will sell out. Yes. Based on just weather. So I highly recommend this. Good, good tip right there for anybody who wants to sell out an event easily.

Molly: Do you know I've been to one other chiropractor's event in Clearwater, Florida twice in January, and both times it was awful weather. It was freezing. It was windy. And then I go to Miami like all excited and it was like, it wasn't freezing, but it was like over Kat. You remember how windy it was? It was like.

I was like, what is it with me and trying to go to Florida? I never get the good weather rule.

Dr. Austin: Other two. If Molly's going to the event of Florida in November, December, don't go. Don't

Molly: go because I will bring somehow bad weather with me. Yeah, so I excited to talk to a, a fellow. Are you from, uh, Atlanta originally?

I'm

Dr. Austin: not. I'm from Charleston, South Carolina originally. Hence my, my backwards Charleston. You know, obviously I don't even know what, what, how this became a trend, by the way, the upside down backward logo thing.

Molly: I didn't know it was a trend. Maybe I'm not cool.

Dr. Austin: I didn't know it was either. And actually all my friends who are my age, like over 40 look at and they're like, why is your hat backwards?

I'm like, I don't know. And then all the kids who are under 40 think they go. Dude, I love your hat. That's so cool. Like,

Molly: look at me. I'm still relevant.

Dr. Austin: I'm still relevant. Yes.

Molly: Well, I'm from being from Birmingham originally when I saw you in Atlanta, I was like, oh yeah, we used to, I obviously in Atlanta all the time.

So tell us a little bit about you and, uh, what you do and if you are not a chiropractor. 'cause I, I still, I have a lot of non chiros who listen to the show.

Dr. Austin: I love that. I, I actually, I am a chiropractor. No, I graduated, I went to, I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. Like I shared, I ended up going to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, thinking I wanted to be a dentist.

Uh, realized as we got to senior year and then after that was like, this is not for me. I was doing a lot of externships and for those that know me, know, I'm pretty self-motivated guy, usually just kind of grinding, doing a lot, and I've, and I've always been like that. And so I remember sitting in. A chair watching one of the students because we were doing our externship program and one of the dental students was like drilling in somebody's mouth and he like, he like slipped and like hit their tongue and I was like, oh, this is gross.

Don't wanna do this for the rest of my life. Yeah, it was disgusting and uh, realized that this is not what I wanna do for the rest of my life. So really started thinking about what I wanted to do. Took that, uh, gap year off after college and my mom said, why you got a major in pre-med biology? Why don't you consider being a chiropractor or a physical therapist?

I was like, okay. I went to a physical therapist, visited one of their offices, was a little disappointed, just more so from the treatment standpoint because there was a lot of people coming in who I felt like weren't getting long-term results, and it was just probably, you know, obviously it was obviously the location I went to.

I have a lot of good friends who are physical therapists that do long-term care, maintenance care as well. But then I walked into this chiropractic office and it was for me, everything I would want in healthcare. Uh, there was no barrier of a window between that person and the uh, uh, office manager. Uh, they had a welcome sign for me.

Doctors like highfiving, everybody. I remember talking to patients and like, Hey, what, what, what, what brings you here? What, where? Like, where does it hurt? And they go, oh no, I just come here because I play for the hockey team here and I wanna like, perform better. It's like, what? Light bulb. That's cool. Yeah, and then like I saw kids getting adjusted and the next day I applied to chiropractic school.

It was hon. Honestly, it was one of the best. And it's like, cool how, like, you know, we all, everyone has a story about how certain things happen to them in times of like, we all go through really hard times, but then somehow those hard times really define who we are and long term. And it's hard sometimes to see it in the moment, but down the road you usually end up seeing why God puts you through those situations.

And so for me it's like, you know, I went to chiropractic school graduate in oh nine for those that are my age. You know, in oh nine was like one of the worst years. Like you bought a house for $500,000 in oh nine or like in oh five. Now in oh nine it's worth like $300,000.

Molly: Yeah,

Dr. Austin: right. Like everyone's losing all this money.

And so it's like going through a time of such a hard time like that in order to open a practice. In a recession was honestly, to me, one of the greatest things that could happen to me. And it was hard going through that, of course. Right. And you're thinking like, gosh, if only I was born five years earlier.

Hmm. If only I was born three years later, you know, and, and you start questioning all of these things. But I'm so grateful to have gone through that because I wouldn't be where I am today. And I, and I wouldn't have been able to handle COVID as well as I did. I wouldn't be able to handle right now fears of recession if it wasn't going through those times.

And so for me, I'm still a chiropractor. I still practice. I started scaling at 14 locations now that we started scaling in 2015. I also have a software we use called Chiro 180, which helps chiropractors with create clarity in their offices and really build businesses around it. And then, uh, the other, only other thing I do is I do two events every year.

I do an event called Growth Summit for chiropractors in February. I do an event for anybody, an adventure summit, who really wants to get themselves to the next level. That's me in a nutshell, right there.

Molly: Where is this event in February though? Is it somewhere south and warm?

Dr. Austin: You know it, February, we do it in Atlanta, Georgia.

Uh, it's actually, this is cool.

Molly: Okay. Don't try to trick people to think it's warm in Atlanta and February. 'cause

Dr. Austin: last year was 74 degrees, by the way. Okay. Okay. We had it. Um, but historically that was a rare breed. Uh, it's usually the, my guess is usually in the sixties, however. We do it in a community called Serenbe, which is a self-sustainable community in Atlanta.

Oh. Everything that they have in all the restaurants is all grown locally in the farm. There's about 1200 residents in this place. Every single neighborhood is built like an Omega, and inside of it are all the walking trails. Because what they wanna make sure is everyone can walk to every single neighborhood in the community without transportation.

It is an unbelievable community. Anybody? I mean, we have a lot of people who listen to your stuff. Who are clients of yours, who came? Great experiences. I mean, obviously there's the content, which is really good. But then there's the experience of being in Serenbe in this community and it is awesome. Uh, great event.

Molly: I've heard of it before. That's actually funny you mentioned that.

Dr. Austin: Yeah. If anybody wants to Google a cool community, Google the Serenbe. It is fascinating business model of study.

Molly: Yeah. I wanna go live somewhere like that. I. It was hard when we were moving, so I was like, ah man. Like how do I get suburbia and a backyard but then like also get a walkable community.

Like can the two things coexist?

Dr. Austin: We have a place there in Sara, we have a town home there. And what's interesting is we go there and we'll stay there for a weekend and you know, it'll be like a Thursday at like 11 and everybody wants to start like day drinking. And my wife and I like. Does nobody work here?

I I don't understand what happens in this community. Literally, nobody works. It's unbelievable to me. But somehow they all can afford to live in this like, huge, massive community of high-end homes. So it's an interesting experience, but it is, it is a very special place that my family and I, and it is beautiful.

Hence why we hosted every year in Sen b. Really excited to do it again in 2026.

Molly: So what lessons, this is not something you probably thought I was gonna ask you, but going back to you talking about 2009, I remember I graduated undergrad in oh eight and I got lucky enough to where I already had a job, but it was a.

Mostly commission-based advertising sales in a newspaper. I'm like, do you remember those? Do you remember newspapers? Even in oh eight, they were on their way out. Luckily we had a little bit of an edge, 'cause it was a, it was a weekly local, just for the county I grew up in. So we didn't cover national news.

So it was the only like, you know, we were like the local Miss Betty's. Apple pie re, you know what I mean? Like very small town community. I think I made like $19,000 that year. Um, I was like still living at home. Like, I was just like, like, this is rough. This is really rough. Like this isn't really what I was expecting.

I transferred into medical sales a couple years later and was like, 'cause I was like, I wanna actually make money. But I, like I said, I remember that year vividly. So you're saying when you graduated Cairo School, you opened your own practice right away?

Dr. Austin: Yeah, so I graduated in March of 2009. Okay. And, um, it's interesting.

So I graduated, our graduation was at nine in the morning. I. We got done, let's say at about 11. All these people are having these like lunches, these after parties, everything. Okay? I actually had a meeting with the mayor of Buckhead, of the town I was going into at noon. So underneath my gown, I actually had a suit on Uhhuh, and because I was gonna meet the mayor of the town, I was ready to grind.

And I get done with graduation. I go meet the mayor and I, and the mayor's like, he goes, I'm like a 27-year-old kid, by the way. Yeah. He's like, uh, Cohen, how can I help you? What are you, what are you doing here? And how you even get this meeting? I was like, oh, well I've been reaching out to your staff for the last like year trying to get this meeting and I just wanna let you know I'm really excited to be part of this community.

I'm really looking forward to changing and transforming the healthcare of this community. And I got a big vision for what we're gonna do here. And anything you need from me, I want you to know I'm here to support you and your vision too. And he goes, just so you know, I get a lot of people that come here and tell me what you just said, and they all fail, so good luck.

He's like. Got it. Uh, okay. Um, so it was, uh, not what I thought it was gonna be, but for me it was definitely motivation to really get out there and be like, all right, I'm gonna show this guy. Like, I'm for real. And, and I, and I love challenges like that, by the way. Like to me that was such a good way to like pick my butt from day one.

Good luck buddy. You know? And then October, 2009 was when the doors actually first opened of my practice. Um, so I had that gap of six months. 'cause we had to take part four boards. Get licensed and June 25th was when I found out my scores for part four. I found 'em out at eight in the morning is when they released them at 9:00 AM I signed my lease to my place because I had the lease negotiations going on.

I was like, the second I find out I passed, I'm signing it and we're boom, we're moving onto construction. Um, so we were, it was just like nonstop. But in that time it was all marketing though. All I was doing and, and this is such, uh, what I'm gonna share right now is I think something that's so valuable is the one thing that has stood the test of time and, and you're in social media, right?

So, um, you could probably appreciate this 'cause you probably see people trying to do this more so now. And when times get, when there's fear in a marketplace, like for example, right now and there's times of uncertainty. People tend to always lean on community. So it's not that people are gonna stop spending money in in a recession or, or times that are bad, but they are gonna be selective on who they're spending their money with.

And that's why community is just so valuable. And so I spent those six months just pouring into my community. I went up Peachtree Road and back, and I'm met a thousand people. On that walk. Wow. And I did that over the six months. And I walked in and I would say, Hey, I'm Austin Cohen, I'm a chiropractor, uh, thinking about opening up a chiropractic office in the community.

And I just wanna know from you, do you think this is a healthcare, a health conscious community? And they would say, oh, for sure. Like, oh, that's great. Who would you say though is the lead doctor for health conscious in this community that's not so quick to prescribe drugs, but they really wanna promote health and they all go, I don't really know anybody.

They go, okay. Well, I just want you to know, I'm, I'm thinking about opening up here and I actually would love to be that person for this community. I'm actually doing an open house in October. I'd love to invite you to that for when that happens and keep you updated in our newsletter. And every single person said, absolutely.

'cause it was a, it was in a recession when I opened. And what everybody was looking for was just community of people to support them. Not from some like sales per 'cause. A lot of people were desperate and they, and they came off very desperate. And you see that too as well. During COVID when COVID was going on, so many chiropractors seemed so desperate on social media.

They were making decisions based on fear and that's a scary place to make decisions from. And so what, what I learned through that, uh, six months. And going through recession, the biggest learning I got was community wins every single time. It won during COVID, it won during the oh nine recession. And if there's another recession, it's gonna win during that too as well.

Mm-hmm. And social media is a great tool for people to leverage the community too, as well, to build other people up.

Molly: A hundred percent. I love everything you said because for one thing, going back to like when you were asking. Who is the person, whatever. Literally the name of the free training that I just did, the masterclass I just did, was how to become the go-to practitioner in your community.

So I love that. Like the little similarities we have there of like, that's what you are out there. Like, look, I'm gonna become a. I'm gonna come become the go-to guy. Like I'm the go-to guy. So like I said, that was the name of my, my training, which is great. And there

Dr. Austin: was no sales, right? It was no sales. It wasn't like, Hey, I'm Dr.

Cohen, by the way. We're opening up an office. Would you like to come for a free exam? It was more so, Hey, why don't you come to our open house? You can get a chance to meet people in the community. You can network, you can promote your bit, whatever you want, but. It, it was all zero sales, purely just like, is this a health conscious commuting and who do you know and would you like to come to the open house?

That's it.

Molly: Other thing I love was about like the, the networking piece, because that's actually, I have like, kind of like this four, like four main marketing foundations and one of them is I. Networking and community building, because a lot of people think, oh, social media now I don't have to go network anymore.

I just put up this great content and all these people are gonna find me. And I'm like, no, that's not, what does the word social even mean? Like, I'm like, this isn't, that's not how it works. You still have to network. So I, I do a lot of teaching, like how to actually use Instagram as a networking tool, not just a like.

Here's my billboard. It's not passive. Like a lot of people treat it as a passive marketing strategy, and it is very much not. If you can make your Instagram account become the community's go-to for like, oh, you know what, I'm gonna go see if Austin has a good recommendation for X, Y, Z, and then your, your account becomes that staple.

So I love

Dr. Austin: that. Yeah. I mean, something to think about and hopefully this never happens. Like, look at what was going on TikTok. If all these people were dependent on TikTok and TikTok went away, you lose everything. And if you have no community relationships, you're done. Community is just one of those things that will always stand the test of time.

Molly: Mm-hmm. If

Dr. Austin: somehow social media goes away, and I hope it never does by the way, 'cause uh, we rely on it too as well. And obviously that's your business and I hope it never does, but you know what, like, you just never know what could happen with anything.

Molly: I was just about to say that, that doesn't scare me because I, again, like I have relationships, like exactly what you said, like it.

Correct. I'm like, okay. And if you, if it went away, I'd just pivot.

Dr. Austin: If Instagram went away and you were like, Hey, Austin, I'm doing this like, you know, masterclass on blank, I'd be like, oh, I know Molly, her stuff is amazing, and whatever she puts out is gonna be high value. So, but that's just built on community that you and I built together, so, yeah.

Molly: Yeah, no, a thousand percent agree. My friend Kate Matheson always says, the, the best way to know if you're, you know, being quote unquote successful is like, are you having conversations? And I'm like, oh, yes. What would you say that was kind of like your pivotal moment of what shaped how you approach business and chiropractic?

Dr. Austin: Yeah, I'd say that was one of 'em for sure. Um, there's been a few. Uh, so that was definitely one. Uh, I would say another. Pivotal moment for us. Uh, I wanna say there's been a few throughout the way. One was in 2014, this was kind of scary. So what ends up happening is we signed this lease in 2009. Our business model, by the way, has completely changed.

Everything we do now is own. Uh, we don't lease anymore. That's been a huge, like, just something to learn. And we learned it from this. We signed a five year lease. We're in clinic. We're hustling, we're grinding. Patients are building. We've got literally are, we're in this like 1100 square foot. We have lines out the door sometimes because it's so busy.

It was. It was awesome. One day the landlord tells me they're selling the building and it's being torn down and I have to move. By the way, I'm 31 years old. It's hard to explain to people what the world was like back then. Like it's almost like pre COVID, post COVID, or like pre-recession, post-recession.

And a lot of people will never know this. So it's one of those things where I was either gonna lease something or I was gonna own something. And that was actually when I bought my first piece of real estate. 'cause I had 12 months, which is also scary. I was like, oh dang, I got 12 months to figure out where I'm gonna go, what I'm gonna do, end up getting an SBA loan.

And that decision really kicked off for me, kind of a new way of thinking. It, it forced me out of, more so from a serv, and this is what we were just talking about earlier, right? It's like if everyone has a SWOT analysis of threats, and for all of us, if somebody's relying on TikTok, it could be TikTok, it would be a threat if like it got shut down.

Uh, for us it was, we were signing a lease, like I'm signing a contract with somebody. They could easily like sell their building, they could kick me out. That's a threat. So it taught me how to be more strategic rather than less of survival. And so really working on my threats and converting them into strengths for us.

Um, so it made me realize that if I'm gonna build something meaningful, then I just need to think more long term, not just about income, but it also started getting me thinking about assets. And that was really what my talk was about at Cairo Wealth Con. So it's interesting, like if they never kicked me outta my space, I may still be leasing all my locations now.

Which would be very short-term thinking, not long-term, thinking about assets and more so thinking about income. So it's really just shaped how I approached everything though. Corrective chiropractic chiro 180, uh, just building systems to last and leading with vision and not fear has really been kind of the mantra now.

Molly: Okay. So I'd love to hear more about that. Like you said, like the assets versus, yeah, that's,

Dr. Austin: um. You know, we almost everybody has a certain income that they make, and you see this all the time with chiropractors, and let's just use a hundred thousand dollars as an example. What they're doing is they're earning this income, but.

Income's a fleeting thing. It's something that you spend and it depletes itself and it just goes away as time goes on. I am such a big fan of creating assets in our lives now. There's gotta be a certain point where somebody could build assets based on a certain level of income that they make. Like, you know, somebody's making 25, $19,000 a year selling newspaper ads, it's not gonna be able to be able to build assets.

But you, you pivoted yourself. And so, but, but there is a point in time though, where once your basic needs are met. And everything above that is profit for you. You could start deploying it into an asset vehicle. And so here's something that's interesting is let's have an employee right now that employee is making, let's just say a hundred thousand dollars a year.

Their overhead for their life is, let's say, just say their make. Their take home though is like $30,000. Uh, is like what they are. Like after all their expenses, they have $30,000 extra. If after three years, now they have $90,000, they could put that, you know, into a half a million dollar asset house. Right, because they're putting down basically 20% now over 20 year, or let's say over 18 years.

Okay? That's six pieces of property that they can buy at $500,000. So six times three is 18, so now they have and times and times $500,000. That's $3 million now of asset wealth they've created over this 18 years on a hundred thousand dollars. I meet chiropractors and others, other, other people, by the way, just take chiropractors out of any business person.

Somebody who starts their business and what they're doing is they're constantly taking their money, reinvesting it back into their business. They have expenses. 2018 years goes by in their life. They didn't buy any assets and now it's time comes to sell their business. And their business, let's say, is doing a half a million dollars a year in revenue.

They sell it for four or $500,000. Their associate making a hundred thousand dollars now is $3 million of asset wealth. This doctor just sold their a or their loan asset for four to $500,000. So the associates actually value net worth is worth more than the lead, the owner of that business. We see this like I, I see this so much 'cause we acquire clinics, you know, with, I've acquired 50% of the clinics I own, I've acquired from other doctors.

And it's sad because usually the clinics we're acquiring we're not paying for what they like. If they were maybe doing $500,000, we're not paying $500,000 because there may not be an associate in place. There may be no recurring revenue. It may be a pay per visit office dependent on insurance. So now the value of that asset has significantly gone down.

They have no other vehicles to produce like long-term wealth for themselves. I see this all the time. I'm such a big proponent of creating assets for everybody. For their lives.

Molly: Do you have like a, a great place that, like you've learned where you said it's been like piecemealed together over the years, but if, or 'cause there's like a great resource you would direct somebody to?

Dr. Austin: Yeah, I would. Uh, the people you hang out with, that would be the resource. And I'm dead serious, right? Like yeah, you can read all the books, but if you're talking to your friends who are not in that mindset. The comments they're gonna make are gonna bring you down. They're not gonna level you up to their level,

Molly: like, oh, that's risky.

Oh, exactly. Yeah. Oh,

Dr. Austin: what happens if a recession? What if you don't Airbnb it? Oh, you really wanna put all that work into it? Don't you wanna spend more time with your family? Do you really want to do that? Right. They start justifying and bringing you back Uhhuh if, if somebody showed me you, everyone hears this all the time.

You show me the top five people you associate with, I will tell you exactly how much money you make, what your hobbies are, what your interests are. Probably can tell you who you even voted for. I can tell you almost everything, uh, about your life. And for me, it was a matter of in 2015, leveling up the people who I associate with, who actually challenged me.

And I felt really uncomfortable being around and having imposter syndrome around. So putting myself around those people and that transformed everything in my life. I joined a group called eo, which stands for Entrepreneur Organization, um, like Elise Anos in it, Justin Brown's in it, just some of the very successful chiropractors.

But it's one of these groups where, you know, you think you're doing well, doing 500 to a million dollars a year in revenue, and then you get around these people who are doing, you know, 51 of my buddies just sold his company for $75 million. I got another buddy who was doing $5 million in revenue, uh, 20 17 20 18.

Now he's doing over a hundred. It's not about the money, and that's something that I want. If somebody's listening to this right now and they're thinking, this guy only talks about is money, that's not true. What I'm talking about, these people are making impact. Money is the byproduct of the impact these people are making.

These are very successful people who are doing really good things for a lot of other people and transforming businesses. Or they're transforming people's lives and through that they're able to have high revenue. So don't think about it from money. Think about it from the impact that they're actually creating.

'cause that's the mindset and the scale and the lens to view this from.

Molly: Well, but I wanna go back to something you said about don't you wanna spend more time with your family. I know that family is very important to you, so I think I would, well, I don't wanna answer this for you. What do you say to that?

Like you talk about the hustle and the grind and

Dr. Austin: Yeah, I, I'm big on fam. I mean, family to me is everything. I would lose. I, you know, I think about this question all the time is if I lost everything tomorrow, would I still be happy? That's the question I always ask myself. If I lost my businesses, if like, if corrective chiropractic went under tomorrow, I.

And the answer is, yeah, I actually would like, I always think about that. I'm like, whatever. I drive for Uber for now.

Molly: Yes.

Dr. Austin: And I have my family. We can still create experiences together and we just have fun. Like it's not, to me, at the end of the day, everything is around that, right? Like I do one-on-one trips with my kids every year.

My son and I are very involved in baseball. Uh, we have a farm two hours away from Atlanta that we do a lot of like experiences together. Uh, agricultural conservation, bring friends down there all the time. Like for us, for us, life is not about work and just the grind, it's really about experiences. Mm-hmm.

And taking those memories. And that's why I do Adventure Summit. So like Adventure Summit is this event I'm doing in October. It starts on Wednesday and it's done Friday. So that way everyone can have their weekends with their family By the way. On Thursday at one in the morning, we're starting at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and we're hiking 44 miles through the Grand Canyon.

There's only 16 people that are allowed to come. I actually only have two spots left, and I just launched this last week. It's 20,000 feet of elevation. Why? Because this is an experience that people will take with them the rest of their lives. All the other stuff that people have in their lives, the tangible asset, all these other things.

Those are just things that will be taken. Those, those are things that will somehow, at some point in our lives, be taken away from us. The experiences we create will never be taken away from us, and that's why Adventure Summit really got released. 'cause I, I see this a lot of, a lot of people in business just grinding and for what life is all about.

For me, it's all about relationships and experiences. That's it at the end of the day.

Molly: Yeah, no, I completely agree. As someone who, we just got back from six nights at Disney World and I was like already talking to my, my neighbors across the street or in like the Disney Vacation Club, you know, like the, have you ever looked into that?

It's insane.

Dr. Austin: Uh, one of my friends actually is involved in that. It's like

Molly: 25 grand or something to buy, you know, but it's like. I didn't think I, I'm a beach person, so I was like, I didn't think I was gonna love it as much as I did. But just like my daughter had such a great time that I, of course had such a great time and I was just like, I know I wanna go back.

I've got the bug. And I never thought I'd be the Disney person, but it was just such a great experience. But, you know, they're

Dr. Austin: spending that money for experience. Yeah. And I, you know, my buddy and I, like I said, we have a farm. My buddy and I just bought a farm recently. Um, we split it. It's a half a million dollars, we split.

And you know what, there's zero income that will come from that, by the way. Zero. But what will come from it are the experiences that we're gonna be able to create with our friends, our family. I mean, this time right now, I mean, you've heard other people say this probably too as well, is like you only have a certain number of summers with your kids.

For me, it's really about maxing those out. I do something what are called, uh, many, I dunno if you saw this, anybody who's seen this on my social media, I do what called expansion cycles. I dunno if you've heard me talk about that before. No, go for it. Essentially what it is, is I have blocks where I travel and I don't travel.

So between February 15. May 1st I do not travel because that's baseball season in June, zero travel for me. Uh, July, August. I'll travel, do like trips and different pla go to different places, uh, for work. And then between September 15th and November 15th, no travel. November 15th to February 15th. Full blown travel work.

That's why I'm doing my event in February. That's why my other event is like, where it, it just. For me, there's these expansion cycles where it's grind hard in work life, but also know that there's gonna be boundaries that are gonna be set in certain times that are pre-planned. So if I got invited to speak outside of Atlanta over a certain time, I'm not gonna go,

Molly: oh, I love that because talk about, that's decision.

I mean, decision fatigue, like that just takes it off the table for you

Dr. Austin: and, and it helps too of just like having these boundaries up of. Knowing I have, if I miss a tournament, like a baseball tournament for my son, it is the worst feeling in the world. I'd rather lose the money I'm probably gonna get from this event.

I would much rather lose that money and go to my son's baseball tournament by far. So, and by the way, if somebody's thinking in their brain, 'cause I can, I can, I can like almost like listen to the audience view right now of some people thinking easy for him to say. 'cause he probably already does well.

And you know what? They're right because my first few years of grind, there was zero travel. Actually, it was pure seven days a week, a hundred hours a week. Not, not exaggerating. It actually was a hundred hours a week of just pure grind. Wake up early. I was at gyms. I was screening at gyms every day between 5:00 AM and seven 15 in the morning.

I was at my office at seven 30, at six o'clock at night. I would then go to another gym to do screenings at, from six to 9:00 PM at LA Fitness. I was usually home by 10 o'clock and rinse and repeat every, and then on the weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, I would do these 12 hour art festivals every weekend where it was just out, uh, marketplace doing screening.

So yeah, those first five years were a grind, but I always knew that it wasn't gonna be forever. So some people aren't. In the beginning they said boundaries so early. To me, that's, I don't, I don't agree with that model, by the way. Now, what I do agree with is when you're with your family, be with your family.

When you're at work, be at work, so be where your feet are. That to me, is a mindset for sure, no matter where, where you start. But in the beginning, there is a grind that goes into place before you start creating a little bit more freedom and scalability of your time, because you're starting to hire your weaknesses.

And those people are able to help scale back that time for you to create these expansion cycles.

Molly: That's how I was in medical sales. 'cause I knew this was not my forever life. 'cause I would say I was probably working at least 70 hour weeks. I was driving a thousand miles a week. I literally put 1000 miles a week on my car.

I had this little Lexus and I was driving all over South Alabama, south Mississippi in the Florida panhandle. Then I had all of Southern California and Hawaii. I lived in Marriotts. People would like, what's your new room number? You know what I'd check out? Like if I was eating at the hotel, they'd be like, room number.

I'd be like, I don't know, like, where am I this week? Like, you know, and I knew that that was not my forever. And so I just lived way beyond, like under my means and just socked away a bunch of cash because I knew, I was like, I don't know what's next, but I know it ain't this.

Dr. Austin: Yeah. And, and listen, I hear business owners all the time, they'll say there's a gym of, uh, there's a group of people I'm friends with.

I asked them, I'll say like, Hey, uh, they're up not far from you. And I said, Hey, I'd love to come to your, I'd love to do a 5:30 AM class at your gym. 'cause I really love y'all's programming and I would love to start coming there at 5:30 AM 'cause their first class is at six. Do you know what they said to me?

They go, Hmm, but we don't like, we don't like to wake up early and do a 5:30 AM class. What? Um, I don't like waking up early two or four in the morning to do screenings at gyms. But you know what? Those are things you gotta do in the beginning. So you can't complain about your lifestyle if you're not willing to put the work in.

You see this all the time. People put boundaries up just so early and they create a lot of friction in their lives, which doesn't allow them to really get to that next level of growth. Um, say yes more when you're new in business, I. There is no such thing as a bad event. There's no such thing as a bad relationship.

Just pour into that in the beginning of time and then you start to scale that.

Molly: Yeah. I, as somebody who was recovering from some burnout, like I said, I have, I'm like getting a little, I'm like, ah, I don't know sometimes because like I said, I did definitely burn myself out and I should have some, some health issues came from that.

So I do think that's something you need to be mindful of. But I also agree that, um, I saw this meme that was like. Must be nice in quotes. And then the next one was like, yeah, it is. Get your shit together. Yeah. I think back I'm like, this didn't just happen, right? Like I had to do a lot of work to the amount of freedom I have now was intentional and paved.

Dr. Austin: Yeah. And I think for like people who are getting burned out, I mean, a lot of it comes down to. You know, I think there's a few things. One is, I, I think it's always important for everybody, no matter where you are in business, to always have something to look forward to. Because if you don't, that will lead to burnout.

So if you're just grinding a hundred hours a week and you don't have, let's say, like a weekend trip or something to look forward to planned, you'll a hundred percent burnout. 'cause then it's like, why am I doing this? For what? Yeah. And that is a definitely an opportunity where somebody could, could burn out.

Also, I think another area where people burn out too as well is where they're just not having fun or they're not passionate about what they're doing. If I wasn't pa, I'm selling one of the greatest services in the world. Like that is fun. I know in my early days though, it's very easy to have shiny object syndrome where you start getting distracted by other things that are out there.

Oh, you can make a million dollars on social media by doing this. Like you probably see this all the time, right? Like. Shiny objects syndrome from people. For example, I asked Molly to handle my social media for me and she said, Austin, we can't do that right now 'cause we need to, to focus on what we do. And I completely respect that because that's how people get burnout by the way.

Molly: Yeah.

Dr. Austin: Is just saying yes to everything that would be non in in relationship with their primary source of primary their business. The one thing I've done, I think the best over the last five years. Was get really clear on exactly who I am and my core values, and that led to kind of where I'm at now because it wasn't always as good as it is now.

By the way, I never got to that level of burnout. Thank God. But I definitely felt distracted and I felt like I, I felt like I was stressed. For sure. What happened five years ago though, was I got really clear, right? We used to have a, I used to have a yoga place down the street. We used to have a place that served Bulletproof Coffee.

We had a PI clinic. Once I had clinics in Philadelphia, Colorado, I mean, it was just so distraction. And so what happened was we got really clear and became all regional, all the locations. Chiro 180 is a software corrective chiropractic has used for the last five years. It just got to a point last year where it was time to allow other chiropractors to start using it based on helping the profession out.

It's an amazing software. It can really start scaling people's businesses and creating a lot of freedom, but also give 'em a pulse on their practice. Adventure Summit and Growth Summit. Those are awesome events that I love doing because it helps the growth of chiropractors and other business owners too as well.

And so the those like as long as I'm stuck on those three things, corrective, Chiron 80 and Summits life is good. If somebody presents to me an opportunity, that's a huge distraction. Yoga studio, Bulletproof Coffee, PI Clinics.

Molly: But don't you? I, I think I had to say yes to stuff that I ended up being resentful about.

It took me, you know, that whole saying like, fool me once, oh, I was not, fool me once. It was like, fool Molly 10 times. And then finally I was like, okay, and people are gonna, outliers are stressing me out. So just say no.

Dr. Austin: And I will say there are people that listening to this, that you know, they're gonna say yes to things that are huge distractions, by the way.

Which is completely fine. 'cause you have to learn through experiences. You

Molly: do. You do.

Dr. Austin: And they're gonna come back to this moment and think, alright, I know exactly what that guy was saying now and so that this will help me filter my decision making now more going forward because yeah, you or I wouldn't be where we are for without the mistakes or the lessons that we've learned along the way.

Yeah. And everyone has to have those lessons learned in order to get to where they are. Hopefully some of our. Uh, experience those though can help somebody else create a little bit better of a filter and start making a better decisions. Uh, yeah, do it,

Molly: do it faster. Don't, don't have to be fooled 10 times like I did.

Yeah. That was actually the next thing I was gonna ask you though, is, well, I feel like a lot of the things you've talked about. Are really about efficiency and when I don't, when I say efficiency, I think people automatically think like SOPs and like, you know, all your systems and your your processes, which it is.

But I think of efficiency too in terms of like decision fatigue because I think so many people spin their wheels just, should I do this or should I do that? And then it's like literally that's your whole brain power is taken up just making decisions. I

Dr. Austin: mean, you've heard, everyone's heard this a million times, right?

Like, done is better than perfect and a lot of, uh, and, and it's, you, you see this a lot for bus. Some business owners are not designed to be business owners, you know, and, and to me, one of the best relationships is a visionary and an integrator, which comes from the book Traction. And so, you know, the biggest thing is like somebody who owns a business, actually, maybe a better integrator.

Like they're more of a doer. They're not a visionary person. So they're stuck in like the tactics of everything, where actually the best person they could hire would be a visionary, not A-C-O-O-A-C-E-O, to then run the business to work on like the systems and then like really helping with like the vision they can actually share with the business owner where the business is going without the business or even seeing it yet.

And that is like huge. Or somebody like me, I'm a really good CEOI am not a good C-E-O-I-I jump from one idea to the next. I'm not good at like. Uh, integration. I'm more so I'm good about vision and I need somebody to like, implement and if I don't have that implementation, then it's not gonna get done.

And so I've, I've learned throughout the process don't hire people like me, hire people that are not like me, which are integrator roles. And I think that businesses I see that have, that have the highest level of growth I've seen. 'cause some business I've, I'm friends with, they'll have like two visionaries.

And nothing's getting done, but the ones that have the vision and integrate in greater relationship together, oh my gosh, they dominate.

Molly: Oh, I can confirm. Like I said, my, my online business manager, Carolyn, has been with me for almost five years. I had no business hiring her. When I did, like on paper, like, if you've looked at my revenue, you would've been like, but I knew.

I was like, no, I have, I am delusional, right? Like, I, I think that's my superpower. I was like, no, no, like I don't care. Like I know I'll make my money back. Like I had no. Doubt in my mind that I would make my money back by hiring her. And every year we've doubled in revenue because she is just very organized.

She's great at making sure things. I tell, I tell her, she's like my mother. 'cause she's always like, Molly, you said you wanted to do this thing. And like it's been in Asana for like six months now. I'm like, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely have a lot of great, like very organized people on my team who are so good at executing and reigning me in and being like, Hey, remember that time you said that?

You know, so I, you know, could not agree more. And that's one of my, I talked about how I have kind of like four main like marketing foundations that I always talk about, and the last one is consistency. I'm like. If you're crazy busy in practice, like you have no business trying to do your own social media, like hire that out unless you just love it.

And if you really love it and you, you know, it feels easy to you, that's fine. But, um, and I don't mean it has to be hired out to an agency like mine. It can be like a go through my program, teach your front desk or whoever up skill someone in your office.

Dr. Austin: That word that you just shared is, I think one of the most powerful words in the, in the dictionary.

Consistency. Oh, I think that is the number one thing I don't see in people like anybody, can I, this is what I tell my team all the time. Anybody can be player of the week. It's very easy to have a good month, a record month, I. But to do it year over year, over year, I'm 16 years in business, right? Like, to do it consistently.

To me that's the difference between like a Hall of Famer and a player of the week. Nobody remembers Player of the Weeks, but people will remember the Hall of Famers. And it's, but it's the consistency of the actions. Just like, you know, health, just like wealth, just like relationships with my family. All these things are, I mean, just gotta be consistent in every single thing you do.

And here's what I see is someone's doing something and it doesn't, they think it doesn't work. They quit, like, oh, well that didn't work for me. It's like, no, no, no. Let's pivot and adapt. Let's actually make some changes here. Let's try this. Let's, and you probably see this in social media as well all the

Molly: time.

Dr. Austin: Yeah. Right? Like somebody's like, my followers aren't growing. Okay, well rather than quitting doing reels, what if we like switched it up and maybe, okay, now we can add captions. You know what, actually, now with this, let's call it a series, let's make it a season of like how you're gonna do your health with talks, with the docs.

You switch it up and you're like, okay, now we got results. But they were consistent with the process. We were talking a second ago just about really like kind of knowing your team, but also, and, and like the people you hire, like visionary integrator. And one thing I think that's important is for people to really know who they are.

And I have a, I have a prompt I want to give people, uh, for chat, GPT.

Molly: Yeah. That

Dr. Austin: is very, very deep and it's one of the prompts that I got from a friend of mine who this is actually all he does ai. And it, it took me down a rabbit hole, but I learned a lot about myself, so, okay. I don't know if I should share it here now, or like, maybe somebody sends me like a DM on Instagram and is like, prompt and that's how I can send it to them.

Alright, well I'll, I'll share it right now then too.

Molly: Yeah, we can even, we can even put it in the show notes too. So, yeah.

Dr. Austin: So tell chat. GBT say, can you share some extremely deep and profound insights about my psych and mind that I would not otherwise be able to identify or see. As well as some that I may not want to hear.

It shares information if, if you've been like doing inputs in chat at GPT, by the way, it shares information with you that you definitely don't want to see or hear,

Molly: and

Dr. Austin: it exposes a lot. For example, like I'll, I'll, I'll be vulnerable and share a couple, like I'll share a couple of mine is you've mastered the art of productive discomfort, but you might fear stillness.

So when like I go through hard times, I can't sit still in that. I have to always be productive because that's just like who my character is. But that's not a good thing, by the way. It'll also say like, yeah, I,

Molly: I suffer from that too.

Dr. Austin: Yeah, right. Oh, you should. This is a very fascinating prompt. They'll say, it says you lead because you're afraid to be led.

Oh, you value connect? Yeah. Oh, hold up. Ready? You value connection, but carry a quiet loneliness. And that paragraph is deep by the way that it shares with me.

Molly: That gave me like. Chills.

Dr. Austin: It is. And then I, then the next prompt is how did you come up with this information and formulate It seems so accurate.

Yeah, I, I have a bunch of different prompts. If so, if somebody thought that was interesting, send me a message on Instagram and I'll send you the rest of it. But yes. Then you can put together, you can tell it to put together an action plan to create your next breakthrough in life, and that's where it goes deep.

Molly: Do you know your Enneagram?

Dr. Austin: Yeah, I'm a three, probably like you, right?

Molly: Uh, I'm actually a seven. Seven, yeah, I thought it was a three. When I took the test, I tested as a three, but the tests are not always accurate because it's based on people who know Enneagram really well would be able to speak to this better than I can.

A three and a seven can have like very similar. Behaviors, but it's not about the actual behavior, it's about the motivation behind the behavior. So for me, freedom is like the seven's biggest thing, and to me, I achieve. Because I want freedom. Whereas usually with an achiever, it's like you achieve because you, you want the accolades and the, but I, I could be saying that wrong.

I'm not a expert. No, you're saying

Dr. Austin: it right. Okay. And that's like where that stillness comes into play though, right? Because if something negative happens, like I've been through some really hard times in business, obviously in 16 years you're gonna go through hard times, especially with like almost, you know, 14 clinics and almost 50 of employees.

Yeah. There's gonna be some tough times. And so through those times though, what ends up happening is you start thinking of like, all right, I need to be productive. You know what? Maybe I'm gonna start a new clinic. Maybe I'm gonna hire a new person. Maybe I'm gonna start this. We're gonna do this rather than what it talked about, like kind of being in that stillness of.

What's actually happening in that moment. And so people can read through that. Especially your team. Yeah. They're like, why is he distracted right now? He should actually be focusing within and this company rather than shiny object.

Molly: Well actually it's so funny. I was having conversations with my team this morning on, 'cause two of the gals that have worked with me, they've been with me for like four years and they're amazing.

And they even came to me this morning. They're like, Hey, we have an idea for a new offer. Like we really like this change of pace and whatever. I was like. I love that they came to me with that, you know, and they're like, this, we enjoy doing this work. Like, we wanna do more of it. I'm like, cool. Like, come up with the price, like, let's get it.

And then this morning I was like, wait. And I was like, no. 'cause it's still very much in our like, purview of what we're doing. But like you said, I, I have a hard, I, I am like notorious for being like, all right, what's next? Yeah. Like, I'll go, go, go, I'll burn out and then I'll be like, Molly, say no to more.

Like, you need to rest more. And then as soon as that stillness settles in, I'm like. Oh, I don't like this. Like, okay. You know,

Dr. Austin: and, and, and, and if somebody's like a service provider, right? Yeah. Like, this is such a good, you know, for, for me, where my shiny object change room comes in is like a new location, something different outside of what I'm already doing.

Well, what if I just focused on the clinics that weren't doing that well? Mm-hmm. Like low hanging fruit Austin, uh, you have some clinics that actually you could probably double or triple their revenue and that would provide a lot more revenue for you too. So, and them, so everyone wins. Just focus on that.

And so, you know, but that comes back to like kinda that visionary and being able to have a really good integrator of somebody who can actually help me, uh, with that deployment. Because that is something that everyone has that low hanging fruit, right? Chiropractors are notorious for this. More new patients.

More new patients, more new patients. Yet the average patient stays seven times. What if we focus actually on like a patient experience, patient journey and patients got to like 20 visits rather than seven? Yes. You don't need, like, you need 80% less new patients

Molly: as, what is that? Eight times cheaper. Is that right?

Dr. Austin: Right. Yes. It's crazy. Um, I, I just, this is so something I do for chiropractors. I talk about, this is actually my keynote is actually talking about customer experience, but I love it because it's such a missing link in our profession.

Molly: I need to send you then this pod, my podcast episode on this, it aired during the holiday, so it didn't get as many.

It literally aired I think like two days before Christmas or something, so it didn't get the downloads I normally get. So it's being replayed. Actually, it'll probably come out the week or two weeks before your episode airs. So for those of you who are listening to this live, it would've just aired. But it was my very unfiltered, I'm like, man, I hope none of my previous service like chiropractors would ever listen to this.

But then I'm like, I kind of hope they do listen to this because being a military family, I've been adjusted acupuncture, massage, health coach, therapist, whatever. I mean probably, probably over 50 providers at this point, like I'm like a wellness junkie over the last five years. I just put it all unfiltered into a podcast.

Like, here's everything that people did that I think they should have done differently, and here's what would've made the experience better. And I hope some people get to take some because I, and even on the intro of the episode, I'm like, and if you find yourself saying, that would never work for me.

Maybe that's your clue that you need to like, you know, oh, that would never work for my practice. Do you have to hear that?

Dr. Austin: My zip, my zip code is different than that zip code?

Molly: Uhhuh. Uhhuh, yes. That would never work for me.

Dr. Austin: That's, and that's those limiting beliefs. I'll tell you, that's something we work on a lot because I've had clinics, like we have a clinic in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

We had a doctor in there, wasn't doing well at all. And the problem he told me was the area, it's the area. So what I ended up doing is we got rid of him, brought on a new chiropractor, and somehow the area just changed when she came in. It was amazing how that works.

Molly: Oh, you know, I mean, for people who are listening, who know, like Dr.

Christie Wicker, even Lauren Brunswick, they're in tiny Towns. Trust me, we run their social. Part of our job is trying to find other local businesses to engage with. There aren't any,

Dr. Austin: so they're

Molly: in tiny towns.

Dr. Austin: Listen, if we go ever, like, if times ever get tough for anybody and somebody's complaining like, oh, I'm not getting a lot of new patients, because times are tough.

I'll tell people right now, there are patients going to chiropractor offices right now, no matter how bad it is. Mm-hmm. Why not your office though? Why are they going other places and not you? And that's the question you wanna be asking. Not, oh, poor me, the recession. No, it's, there are patients, anybody who's in real estate.

And they say, oh, the reason real estate market's bad right now is because of the interest rates, because no one's buying homes right now. 'cause people are scared to spend money. Are people closing on real estate deals right now? 'cause real estate attorneys to me, seem very busy. So people are buying ho homes, but they're not using you.

So how do you transition that and start doing some of the, and I love the four things you talked about, by the way, about like the four marketing buckets that people could be doing. Mm-hmm. I think that's great. So just having tools like that would be helpful for people.

Molly: Yeah. The foundations. So wrapping up, I just kinda wanna, this might be a longer answer, maybe it's not, but just to wrap up, I kind of want to, 'cause you already talked kind of about like maintaining mission versus work life balance, so I don't wanna talk about that.

But if you were to just kind of leave people with one, and I don't wanna talk to just chiropractors. So say you've got like any brick and mortar. That you're trying to scale or grow? What's kind of like the biggest mistake or like I said, like tip you could give people?

Dr. Austin: I think a lot of people, uh, there's a couple things.

One is I think people chase tactics first. Okay. They're not building systems and I think that's a huge problem. So they're doing one marketing idea that then the next marketing idea, hoping for these like quick wins, Facebook ads, dinner talk screens, all these different things. But like I said, I shared earlier, they haven't built a, a good customer journey.

Customer experience, a clear retention strategy. You can't outmarket a broken experience.

Molly: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Austin: Okay. So if the experience is poor, it doesn't matter how good you're marketing, these people aren't staying. Amen. I think another thing the what

Molly: I said, amen.

Dr. Austin: Yeah. Right. I mean, uh, I think a lot of people try to do it alone, uh, too as well.

I think they think that leadership means that they're the smartest person in the room. But you really, it's what I shared earlier, surrounding yourself with great people who level you up. And the, and I said this earlier, 'cause in 2014 I was hanging out with some friends and I told 'em I was gonna start scaling and growing more locations.

And they said to me, they said, why would you do that? That sounds so scary. You don't wanna put yourself in that situation. And I'm thinking, and, and they go, you already worked too hard. I got to think about that throughout the, like, next couple weeks when these guys said this to me. I was like, all right, you know what?

I'm moving on. I started hanging out with my new buddies. And what do they say to me when I say that to them? They're like, dude, let's freaking go, man. Hell yeah. Why not 20 this year? Only two. Come on man. You're, you can do 20. I'm like, how am I gonna do 20 and, you know, start asking them really good questions because they've obviously done this before.

And so just leveraging like other relationships, I think was a weakness of mine in the beginning, not having really good systems. And the last thing I'll share is this is, um, a lot of people, there's lagging indicators and leading indicators, and I think a lot of people don't know the difference. If somebody is, let's just say customers, right?

Like total customers, that is like, you wanna look at how many customers you got in a month. That is a lagging indicator where people aren't focusing and pouring attention into is leading indicators. How did you get more customers rather than at the end of the month saying, we only got 20 new customers this month.

That sucks. Okay. What about let's actually build, let's build systems around leading indicators. Okay. How many calls did our team make to relationships? How many businesses did we highlight on social media? How many reels did we post on social media? Um, how many, uh, follow up calls did we make for people who haven't been in 30 days?

What about people that are still like in our lead gen systems that we haven't followed up with? Are we doing any reactivation campaigns right now? Like building out those systems are really where I think people will win more. If they're focusing, like, think of your top three lagging indicators and build systems to have healthier numbers in those areas.

Molly: Yeah. I actually never heard it that way, so I'm gonna have to, I like that. I usually use, okay, the difference between

Dr. Austin: processes versus outcomes. Everyone focuses on outcomes, but they don't fo focus on the process. So thinking, just shifting the mindset.

Molly: So how can people find you work with you? You can talk about, uh, you didn't get to talk about Chiro 180 a lot.

Sorry about that. So go ahead if you wanna,

Dr. Austin: yeah. Kione 80 is, I shared earlier. It's a software that we use at corrective Chiropractic. Here's what I learned. We were spending $200 a month, 14 different clinics, 2000 bucks a month, multiply that by 12 months. That's like over $30,000 a year per software. We had like eight.

I teach everyone, I think any business non chiropractic, and by the way, everything we shared today is not just for chiropractic. Any business person could learn from all these things we talked about, by the way, today. Yeah. And so, but here's what, um, here's what I also gathered was we had a lot of confusion going on of all these different softwares we were using.

We were spending a lot of money on them. We wanna make sure that like when I build my company, I build it to sell great book by Jim Collins, built to sell. I don't have any plans to sell my company anytime soon. But every human who runs a business should always be thinking about if they were to sell it tomorrow, are they building up the value prop for that business and are they getting the highest multiples possible?

And a lot of business owners just don't think like that, and that's why they're not. They're getting pennies on a dollar. They listen. Time goes fast. I mean, it feels like yesterday I just started my clinic and I'm 16 years in business. You know, I probably only have another 16 years left of actual like clinic time.

And so, uh, we started using Chiro 180 and building it because we wanted to like, have really good systems and that if I were to ever sell my company, we could show people some amazing data. We do spinal health scores for patients, which. It's really cool because a lot of people, when they're sharing their, like chiropractor specifically, they're talking about neck curves, posture, range of motion.

If I told you, Molly, I was like, Hey, by the way, Molly, we did a full blown assessment, tracked every single thing in your spine. We did range of motion, posture, x-rays. You scored a 63 right there and, and we paused for a second. They're like. I've never failed anything before. Like, well, Molly, guess what the good news is?

Uh, we have a lot of opportunities now in a lot of, uh, areas where we're gonna focus on to help this improve. I can go through those in detail or I can kind of talk to you about what it's gonna take in order to get you the results you're looking to get. And some people will be like, like the analyticals?

Yeah. Can you show me the non analyticals drivers? What is it gonna take? How much it gonna cost? Great. So we connect people, we anchor people to a score, and that's what, you know, part of C 80. And there's so much into it. So if people wanna learn more about it, just go to K one eighty.com and you click watch demo.

There's like a free 14 minute demo on there. I do monthly growth calls for all my, all my clients, just complimentary to help them grow. Yeah. So it's, it's awesome though. It is such a good software.

Molly: It's not, and it's not just, you're not just like rehab. Like, would you say

Dr. Austin: my clinic in Buckhead has almost $2 million a year and over a million dollars is pure wellness revenue.

Molly: Oh, that's amazing. Okay, cool. Of like

Dr. Austin: recurring. If we had, if not one more new patient came into our office for the rest of this year, we would still do over a million dollars in revenue. Just on wellness patients.

Molly: Yeah. That's amazing. How can people find you? Where do you hang out? Best place to chat.

Dr. Austin: I'm on link.

Uh uh, what is it called? Um, what is it called? I dunno. I was trying to think of MySpace and I couldn't think of it quick enough. Tom, Tom from MySpace. Dang it. No, I, I hang out on, I hang out on Instagram. I love Instagram. I jumped off Facebook a long time ago and people started sharing like, it's the most negative place in the world, uh, ever.

Oh,

Molly: Facebook is of cesspool. I it's the worst.

Dr. Austin: I hate Facebook. It's same. Everything's anno. People make anonymous posts now. I mean, I had to get away from that. It's too toxic. So I moved over to Instagram, which I love. I I love Instagram. And you know what I'm, what I love about it is I love, I love people that share wins, man.

Like I love being around successful people that are sharing positivity. I know a lot of people what they're scared sometimes to post successful things because it comes off as bragging and they think that they're coming off as an having an ego or cocky. I disagree. I like love watching people win and I think that's something great about Instagram and like, don't hold back, like share your wins for if you share wins and I see it, I know the work behind that win, so I'm gonna like, I'm loving on you.

I'm commenting on that like. Keep it rocking, man. I think it's awesome.

Molly: That's great. Yeah. For people who think Instagram's uh, toxic, you need to reprogram your algorithm 'cause mine's a lovely place.

Dr. Austin: Yeah. You can control the people who you follow, not follow. I love when I see people share negative things on other people saying like.

You know, you didn't have to follow that person, by the way. Yeah.

Molly: You didn't, you didn't have to. You could've just scrolled, right. Unpassed.

Dr. Austin: That's right. Yeah. So, um, Hey, thanks for what you're doing, by the way, too, as well. I, I, I know how many clients you have and I see you at all the events and hosting events and, uh, you know, you're making an impact too as well, which I, I, I love to see.

It's something that doesn't exist in our profession, so you created something special, so thank you for doing that.

Molly: Ah, thanks. Thanks for saying that. Yeah. I have to return to my why often. So like I said, like we all do, it's like, okay, yeah, I do love what I'm doing, so this is awesome. Alright, thank you so much Austin.

And um, we'll put that, that prompt in the show notes, but make sure to DM him, uh, for more of the prompts and then to check out Chiro 180.

Dr. Austin: Well, thanks Molly. Thanks.

Molly: Thank you for listening to Holistic Marketing Simplified, and hey, you know how every podcaster at the very end of their episode asks you to rate and review their podcast?

Well, that's because it's super important. These podcasts take a lot of time and heart and effort to produce, to bring you free information. So in order for me to be able to continue doing that, we need more people to find out about the show. So if you could please just take like two minutes out of your very busy day to leave me a rating and share this on your Instagram Stories and tag at Molly a Cahill, that's C-A-H-I-L-L.

I would greatly, greatly appreciate your support. I know your time is valuable and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.