Transforming Healthcare: Dr. Grant Elliott's Journey
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I probably had a 5% grapple of how are people going to perceive me? Yeah. You know, seeing me on the, on online with a hundred thousand followers, $150,000 followers, this, you know, great rehab doc. And then, you know, they show up and I'm kind of in a little bit of a dingy gym space kind of off to the side. Yeah. Probably 5% of me was like, my image isn't going to match what they think it is. And then once I started getting better results than anyone else and people kept coming back, that disappeared very quickly.

I'm going to go to the hotel.

And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for another exciting, riveting, really, I don't know, that's too many adjectives. I don't know what I'm doing. Episode of the show that gets you from like the opening says, man, where you are to where you want to be.

And today, people in the studio, I got somebody, man, you got a pain in the neck. You got a pain in the back. You got a pain in your business. You got a pain in your life. I got a guy that can help you with that, man. This dude has done something that I would have said before he told me he did it, called it impossible, but he's done it. He has taken something that should absolutely be a brick and mortar business and moved it online and done so at scale to the point where he's now helping other people scale it up.

But if you're not, you know, even if you don't have money problems, if you don't have scale problems, even if you just got back problems, this is a dude that you want to listen to. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the studio live from Tampa, Florida. Mr. Doctor. Mr. Doctor? We'll just go with Doctor. Dr. Grant Elliott. Grant, how are you, buddy? I'm doing fantastic. Welcome to the show. This is...

Man, first of all, apologies for the minor scramble today. We had, coming off of the holiday weekend, I guess we had a scheduling issue with my schedule that I live and die in, and that too many people have their fingers in it. And somebody did get their finger quite on the button and said that you were going to start right at 11 o'clock. So we're getting a little bit of a late start, but see, here's the thing. That's good for you. Because now I feel like I'm indebted to you. Like I'm just going to, I'm going to extrapolate the genius from you. You're going to walk out of here going, you know what? Not only did I help people, but I

But I feel smarter than I was five minutes ago, just for my own self. So let's get it started. By trade, you are a chiropractor, correct? Correct. Okay. So you grew up small town Indiana, right? Big town Indiana or small town Indiana? Moderate town. Moderate town. What did your folks do? Yeah. So my mom, full-time mom before that, accounting. My dad, my dad is a software programmer, engineer type guy.

for, well, shoe companies for a while. I worked for Adidas for a while, but he's in the software space. Okay. Software. So parents were professional people. Yeah. For the most part, I grew up normal childhood, played little league. Everything was cool. Mom and dad are still together. Yeah, of course. Midwest man still together. Oh yeah. So, so no, no giant setback story that made you excel because I love kind of finding that out because they say that the saying is, and you, you give me hope for the future and I'll tell you why, because the,

the story always is that hard times build great men, great men builds, build easy times, easy times, build soft men. Right. And the cycle continues. Yeah.

And me being the father of a 16-year-old that, like we discussed earlier, is amazing in so many ways but failed to get a calendar and find it today. It's always my biggest fear, right, is raising somebody who doesn't have that drive. So you coming from that very great middle America family, the nuclear family, you still had the wherewithal and the drive to go become a doctor. So where do you think that came from?

Well, I would say, you know, you brought up the question like, you know, where you were in rough times or whatever. I would say, uh, the style of parenting that I had was very much so, um, hard in all the best ways possible. Uh, I have very principled parents, parents with very strong character, um,

And they raised me. I'm the youngest of three boys and they raised us right. They raised us tough. No excuses. We do what we say we're going to do. We take accountability, accountability for everything. If we do something wrong to someone else or we do something unintended, we,

Even if the person is unaware, we tell them we did it. We look them in the eyes and we pay the price for our action. So instead of if we did something annoying or broke a rule in my home and, ah, Grant, don't do that. It was if I did something, you're giving me 50 push-ups.

or you're running around the house or I'm going to drive behind you in the car and you're going to run a mile until you learn to not do these things. So, uh, we were raised, uh, in what I believe to be a fantastic way that built character and built principles. I love that. Yeah. Pushups for, for bullshit, I guess is a good way to put it. You try to pull something and it's push the floor. A hundred percent. So I had a good combination of, um, nurture for sure. And then I believe I have a, definitely a certain degree of nature that I was born with. Um,

That loves working. I love to work. I love being disciplined. I've always wanted to work. And so I believe I had a very good combination of nature and nurture. What was your, what was your undergrad? What was your degree? My undergrad was just exercise science at a college called Ball State in Muncie, Indiana. I know, I know the Ball State Cardinals. Yes. See, look at the bam. Look at that. Yep. I knew that. So yeah, you did that. What drove you to want to be a chiropractor? So,

This is a good story. I was racing cross-country mountain bikes, so like mountain bike trails. I was racing cross-country mountain bike trails in high school, and I developed back pain, low back pain specifically on my races. Now, I fell in love with racing, and I got good at it pretty quickly, and I was starting to get some scholarship offers, was looking at North Carolina or Colorado or Utah for different schools.

And so at that point, my racing level was higher up and most of my races were hour and a half to two hours long of high effort the entire time. So it started to be that, you know, towards the end of my races, my low back would start to affect me, you know, some soreness, whatever. And then it was like, all right, now it started affecting me a little bit earlier and a little bit earlier. And then it really started impacting my ability to perform and

And I can remember very vividly one of, one of my last races, I had to stop middle of the race, which if you weren't moving for five seconds in a bike race, you're losing a lot of time. I got off and was actually in the woods stretching, trying to get this, this back pump, this soreness I had to go away so I could keep pushing myself. And that's when I was like, all right, like this is, this isn't going anywhere. And so,

You know, at that time I'm 16 or so and, uh, you know, I'm telling my dad about it. He's like, all right, we need to do something about this. Like you're talking about this too much. So we, you'd find a chiropractor that my dad knew of. And here's where the story is going to take a twist, not the one that you're expecting. Okay. So, um, you know, obviously as a 16 year old, I'm not knowledgeable about much of anything in life. And you know, my dad, not, I would say at this point, yeah, not super knowledgeable about, you know, back care or health in general. Um, so we just go to a chiropractor and,

He does what I'll say is the traditional, old school, typical chiropractic model, which is let's get these x-rays. Let's see if your spine's crooked. And let's come in, you know, three days a week for the indefinite future. Yeah.

And so I'm doing that and I'm not getting any results. Surprise, surprise, which I would love to speak on later. And my races are still suffering, still suffering. And eventually like, I don't know what to do. I'm 16. So I just go, well, I'm failing out of my races. I'm losing my opportunities. Racing isn't fun anymore. So I'm going to stop. But I just stopped. Yeah. Just started working out instead. Got to the gym. I needed an outlet for my, just for my, you know, body push desires, right? I want to push myself physically. So I just got into the gym.

Year goes by, I meet someone in the gym and they're doing warmups that stand out to me. They're moving in certain ways that stand out and they have a great physique. And so I just start talking to him and he introduces himself as a chiropractor. And I go, oh yeah, I worked with a chiropractor once. And he started asking me some questions and I start learning about what he did. And I go, wait, it doesn't sound like you're a chiropractor. I thought all chiropractors just take x-rays and do adjustments and have you come back every day, you know?

And so I went to shadow him and he was actually teaching people how to fix themselves and do rehab and implement movement based practices. And I was like, this is super cool. This isn't anything like what I received and what I received was not helpful. It might be helpful for some, not denying that. Um, but I was like, this is awesome.

So actually, uh, having a bad experience with the chiropractor and then see how long to take that guy to get to the bottom or the root bottom of your back pain. So at that point I was, I was a year removed from the racing. My, my lower back pain had gone away cause I, cause I stopped doing it and just, you know, did other things. So I did not seek him for care for that particular issue. It just self resolved. Okay. Um, but I saw the contrast and I, well, dang it. I want,

less people to receive the first experience I had and I want more people to have experiences like what I'm witnessing for this individual. So that's actually what inspired me to become a chiropractor. So I could be one of the best ones and teach people how to fix themselves and never have to rely on me again. Right. And to gain full independence in their life. Where, where did you go to chiropractic school? I went to Logan university in St. Louis. Okay. Um, St. I lived in St. Louis for a while. St. Louis. Shout out for that. Uh,

Yeah, where did you live in St. Louis? Well, technically a small suburb called St. Charles. Oh, yeah, St. Charles. Yeah, a great little area. Yeah, I lived in, where did I live? I lived in Maryland Heights.

When I lived there, which is similar to St. Charles, a little suburb there. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. And then I lived downtown in Sular, which was right by the Budweiser plant. Yep. A hundred percent. Yeah. And we both live in St. Louis. I know we lived in Tampa for a while. To be fair in my early twenties, I worked for a restaurant chain that used to move me. I was like the corporate fixer guy and they would move me constantly to like the worst restaurants they had. And so every time, you know, something was broken, I would, I would, I would get moved there.

Okay. So it was kind of cool. It was cool. Well, A, it was Hooters. So it was cool in your mid-20s. That's where I was working. And then to kind of see the country that way was kind of cool. So it was fun in my early, early days, which was cool. But, you know, I like that. So your chiropractic school. Now, there's always two schools of thought with chiropractic, right? There's the school of thought that, like you said, through physiology, we can fix this. And then there's that kind of out there schools that say, like, oh, you can cure the common cold with chiropractic.

Do you know what I'm talking about? I know much more than you might believe what I'm talking about. Right, right. So I'm assuming that you didn't go to one of those schools because I think those are the ones that kind of give chiropractic a bad name, I think, is kind of what it is. Now, to be fair, the types of two schools you're referring, that exists in every school.

Every profession. That's, you know, that's a good point. Every profession. Point taken. It's just that most of the media and certain individuals like to publicize certain professions more than others. Yeah. But, um, you know, I have, I have no problem using terms like, ah, man, this guy was a quack or whatever. Yeah. There's quacks in any area of health.

Just like there's quacks in any area of anything, right? So like there's amazing barbers and there's awful barbers. There's amazing real estate agents and there's awful real estate agents. There's amazing financial advisors and there's awful ones. Well, yeah, there's amazing medical doctors and there's awful ones who are total quacks.

There's amazing chiropractors. There's awful ones who are total quacks. They exist in all areas. But yes, what you're referring to is definitely some of the not so preferred experiences that some people out there have that does not follow what I would say is an evidence-based model. Let's follow what the evidence shows about what we can and cannot do. Being as though I am 100% in rehab at this point,

teaching people how to fix themselves through movement. Yeah. I'm not in that case. You're not in that case. Okay. Well, let's start. So you graduate from school. You're not looking up in a voodoo shop, which is great. You open your first practice. So it's just, do you go to work for somebody? Do you open your own shop? What do you do? So I, I think, I think you want me to rewind it a bit, actually, because it's relevant to what I do at, at, at, at the, at the end of school. So when I was still in school, um,

extremely passionate about being the best. Like I, anything that I commit to, like I want to be the best. So I'm very invested into my business growth and personal development. Now I was just as invested when I was in school. Um, seminars and extracurricular learning is very common in any form of a doctorate program. So if you want to learn more, you pay more for seminars, education, shadowing opportunities, um,

especially in an area of healthcare where there's different techniques and approaches and knowledge with, you know, physicality, like rehab approaches and soft tissue approaches, things like that. So my very, very first trimester, I had 10 trimesters of schools all year round. My very first trimester, I was signing up for seminars, even as a, like in my first month and classmates and their people like, great, what are you doing? Like, you don't know anything yet. You can't apply any of this. And I just said, well, this will help me learn it faster.

And I had that mentality all through school. So I heavily invested any extra money I had. I heavily invested into seminars and learning opportunities to be the best, to grow my rehab skill, my rehab knowledge, to help as many people as I can. Around halfway through school, a little over halfway through school, I was thinking ahead as good entrepreneurs do.

Wasn't really an entrepreneur yet, but in the making. And I thought, okay, I'm going to go back to Indiana where I'm from, you know, and I want to work for the doc, the second doc. That was really good. That was a good influence in my life. I'm going to work with him.

And I want to build a care some authority with me that I know what I'm doing after school. And at that particular point in time, hey, what's the best way to do that? To grow social media. So a little over halfway through school, I said, all right, I'm going to start posting videos of me showing, hey, if you're back stiff, try this mobility exercise. If your neck hurts, try this exercise. Here's ways to improve your form in the gym. If deadlifts hurt or squats hurt or whatever it might be. So I started posting videos. I was posting maybe once a week and kind of twice a week.

And I've started to build my brand, which I have now today. Nothing has changed. So start posting a bit. And I start listening to podcasts and start researching how do I grow my social media? Because I wanted a strong portfolio for when I graduated to have social proof. And so I listened to podcasts and read and they're all like, you got to post every day. You got to post every day. You got to post every day.

One real, two stories, one real, two stories. And I was thinking, you know, at that time as a full-time student and year-round school, our curriculum was decently rigorous. It would not be uncommon to have 35 to 40 credit hours at a given time. So heavy credit hour load. Oh man, that sounds like a pretty big time commitment. But I went, all right, I want to do it. I want to post every single day for a year, pretty much the last year I had in school. And I'm just going to see where my account is.

So I posted every day. I gained over 100,000 followers from that point until I graduated.

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That's $50 off with code pod at blue Nile.com. People messaging me, where are you located? Where are you located? Where are you located? I'm not located in your area. This is building the foundation for where we're going now. Yeah. I'm not in your area. Let me look up a doc where you are. I'm not in your area. Let me look up a doc where you are.

And I was a referring machine. I was going to say that for free. Oh God. Yeah. How did you not turn that into a business? I wasn't even graduating yet. I wasn't even thinking about money, man. My number one mission at that point in my life was how can I be the absolute best and how can I get people out of pain? I was, I was sending people guides over Instagram for free. I was going back and forth with people in Germany, Australia for days for free, fixing people through texts,

Just because I wanted to do it because the only thing I thought, limiting belief, the only thing I thought was possible in healthcare was a brick and mortar. So I thought, well, this isn't even an opportunity for me anyway. So I might as well just help somebody until I can be at a brick and mortar. That's what I thought. So about two months before graduating, I had an epiphany moment. And this is really what changed my life.

Is you ask, okay, where are we going to go after school? And originally it was back to Indiana, work for that doc, learn how to, you know, do good and learn how to build a practice and then maybe open my own someday. That was the dream. Right. So,

Up until that point, I was doing my clinical, my clinical rotations. The last year is just clinical rotations. So working at different clinics or even hospital settings, orthopedic rotations, whatever, like you do your clinicals. So I was doing my clinicals in Tampa. My wife's idea, she said, hey, before we go back to Indiana, let's do your clinicals somewhere fun. We might not have this opportunity ever again. Let's go to the beach. Yeah. So I did my clinicals in Tampa.

Did some good networking there. And still we were like, okay, we might go back to Indiana when these clinicals are done. So about two months before I graduate, maybe three months before I graduated. Once again, I'm getting messages every day. Where are you located? I have this pain. I have everything that you're talking about.

And I thought, huh, I'm starting to get some people message me from Tampa now since I moved here. Hey, I saw you move to Tampa. Like, where are you at? Oh, I'm doing my clinicals. So you have to call this clinic and you have to ask for me. And if I'm there, then I can see you. And I'm not getting paid for any of this, right? I'm doing 40 hours of clinical work. I'm not getting paid anything, right? So I'm like, man, this is difficult. So then here's my epiphany moment. I said, all right, I have people down from Tampa reaching out.

The only way for me to help them is if I get them to go this one clinical rotation that I'm at that's far away from them or whatever. And I can only do so much. So I said, okay, you know what? Well, I understand there's a law. You can't practice medicine without a license. Okay.

But everything that I focus on is movement and exercise, rehab exercises. So I said, wait, what's stopping me from getting a training certification, getting professional liability insurance for a training business?

in coaching people through exercises that I know would be good for their condition, but not providing medical advice, not providing medical treatment, not doing any therapies that would cross that line for practicing medicine without a license. And I said, nothing's stopping me from doing that. So I immediately found two different gyms, one in St. Pete, one in Tampa. I said, hey, can I rent out some space from you? Okay. I advertised that, you know, I just want to train people here. Yeah. Started posting all my stories. Hey, I

I'm accepting clients, using the word clients, not patients. Hey, I'm accepting clients. If you're struggling with an ache or pain or stiffness, I can do rehab with you. I can coach you through the right exercises. And I started getting people booking on my schedule. So before I even graduated, I said, okay, well, really nervous about starting a business. I have no idea how that works. I just got to be an associate like everybody else.

This was my opportunity to test it to see, could I do this on my own? How does it feel to do my own without the risk of being graduated and having full, you know, expenses and everything. I was still a student at this time. So I said, Hey, I got two to three months to see, can I do this to test it before I just go and work for somebody else? So I take that approach and say, Hey, anyone. So what did you, so, okay, real quick, stop. Yeah. What did you invest in your test? Yeah.

Nothing significant. You know, one of the gyms was like 500 bucks a month to rent some space there. Nothing. No big deal. The point that I'm making is, and one of the lessons that I'm drilled on is people fall so in love with their ideas, right? They're like, I have this idea and I'm like, this is the best idea ever. And they fall in love with it and they're like, I'm going to burn the bridges. I'm going to go all the way in on it without ever seeing if anybody wanted it. And

I have done that myself. And like, it's funny, a lot of people have, you know, all these trophies in their office and plaques and rewards and highlights of their life, right? I have mementos of screw ups, right? In my office right now, I have $100,000 bottle of vitamins. One bottle of vitamins, $100,000. Because we were like, this is years ago. This is a

2001, it was like, let's start this multi-level vitamin company. It's going to be great. People are going to love it. And we went and filled an entire warehouse up with private label stuff before we ever asked anybody if they wanted it.

And guess what? - I see where this is going. - They didn't want it. So all we had to do, what we should have done was gauge interest in the product prior to making the investment, which is what a lot of people failed to do. That's what you did. You were able to go out and say, I'm gonna just see if this works before I go all in, which I love. So let that be a lesson to you folks. If you're listening right now, that's a good one. So keep going.

So I love that. Yeah. Test the audience. You got to test. You got to test. Yeah. Just because you love it. Nobody else might. Nobody else might want it at all. They might think it's terrible. Anyway, keep going. But obviously they did because they filled up your calendar. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's leading me up to the launching point here. So two, three months before graduating, once again, hey, I have an opportunity to see, can I do this on my own? Is this possible? Do I feel confident enough to do this? And I start posting, hey, you can come see me now. Yeah.

Within the last two to three months prior to graduation, I start getting a decent amount of appointments booked. At that time, you know, okay, I'm going to charge this much for this. Okay, now I'm going to charge this much. And before I even graduated, I was starting to make money from working with people in person, building my name in the area. And so basically up until the day of, I went, I'm already doing it. I'm already doing the run your own business thing.

And sure, I don't have my own building, but I'm renting space and I'm making money and I'm covering my bills. And I've already crossed that border of this very falsely perceived, intimidating obstacle of, oh my gosh, starting your own business. But let's address that too, though, because that's very interesting in the fact that

You spent four years in college and then you went to chiropractic school, which is two years. It was three. It's over three years. Three years around. Over three years year round. And then you went through your clinicals, which is your. Yeah. Yeah. One of the last years. Eight years deep. Eight years deep. And the goal of the end of that is supposed to be at some point your own brick and mortar business. Sure. And.

At some point during that, your ego has got to kick in and say, I'm going to have this big-ass practice because that's what it is. I'm going to have this giant practice, right? And a lot of people wouldn't be able to suppress that ego part of it to see that the path that you were on by just, I'm just going to share some space here because it's way more profitable because it's not the big, shiny office, right? It's not that. Like, yeah.

So many people can't separate their ego from their business decisions.

And you were able to do that. So did you have to grapple with that at all? Or did you just see this as the better way? And I'm just like, talk about that. I probably had a 5% grapple. How are people going to perceive me? You know, seeing me on the, on online with a hundred thousand followers, $150,000 followers, this, you know, great rehab doc. And then, you know, they show up and I'm kind of in a little bit of a dingy gym space kind of off to the side. Yeah. Probably 5% of me was like,

my image isn't going to match what they think it is. And then once I started getting better results than anyone else and people kept coming back, that disappeared very quickly. Yeah. That disappeared very quickly. And even one scenario just to, to, you

you know, lean on that even more. There was, um, there was a veterinarian that, uh, worked with me. And at that particular point in time, I was seeing people out of a gym that was not very attractive on the front end. Very much. So like almost like, is this just a random small garage somewhere? Not that pretty. The iron dungeon. They wanted to look that way. And he admitted to me around our third appointment or so that when he first rolled up for the appointment, he saw the front of it that he considered, uh,

turning around and leaving because it just did not look professional. But then after just our first two appointments, he realized, okay, this is something different. And he completely forgot about the image as well. And just focused on the results, which is everything that I'm focused on. Yeah. So I crossed this, you know, mental obstacle of, Oh, I can do this. I I'm seeing people now. All right. I'm not going to work for anybody else. So graduation comes, I graduate

Now all of a sudden I can practice medicine. Yeah. So I go from only being able to coach movement to now being able to provide adjustments, soft tissue, you know, referrals for imaging or blood work and do the whole thing, do the whole doctor thing included. So everyone that I was seeing as a training client now immediately converts to a patient. So my very, very first week in practice ever on my own. Yeah. I'd like 16 patients on my schedule. I just roll right into it. Now,

So really great. Best movement of my life. And I want to actually teach. There's, of course, implementation of what I described. I want to teach students, physical therapy students and chiropractic students that process of what I did. Because doing that myself and knowing, okay, I can just get a training cert. I can get professional liability insurance. I can see people now as clients doing rehab, build my name, and then just convert it to, okay, now it's medicine. Realistically, from a legal perspective, that changed my life forever.

Well, yeah. So you bypassed. I mean, oh, that's a three year shortcut. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was a three year shortcut. Yeah. So first week, everything's going great. Now, here's a key piece of timeline. I graduated December of 2019. So my first week of practice is the beginning of 2020.

We all know what happened in early 2020. So here's where the journey gets really fun and relates to where I am today is I'm doing, I'm full brick and mortar. I'm doing networking. I'm doing workshops at CrossFit gyms and trying to get with running clubs. And when I go to the gym at that time,

I'm not wearing headphones and I'm saying, I'm meeting five people at the gym, every workout. I love to train. I'm working out six days a week. So I'm going, all right, if I can meet five new people at the gym, every day I work out, I'm meeting 30 new people a week. How many of those will become patients? Spread my name. I now work with all the, I had like five different gym memberships. You're just glazing over all of this stuff.

That is so there's, there's, it's gold, it's gold, right? It is gold because that's, that's the stuff that most people aren't willing to do. You know, people, people think like, I want to start this business and you know, dude, if I gave you 300 grand, start a business.

and you're not willing to do what you just said, it's probably not going to work. Oh, for sure. Because, you know, like my buddy Bradley says, the more hands you shake, the more money you make. Right? And I firmly believe that. And people are so terrified of,

of other people anymore. It's like, because of the phone, we have completely lost the ability to connect with other people on a one-on-one basis. And I tell my kids this all the time. I say, look, by the time you're 28 years old, the ability to connect with another human is going to be in short order. I mean, it's going to be in short supply. And it's

If you can do that, you'll be able to punch your ticket in no matter what field you choose. And the fact that you're just willing to go out and just say, hi, I'm Dr. Grant. What's your name? Hey, man, what are you doing? Hey, what's your, and just as many people as you can meet, open and honest, and not care if they kick you in the teeth, not care if they tell you to pound sand, but just that willingness to go out and put yourself out there.

That is the difference between successful entrepreneurs and failing ones in a lot of cases. Cause a lot of people just think, well, I've built this great product. I have this wonderful thing. Why don't people just gravitate to it? Because people don't buy products by people. Yeah. So keep going. That was, that was, I just, I wanted to point that one thing out. Cause to you, that might just seem very natural, but I'm telling you a lot of people are terrified of that. I, I, I appreciate you stopping me cause you're right. I, um, I've given some of the similar coaching advice, um,

to individuals who once again, love the gym and that's their escape and they're listening to their music. Like I do now, like that's great. Like at, at the time of, I need to build a business. I need to be able to support my family, all these things. Yeah. I mean, I, I basically locked my headphones away and almost between every set at the gym,

looking around, finding a conversation starter, whether if someone was wearing pink shoes, there's my conversation starter. If someone was wearing a shirt with a sports team I like, there's my conversation starter. If someone was doing an exercise a particular way that I really respected, like their form was great, there's my conversation starter. I found any reason to talk to anybody

And I just talked to people nonstop. Is that something that is innate with you? You've always been natural to do that. So when you first started it, was it a little terrifying to do that, to put yourself out there? It was intimidating, just purely in regards to at that time, it really wasn't my personality. Like through high school and college,

I'm a very focused, very driven individual, but I would not describe myself as... Extrovert. I was not an extrovert. Definitely not. Not an extrovert. So I basically said...

All right. I want to start a business extrovert mode engaged. I just made it. It's funny. Most doctors, if you look at them on a disc chart, most doctors are high D high C it's, it's that driver. And then that very, very calculated high C everything has all the, all everything has to line up, right. Is, is traditional disc. And so that's why it's so funny because we talked about this earlier before we came on doctors normally make the worst fucking salesman.

Because that is a terrible salesman desk because you just don't have the patience for people to just be nonsensical in their own head over things. It's like, no, I know you need to do this. This is what you need to do. Why aren't you doing this? And the frustration comes through. And I see that with every salesman that I've ever helped in any industry that has that desk. It's like learning to slow down and let people grapple a little bit with their own decision making is hard. Yeah.

Yeah. Learning how to manage people. Yes. Being very good at managing people is a key component. So, but anyway, like that little summary right there, like that's what I did every single day I was in the gym. How can I find an opportunity or even in the grocery store or doing a workshop at a CrossFit gym or whatever? Like I found any reason to start a conversation with anybody and

and it grew my business quickly. Yeah, of course. It grew fast. Of course. I was doing great in my first two months officially graduated. I was doing better than anyone I'd ever truly heard of starting their first practice right out of school. Yeah, no kidding. And with my overhead being, you know, 500 bucks. 500 bucks in the gym. Yeah. 500 bucks in the gym. It was great. It was great. So here's now where timelines come into play. So

during those first few months growing my brick and mortar um once again my social media is still growing i'm posting every day still i'm still getting people messaging me from all over how can i see your help how can i get your help and at this point i'm actually starting to make some money now and so now i'm starting to think a little bit more like okay i'm the best of the best at this i'm helping a ton of people um i deserve some degree of compensation yeah i can't just hand this out all day long so i had to think okay

I'm making money in person, but I have at that point, maybe 180,000 followers online with people asking for help every day. How can I monetize this? And it started with as simple as, oh, there's this thing called Zoom now. What I'll do is I'll just do Zoom consultations. I'll advertise Zoom consultations for a hundred bucks.

That's how this creation that what I have now started. So I was just getting on zoom calls with people. Once again, Egypt, Indonesia, Australia, Germany, a lot of people from the UK, um, all over just, Hey, what's going on? All right. Try this exercise for this. Hey, here's a link for my page. Try these ones would build a mini plan. Tell me what hurt. And

And so then it evolved from, okay, just single Zoom sessions to, okay, now can I do a Zoom session and provide a plan to go with it? So then I started building PDF plans, emailing PDF plans, right? That's how it started. I started to make a little bit of money online. And I thought, okay, well, now I need to build a program. So then at the time, I will kind of glaze over this because it's not super relevant to where we're heading, but I just built a standard, do-it-yourself, pre-recorded low-back program on my website. Okay.

So I had that and that's probably around February or March of 2020. So getting close to COVID here. Okay. When I launched that,

And I was maybe selling one to two a week. Maybe. Maybe. It was like for a very low fee. Yeah. A very low fee. I was like, man, I thought more people would be buying this. But whatever. I got my brick and mortar. That's my focus. Just seeing if I can get a little tip online. Did you test it this time before you melted? Sounds like you did. Sounds like you did. Yeah, yeah. Maybe not as much as I should. Or as much as I knew how to. There you go. So...

brick and mortar. That's my focus doing everything there. Hey, let me just figure out how to scrape a little bit off the top of my online, but not really fully investing into that approach. Okay. So

COVID comes, right? Boom. COVID comes. Everyone knows what happened to brick and mortar businesses from COVID. Yeah. And even though I was considered an essential provider, it doesn't matter. People's fears will always win. So even though I worked with individuals who I feel as though viewed things a different way and were very much so health focused and, and you know, many of them still, Hey, I don't really know what's going on. I'm not going to see anymore.

And for the vast majority of practices in any area of healthcare, there was a massive reduction in your business. And I was just starting. At that point in time, after investing what I had in school,

And paying for a lot of it with my own money, trying to minimize loans significantly. At that point in time, my wife hadn't worked for a while. And the job she had when we first moved here wasn't amazing compensation wise. We just bought our first house. We could barely afford it. Barely. So we're scraping at this point. And I was like, just starting to replenish. And so that comes crashing down.

And I'm seeing it fall away very quickly. So what most medical practices did is, okay, we need to overcompensate at this point in time. We need to do more marketing, more awareness to keep as many people on board as possible. And basically put three times as much effort into retaining half of your business is really what it was for all clinics at that time. And I feel for these individuals significantly, any lines of business. So I was confronted with a choice. Brick and mortar was my main thing.

And I was seeing that dwindling very quickly. I just started making some money online. I didn't really understand it. I didn't really see a huge path. I didn't really see a clear path for that, but I was just starting to make a little bit of money online. And I was standing at a crossroads and I didn't realize I was there, but I saw crossroads. That was okay. I have two choices here.

is I can put now all of my effort, basically kind of stop doing the Instagram thing. Cause I wasn't, I was putting a ton of effort into a ton of time, but not really making much anything.

I can take all that time that I'm putting towards mostly free social media, but providing massive amounts of value. I can basically cut that and put in three times as much effort into trying to keep my brick and mortar alive. Right. Or I can completely cut off brick and mortar and see if I can turn online into a

anything to get me through this time or to open up new doors that I might not even be aware of. And what you focus on tends to grow. Yep, exactly right. So I made it very clear. I was kind of juggling two things, but at that point in time, I realized, okay, I can't juggle anymore. I need to pick something. So I saw obviously where my brick and mortar was going, which was nowhere fast due to factors outside of my control. But I thought, okay, online, my social media is growing amazingly.

anything digital is the future. I'm going to take what I felt at the time. I felt as though it was a big risk. I'm going to take a risk and I'm going to just figure out, I'm going to figure out how to use my audience that I've spent two years at this point building for free, charging nothing value, value, value, value. How can I figure out how to, how to turn this into something? So I completely stopped all brick and mortar when a hundred percent online and

And it was the best decision I could have made. And my life has forever changed. So your first, your first training system, what did you build it in?

Yeah. So, um, we used a, uh, I, well at first, like I'm just sending PDFs, right? I'm just sending PDFs and then I figured out, okay, I need to make this more robust. So I found, uh, basically a third party, uh, software that we use for like a coaching platform. A lot of like online personal trainers use it. Um, what is it? And it's called true coach. Okay. So we use true coach and I started figuring out, okay, just basically,

Basically, what's the most sophisticated way I can deliver my recommendations?

Because it's difficult to deliver recommendations over email or over PDF. So all I was thinking, I'm a one-man show. I don't have any employees, nothing. Sure. How can I deliver the most effective, most clear prescriptions in regards to exercise, rehab prescriptions, movement prescriptions? How can I provide the best education in the best way possible that would make it as clear, as tangible, as understandable as possible? How do I do that? Mm-hmm.

And so I was just research, research, calling anyone I knew. I'm going to guess video library for 300. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly right. So I figured out how to implement some degree of, okay, I can type out what I want them to do and I can attach a video to that, a custom video that's recorded, that covers these topics to show them exactly what I want to do, what I want them to do and provide communication, checkpoints, Zoom meetings, text conversation all throughout the entire process. Mm-hmm.

And it worked incredibly well. And because of my giant time and monetary investment into rehab,

Rehab is movement coaching. And I don't need to like John, like right now, I don't need to touch you to coach you through movement. I can tell you what to do. So show me what to do. Yeah. I could, I could show you what to do. Hey, like, and let me just use a simple example. This isn't like a, this is all we do in our program, but like, let's just say I wanted to coach on your squat form. I could show you something.

I could ask you to do it. I could watch you and I could give you adjustments. I don't need to touch you to do that. Well, it just so happens that 90% of low back pain is movement based. So meaning it's mechanical. There's certain movements that you can do that will make your pain worse. And there's certain movements you can do that will make your pain better. And if I can coach the person, the good movements to do,

instead of the bad movements to do. If I can coach them on how to do the good movements, specific movements and specific sequences that's right for their condition, then I don't need to touch them. And that's everything I learned up until that point. So my education fits absolutely perfect with an online model that

providing 100 online coaching for low back pain disc herniation and sciatica specifically are you using the same platform you did when you when you launch this are you still on the same platform you scaled to something else no same thing we're still using it i believe it's so the best so again you don't have to go out and build software to support your idea there there's there's sa is that my phone dinging is that what that is sorry about that we can uh no it's on silent

- I don't know if I'm doing it. I don't know if I'm doing it. - It's true. - See, it's like, we keep it real here. We'll keep all the warts in with the good stuff as well. We keep it real. Now, what I was gonna say is if you have an idea, like there's so much software as a service out there that can get your idea live, you don't have to go build your own necessary platform. And it's also a great way, like I said, to test if you can use other people's stuff

to get it up and get it done. And there's a bunch of coaching platforms out there that work really, really well that do what you're talking about. But again, if you don't have good content to go in them, then it's kind of useless. So you built this great machine that's working good. You already have your existing thing. Have you branched out into new... Have you turned this into like funnels now? Are you funnel hacking using...

using that stuff, all of those things. Yeah. So here's the way that I'll phrase that is I have now heavily invested into figuring out the methods in which I can help as many people as possible. And of course, funnels and sales processes, there's a natural part of that. And what it is, is it's helping people realize that they need to make a change and helping them make the change that improves their lives forever. So absolutely. It's funny. I heard a great quote I shared with my personal team the other day. It was, uh, it was

I was watching that show industry on HBO. The guy was talking about this. And I think this is true for so many things. If you're in sales at all and you're selling something, um,

It's your job is to make people make a decision that you know is right for them much faster than they're comfortable making it. Yeah, 100%. And that's what a good sales system funnel or person does, I think. Are you using ClickFunnels? Are you using GoHighLevel? What are you using? Start with ClickFunnels. Everything's been converted to GoHighLevel. Dude, how much do you love the high level? I love it. Because just as I'm sitting here listening to you talk, right? Because I'm such a high level nerd. All I can think about is...

oh my God, he could use high level to do AI onboarding where literally he could ask them like 50 questions, like a choose your own adventure and then build their stuff for them. And then you would just have to look at it and push it. But I mean, it's wow. Go high level is great. I love that, dude. It's like, I sit here and think about your business. Like, well, what I do at high level, that's amazing. So at some point, and also the best thing I want to talk about is your business in the gym wasn't scalable.

Not with just me. No way. Cause it's my time. My time is directly tied to all of it. And it's just me. You were swapping. You were swapping time for dollars. Yep. So you were hustling. You were hustling. Oh yeah. And again, one of my good friends and mentors, Kent Clothier always says, uh,

you know in order to become the ceo the hustler must die and you're and that's a walking case study for it you had to kill the hustler which was the brick and mortar for the ceo to emerge because now you can scale and you're in your infinite with what you can do yes we are so with your programs on the back i'm just curious because again i like to look at the business side of it i promise we're going to talk about the outside of it no it's cool i get so into the business focus on what you want to talk about yeah yeah no i get so into the business side of it so

Do you have like different levels of like, there's the choose your own adventure, do it yourself where you put in your symptoms and it serves you up what you think it needs all the way up to like the zoom still like, like do you have different levels of program for people? So vast, vast, vast majority, if not almost all of Zoom,

online programs for different health issues at this point are pretty much all plug and chug. Meaning, hey, here's this standalone. This will help a lot of you, won't help some of you, but it doesn't cost that much. So whatever. That's the vast majority. We are...

We are very heavily one-on-one. We are premium. We are a premium approach. So yes, there are preliminary forms that people will complete that track different symptoms and difficulties that give us information about what they're dealing with. But a person reads every one and a person builds the plan for every person. So sure, are there...

vast similarities because at this point the only individual we work with is low back pain disc herniation sadhaka that's it so is there some significant overlap between people's programs that can sometimes streamline our process to building a program yes sometimes it can be very simple because we're like yeah we've seen six cases of this exact same thing this week we know exactly how to start you boom button easy sometimes it's

We get some complex cases. And sometimes we truly are building it from scratch every week, from complete scratch. So it depends on the circumstance. It depends on what they're doing. So how many people are in the system currently? Right now, active clients, you mean? We probably have 180, 90 active clients right now. All right, cool. And it's still just you? No. Okay, so you scale up with how many people? And at what point...

Like I run a U S with all my business. I don't know if you've heard of U S, but it's the business operating system. It's just a language of how you run your business. Um, we're done. Women are coming to run it in and it's a big part of scaling your business. So at what point did you know, did you map out when you needed to grow and you needed to add more hands or did you just get to a stress point where it was like, I can't like, we're going to like, yeah, I need to sleep. So we got to get somebody in. Yeah. Two, two main things there. One was awareness. So complete lack of awareness. That's,

what degree I could scale this to and what is actually possible. So figures that I'm at now and that I know are attainable in the future, I didn't even think were possible to me. So two main things was one investing in my first business coach and being aware that business coaching was even a thing in scaling businesses was even a thing. Who's your coach? So, well, I've worked with multiple coaches at this point. So there's just, you know, a few that I worked with early on. Um,

But anyway, the first two years, so 2020 and 2021 was just me. One man show actually was able to hire my mom. She quit her job.

And she was helping me do all of my bookkeeping. Did she screw up your calendar? No, I don't think she's ever screwed up my calendar. Mom would never do that. Yeah. Sons do that, not moms. So that was amazing. And she helped me in many ways. So she was my first employee, you could say. Perfect. When I was still really a one man show in regards to I'm doing all the content. I'm doing all the calls. I'm doing all the programming. I'm doing everything. You're doing everything. I'm doing everything. So-

first year, second year, I'm doing everything, making, at that point in time, good money. Double what I thought I would ever make as a brick and mortar carpenter. Got it, yeah. So I'm happy with where things are at. So then, close to the end of 2021 was when, yes, two things happened. One, I realized, oh, it's podcasting

It's possible for me to do more than what I am. It's possible for me to not be a one man show. I thought, you know, when you're growing a business and it's just you, like this is my baby. No one else can do what I do. No one can touch this. It has to only be me forever. That's what you think. And that's the trap. That's the hustler, man. That's the hustler. And so I realized, okay,

I'm doing, you know, 80 hours a week, every week for the last two years, which is absolutely true because I love to work. It's not a chore for me. At that point, we have kids and I, well, until, you know, I had my, I had my first child in, in 2021. So I did have a kid on that year, but yeah, eight hour weeks, all me crushing it. But hey,

kids getting older not seeing him that much I'm grinding I'm doing assessments and calls on Saturdays Sundays any opportunity that comes up I take it work is everything which I love I love to work but realizing okay I'm like not

I'm not really hanging out with my wife. I'm not really hanging out with my kid. She don't like that. This is getting tough. So the, the two points were, Hey, one, it's possible to go beyond where I'm at into, I've been maxed out for basically multiple years straight and I need to make a change for my family. I can sympathize, man. You know, it hit me really hard. Jesse Itzler said this. Um, I was at a dinner and he was there and he said, uh, first time I've heard him say it. He said, you know, you got 18 summers with your kids. Yeah.

That's it. Get 18 summers.

And ever since then, hearing that, I started counting them down. And the 16-year-old that I busted his balls, two summers left, man. He's off. He's off to school. And so, yeah. I wish I could get those early days back when I did what you did in those early days. So I'm glad you figured it out much faster than most. Probably much faster than me. So I'm glad for you and your wife that you figured it out. Yes, me too. Because you're never going to get that time back. You're never going to get it back. So, yeah.

How many people now? How many, how many, how many presenting physicians? So one man show from 2020 to 2021. And at the point that I realized our time to grow, I was able to hire nine staff within that next year. That's great. So I'm from a one man show to nine staff in a year. Now I have 11 staff and we're making a huge impact and I'm loving every minute of it. What happened? What would happen if you left for three months at this point? So, um,

Great bottleneck question. What would happen is things would go down in regards to front end lead flow because our media is everything. I am built on organic social media, providing more value than anybody else. That is how my business is built. And I've attempted, I've attempted multiple times to hire out. I,

ideation, content scripting. Like, Hey, I just want time to think about it. Like tell me where to, what to record. You do the bio for me. You do the posting for me. I've tried that probably three, four or five times. You just can't get it right. And it is not right. It's just not you. Yeah. That's so, that's so tough. It's very tough because, because one, my, my,

And I know anybody, no matter what your skill level is, would say this about themselves, of course. But I'm very, very good at what I do. I've invested heavily into being the best. So I know...

the movements and the things to do that yield the best results but also i know the language of my audience better than anyone else could so i know what are the exact symptoms they feel when are they triggered with what movements at what point and i can create content that speaks to that exactly so if you're dealing with back pain and you notice this when you do this here's why

And here's what you can do to change that. So do this, this, this, and I'll retest it. Do you use the questions a lot on to solicit information to help you make your stuff? Yeah. So speaking the language in the most direct way possible, I know the best types of videos and messages and scripting to do. And every time I've tried to hire that out, they just, they don't have my brain. So I have attempted to do this multiple times, but I would say, I don't think it's possible.

for anyone to create the videos other than me. - See, it's so funny that the guys, if you're in a vShred, you know what vShred is? - Yes. - The guys that are in vShred are good friends of mine.

And it's kind of the same thing. They have a billion dollar valuation now almost on that company. And they still are like, they're the secret sauce for it. Like Vince is the guy on camera and my buddy Nick and Kevin, they're the ones that write and put together everything that comes out of his mouth. And it's, and they won't give it up. They're like, no, we can't, we cannot let this go. We have to do this. And obviously Vince is the front guy. He's got to be on camera. But as far as I'm putting the ads together, they just feel like they just have the sauce to it and they just want it.

I get it. I mean, sometimes, sometimes in some businesses, you just are the secret sauce, man. It just is what it is. So as of now, I still am. I'm not trying to be forever. I still got to be the face of it. And I know that, but like for instance, right now I'm making a big push to try to hire my YouTube scripting, writing YouTube video for myself takes a lot of time. So I'm trying to actually look for a physical therapist or chiropractor who's has my same

mindset who has a similar knowledge to me that I can teach how I write my YouTube scripts so I can begin to hire that out. But for the most part, if I left, our media would go down. I hate that. Well, I hate that because let's talk about that because the reality of that situation is, and this is a reality of business that a lot of people can't come to grips with. If you hire somebody talented enough to do that,

You have to expect they're going to bail on you and replicate what you're doing. Yeah. It's like you have to expect it. And people get so mad, like they get so mad when they bring somebody on. That's so good. And they realize, oh, I'm really good. I can. Yeah, I don't need this. I can do this by myself. And then they leave and do it themselves. And people get so mad. It's like.

That's the trade-off. That's what you get like yeah, exactly. It just happened to me. Yeah I had I had an assessment coach who's part of the process part of the funneling process and he's Amazing and he's a physical therapist assistant his name Xander if you ever watch this I love you, man But he had zero sales experience zero online marketing experience zero zero zero just physical therapy assistant but great person great great language

great, just everything. And so our very first meeting, I went over just some, some simple sales stuff with him and he was terrible. He was terrible. He was so bad. I was like, Oh my gosh, I don't know if I can hire this guy now. He has no concept of discussion in regards to a sales process, which once again, you need to have in order to help people. Yeah. So,

I was like, all right, I got to give this guy like some homework, check back in a week, see if he's made improvement. So I just sent him some recordings of myself, send him some information. Week later, we did another mock call and he was like 10 times better. The fastest learning in regards to sales language and discussion I've ever seen. I was like, oh my gosh, yes, let's go. And so he was with me for about a year and he became so good.

So good at just the discussions and analyzing and reading behavior and what to do and when, you know, all the intricacies of sales processes. Very in depth, very in depth. He got so good at it that of course, and I'm saying this in a lovely way. Once again, if you're listening, man, I love you. He's like, oh,

I have learned now. And I, and he's of course seen what I do and he's heard, Hey guys, we're going to test this. We're going to do this. We're running this new ad. Here's the processes to be able to watch all that and learn from me. It was, Hey, I'm really good at this. I can run, I can run my own business now. So he just created his own brick and mortar business and he's leaving me. And you got to expect, but you got to expect, but I love how you're doing. You're wishing him well, which is the right way and the only way to do it. Yeah. I mean, for me, I think there's predicators that there's, there's,

data points that will tell you this is going to happen. And for me, especially in sales, because that's the business we're in here, if somebody ever becomes 30% of my Salesforce sales, they're gone. Yeah. Like if you hit that 30% threshold and that's somebody that's really smoking, that's really good, you've got to have the expectation that you're about to lose that person and you need to prepare for it. Yeah. Right. Like when I have had people in the past hit that number on my personal team, I'm like, you know, what are you doing? Yeah.

Like, like time to leave the nest, the little birdie, you gotta fly. Right. Like, like, and that's a good thing about this company. Cause like I own this company, we have 600 agents that work here. Um,

And the good news is, is I have 10 that work directly for me on trade on my name in the real estate space. And when they, if somebody hits that point, if I shove them out of the nest, I don't shove them too far. They're still in the building. They're just running their own business here. So I can still kind of keep them, which is a nice little advantage that I have within this industry. But yeah, it's hard when that happens. The one thing I want to point out though, is I can just tell the manner in which you, you just spoke is that

Winners like seeing other people win. So when someone does work for you, it was like that one, you appreciate them greatly because they provided you a significant amount of value. And then when you see someone turn into a winner and find an opportunity now through you to now win more than they ever thought was possible for themselves, you're like,

Winners celebrate that. And you're happy for them. And yes, you're losing a very, very valuable asset to your business. But winners like seeing people win. And so it's a celebration. I deal with people with one ethos running through my head the whole time, which is I want people fighting over the microphone at my funeral. That's what I want. I want them fighting over the microphone at my funeral. That's what I want. And that is a direct fight. The only way to get that

It's how you deal with people on a day-to-day basis. So what are we going to happen? So yeah, I'm excited about that. But let's talk about, we talked about business a lot. I do want to talk about some back stuff, right? Like, cause there are people that are listening to this right now. They're like, dude, I'm sitting here with aches and pains. They've told me how they're going to help me. I haven't gotten to that yet. So before I get to that, I want to talk about, I'll tell you, I'll tell you a crazy story. Cause I did in my early twenties, I had chronic lower back pain, like the stuff where you bend over to put a fork in the dishwasher and fall down and lay there for three minutes. Yeah. Yeah.

And I had this and I would go to, I went to all these chiropractors, I went to these different people and I just, nothing fixed it. And then Howard Stern cured my back pain. Okay. Yes. It's true story. So I'm driving to work and I'm listening to Howard Stern and he's talking about his back pain saying, ah, man, I've been all these doctors and x-rays and everything else. And nobody can figure out anything. Why? And he goes, finally, I went to a doctor two weeks ago and the doctor said, you know, I think you need to see a psychiatrist. Okay.

He said, why? And he goes, well, because there's no physical, there's no physiological reason why your body is in pain.

But you don't deal with stress outwardly at all. You have no outlet for your stress. So your body is attacking itself is what he told me. And he said, as soon as you realize that that's what's going on, it won't happen anymore. And he goes, I haven't had a back pain in two weeks. And as soon as I heard that, I swear to God, my back pain went away. Never had another one. I believe you. I never had another one.

I thought that I love telling doctors, like, I love that because I thought that was so weird. Now, obviously a lot of people have real physiological pain, but I just thought that was such an anomaly and such a weird little deal. Yeah. In my own life. I believe you. Thank you, Howard Stern. Yeah. No, I, I'm not surprised by that story. And I thank you for sharing that story because I think a lot of people need to hear that. And I think a lot of medical providers need to hear that too. Yeah. And I'm going to speak to that for a moment now. So yeah.

You're absolutely correct. Stress. And I'm going to discuss multiple facets here. Your body channels stress through different ways. And if someone has a present or past injury, it doesn't matter what the injury is. Yeah.

So often your body will use stress and there's different kinds of stress, right? There's emotional stress and like there's different kinds. It'll use that stress and it'll go to that previous or present injury and use that as an outlet. So I have a few, I think, I think stories and examples are really helpful to speak into the audience. And I think some people will like, this might do it. Yeah. Let's try to cure somebody right now. So,

Here's a few true examples. So we had this client. She's in Brazil. Amazing client. So sweet. Okay. Had sadica for six months, back pain for 12 months. Yeah. Tried the PT, the chiro, the injections, painkillers. Didn't want to be on painkillers anymore. Joined our program.

amazing success story like we have some people that you know there's like an average pace we have some people where we've had some people completely pain-free in eight days and these testimonials are shared yeah chronic back pain completely resolved in eight days you can see our public testimonials and for her she was one of the rapid responders like two months side i got completely gone back in the gym getting back into tennis like really really really good story

And so we're kind of in the bulletproofing phase. I'm like, yeah, you're, you're doing great. Like we're not that involved anymore because she's doing amazing. She's following the plan. Yep. Guys, I'm good. I'm following the plan. Yep. Another good week. I'm good. Following the plan. All of a sudden we received some like out of left field messages. Like I'm in this much pain. The side of his back, the side of that was gone for a full month, completely back shooting all the way down her leg, fired down the leg. I'm crying. I don't know what happened. We're like, well,

What, where did this come from? Like you've been crushing it. Yeah. And so we're messaging her. Hey, okay, well let's, let's take, let's take a step back. Like, am I even going to ask about your symptoms? Like what's happened recently? Yeah. Nothing. Okay. Did anything change in your life? No. What, like, what did you do differently? Did you do a different movement? Did something happen? No, no, no, no, no. And so we thought we need to have a face-to-face conversation. Something happened. So we scheduled a call.

I don't know what happened. I didn't do anything differently. I've been following the plan. I didn't do any old movements. I've been following the plan exactly. That's been working perfect for me. I haven't changed anything. My injury's back. Something happened. Crying on the call. It's an emotional call. And I just keep digging and digging. Hey, I totally understand. And I'm not dismissing what you're feeling at all. But

I believe something happened in your life recently. Just can you think of anything? Did anything happen? And I started asking, did something scary happen recently? Did something happen to your job? Has anything happened to a loved one? And she looked at me and broken into tears and said, what happened? And she said, a week ago, my best friend died. Like tragically. Okay. That's not a nothing. Yeah. But in understanding of people in pain,

They're trying to most individuals that I'm directly speaking to my audience right now. Most people believe when my pain increases, then I've either hurt something or damaged something. So what did I do to damage myself more? So they put the blinders on in regards to what is my physical activity been?

Okay. I've been working the same job. I've been doing the same habits. I did the same workouts. I did the same movement preparation. So I haven't done anything. And it's our job to peel those back to help them become more aware of things that could influence this. So she tells me my best friend died a week ago. I said, okay, when did your pain return? And she said the day after I found out. Yeah. And so we talked about that.

for 15, 20 minutes. And I just explained what I'm going to explain right now, which is pain is an experience. So pain is not like, like if I were to pinch my hand right now, okay. My hand does not create pain. What happens is I pinch my hand. The, the degree of pressure that I'm squeezing with is sent to my brain.

My brain interprets the degree of that tension in my brain will then tell my hand to either feel pain or to not. So all pain is created in my brain, all of it.

And we know this. Do you have something to, no, well, well, you don't know how, how funny, well, no, it's not funny. It's terrible because I suffer from something called trimogenital neuralgia. Yes. Yeah. I know what it is. The suicide ailment is what they like to call it. And, and yeah, and it comes, I'm dealing with it. It had happened like a year ago, went away for a year, started again now, August 4th, not nearly as bad this time as last time.

Last time, the wind would blow on my face and I'd get zapped. It was bad. For those of you who don't know what it is, there's a nerve called the trigeminal nerve that runs all through your face. And it is... Mine misfires. And when I say misfire, when it's bad, it's like you pulled the cord out of a plug, out of a lamp that's still plugged into the wall and then touched the top of it to the top of your face and the bottom of it to the bottom of your face. And you get electrocuted. And I know that sounds crazy, but it happens. And this time, it's not really touch-based. It's happened kind of when...

I brush my teeth or eat. And then kind of when I touch my, you'll see me touching my nose like this because it's when my nose itches and I rub my nose, it zaps me. So a weird sort of thing in my nose decides to be itchy when this happens. So there you go. But you know, it could be worse, but, but yes, I agree with that, that all pain starts in the brain because this is 100% just a nerve misfiring in my head. Sure. So one story. Yeah.

So really helpful example for the audience. Okay. Let's compare a shark bite to a paper cut. Yeah. If we get a paper cut, oh my gosh, it's burning. You're looking at it, but that's a little paper cut. How often do we hear, well, shark attacks aren't common, but someone's surfing, they get their leg bit off. They don't know until they see it.

or they see blood around them, they're not even aware. So you can get your leg bit off and feel nothing. But you can get a paper cut and it's the worst thing ever. So pain is an experience that is influenced by multiple things. And

Past or present traumas, physical, emotional stress, sleep, diet, all these things influence the experience of pain. So in that example with the client I'm referring to, and I have another really good example after it, a really good example.

In this moment, after she made that connection with me, oh my gosh, the day after I discovered my friend died was when all of my pain returned. I educated her on the fact of pain is an experience. It's made up of these things. She had a vast overload of this type of stress, emotional stress, and your body is using the issue that we've already resolved. It's using that to channel your stress. But, and I made this very clear to her,

To your point, I'm trying to remember this multiple years ago. I think your name was Gabriella. I said, to your point, Gabriella, you keep repeating to me, you've done nothing different. You didn't, you didn't fall. You didn't do a heavy lift. You haven't done anything different. So my question for you, Gabriella, is if you have not done anything different, is it possible for you to have injured yourself more? Yeah. No, no, exactly. So although you feel more pain, um,

Hurt does not equal harm, right? Increase of pain is not equivalent to more tissue damage. They are not the same thing. So you are feeling more pain, but there's no tissue damage that has occurred. There's no re-injury that has occurred. There's no trauma that has occurred. Your experience of pain is

is currently elevated because of the emotional stress that you're dealing with from your best friend passing away. We had that conversation 40 hours later, completely gone. Yeah, dude. The brain is a weird and wonderful thing. It's a wild thing. So your clients that do come to you with back pain, any of those things, the sciatica, the, you said sciatica, disc herniation, just low back pain. That is our, that's all we do. Yeah. Um,

Dude, and I'll talk about disc herniation for a second because this was crazy. My wife had two microdissectomies. We're both very tall people. And, you know, disc issues are always a problem when you're very tall. It's like, I wish I was tall. Yeah, wait till you're about 50, buddy. Let's see what happens. But so she had two microdissectomies on two different discs. And then at some point, like...

Something happened that she had something else, another doctor. And another doctor was like, oh my God, your abs are totally separated. We need to put your abs back together. And they never went back together after you had the second kid. Diastasis recti. Right? He's like, we need to go sew your abs back together. And he's doing this. He's like, man, it really surprises me. You never had any lower back pain with this. It was like...

Yeah, dude, two microdosectomies. I wish somebody would have looked at the other side of me as it went. So I'm assuming with a lot of your treatments, you really, with the movement stuff, you get after the whole core, strengthening the entire core, which is so, I don't know. You tell me how important that is to overall back health.

So there's a lot of intricacies to this. That's a long question. That is a big question. Here's why. I'm going to discuss a concept, a theory first. I'm going to go into your question, okay? Is the vast, vast, vast majority, oh my gosh, I would say 99% of healthcare providers, they both think and they promote a message on the internet and social media about any injury, any physical injury, back pain or whatever, as being very like...

mechanistic in regards to if you have back pain, it's because your core is weak. If you have back pain, it's because this one hip flexor is tight. If you have back pain, it's because your hips aren't even. But here's the truth. And that's a very easy sell because it's very understandable, very digestible to someone who isn't an expert in this area. But I'm an evidence-based provider and I'm going to say what the evidence says because this is not my opinion. It's what the evidence says. So back pain is

majority of back pain is referred to as nonspecific. 90% of low back pain is nonspecific pain. Nonspecific pain means you cannot trace it back to one individual thing related to the concept I discussed earlier. There's so many things involved with pain from an emotional perspective, or there's so many things involved with pain with a movement perspective too. So you can't just blame one isolated thing. So what the evidence shows is

Is that back pain is not caused by a weak core. So I make it as very linear. It's not one plus one equals two. Can core function be involved with low back pain? Yes, but we cannot say weak core equals low back pain. Can't do that.

Because there's way too many levels of back pain. There's way too many things that could be involved. It's way too multifaceted. It's multifactorial. So we can't make that conclusion. But if you're wanting me to have a quick discussion on core things about back pain, I can provide some hot value right now. So...

Let's take this into consideration. We know that 90% of back pain is a movement-based problem and therefore needs a movement-based solution. So vast majority of people don't move enough. So vast majority of people are not strong enough. And vast majority of people are not mobile enough. So

Let's take someone who is deconditioned. So they have not been training. They have not been doing any form of strength exercise. They don't move enough. Okay. And they start to develop common low back pain because they're not strong because they're not loading their bodies. They're not using their bodies. Okay. So this type of an individual, someone who's deconditioned, who's not moving realistically for this person, any form of exercise will do them good.

Like if you take this type of individual and you just tell them walk a mile in the morning and walk a mile at night, chances are you're going to make a huge impact in their back pain. Yeah. Is it because walking cures back pain? No, it's because they're deconditioned, not moving and now they're moving. So in this example, and here's where messaging and healthcare can get a little bit screwy.

And here's where people get very bought in to certain approaches is I could take the individual and I could visually see you're out of shape, you're deconditioned, you're not moving. And I could say, you have a weak core. Well, duh, they have weak everything. But if I say, oh, you have a weak core and I know that a weak core causes back pain. So I'm going to have you do core exercises. Okay. I have them do core exercises. They tell me, yeah, I feel better. And I go, told you.

Weak core equal back pain. I give you core exercises now, no back pain. So core was the reason, but for that person, I could have given them any exercise to get them moving in general, any exercise to load their body and to get them moving and they would feel better. So this is why there's where the mistakes can come in, where a lot of people will develop this belief. Oh, I had back pain because my core is weak. So I

I did core exercises. My back pain's gone. So it was my core and no one can tell me otherwise. Now the flip side of this, and here's where we can create traps and here's where healthcare does create a lot of traps for people is if someone comes into standard healthcare clinic and

And someone tells them you have back pain because your core is weak. But that person does have another mechanical issue, something that needs to be addressed. And their core is very strong and they're very active, which we get a lot of people who are active individuals. We get CrossFit athletes, professional strong men, power lifters,

We get clients who fit that profile and they go to typical PT clinics, typical chiropractors, and they're told, yeah, you have a weak core. And they're thinking, okay, I can squat 500 pounds. I can hold a plank for two minutes. Yeah. I'm top. I'm top 1% of physicality in the world.

My core's not weak, but because they're told that message and they're convinced, okay, now my belief is that I'm in pain because my core is weak. And the only way for me to get out of pain is to strengthen my core. Well, when they go and do core exercises and it doesn't get better. Yeah. Now what? They get disillusioned. Absolutely. And they probably turn to medicine. Yeah. They feel very defeated and they feel very confused and they feel very stuck because the only thing they know is I was told by the authority.

I was told by that doctor who has that title that the reason for my pain is my weak core. So I'm just going to do planks all day, but nothing's changing. And so now if they're under this impression that the only way for me to get better is to do this, and now that's the only thing they're doing, and they believe that the only way to get better is to do this one thing, but they're not getting better.

Well, now you're stuck in a cycle. Now you're in a mental trap and now your chances for recovery are very low. Yeah. And you look at, you know, like we had Alec Barlakov on the show. He's the guy that the movie Pain Hustlers is kind of actually about. He was part of the opioid epidemic and sailing of that. Watch that movie. And to hear, you know, how quick doctors were to prescribe that stuff and for pain.

You know, obviously I think that the majority like you said 90% of lower back pain or these issues can be solved with movement Which is great If you had to choose between strength or flexibility you can only pick one, what do you pick and

for the general populace strength, strength, the general populace, always strength. Okay, cool. Well, dude, if they want to find more about you, obviously rehab, our X is the online system that they can go. We have fixed. We have fixed, fixed, rehab, not our X, F I X. We have fix is the online program that they can find you. That's where you're branded everywhere. Yep.

Yep. So you can find that on all social media. Our number one source there would be our Instagram. I'm posting, I'm posting every day. And so a lot of, a lot of very, very applicable movements, primarily once again, for low back pain, disc herniation, sadica movements that you can apply. Our free content alone has helped thousands of people get pain-free just following the free content.

Those who need a more specific approach, of course, who want to reach out for more individualized help. That's what we're there for. But there's a lot of posts that I make that anyone has free access to. But what I found also that's super interesting, not just helping people with back pain, you're also coaching other chiropractors how to do what you do now.

Yeah. Cause how do they find you for that? How do they find you for that? Yeah. So yeah. I mean, like I said, like I don't, there's not a whole lot of people. I like to think this is a highbrow show. So we have lots of, we have lots of highly educated doctors, you know, surrounded by leather, leather bound books, reading and enjoy listening to the podcast. So yeah. How do they find you?

Yeah. So they can, they can reach out directly over Instagram as well. That would probably be the best way for a fellow chiropractor or physical therapist to get ahold of us because we are working with brick and mortar practices, helping them to scale based on the knowledge and experience that I've accrued at this point. But definitely,

Any chiropractor or physical therapist that has built an online following is sharing things online for the, for the purpose of growing their brand. And they have a decent following, but they're not really sure how to monetize it. I have the recipe. I have all the answers to the tests and,

maybe, and we can give them those answers and things can change very, very fast. Cause like we talked about earlier, you were able to take a three year shortcut. I mean, dude, information coaching, all of that is just, it's a time machine, dude. It is a time machine. Coaching is a time machine. It's a time machine. It,

I get asked sometimes and on sometimes other interviews or even other clinical individuals, like, Hey, if you could go back and tell yourself one thing or to do something earlier, what would it be? And every single time it's, I would have taken the first business coach earlier. I would have done that next mentorship as soon as possible. Like it all comes down to, I would have invested in myself or I would have invested into my business. I would have invested in myself.

at the first opportunity if i'd done all those things you know i think i'm at least a decade or two ahead at this point if i'd done all the things i've done up at this point at the beginning i'd probably be 30 to 40 years ahead right now yeah and i've helped way more people because ultimately that's the objective is to just help as many people as possible get out of back pain yeah and we can reach people over and i love doing it it's awesome being able to deliver results that you know

Our classic individual, and I hate to spiral into another lesson if you're trying to wrap things up here. Yeah, I know. But our classic individual is, hey, Grant, I know you guys are an online program, but I've seen two chiropractors. I've seen two physical therapists. I've already had an injection. If all these things haven't been able to help me- How are you going to help? How is an online program going to help me? And I don't mean to mock the individual. Sure. This is just the mindset that isn't aware of these things. And the reality is this. I like saying this example is-

Well, first off, something we'll say is, okay, well, if you've tried everything at this point in person, it sounds like you need to do something different. You try something not in person. That's the first thing. All the more reason to try this. Yep. The second thing is, hey, what makes this different? Well, as I articulated earlier, my number one mission in school up until the very point of starting my business was I want to be the absolute best at what I do. And I've always been results first, results first, results first. It's always it. I've grown my reputation. I've grown my reputation.

our reputation as a company based on the results and the value that we provide. 100%. That's everything. We are premium and we are the best at it. And I have no problem saying that. So

They'll ask me, okay, what makes this different? I said, well, really, there's no answer I can provide you that would sound authentic. Because if you ask any business in the world, what makes you different? Why should I go with you? They're going to respond with, well, we've done this and we've done this and we've done this. And that's what you're expecting me to say. So here's what I'll say instead is let's say you take two painters. Let's say both painters have 10 years experience.

You give both painters with the same level of experience, the same paint, the same brush, the same canvas, the same model, everything the exact same. They're just two different people. You say, okay, paint this. And you give them the same amount of time, same instructions, everything's the same. Now, after they're said and done, one artist is able to sell it for $100. The other is able to sell it for a million dollars. What makes the difference?

The result. The result's the only thing that makes the difference. I'll take it. I'll take it one more. You know what else makes a difference? What? The brand. Sure. The brand makes a difference. Sure, the brand can make a difference. I understand. The brand makes the difference. But let's strip it all down to what matters the most, which is the result for the recipient. Yes. Yes, because...

How do you feel when you buy a premium brand? Yeah. You feel better about yourself than when you buy a budget brand. Yeah. Which is why you have positioned your business online. Yeah. As a premium brand. Yeah. Which I love. Yeah. We're, we're a premium because we get results and that's the biggest thing is, Hey, like how could it, well, we, we get results time and time again when the typical individual feels very lost, very hopeless. I've tried all these things.

Like, is anything going to work? And the truth is, yes, low back pain is highly recoverable. It affects 80% of people in the world. It's the number one disability in the world. So 80% of people at some point will experience lower back pain. And the message that healthcare preaches about low back pain is very negative, extremely

extremely negative. Oh my gosh, I got a disc issue. I have to have surgery. Oh, I have low back pain. My aunt, that's where the money is. Yeah. My aunt Susie with low back pain had it for 10 years. I'm never going to get better. And this is a message that society preaches. And this is a message that big scale healthcare preaches to back pain. All immediately run to imaging.

And I don't know how much time we have to discuss other topics, but imaging is, it can be. We're starting to run long now. Okay. Okay. Can be. It goes when it's good. It goes by fast though, doesn't it? So anyway, okay. I'll wrap it up. But anyway, so, so I need to provide a conclusion message at this point. Bring us home, Dr. Grant. Bring us home. Okay. So, so the main message here is low back pain is highly recoverable. You don't need invasive procedures. The vast, vast, vast majority of the time.

Imaging, x-rays, MRIs are not needed in the vast majority of cases and can provide a very scary narrative for your situation and can be a fast track to ejections and surgery when in the hands of the wrong doctors. So there's certain clinical guidelines that necessitate imaging the vast majority of the time.

Doctors will push this when it's not necessary and can leave you scared and leave you hopeless and leave you feeling like you're lost without a path. But back pain is highly recoverable. It is movement-based the vast majority of the time. You just need a correct movement plan to get better. But my message is optimism and hope.

High recoverable, you can get better. It's a movement-based problem. Just find someone who preaches the message that you're after because you can't get better. You can't get better. And I'm going to sum it up with my little thought today after what we got from Dr. Grant, which was if you took nothing else away from this, I mean, obviously, hopefully you took away from the, on the business side of things, but if you took, or I'm sorry, on the back pain side of things, but if you took away on the business side, invest in yourself, get coaches, be in masterminds, do those things because it is a

absolute time machine to success. We'll see you next week.

What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.

Hey everybody, Matt MoneySmith here from Believe in Chargers along with the great future Hall of Famer Lorenzo Neal. What do we do? Well, it's one of the most exciting franchises in the NFL this season. You got Jim Harbaugh. Can he do it again? Can he turn the Chargers around low like he did the 49ers, the Stanford Cardinal? In the words of Jim Harbaugh, who's got it better than us? Nobody. No question, buddy. I love it. I love coming on the show, man, and just being able to chop it up with you. You know, I'm the jock. You're the guy who's got

practice all the time. I was a guy on the field. We're fans and we want this team to succeed. And I think hardball is going to do that. The fact that they're going to run this physical brand of football and we have on this podcast and Lorenzo Neal, one of the most physical players in the history of the sport makes it especially special. So check us out.

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