Dr. Chad Woolner: Hey, what’s going on everybody? Dr. Chad Woolner here with Dr. Andrew Wells. And on this episode of the laser light show, we have with us our good friend and special guest, Dr. Mark Mouw. And we’re gonna be chatting with him about his new plans to add Erchonia lasers into his practice. So let’s get to it.
Transcript
Speakers:
Dr. Andrew Wells
Dr. Chad Woolner
Dr. Mark Mouw
Dr. Chad Woolner: Growing up in Portland, Oregon, I used to love going to laser light shows at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. They would put on these amazing light shows with incredible designs sync up to some of my favorite music from the Beatles to Pink Floyd to Jimi Hendrix and Metallica. They were awesome. Little did I know then that lasers would have such a profound effect on my life decades later. As a chiropractic physician, I have seen firsthand just how powerful laser therapy is at helping patients struggling with a wide range of health problems. As the leader in laser therapy, Erchonia has pioneered the field in obtaining 20 of the 23 total FDA clearances for therapeutic application of lasers. On this podcast, we’ll explore the science and technology and physiology behind what makes these tools so powerful. Join me as we explore low-level laser therapy. I’m Dr. Chad Woolner, along with my good friend, Dr. Andrew Wells, and welcome to the laser light show. All right, welcome to the show, everybody. We are here on-site yet again at Parker. It’s been a ton of fun. And we have with us our good friend, Dr. Mark Mouw. How are you, my friend?
Dr. Mark Mouw: I am doing awesome, man, day one of the show. Just excited to see and hear all the awesome things coming forward in our awesome profession, man.
Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah. And you’re here not only as an attendee but also as a vendor with Chiro Match Makers.
Dr. Mark Mouw: Yeah. So a second year here with Chiro Match Makers was awesome. Last year, a lot of great doctors coming up, associates coming up, and getting to learn who we are and how we help doctors get great jobs and place great doctors in their practices.
Dr. Chad Woolner: Talk about a really, really useful solution. Talk about an itch that had needed to be scratched for a long, long time. And you guys, you know, prior to Chiro Match Makers, what Craigslist and indeed were your competitors, I guess. Yeah. Classified ads in the school, you know, and all that fun stuff. We have, we have literally referred so many docs over to Chiro Match Makers just because you guys have done such a thoughtful take and such a thoughtful approach to, you know, not just, “Okay, you need a new associate, let’s just find somebody,” you know, with a pulse and a license, throw them in your practice, but instead really being thoughtful about, “Is this going to be a good fit, right?” It doesn’t work, right? Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So Mark is here with us. I pulled him aside. I said, Mark, we want to interview you on the show because Mark recently acquired the FX 405 and the base station. How did you get in? Was it literally just me telling you to go to the seminar was what it was?
Dr. Mark Mouw: So funny. We were at a UAC event together, okay, like I’m gonna be in Omaha Nebraska in December, and I’m like I’ll come and meet you there.
Dr. Chad Woolner: And then I no-show.
Dr. Mark Mouw: No-shows on me, great, right? Had nothing going on in a week in which never happens other than a Christmas party at the house. So nice. Like you’re doing what this weekend I might go to a seminar with Chad. You know why that was? I heard about it. You booked the wrong date. I think I let you know you see it Thursday, Friday, and I’m like dude, Friday Saturday.
Dr. Chad Woolner: I booked the wrong flights. And then what wound up happening is I literally got super, super sick on those days, and I was like there’s no, even if I had, assuming I had. I was telling Andrew a long-standing joke in our business is, and I’m not proud to admit I’m ashamed to admit this, but just for the sake of transparency.
Dr. Andrew Wells: You tell the audience what you’ve done.
Dr. Chad Woolner: I have cost this company a lot in misbooked flights and occasions.
Dr. Andrew Wells: There’s occasions where he booked the departing flight should have been the arriving flight and it backward all kinds of yeah.
Dr. Chad Woolner: This is a sign that I need to use more lasers on my brain. More Erchonia lasers on my brain so anyways, but yeah, so
Dr. Mark Mouw: Sign you need to buy more suppers.
Dr. Chad Woolner: So you went to the seminar, Dr. Trevor Berry spoke. Tell us a little bit about your experience, sir.
Dr. Mark Mouw: I go to seminars usually just to get my continuing education credits. Yeah. It was one of the reasons I went that weekend and to see you and doctors.
Dr. Chad Woolner: Twist that knife.
Dr. Mark Mouw: It was so interesting to see the genius in Dr. Berry. Yeah, I hadn’t said somebody speak like that into me since Dan Murphy. Yeah, so I know they’re really close. I just found that out during that event, but we’ve been doing in our practices. We’ve been a chiropractic slash active care-based practice, high volume, wellness space, multiple associates for 20 years. Yeah. And it’s a lot of work for the associates. It’s a lot of work for a lot of times the owner, adjusting 100 125 people a day for, you know, your average collection visit in the Midwest is 45 to $65. Right? Yeah. And you’re helping your patients. But, you know, there’s more out there. You know, there’s more that people are doing to get patients well. So we launched inside of our office decompression last March. And along with that, I’ve had a class, the last class for laser for about five or six years.
Dr. Chad Woolner: We don’t say that on this podcast.
Dr. Mark Mouw: Berry told me, “Do not use that word in this room.” So I’m sitting there in December, I put my class four laser for sale inside the room, and no one bought it because they were buying here guys and stuff. But I do know that’s a customer now. All right. But here’s the issue is that it may or may not work. I mean, we’ve had some results with it. But it has to be attended. Yeah. And it doesn’t get as good a result as what your lasers do from all the research I’ve seen now. So when Dr. Berry was talking about the FX, 405, and the unattended and all the amazing results it gets, not just with low back issues but with brain gut health. And that was the seminar. It was a brain gut connection seminar. And I was like, you know, that’s just magnificent. And I’m gonna be honest, it’s kind of like Dr. Berry was talking about, why did he go and start working with lasers? Because of his daughters? Yes, right. I know his story now. Yeah. And it’s not every piece of equipment I buy in my practice isn’t about it’s not for my patients initially. It’s for me, yeah, I bought the class for a few years ago. It’s for my shoulder. Yeah, you know, it did what it needed to do at that point about the decompression because I’m a chiropractor because of a low back issue in college. So, you know, I’m purchasing these things for my family and my health for the long term because my goal is to live to be 100. And let’s do it the right way.
Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, no doubt. You know, the thing that’s interesting is it could come across as sounding very biased. You know, like Erchonia lasers are the best they are, you know, Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah believe us believers. The reality of it is those when you go through and you have that what you, you can’t unsee what you see. Absolutely. You know what I mean, when you see that when you see that, and it’s not just a little bit of evidence, it is just a tremendous amount of evidence that has been done the right way to show the profound difference in what Erchonia lasers can actually do compared to any other laser out there. I mean, just profound, really, really powerful.
Dr. Mark Mouw: What impressed me I think the most was the FDA certifications. Yes. That Erchonia laser has no one’s has 1/10 of what you guys have. Yes, that’s what the impressive part to me is, you know, any, as we sit here, there’s multiple lasers rolling around in this room. I always know like, this is the booth doing what it says because the research is behind it. Yeah. And not that I need to have research a lot of people do. But it sure is nice to stand on research 100%.
Dr. Chad Woolner: And it provides you with a certain level of exactly what you were kind of alluding to this whole idea that when you have a certain degree or level of standardization, it makes systematization from a business standpoint, so much easier now, because you don’t have these variables, if you’re not going to have to worry about an assistant interrupting you in the middle of seeing a patient being like, Hey, Dr. Mouw, this this patient here came in with XYZ, what protocols should I do that? It’s like, it’s very clearly delineated, especially with like disk and back issues, you know, it’s literally Okay, yeah, you press the low back protocol. And that’s what you do. And it creates a certain level of standardization, which lends to systemization, which, again, you’re you’re a systems guy, you’re big involved with Stephen, for instance, group TRP. We’ve referred a lot of Doc’s over to tarp, because that’s TRPs real kind of jam is the system is ation of, of the business side of the practice, which just makes things run far more smoothly, efficiently helps you get better results with patients and more profitably. So it’s important.
Dr. Mark Mouw: You know, when you go all the way upstream and running our businesses, and I coach from the stages, we went to school to be chiropractors, and then we come out of school and we have to own these businesses. Yeah, we get beat up a lot of times when we first come out of school, learning how to do it right and what’s right, what’s wrong, all the way from, you know, Unclogging the toilet to doing your marketing, right. Welcome to the chiropractic world, which we deal with in the recruiting business all the time. I can do that myself. Right. Sure. You have held the last few words. Well, it’s been terrible, but I can still do it myself. Because I’m not going I don’t want to spend money on that. And I’m like, right. You know what, when you hire an associate, it’s the biggest investment you’ll ever make. When you add lasers and you add decompression, it’s some of the biggest investments you’ll make. So you have to have a system behind it. So when you hire the right people, put them in the right role, train them the right way to be successful in the processes that you run in your office. That’s where the Four Rights knock it out. out of the park inside your practices. Yeah. Especially when you have the right equipment around you and the protocol to get people. Well, yeah.
Dr. Andrew Wells: So you’re so you run a high volume practice? Are you planning on using the lasers for chiropractic patients when they come in? Are you? Are you do you have this for just for decompression patients? Or how do you how do you met? How do you? How are you going to fit this technology and this therapy into that, that type of practice.
Dr. Mark Mouw: So I’m gonna blow up building, I have built three stories. Because of, you know, being a chiropractor inside of the subluxation based model that we’ve had, you take a look at the nerve system, and I think our focus has been to that spine almost 100% of the time, spine, and everything associated is associated with it for 20 years. Yeah, but now all of a sudden, you start to bring in technology that’s working with the brain in the gut, and all of a sudden, it’s almost it’s almost a sin if I don’t bring that to our patients, and at least offer it Yeah, once again, like I said, it has to be systematized. So we’ve rolled out decompression, and now we’ve started a DBA. In our practice called an urban dissenters of the Midwest, it’s still under our chiropractic clinic, we wanted to separate it because we wanted to see what it was going to happen. And we will, we’ll still have, there’s going to be laser it will be decompression with our chiropractic patients. But there will be this whole subsidiary business inside of our practice that’s going to be coming from marketing that business ad campaigns and doctors in the community that we will really focus on discs and nerves and neuropathy. But what’s going to come out of that on the back end is hopefully more patients because it’s not a chiropractic office only. And not nothing against that, if you have that wonderful chat, I know this in your practice is that your chiropractic office, that’s your foundation. But just because you have other things that are in your practice doesn’t make you some mixture, that’s crazy. It just makes you somebody who’s trying to get the best results for the patients that are coming under your roof. You know, what it’s going to do is it’s going to open patients up to chiropractic care.
Dr. Chad Woolner: 100%, I was gonna say just that same thing. It’s interesting. From a philosophical standpoint, I found myself getting more deeply entrenched in kind of more of the philosophical, straight approach of chiropractic after we integrated our practice, which is you wouldn’t think that necessarily, but when we integrated, because I think what it did was it allowed us to really integrate in a holistic way. That would be the term compartmentalize. But but but again, compartmentalized, but yet still integrated. Let chiropractic do what it’s best at doing. Amen. And then and then also looking at these other services. It’s interesting because the CFO of our company, Dr. Jason green, brilliant, brilliant talk. I mean, he took he was working for a clinic that was at what was an 18 million a year, took them from 80 million to $30 million a year and 37 $37 million. So he knows what he’s doing. And the thing that when you hear it’s almost too simple, but at the same token, it’s like no, this is how you do it is you have to develop a culture within your practice of almost viewing the practice as this place where you have these multiple, I think he uses the term multiple centers of x, or it is a center of excellence. But you have these multiple solution profit centers, that that you’re constantly when a patient is, and this is the distinction, right? Because for patients who are listening to this podcast, if they hear this, I don’t want them to get the wrong impression that when a patient walks through the door, we’re just salivating and seeing money. That’s not That’s not the friend, especially if you hear Jason speak about this. It’s incredible the way he views it. Because when a patient walks through the door, the question or the preeminent framing is, how can we serve that patient to the very, very best way we can possibly serve them? Because you can have a patient who could come through and maybe truly all they need is some chiropractic adjustments. Okay. And I don’t want to relegate that as like, oh, just this thing. You know, that’s not what I’m saying. But maybe again, the patient is like, Look, they’ve also got some gut issues that have been going on for a while, or a disc issue, or any number of different things. And so the question, then that the practice is holistically looking at is okay, what’s that patient’s journey going to look like? And how can we frame a program to really serve that patient at the highest possible level? And then really, what winds up happening is you wind up serving that patient at that higher level, getting them better results than if you were to just simply isolate or regulate their journey into one modality. Is that making sense? Absolutely. You know, and so it’s just an and the way that it’s done. It’s not complicated. It requires a little bit of forethought and effort and planning and systemization, which is what we’re talking about here exactly with you, which is what you guys are really, really good at. But it’s framing that way of looking at things as as again this this looking at the practice holistically as well. Yeah, no,
Dr. Andrew Wells: This just for Docs listening. I think we’ve shared a story on the podcast before but this is this is the one year anniversary I think to the day And maybe it’s tomorrow that Chad and I woke up one morning after interviewing Penny Sneed from Erchonia the day before. And we’re like, how did we miss? How did we miss lasers in our profession? I can say that I started the profession very much. I call myself a right wing extreme, very bathed in the philosophy. And just like yeah, I like to, I went really hard in the philosophy, and then that served me really well. And I’d heard about lasers before, and I just kind of relegated them to like a soft tissue, like, Alright, you’re in pain, reduce inflammation. And that’s good for that. And that’s, that’s cool that has this place. When we interviewed penne a year ago. She’s like, well, it does do that. But it also does all these other things. And here’s how it actually works. And I was thinking, so like, Man, if I had, in my practice, if I had just had this laser beaming down on patients, while I’m adjusting them the same time, that would have been that would have elevated the adjustment or elevated the outcome. And I’m thinking like, Man, if I had a patient on a decompression table, for example, lasering, their lower back, would that also have a benefit to their gut health, or to their hormone imbalances, or their energy production energy levels? And what I’ve come to learn now is that yes, it does all those things. And so it kind of got me thinking about when I was studying like BJ Palmer, and he was looking at, okay, if you could give one adjustment to have the biggest impact on your patients, what would that adjustment be? What would that look like? How would you do it? When would you do it? And it really, that, that was kind of talked about a lot in Upper Cervical, you know, Holan, one techniques and things like that. And, and that’s amazing. And I think there’s a lot of validity, validity to that. But what if you could stack that with another therapy? Like, what if you just shine a laser? What effect? What effect would you have on the body? And what we’re learning is that just putting a collimated focused beam of light on somebody a coherent, light wavelength of light, has a profound impact does a lot of things for there’s a lot of benefit for a lot of different processes physiologically in the body, from energy production, mitochondrial production, ATP production. I’m like, How did I miss that? Yeah, it was the end. That’s That’s why this podcast exists, by the way is to share it. Sometimes
Dr. Chad Woolner: I do this even myself, sometimes where you play these kind of like for lack of grid or putting it asinine hypotheticals, where I go like, Okay, if I can only do one modality, what would it be? And of course, everybody’s answer, that’s a chiropractor is gonna be like, Okay, if push came to shove, all of a sudden, some crazy law came down that said, you could only do one thing, what’s that? One thing it’d be it’s gonna be adjustments, like I get it, you know, you know, if you again, push comes to shove, if that’s the only thing you can do, great. But the point I would say is, that’s an insane hypothetical, because thankfully, we’re not just relegated to one modality. And so we can open the door. And that’s the thing I think that’s so cool to hear from you is here, clearly, you’ve, you’ve operated in a very kind of what people would think of as a fairly straight chiropractic model. And yet you you recognize and open your eyes and paradigm to this, this idea that, like, what if there’s more we can be doing, and there is like, that’s awesome. And it’s and it’s, and it doesn’t relegate or dismiss the chiropractic, I would argue again, it just all it does is enhance it that much more.
Dr. Mark Mouw: You know, what, let’s, let’s go back to the meaning of Doctor, teacher, right, right. And if we’re teaching, we need to be learning. If we’re not constantly learning what the best thing is for our patients, then we aren’t a great doctor. So when I talk to my association, I coach clients, you know, we have to have a foundation who of who we are as chiropractors, but then I asked them is, you know, if every time you give recommendations to the person sitting across from you, as a new patient, I come back to this all the time. And that’s your wife, your father, your child, your grandparent, the recommendations you give the person sitting across from you should align with exactly what you’d give up one, right. And if you’re out of integrity, either way, you’re not gonna give enough because you don’t think they’ll pay for it, or you’re giving them too much, because you think they’ll pay more than you’re out of integrity of being a doctor, teacher, and a person who’s learning to be better. And then take it to the next step further is, if you’re a doctor, that’s a teacher and a learner, and you know, that lasers help patients and you know, nutrition helps patients, you know, decompression those patients, or massage or Graston, or whatever it is, and you believe in the principles of those concepts. And you don’t offer those to your loved ones that are sitting inside of that practice of yours. You’re out of integrity.
Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah. You know, I love that you’re saying that because we always say whenever we’re training dogs, we’ve said this, I think on this podcast is the litmus test that we have, which is unique about this podcast, because this is listened to by just not just practitioners, but also patients that like to is the our litmus test is would you say the things that you say to doctors behind closed doors? Would you be embarrassed if patients were to kind of eavesdrop on these conversations? And that’s what’s unique about this podcast, right is that we’re here we’re talking about finances and business, making money in this healthcare space, knowing full well patients are gonna hear this, they’re gonna hear this conversation. But these are the types of reality this is the reality we live in, you know. And so we can either approach this exactly the way you said it, you know, by being congruent, having integrity, making sure that we’re making. And that’s what’s again, so cool. From so many. So, you know, the parallel that we see with lasers that you heard from Trevor Barry was, you know, what got him into lasers was exactly for his family, right? What is it that gets most chiropractors into chiropractic? It’s their own pursuit to your own personal experience. They have this story, right. And so that’s what’s so cool about arconi lasers is most people have had some type of very profound experience with it, whether that’s seeing the research like you and learning firsthand or being like, Wow, I can’t unsee this, this is incredible, or having the lasers used on them and having some sort of life changing experience from it. But ultimately, again, it makes it easy for those recommendations to be very genuine, because they know like, No, this is truly Mrs. Smith or Mr. Smith or whatever. This is truly what you need. This is the best possible thing I can do we can do for you, as you know, you know, these lasers XYZ plan and program and all that. I’ll
Dr. Mark Mouw: take it to even a next step of that is that as leaders inside of the health profession, which we are right, how do we how do we create value to our patients? Yeah. So that they don’t have to do the other things that all of us know aren’t healthy? For right. And that is a laser instead of pain medication? If that is a laser instead of having antipsychotic drugs that they’re gonna have to use that there’ll be addicted to forever. Yeah, I mean, we are adding a value to a person who’s going to be able to add value in their life more. Yeah. Because we’re looking at an alternative route to what common medicine common people would say, is the practice of them getting well, which we know it’s not. Yeah. So we need to speak loudly from the mountain and let them know that we have awesome businesses. Yeah, because we have to upgrade businesses to have an impact against the businesses that are going up against us. Right aren’t per se not wanting to hurt us, but aren’t actually fixing us as our population of human beings don’t
Dr. Chad Woolner: necessarily have ultimately the best interest of the patient as the at the forefront.
Dr. Mark Mouw: The doctors do. But I think there’s people that run the doctor says higher level articles, I’m not sure that their mission statement is let me help patients know their mission, his mission statement is, let me make profit inside of our stock, right? I mean, plainly putting these one of those. So yeah, when it comes back to us as chiropractors, it really is the value of once again, at 95. Remove interference, so it can function better. Yeah, lasers helped to remove interference to the nervous system. Now plain and simple. It’s just a little bit different than the adjustment is the adjustments using your hands. This is using a laser, but ultimately, what do we want from that person? We want them to get better? Yeah,
Dr. Chad Woolner: No doubt. So we’re gonna say something like, I’m just curious, what do you foresee? In terms of other potential programs, you have your eyes on other programs that you’re wanting to introduce with these lasers?
Dr. Mark Mouw: Well, you’ve been in my ear a little bit with thyroid, work. I love that. I think I probably need somebody in my practice to take that on. What I first see is that once again, I’m a CEO and my practice, I’m not in my practice seeing patients on a regular basis. Sure. So I have a team that does that. I’m visionary, and what that goes, but I think anytime you launch something in your practice, you have to have somebody who has ownership over it. Yeah. And a lot of times doctors take the ownership of everything and then nothing gets done and nothing changes.
Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, or or on the opposite end. They do that term. We use this abdicate they abdicate it, just case, Sally, go go do all this stuff. You know what she doesn’t have any sort of game plan any sort of systems, procedures, processes, they just but But she’ll somehow get it done out of sight out of mind. It’s off my plate. Yeah. You know, that’s not an answer either.
Dr. Mark Mouw: So
Dr. Andrew Wells: maybe I’m sorry to cut you off, maybe to speak to that. When I when I found out that you got some lasers. I’m like, Oh, cool. So lasers in the hand of Dr. Mark Mao. There’s systems attached to that. And so so so just a redox listening. you’ve purchased lasers, you haven’t implemented them yet. But I think this is a really important topic to talk about. Because I know a lot of Doc’s buy lasers because they want to put them into practice. But then how do you actually do that? What is your Do you have any kind of framework or idea now how to so you’ve got this practice? It’s running beautifully. How do you implement laser therapy without disrupting what’s already working? Well,
Dr. Mark Mouw: you have enough? Yeah, go ahead on my system sampah. So you have so when I found you have to take the time to put the system in place before you can launch it into the system, right. So I have an amazing chiropractic wife. She’s an executor. She just she’s GSD. Right. And when we implement something, she’s like, Hold on visionary me.
Dr. Chad Woolner: I had to I had to mentally ask I was like, well, what’s the god I know what I will let every all the listeners out there, you probably don’t have to put the explicit sign on.
Dr. Mark Mouw: She’s, she’s amazing. And we’ve worked together for 20 years. She’s chiropractor, chiropractic school. And she’s just awesome. But what’s awesome is that when you have a system in place that can be successful, what happens? There has to be people that have to be able to run that system. Yeah. So here’s the iteration is I launched decompression in May. And we launched it softly into our practice with established patients only. We wanted to make sure that works. It worked beautifully. I mean, we were helping so many of our chronic low back patients and you’d say, You know what, they’ve had chiropractic care. Yes, they were better. They had adjustments. They had therapy. They saw massage therapists. But you know what? Their discs weren’t. were much, much healthier, right? Yeah, they were healthier, but they weren’t as healthy as they could be. Yeah. And now we bring them in, you can see like, they gain an inch of height after doing decompression when they go back to their exam their doctors, like how did you gain an insight that 52 years old? Yeah, that’s because the decompression Yeah. So then I knew the next iteration was is like bringing in laser. So what happened is we launched decompression in May. Then we launched decompression to the public, in more or less September, that went really well. And then I went to the seminar in December, to find a alternative to a handheld laser, which was the unattended laser, which you guys have. And then all the research came behind it. So it was even better. Like now we have substantiation of what we’re doing. Yeah. So then what I did is I started a new DBA in my practice called Urban dissenters of the Midwest. And what I’ve been working on is literally in the last six to eight weeks, I’ve been working on rolling out what the decompression with the F x 405 with the sub the station, the handheld station, that I have the stands that are making the they are unattended, right, yeah, you don’t have to hold them. So I bought those. Everything’s in place. And now we’ll launch as of March 15 nerve and dissenters of the Midwest with decompression only and the lasers. Okay. And then August, we’ll launch neuropathy in our practice. Love it. So we’re gonna hit neuropathy. polyneuropathy mean, like changing people’s lives. I know chiropractic is great for a diabetic patient. I’m sorry, I might suck as a chiropractor. I don’t know. But I’ve never had somebody’s probably neuropathy go away from a lumbar adjustment. Yeah, I don’t know. So if we’re going to help those people, and those people need help, because they’re worried about falls, and they live a crappy life. And it’s their last end of yours, right? Usually 1015 years, they can’t feel their feet, we can help these people with this product. Right? Yeah, and with the right supplementation, and then we’ll more or less, I’d say probably at the end of the year, first part of next year will launch the knee component of that. So we’ll start to do some knee work. And then, as Chad wrestles me around and tries to arm wrestle me into a thyroid program, that would probably be the next program. But it’s people get these and they want to watch everything at once. And that’s when it blows up for them. So I’m very systematic in executing number one, how do we implement it without affecting the practice? Number two, what are the systems put in place to do it? Number three, how do we get paid to do what we do in that work? Number four, launch the marketing and I’m sorry, number four, have an employee or two that’s going to run it inside the practice, right? It’s a doctor a CA, and then number five, launch the marketing be successful for three or four months in it? And then launch the next product? What’s the system? How does it not interfere? What’s it look like? Who’s gonna be in charge of it? Who’s on the scorecard? And how can
Dr. Chad Woolner: you quickly again, recap that for Docs? Who should take notes? Hint, hint? What was that five? Was that five steps?
Dr. Mark Mouw: Yeah, I’m really good at talking about it. One, step one, you’ve got to know how to implement this new product, okay, into your practice without blowing up the business.
Dr. Chad Woolner: Okay, so knowledge. Implementation Number Number
Dr. Mark Mouw: Number two is putting the system together of what you’re going to use to affect that disc. Decompression is that laser what neuropathy you’re going to do nutrition in your practice. So you’re going to have home products, what’s it look like? So you got to have the steps out. Number three, number three, yep, you have to have the employee in place to run it. So
Dr. Chad Woolner: Chiro Match Makers that’s where you guys come in, because because you guys not only help staff Chiro’s but also chiropractic assistants. They’re very consistent. CA’s Yes, office furniture petitioners
Dr. Mark Mouw: and office manager see coos and practices office managers.
Dr. Chad Woolner: So because I see it referred further. I’m guessing for most Doc’s they’re like, Okay, step one, check. I’ve got the knowledge. Step two, I know what tools at least vaguely I know what tools I’m gonna be using lasers among them, you know, cool checkup. Here’s where we start to run into problems, because we don’t, yeah, we don’t have anybody to do it. Right. Right, exactly. It’s like and then that’s the thing is, it’s nice to offload some of that stress, strain anxiety onto a team that can help you with that. And again, I’ll unabashedly plug Chiro Match Makers because I know that you guys do a really, really good job with with helping with that and that’s something that could really be a huge so then step four, so
Dr. Mark Mouw: let me go back to step three real quick just to say something to plug Chiro Match Makers. But it’s not about finding a warm body. It’s finding it’s about matchmaking, right? It’s about it’s about using Science behavioral assessments that we have licensed and REITs. Yes, that we can make sure a person is built to be a tech ca, or they’re built to be a front desk ca built to be a back office, the front desk and back office are very, very different. Yeah, like, well, I can interview for that. Well, that’s where you get it wrong. That’s why the average ca stays in a practice for less than seven months. And the average associate stays in a practice less than 18 months 65% of the time. Why? Because we hire on gut but we fire on behavior.
Dr. Chad Woolner: This would be like to put this in simple terms for people to where they’re like okay, yeah, that makes sense. You wouldn’t hire a quarterback for a football team and put them as a frontline. Right? Like, you wouldn’t want to do that. That doesn’t make any sense at all. And yet, that’s exactly what we do is like we just like bring bring a warm body and and be like, Morgan, I think my gut tells me you’re gonna get
Dr. Andrew Wells: your stash like that’s what you said the last five guys. But this is different. Yeah, guys,
Dr. Mark Mouw: we do. So we take the heavy lift off of them. We do all the vetting, our team tests everything we we have 17 full time recruiters in one location and our loft and inside Albert.
Dr. Chad Woolner: I’m so sorry. I’m gonna derail this real quick here. But you said that and I’m thinking of that scene in Dumb and Dumber, where they’re like, We don’t usually pick up hitchhikers. But I’m gonna have to go with my gut on this. That’s a great analogy. Yeah, there you go. Okay, so that’s number four.
Dr. Mark Mouw: Number four, you you have to do your marketing then. So you find the right employee, get them trained up, then you have to market the product. What’s that marketing look like? What’s your marketing budget, who you’re going to use? Is SEO optimization. Tiktok. Facebook, you are you going to do it in office, because you’re really great at and you have a marketer, because you’ve hired a marketer through Chiro Match Makers, you’re gonna hire a company to actually do it for you.
Dr. Andrew Wells: And I like I like how you said, you also, you also did a soft launch to your active patient base. These are people who already know like, and trust you.
Dr. Chad Woolner: And if it doesn’t convert there that should tell you something. Yeah. But unclear. So true. Yeah, that’s, that’s it.
Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah. Chance to it’s a chance to to test drive your systems and make sure they’re refined before you have a brand new patient, which demands a white glove service. Right. And so yeah, that’s, that’s a really key point. I think dogs need to know, whenever you launch a new vertical in your practice, test it first test it on people who already have, you know,
Dr. Chad Woolner: And then number five,
Dr. Mark Mouw: Number five, I would say is run it for three to four months. Yeah. So assess. So I’d say easy way, if you’re going to take notes and write it down. Plan, prepare, train, execute, assess, yeah, yeah, that’s a free single thing you launch in your practice and in your business has to go through those five steps. And if you don’t do them, in order, you’re gonna usually crashes or at least they can’t withstand a long run. And it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be a stress to your office. So you start to lose pace, you start to lose staff, and it drives you crazy. And you’re bald, by the time you’re bored. Yeah,
Dr. Chad Woolner: The thing I would say to that Doc should clue into here is that you could identify yourself as any number of different things. Obviously, you’re a chiropractor, you’ve said that we get that. But your primary role is that of a CEO. Yeah. And I think that’s a huge, it’s not semantics, because you can hear when he’s talking here, you can hear this is what a CEO would this is the lens through which a CEO would look at is he stepping back? And he’s assessing holistically like this whole, this whole enterprise, right? And how do you do that. And so for Doc’s who are like maybe stuck, and feeling like they’re kind of on that entrepreneurial hamster wheel, you’ve kind of shed some light, and maybe given some really powerful insights and clues. And this episode, I’m super grateful that you jumped on with us, because I think this episode is a kind of a little bit of a different departure, we’re talking a little bit more business than we typically do, which is fantastic for those practitioners. And even for patients to hear this too. It’s good for them to hear kind of the method or methodology that the term that I would use in hearing you talk is this is very methodical, very methodical, it’s not accidental. It’s not just like you’re flying by the seat of your pants, this is a very thought out approach. And you can tell that you’ve done this a time or two. And so this is a tried and true kind of path for practitioners who want to help impact patients at a higher level. So solid, fine, like as you’re, as you’re saying this, I’m like, I think this is kind of like what we’ve done as well, in terms of our processes. Thankfully, I worked with Jason and Andrew, they help with a lot of the operational side of my clinic, which has been and this is exactly what you’ve been saying is more or less what we’ve been doing, which is accounts for a lot of the success that we’ve had, which is good.
Dr. Mark Mouw: And I think you would agree with me. You love to adjust patients. Oh, totally. I mean, I can see four or 500 patients a week in my practice on my own if I wanted to. And I have. Yeah, the thing is, is that I can only see four or 500 patients a week in my practice. So when we started to bring associates in, and our practice continued to grow, we got to amplify my impact on others, and then what you start to see is when you start to step out, and we call it in the remarkable practice, we say there’s four seasons in a chiropractor’s life: launch, build, scale, and exit. The problem is that our profession is stuck kind of behind everything else in the medical profession. The reason why is we launch, we build, we build, we build, we build, we build, we build, and then someday we hope to exit, and a lot of times we don’t get anything out of it. Yeah. So the difference between going from build to scale is that build to scale is I’m a solo practitioner, I have the best job in the world. I’m a chiropractor. Yeah, it’s the best job, though you still are the only one that having profitability inside your practice. You’re the only one that’s working to produce, and everybody else around you is helping support that, right? Yeah. As soon as you go to scale, that means you’re scalable, durable, and transferable. Yeah. So scaling means you can have more impact you can have in your community, you can see more patients. You have durability. I was just talking to you, Chad, I had my appendix out four weeks ago, guess what, I didn’t have to worry about shutting my office down. It went along, just like they didn’t even have to worry about me, even though I was stuck in a hospital bed getting my appendix out.
Dr. Chad Woolner: I’m here in Vegas right now. My team is handling things really. Yeah, so amazing. Such an incredible team.
Dr. Mark Mouw: When you have a great team, there’s transferability, there are some of us will do it till we’re 50, some of us will do it until we’re 90. But what better than to have the legacy inside, and I have a legacy, my son’s a chiropractor. He’s in my practice, I get to see him adjusting across from me when I’m in there. And he’ll be taking over that practice. So what better way than to give him the right systems, procedures, processes, and people to help him continue to have an impact? Because he’s never going to experience a practice that has zero patients in it like we did.
Dr. Chad Woolner: And the lasers, the lasers make such a powerful image in terms of that transferability, it’s a challenge, you know, well, Dr. Mouw doesn’t adjust me or Dr. Mouw just me this way, you know, you don’t, you know what I mean? And there’s that inter-practitioner, you know, kind of consistency and trust and or standardization. The lasers are just one more element that is just standardized. Dr. Mouw can turn the lasers on just like I can just like Andrew can, just like anyone can. And so that’s a cool way to reason to add the lasers in as well. We’re gonna say, Andrew, yeah,
Dr. Andrew Wells: there was another key resource that we want to plug on this podcast, we talked about Chiro Match Makers, but also the remarkable practice. And I have a kind of a cool story here, we have a chat, and I have had a client who was wanting to integrate functional medicine into his practice. And this very much applies to buying lasers. And so super smart guy, very nice guy. He’s like, I totally get all these different. I get how to run functional medicine. But man, he goes, he goes, I’m just like, I’m so busy. And my wife, when my wife, he’s like, my wife is like, we don’t need one more thing. And he was kind of struggling there to implement it. Or like, you know, it’s kind of like a car stuttering in the beginning. And we’re like, you know what, go go if you need, you need some systems in place. And you know, he was like losing staff left and right, not because he was a bad person. Super nice guy. Right. And, and a great leader as well, he’s really a good leader. And so we’re like, man, maybe check out the remarkable practice. And they’ll show you how to systemize some of these things. Because he wasn’t, you know, he’s a practitioner, not a CEO, you develop his CEO muscle. So he’s like, Yeah, you know, I’ll check them out. He’s like, You know what, this is exactly what I needed. So he dropped us as a client, which kind of sucked, but we knew we knew, like, that’s what he needed. And so he went through, he went through training through their remarkable practice, and developed systems. And then he called us back, he goes, Hey, I’m ready. Yeah,
Dr. Mark Mouw: I’m ready. How smart is that guy? It’s cool. It was cool. And that’s what we want to do. Because there’s synergy between all of us because we all have one mission. It’s the people outside of these walls that we want to have an impact on. And how can we have that impact is what we need to have togetherness.
Dr. Andrew Wells: Yeah, and I see Docs who buy lasers and like, cool, I got a laser, I’m gonna implement, it’s gonna be great. Everything’s gonna work fantastic. But they have no systems. And so if you’re listening to this as a doc, you’re like, Yeah, I’m, I’m stuck in that build mode. Check out their remarkable practice, if you need, if you’re if you’re wanting a deep dive, you went over kind of a gloss over like, here are the here’s the outline. But if you really need to, as I say, develop that CEO muscle, that’s the best group that you can that you can join up with to do that.
Dr. Chad Woolner: I say this all the time. And it’s one of those things when I hear the statement that I say I’ve told Stephen Frandsen who’s what’s his his total is his role. President CEO, what’s his role in remarkable practice?
Dr. Mark Mouw: He is the owner, Owner, okay. Owner, CEO.
Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, so I’ve said this before, I’m like, Where the heck were you guys when I was in new breath, like, I’m kind of like pissed off because I’m like, I didn’t know about Stephen Frandsen and remarkable practices that would have completely changed entirely the trajectory of my experience. That being said, though, I also at the same time recognize, we learn the lessons we learn for reason. And so my first you know, five years of struggle in practice, taught me a lot about myself, helped me to develop a lot of grit and other no doubt necessary life lessons that I had to learn. But nonetheless, if I could, for Docs who are listening who maybe are brand new out of school, help them I wouldn’t recommend my five year plan. I think there’s a way to accelerate that and I think reaching out to groups like Stephen’s, you know, your you guys can really make a difference and help practitioners avoid some of those same kind of learning experiences. Yep, it might be a little little more painful than they want.
Dr. Mark Mouw: Like we said at the beginning as chiropractors and doctors, you don’t learn that in school, you learn how to be a doctor and you don’t get the business and we come out of school. And we have to learn how to run a business right away. Yeah. And then we become leaders in our businesses and we lead a community of health. But I would say when you were chatting to Andrew is you were just saying like the leadership part of it, if you want to be a better leader, you want to be able to run your office the way it is. And leadership to me is learning delegation. Yep. Yep. And the problem is, is that so many chiropractors are so used to doing everything themselves. Yeah. You know, if I say scorecards, and their KPIs, and a job description, so a lot of Docs listening right now that maybe don’t know what that is, but that’s what we teach at the remarkable practices, how to run your business like a business, being a CEO with scoreboards and scorecards and laying those things out. But unfortunately, a lot of times we do accountability charts with the doctors that we coach, and we’re like, Okay, here’s the 20 boxes inside of your business, from attraction to conversion to money. And the three things that go along with each one of those put your initials in each one of the boxes that you’re responsible for. And it’s nothing for doctors to have those boxes, oh, if they don’t understand why they’re so freakin stressed, and they’re like spending 17 plates and so forth. We’re like, Your name should be in five of those boxes no more. And they’re like, what? That doesn’t mean you need to have 18 employees. Yeah. So when you have two employees or three employees, a lot of times you don’t delegate to them, you micromanage them. So people that are team players want to have macro management, they want to be trained, they want to do role-playing, they want to be micromanage. They want to work in a place with purpose. And a lot of times we don’t hire these people because we think we need to micromanage them. And the people who leave us are the ones that are awesome employees because they’re sick of the micromanaging and not the A-team player mentality, right? Yeah.
Dr. Chad Woolner: Yeah, boy. We could talk about this for hours. And I know there’s a lot there. But for Docs who are listening who are like, hopefully this has sparked something, check out what Mark’s doing over at Chiro Match Makers, check out TRP at the remarkable practice, we’ll put links in the show there for them to check that out. But we appreciate you guys. We appreciate what you guys are doing. So any final thoughts, Andrew?
Dr. Andrew Wells: Thank you for being on. We really appreciate it. I think this is a really refreshing episode because we don’t really talk about, you know, okay, cool. Now you’ve got a laser. What do you do with that laser? How do you build it? How do you build a team around that?
Dr. Chad Woolner: We should title this episode with Dr. Mark Mouw. He bought a laser dot dot dot now what? It says really good when he asked me like.
Dr. Mark Mouw: What do you want me to do and do a podcast with him? I’m launching them in March. I mean, I’ve been taking my time making sure this goes right. And you’re like you’re the exactly what we need to talk to. So I appreciate the invite. Yeah, I just gotta say I appreciate what Erchonia laser is doing in our profession. Yeah, the research you’re doing everything and all the pieces you got to ours are touching. And I can only see like right now the runway’s just taking off. Like we just we do launching some awesome, awesome products and you’re growing and I just see what you guys are doing. So I commend you guys, so keep doing it. Yeah, don’t
Dr. Chad Woolner: Thank me, man. We were just chatting with Travis Salmons. And David to sec, Travis heads up all of the research that’s being done. And it is inspiring when you hear they have, they have a vision for what they’re doing. And it’s they are very, very mission-driven, which is what really had us gravitate to them in the first place. Right? This is a company with integrity. And with a clear vision, they could, we’ve said this before, and we’ll say it again, they could make so much more money by like in terms of like you either, in terms of profitability of business, you either obviously make more money or you cut costs, they could easily right now just cut Okay, we’re gonna cut our research costs because that’s really expensive. And we can
Dr. Mark Mouw: We have 10 times more than anybody else. Right, right, right. We’re
Dr. Andrew Wells: good enough. We don’t.
Dr. Mark Mouw: We’re just gonna glide. Right? We’re not doing No,
Dr. Chad Woolner: no. And that’s and that’s the thing that is just incredible. And that’s the cool thing is when you talk to them, it’s clear why they do is because a, they’re very mission-centric, but also b, they’re passionate about it, they love it, they love where the future is going because it’s just and what’s cool is we see all sorts of incredible things that these lasers do that we can’t necessarily fully articulate or explain yet, but the research seems to slowly but surely come behind and start explaining some of the oh that’s that’s why we’re seeing what we’re seeing with these things. And so it’s just a really, really exciting thing we just entered I we constantly truly like for everybody listening like we have conversations off air all the time where we’re like pinching ourselves like holy cow like we were a part of this well it took quote Dumb and Dumber To go oh my gosh, you’re quoting Dumb and Dumber, the part when they’re getting ready to go on their road trip and he’s like we’re really doing it our way. Conversation We’re always having that but it’s true like we’re so excited like I spoke this morning and I’m like I’m so glad that I got to speak first first thing in the morning came out I can just like enjoy these conversations with the podcast now I’m like this is like like this is the coolest thing we get to do we get to sit down we get to talk with awesome Doc’s. We get to have these conversations. We get to share a lot of valuable information with those who listen and it’s like, dude, like, this is the coolest thing ever. Like I want to do this This indefinitely. So anyways,
Dr. Mark Mouw: I have a part-time job of just talking on podcast and get paid really well. I mean, I would be there because I enjoy this. It’s been fun. You guys are great Hoedspruit Thank you. Yeah,
Dr. Chad Woolner: thank you, man. So, Doc’s and patients alike. We hope that this has been valuable and insightful for you. We appreciate Dr. Mark Mouw. He’s doing some amazing things out in the Midwest and beyond. And we’re looking forward to catching up with him again, in the not too distant future to see how things are going with his investment with Erchonia lasers and how he’s changing people’s lives. So share this with those that you think could benefit. I think there’s a lot of real value here for practitioners and helping them understand that a lot of the business side of things so we’ll talk to you guys on the next episode. Have an amazing day. We’ll see you. Thanks for listening to the laser light show. Be sure to subscribe and give us a review. If you’re interested in learning more about Erchonia lasers, just head on over to Erchonia.com. There you’ll find a ton of useful resources including research news and links to upcoming live events, as well as Erchonia e community where you can access for free additional resources including advanced training and business tools. Again, thanks for listening and we will catch you on the next episode.
About The Guest(s):
Dr. Mark Mouw has started and run several high-volume chiropractic offices and is also the co-founder of Chiro Match Makers. In this episode Dr. Mouw discusses why he traded in his Class IV lasers for Erchonia lasers. Also, he discusses how to implement any new service or technology into a busy practice without disrupting what is working. This episode is for any practitioner who likes or needs good systems!
https://www.mouwchiropractic.com/
Summary:
Dr. Mark Mouw, a seasoned professional in the chiropractic field, brings a wealth of experience to the table, having successfully initiated and managed multiple high-volume chiropractic offices. As an additional feather in his cap, he serves as the co-founder of Chiro Match Makers. In the course of this enlightening episode, Dr. Mouw delves into the intriguing decision to transition from Class IV lasers to the cutting-edge technology of Erchonia lasers. Beyond merely narrating his journey, he shares invaluable insights on the delicate art of seamlessly integrating novel services or technologies into a bustling practice, ensuring a harmonious blend with existing successful elements. Tailored especially for practitioners who appreciate the significance of robust systems or those in need of efficient frameworks, this episode provides a compelling exploration of Dr. Mouw’s experiences and expertise in the chiropractic landscape.
Key Takeaways:
In the realm of chiropractic and medicine, the deficiency in business education becomes evident upon graduation. As professionals, the immediate shift from focusing on becoming adept doctors to running a business is a daunting challenge. Dr. Mark Mouw highlights this transition and underscores the critical role of effective leadership in managing a healthcare practice. He emphasizes the pivotal aspect of delegation in leadership, stressing the importance of relinquishing the tendency to handle everything independently. Dr. Mouw introduces essential business concepts such as scorecards, KPIs, and job descriptions, integral components taught at the remarkable practices to instill a business-centric approach.
Quotes:
“Yeah, I just gotta say I appreciate what Erchonia laser is doing in our profession. Yeah, the research you’re doing everything and all the pie” -Dr. Mark Mouw
“You know, what, let’s, let’s go back to the meaning of Doctor, teacher, right, right. And if we’re teaching, we need to be learning. If we’re not constantly learning what the best thing is for our patients, then we aren’t a great doctor. So when I talk to my association, I coach clients, you know, we have to have a foundation who of who we are as chiropractors” – Dr. Mark Mouw
“Like we said at the beginning as chiropractors and doctors, you don’t learn that in school, you learn how to be a doctor and you don’t get the business and we come out of school. And we have to learn how to run a business right away. Yeah. And then we become leaders in our businesses and we lead a community of health.” – Dr. Mark Mouw
