EPISODE 457: The Benefits of Being a Chiropractor

Hey, chiropractors. We're ready for another Modern Chiropractic Mastery Show with Dr. Kevin Christie, where we discuss the latest in marketing strategies, contact marketing, direct response marketing, and business development with some of the leading experts in the industry. 

[00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Modern Chiropractic Mastery. This is your host, Dr. Kevin Christie, and today I am bringing a solo episode and we've titled it the Benefits of Being a Chiropractor. Um, you know, there's challenges of being a chiropractor and we see it all over. People posting and concerns about student loan costs and what you can earn as a chiropractor and our respect in the healthcare community and, and you know, and the insurance reimbursement, we.

We hear a lot of the negatives. We hear a lot of the, uh, hard things that it is being a chiropractor, dealing with certain types of people that we have to deal with. And, uh, there's just no doubt that there's challenges. But at the same time, you know, I think we've all have a lot of friends in other professions.

I know I do talk to other types of doctors. I talk to other types of professionals, and every industry has its issues. We just don't see the issues. It's almost like. [00:01:00] How you see someone's sizzle reel on their Facebook, how great their life looks, but you don't know if it is or not, right? You don't know the underlyings of their lives.

And it's the same thing with certain industries. Like you may think it's great that, uh, orthopedic surgeon's life, they make 600,000 with no sweat. But have you ever, you know, kind of talked to an orthopedic surgeon how challenging the life is and how expensive? Rev or, you know, running a clinic is, and the overhead and the type of staffing they have and the surgeries that go wrong.

And you know, like it's just a lot, you know, being on call in hospitals and working 70 hours a week. They have struggles too, right? Maybe not a financial struggle as much, but they have others. And so I thought, you know, I posted in the Forward Thinking Chiropractic Alliance Facebook group, there's always a just great, a lot, a great amount of engagement in there.

And so I wanted to post, you know. What were people's, um, the things they loved about being a [00:02:00] chiropractor? The positives, and there's a ton of great answers in there, a lot of engagement. So I kind of sourced that. Uh, if you haven't been in that group, I highly recommend it and, uh, asked to join that if you're an evidence-based chiropractor.

But, uh, really good group. And so I just had posed that question right. And, uh, just gonna run through some of them, uh, that are positives because again, just like the world, right, the world's hard, but you can choose to enjoy life and have a great life. And in a, in a world that's hard. Or you can choose to dwell on how hard the world is or how bad it is, and, and be miserable because of it.

And it's the same thing. With our profession or anybody's profession, you can choose how you want to look at this. And so we're gonna go through the positives of what it's like to be a chiropractor. And so here are some of them not, this doesn't pertain to everybody, but these are some that pertain to a lot.

And I think, you know, I do have a, a [00:03:00] fortunate. View of, like, I talk to a lot of chiropractors, I coach chiropractors, I mastermind group, I, you know, interview people on the podcast. They just get a, a, a unique opportunity to see the gamut as it is for our profession. And so a lot of these, and I mentioned there are plenty of chiropractors that have this, and frankly, there's plenty of chiropractors that are making a very good professional living.

And so I, I know you can too if you start to do the right things over and over and over again. Right. Um, but here we go. Um, you know, many, one of the ones was, um, you know, many more integrated settings with hospitals and orthos and performance facilities that didn't exist as much back when I graduated 20 years ago.

And now you're seeing, I, I know some car that are. Heading up clinical side of performance facilities with professional athletes. That's awesome. I had that opportunity in my career. You, uh, you know, orthopedic clinics [00:04:00] and hospitals, big hospital groups doing it, va uh, so there's a lot of cool opportunities there and people that are in those settings tend to really enjoy that.

Another one is, uh, you know, obviously the half days, uh, a lot of cardboards have half days, right? We typically have Saturdays, Sundays off, and then. Typically have two more half days. So it's kind of like four full days of of work, uh, at a seven. I know a lot of chiropractors have Fridays off. Uh, they have three complete days off a week.

Uh, so that's pretty cool as you get later on in your career. I know many chiropractors. Like myself, I work a couple days a week with patients and, uh, yeah, I, I'm not only working a couple days a week, I spend a lot of time with MCM, but I treat patients twice a week. And you know, if you build a business down the road, you might have that ability as well, but the schedule is pretty friendly.

Right. Um, the two hour lunches someone [00:05:00] mentioned. That's definitely a, a nice one. Obviously we're probably doing notes and things like that, but there's a lot of other healthcare providers where they're kind of eating a sandwich on the run. Right. And we get to have our two hour lunches. I obviously like the common theme that was on there was just, I think we sometimes forget 'cause we get mired in the weeds of treating patients, but.

How unique it is on this grand scale of humanity, whether it's the 8 billion people that live on there on the earth now, or in, you know, earth's time of all the people that lived on there, how many people actually get to heal people that can help people in that way where you, you actually heal conditions.

That's, that's pretty cool. That's pretty rare and it's pretty impressive. So you, you really need to, to, to. To take solace in that too. Right? Um, another one is the benefits of entrepreneurship. I do believe it. Entrepreneurship can [00:06:00] be a double-edged sword. I do believe some people get into entrepreneurship that probably shouldn't, and I think that's one of the struggles with chiropractic.

But there's a lot of benefits of being an entrepreneur. Setting your own schedule, setting your parameters, what you want to do, how you want to do it, building a business, building a side hustle, right? So there, I think the. Entrepreneur. Nature of chiropractic is a positive. It can be challenging, but it's a positive for sure.

Uh, another one is, we talked about briefly, but flexibility of scheduling patients around time with kids, family sporting events. Someone had mentioned to that where they block off times ahead of time, get their kids sport or dance, whatever schedule. And go in ahead of time and go in and block that off.

You know, leave at Thur Thursday at 3:30 PM instead of 5:30 PM that particular Thursday, because you're not gonna miss a sporting event and you just block it off and you don't schedule patients there. [00:07:00] Right. I. Uh, someone mentioned on here, and, and I do know people that do this, I or have this combination.

I do know people that have this combination. They typically worked hard, very hard for a period of time, built something really good, but he mentioned, uh, making six figures in 20 hours per week. Uh, you can do that. Typically the mistake I'm seeing and kind of a joke, uh, but not a joke, uh, with the younger dcs as wanting six figures.

And working, uh, part-time and, and treating 10 people a day, uh, that, that math doesn't typically add up early on, but if you work really hard for a period of time, um, in your forties, give or take, uh, you can pull that off. And I know many that do. And so that's rare in the grand scheme of most professions, and we do have that ability to do it.

Uh, someone mentioned we have a movement based day and not stuck behind a computer and zoom calls all day. I can't [00:08:00] stress that one enough. I know our job is physical, but it's not on the, typically, it's not on the like physical construction type, physical labor and, and that type of stuff. It definitely is physical, but I think.

The amount of movement we do get is so good and not being stuck behind a computer and zoom calls all day. Talk to people that do that all day. They are not happy. So movement based day, I love that. Uh, next one is great social interactions all day combats, loneliness. You know, the, there's that Harvard study that showed over like a hundred years or something.

The people that had the highest level of happiness was all based on relationships. And I do think there is a. An epidemic of people that work from home and, and, and sit at a computer all day. Um, and lack of a social life outside. Some of them don't have families. Some some of them do, but they don't have any relationships outside of the family, which is, is a, a really stru big struggle for people nowadays.

And, [00:09:00] and we get just great social interactions all day long, which is awesome. Uh, impacting people in communities, that's huge. We talk about healing, but in general, we can impact communities for sure. Uh, you get to pick when you take a vacation. Someone mentioned you definitely get to pick when you take a vacation and how much vacation.

Someone mentioned a large scope of practice. Obviously that depends on what state you're in, but yeah, like I'm in Florida, we have a pretty large state, uh, scope of practice, which is awesome. We typically have a, a much less or lack of hospital administrative load and red tape. Right. Um, that can be tricky for sure.

Uh, someone mentioned providing jobs to other people. Yeah. I think that's a big thing. I think that's a lot of satisfaction out of that. You're providing a livelihood to other people when you build a business and, and do this, right? Uh, the ability to potentially purchase the office real estate, this is something I think is a very big positive.

[00:10:00] It's not. For everyone. It's not necessarily a smart idea for everyone. If you're in very expensive areas, it can be very challenging and not something that could be worthwhile. But yeah, uh, I was able to do it back in the day when it was, uh, able to do it in in my area. It's a little challenging now with the cost of it, but, uh, yeah, purchasing real estate, your practice being the main renter is a benefit.

And then, uh, lastly. AI can't replace your hands, right? Um, that's a lot of people are scared, scared, scared of the AI thing because of what it's gonna do to their jobs. And it's gonna be a long time. I don't think it's gonna be anybody that's a current DC now is gonna worry about ai. Changing their, uh, or, or taking, replacing their hands, right?

Could replace other things, but I don't think it's gonna replace the hands. And it could enhance people's desire to get treatment by human beings. Right? [00:11:00] And so that was a list. Uh, I thought it was really good. A lot of positives. I want you to kind of. Take a time to sit down, you know, especially early in this year, write down which, which of those positives or any others that you have that offset the negatives, right?

Um, if you're making 85,000 a year right now, and you are 30 years old, 35 years old. Would you rather make $135,000 of some corporate job behind a Zoom call and hate it and hate your life around it? Or would you take the 85 um, with your benefits that you have now? I want you to get the buck 35. I want you to get to a 2 35 and you can, you can, you can build a practice that can allow for that even in the current insurance reimbursement.

Um, you can do that. Um, but just, you know, sit down and write out the positives. And I'm gonna leave you with this, uh, I, I referenced it before. I really like Cal Newport's work. He has a lot. I reference his deep work stuff a [00:12:00] lot, but he also is in the midst of writing a book called The Deep Life and he breaks it down into four things, community, craft, constitution, and contemplation.

So, um, community, uh, you know, obviously we know a community is family, friends, et cetera, but you're also your work community, your team members, your patients, like I talked about. You that serves a deep life, the social component you have at work. Um, that's a big one. You have quite a community as a chiropractor, craft work, and qual, you know, and really honing your craft if you sit down and really try to keep on getting better as a chiropractor and work towards that, it's a never ending pursuit.

It's working on the craft and having that. A lot of people hate what they do or they see no meaning in it. We have that built in. There's a lot of meaning with what we do, and you might just need to hone that a little bit and prove the craft. Right. The third is [00:13:00] Constitution, which he has kind of parentheses health.

I think, uh, we know a lot about health. We have a movement based job. We have access to other chiropractors can help us out. We know. You know, I, I know not all of you are maybe healthy, but you know what it is and I think it gives us a leg up. A lot of chiropractors are, I bet you if you took a cross session of section of chiropractors, we're probably healthier than other healthcare providers, and we're probably way healthier than the general population.

So, uh, being a chiropractor helps with constitution and in contemplation. Which would be, he has in parentheses called Matters of the Soul, whether that's religious stuff, meditation, uh, maybe it's mindfulness or wellness practice. You have stoicism, right? That would be something, uh, that maybe we don't naturally get from our profession.

It could, um, but consider that. And, and he talks about if you can really hone in those four things. [00:14:00] That is how you can have a deep life. And if you can do that, I think you can become more resilient against all of the challenges that our profession and frankly our world faces. So I hope you take this into consideration, a little bit of homework, of write down all of the benefits of your current situation as a chiropractor, and then how can you improve your deep life between community, craft, constitution and contemplation.