What chiropractic students should know before opening a practice

I want to find the doctor or chiropractor, whatever you call, that is most successful and then shadow them and pick their brain. I would say maybe rather find someone that has the life professionally and personally that you envision for yourself and that you want to have and shadow them. You're listening to the Restoring Human Movement podcast, where movement experts discuss the latest evidence-based practices to help you and your clients move with mastery. And now, your host, Dr. Sebastian Gonzales. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Restoring Human Movement podcast. This is Dr. Sebastian Gonzales, your host, and we're going to have an interview on today, which you heard a little tidbit of.

This is Kyle Hemsley. He's actually going to be part of the live intro today. Kyle, say what's up. How's it going, everybody? Hey. Before we actually get into the interview, then, just to let everyone know, if they have not listened to this podcast before, the idea is to improve patient-doctor communication. And as you see through this podcast, it's going to be very easy communication because it's really not fair that we just learn Latin and patients don't learn Latin. So, if you haven't gone back in the archives, please do so. I've interviewed quite a few great people in there, such as Stuart McGill, Michael Shacklock, Guido Van Ryssegem again, Ben Ramos, Philip Snell.

And so, there's lots of good gems back there. And if you have not, please do and share your experience. Kyle, since you're part of the interview then, or sorry, the intro then, what is a story? I think you told me a story about football one time that everyone should know about you. Oh, yeah. Good one. An embarrassing story? Yeah. Let's go to the embarrassing story. Okay. Let's see if I can tell it right this time. Kyle wanted to do a second. This is his second interview because he felt like he deserved a second, and the first one didn't go as well as he wanted to be a perfectionist. No, I think it's more that I tend to run on and run on, and I want to be a little bit more quick and efficient and maybe offer some more helpful things for people, specifically students.

You're really the only person I've ever done a second interview for. Man, I must be special. Everyone else, they've got to do good on the first time. So, yeah, the story, it was ninth grade football. It was only my second year playing, and it was junior varsity, and I didn't know the rules too well. And we were on the punt team, and I'm trying to remember exactly what yard line we were on. That doesn't really matter. But we punted the ball, and I was running down, running down. I was like, oh, I'm going to touch the ball down. Okay? So instead of downing it and holding the ball and picking it up and giving it to the ref, I just tap it.

So I touched the ball, and then the defensive team was thinking, well, is he just going to stand there or what? So they pick it up, and they run it in for a touchdown. Did they actually pause, kind of like I know in baseball, there's that you throw it a second, and then someone jumps. You pick the second, someone jumps, and then you just kind of pause, and you wait to see what they do? That's exactly what happened. Literally picked up the ball, looked around, and then my team didn't even really understand what was going on either. They ran it into the end zone, and then I felt like an idiot. Go hard until the whistle blows, I think.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. So as we go into this interview, someone kind of understands what's going on. Kyle is a 10th-term student now. He's interned with me for about three months or so. And so the idea behind today's is, since we've done student interviews before, is I want to figure out what student life is like, what you think you can get better at, what you've learned over the course of time. And I'm going to ask you the critical questions at the end of how I can improve this podcast too. So I want you to tell everyone a little bit about yourself and how you got into chiropractic school and so on.

Well, I was a four-sport athlete in high school, and then I ended up playing some college baseball. And I went on to, I was a personal trainer and then ended up being a partner in a CrossFit gym in Reno, Nevada. It was about four years or so. And then I kind of, we had a chiropractor come in that I met, and he ended up being a good friend of mine. And, well, I ended up being his friend first. And then he needed a place to rent some space, so we brought him in. And, you know, I kind of was like, well, I'm interested in this chiropractic thing. And I wanted to go back to school. I thought about surgery and physical therapy and chiropractic, and it just made sense to me.

So I decided to go back to school and come down to SCU in Southern California. I didn't check out a lot of other schools, to be honest. It might have been a good idea, but I have enjoyed my time. A lot of my relatives live in Huntington Beach, so it was kind of the obvious choice for me. And I went to school down there, and yeah, now I'm in 10th term, and I just moved back up to Reno, Nevada. Well, it's been five days now, so now I'm here in my living room. Did your nose start bleeding yet because it's drier there? It's dry. It's bad. Yeah, it's dry. Luckily, you can't see me, but my lips are bright red like I have lipstick on.

Oh, did you start wearing gloves with Vaseline in them at nighttime as well as booties? I haven't had that problem yet, but it's a good thought. Yeah. Does your body eventually just adapt to the chap, or is it like… It does. It does, actually. I have a couple buddies up here that say, do not wear chapstick. Say, just let the pain set in and let the adaptation occur, and you'll never get chapped lips again. The problem is when you have to go into the office and see patients, and your lips are just bright red, it's not a good look. So, I've been wearing a little bit here and there, but yeah, it'll just be a slower adaptation.

Oh, got it. Spoken very scientifically about how to manage chapped lips. Yeah, just don't do anything. So, what's it like going from ninth term being an intern to tenth term is like, wow, I actually get to maybe meet people that might feed my business. Yeah, it's kind of tricky trying to figure out how you want to work in someone else's office and kind of build your own brand, especially if it's a little bit different than what you envision seeing yourself doing. So, it's really exciting, but at the same time, you know, I haven't seen any patients yet. Today's Monday, and I'm going in on Wednesday.

So, I'm not sure how that's going to work yet. Obviously, I want to see people at my house, but that's not legal, so I can't do that. So, how does everyone typically, have you talked to other people who have been through before and like, do they have any advice kind of going into that or? Let's see. No, because my situation is a little bit different. I don't plan on working in the office that I'm going to be in in tenth term. I have talked to several people that were planning on preceptoring and then post-ceptoring and eventually working in that office, and that's a pretty nice transition typically.

But in my case, I don't plan on being in this office more than the next three months or so. So, I haven't really come across anyone specifically with this dilemma. So, why don't you want to work in that office? Like, what's the deal? The guy I'm with is great, and everyone loves him. He offers, he does a good job at what he does, but it's just a different model, and I don't know if I see myself fitting into that. His is more of a traditional chiropractic model, and so it's kind of, it's Leander table and then adjusts most all people very similarly. And the people love that, and it's just eight to ten minutes, and it's 40 bucks cash and a lot of insurance.

And that's just a different model than, that I'm going to practice that's going to be similar to yours. So, trying to do that in his office with three treatment rooms and the high turnover rate where he's seeing about 140 a week, I just don't know if I see myself fitting into that. But I'm definitely, I'm not, I'm not shutting all doors. I'm going to keep all doors open, and I'm going to meet with a lot of different chiropractors in town just so I have options. Well, I wonder then, like, so when you tell him, like, what you want to do, and so he's obviously been in practice for a while, does he have any advice?

Like, hmm, that's a good dream, but here's what works here in Reno. No, no. He's very realistic about what's possible and what his lane is, and he stays in it. He knows what he knows, and he says that I haven't learned a ton in a long time, and I feel comfortable offering this rate is because I spend 8 to 10 minutes with people, and this is what I'm giving them. I offer this type of care. I do a very good job at offering this type of care, but he sees a need for the active care, especially with the active population. So I think he's also very excited to have me in in the next few months, so we can kind of, I think it's going to kind of be me teaching him a good amount of things that weren't exposed to him, and me learning more of the business side of things from him.

I was talking to someone recently, actually, about, we were talking about, let's just say this, the guy you're with, that say he knows there's other things that are needed, but he does not suggest other things that are needed. Is that unethical? Or, let's just say he thinks all that he's doing is the 100% only thing needed, is that, like, because that would be, like, he believes it, right? But if he knows there's other things, yet he knows he can't provide it, or he doesn't want to provide it, I think he would have, I think he would have the responsibility to talk about it and suggest it, you know?

But if you expose him, because you're going to expose him to it, and then he has the choice to say, well, I'm going to use it or I'm not, and hey, by the way, Kyle's on the other side of town, he does a really good job of the other part of this, you know what I mean? Right, yeah, that's a good point you bring up. I can see him referring people to me for what you were saying, Kyle's on the other side of town, but I don't know if I see him implementing a ton of things in the office because he's been in practice 12 years, and I think he's pretty set in what he does with his patients, although he did bring in a squat rack in his little office and a little TRX, and he's got some kettlebells, so I don't know.

So I was thinking about doing some other things. So is he going to dry, I didn't hear a dryer, so is he going to dry some laundry on it? Yeah, maybe. Like those multi-purpose machines that you have back in the 90s? Yeah, so that brings up a good point, but I know he's a very ethical person, and he wants the best for his patients, but I don't think there's anything in his mind saying, this is the end-all, be-all, and you just need me to deliver the chiropractic adjustment, and that's going to heal everything. So that's not his mindset, and if it was, then I would not be going there, that's for sure.

Yeah. I was just curious, I've thought about it before, and there's definitely things that I feel like I can't provide, and I might not be good at suggesting the other things, but I think they're, you know, I tell them that the suggestion's there and that it's needed, you know, and sometimes they will come, still come back for the implementation here, and I'm like, I told you, like, I'm not great at it, but if you want me, like, they build a little bit of a trust, you know, so they want part of it here, but they could do probably most of it more efficiently somewhere else with someone who's specialized in that, you know?

When you say you're not great at it, what do you mean? So I've talked to patients about, like, we talked about it, so last week came out the four block thing, the first aid, the butcher senior support systems, the second, or the third one is then resistance training, and then there's returning to meaningful play. I'm not really good, like, I can get them through block three, but after that, it's like, I mean, there's strength coaches out there who do this for a living. Like, I'm very good at block one, block two, and part of block three, but then block three and returning to meaningful play is really not my job, you know, and I shouldn't be expected to be good at all of it, so that's just one part.

Obviously, that we probably encounter some psychological things with people, you know, that are, we're kind of like, we dabble in it a little bit, but I don't think, we're not psychologists. Nutritional stuff, I tend to say, look, eat, I do the Dan John type of stuff, eat like an adult, you know, if you don't have to chew it, don't put it in your mouth, but beyond that, I'm not going to, I'm not going to make these plans for people, and so those are things that I'll tend to say there's a need for it, and it's part of your case, but I'm not good at it. Right. So, is there anything specific you wanted to cover today that you think that students would need to know that they don't already know, maybe?

Well, let's see. I think the number one thing, well, not number one, there's a lot of things, but I would say, I would say going out there and finding a good mentor as early as possible would be very beneficial. I know that when I started, my idea of a good mentor was a little bit different than it is now, and I would kind of ask yourself, rather than saying, I want to find the doctor or chiropractor, whatever you call it, that is most successful, and then shadow them and pick their brain. I would say maybe rather find someone that has the life professionally and personally that you envision for yourself and that you want to have and shadow them, you know, pick their brain.

Obviously, I think finding multiple offices and seeing what you do want to do and also what you don't want to do is important. But I think where I went wrong early on was trying to find the most successful, the busiest practice, the people that had the nicest things, and that really isn't in line with what I want for my life. I just thought, well, if they're doing this and they have all this, they must be doing a lot of things right. But when I came to your office, everything really kind of meshed, and it all made sense. And the fact that you can work three days a week, still have a very healthy and active life, and you're obviously working more than three days a week.

You have these other days that you don't see patients, but you have all this time to create content and do all this other stuff that's fun to you. I had never thought about that before, and I think when I open a practice, that's actually how I plan on doing things. So I'm not saying that everyone's going to click with you, but I think that's something I would look at more early on in school as opposed to the success and the dollars. I think that's a good advice, probably. I saw a movie last night called Morning Glory, sadly. I mean, actually, I liked it, but I'm embarrassed to say I watched it.

The premise of the movie was there was an anchor who was Harrison Ford, and then there was a producer who was Rachel McAdam, and one was old, one was young, obviously. And so basically the short end of the story was that Harrison Ford had spent a lot of his time working throughout his life, and he was very decorated and so on as an anchor, yet he had no relationship really with his kids and so on. He was just very unhappy. And so the girl was, what, 25 maybe in the movie, and so she was also just straight hustling, and so he's like, look how this panned out for me. But he looked up to it. She looked up to him is the point.

So I think that's really solid advice. I think the success is dollar amount as well as how many hours you're working are probably really important in regards to longevity and really liking your job. So now let's pause for a very quick break from our sponsor, Pro Chiro Online CE. If you have not been to it already, that is ProChiroOnlineCE.com. It's the website created by myself, Philip Snow, and Ben Ramos, all the people you know and trust, hopefully, to really attack a problem that we personally had. We would go online during our birthday year or our birthday month because we needed online education hours because a lot of the workshops we've been to throughout the year didn't give CEs.

They were just good workshops, good information, and they didn't need to go through the accreditation process. So we struggle every year to go through and find online hours because we've burnt all of our workshop money, and we can't leave the clinic anymore, and that's kind of all there is to it. But when you go through the online ones, if you've done it already, they're really not that great. You don't learn a lot. You don't really learn a thing. It's outdated information, and it sucks, okay? I mean that in a nice way. It just sucks. It's a—I feel like I'm literally burning my money. And so what we've attempted to do and what we believe what we've done is so we've curated together some amazing presenters, Greg Lehman, James Valkersel, Cody D-Mac, which you've already heard on the podcast here, Philip Snell, myself, and Ben Ramos.

There's other people to come on other modules, and we're attacking the topics that you guys care about. And so what we're attempting is we're trying to make the online educational platform useful. Again, we want you to learn something. And so we believe that we've done that. So go through. Ten minutes of every single module is free. If you don't like it, that's fine. If you do love it, buy it and get some hours. Perfect. So now let's get back to the show. Right. Yeah, 100%. It's like when you go into clinical residency and you're making 50 grand as an MD, but you're working 80 to 100 hours a week and you're making minimum wage.

Yeah. It's crazy. Well, it's crazy how many people don't like their job, you know. Yeah. I mean, I think you've got to like it. And I don't know if you've ever had – you ever have a nightmare about a job? No, not that I can recall. No one comes to mind. There was – I used to wait tables back in – even into like when I graduated chiropractic school. It was at Polly's Pies. And so we'd have nightmares. I call them polymers. And so – Wow. Actually, it's funny. I had one last night. Like I don't even work at Polly's anymore. And so like 10 years later, I imagined that I had to go back to work at Polly's Pies for some reason.

I was covering someone's shift as a favor. It was like, you know, 10 years removed. And I didn't know the computer system anymore. They sat me too many tables. And so I woke up at 3 o'clock last night and I was like, okay, I don't work at Polly's Pies anymore. And just had to think about it, you know. But I had those actually probably every Saturday night after I worked for – not for years. But it was like multiple times a month, you know what I mean? So the money was okay at the time, but I really didn't like it. The polymer, that's a good one. The polymer. I'm sure everyone's had a nightmare about a job before.

I don't have nightmares necessarily about this job, but I do troubleshoot people at nighttime, which that's why I don't like complex cases. I can see that. I have those too, and I've probably seen I don't know how many patient cases, but nowhere near you. That's why just only doing quote-unquote piriformis syndrome is great, because you don't really think much other than just what you did. Yeah, I like it. I like it. You're funneling in what you feel comfortable with, right? That's right. By the way, in case everyone knows or doesn't know, piriformis syndrome is really not that common. They're actually referred stuff from the spine a lot of times or the nerve.

So they're actually very simple, but patients will think they're very complicated. So that's why I like quote-unquote pseudo-piriformis syndrome, because they've already been through the ringer with things. So what's your target person going to be, Kyle? Yeah. This has changed over time, and you could probably say that I'm copying you. It just makes sense, because you think about the people that you're best at treating, right? And the people that can pay for it, and then the people that you want to treat. And it seems to all come down to the endurance population, and Reno's a good place for that.

So running, cycling, outdoor, mountain biking, there's some cross-country skiing, and things like that. I think probably the people that swim also cycle and run, but I don't know much about swimming. So I would like to figure that out a little bit more. But that's changed, because I thought initially it would be more CrossFit athletes and baseball players. But the baseball players in the area are typically younger. There's not any professional teams here, and I don't really care about professional athletes anymore. Well, there's a AAA team here. I take that back. But are the high school athletes going to pay for it?

I don't know. Maybe their parents will. But that's kind of where I've gone, and it's probably been shaped because of who you've targeted and who I feel most comfortable treating now after being in your office. But to me, it makes sense, because a lot of them are middle-aged, and they can pay for it. And a lot of these cases, there's a huge upsell, like you've talked about, because a lot of them don't know strength and conditioning, and they haven't done it. And they think they can just run for all of their exercise. And, yeah, so that's probably where I'm going to start. I have one specific person that's my perfect target audience.

And I'm actually planning on meeting with him next week and talking with him about the pains and aches and all these things that he's gone through, the struggles of training for his triathlons. And just getting a better idea, he's an emergency room physician, so he has crazy hours. And then he's super type A, and he just charges, charges, charges. And, yeah, I'm just looking forward to it. He's a good guy. And he actually doesn't really believe in chiropractic. So I'm going to hopefully change his opinion on that, too, and just let him know that I don't need to adjust C1 and fix everything. Yeah.

That's probably a good note is with, I don't know, if anyone's, if they've kind of noticed, like, the amount of people who see a chiropractor, like, there's not, like, I don't think we're the majority. I think it's, I thought the estimation was, like, 30% of the U.S. or something. That's low. Yeah, and we're all, like, people are, like, fighting over those people. It's, like, I'd rather get the people that aren't, you know, that we're not competing against any stereotypes or quite as much. Just to clarify on some things, too, in case the listeners are wondering, is a lot of things that we'll see in this office, at least when Kyle was here, was we'd see a lot of low back, either discogenic or nerve-based.

We'll see a lot of groin pain, posterior buttocks pain or tightness, hamstring tightness, IT band types of stuff. And so it's kind of like the low back and, like, hip regional type of stuff. We didn't really, we had other things of other types there, but that was the strong dominance of things, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, some shoulder and neck here and there, obviously. Which, I like shoulders, too, but it seems like there's a lot quicker and easier wins in the hips and low backs. Yeah, there's a lot. As you know from working with my shoulders. Yeah. So, yeah, there's, oh, I don't think I told you this thought before, but I've had a couple of people tell me with, say, those steaks, right?

They're like, hey, you should start making tomahawk steaks. You should start a restaurant with tomahawk steaks. And I'm like, I'm not going to do that, you know? And they're like, oh, but they're really good. I'm like, but it's not what I'm passionate about. And there's other people who are really good at it, too. And so, say with shoulders, it's like, as you can see with your shoulder, it's not as, like, although you're a little bit more of a complex case, shoulders are not quite as always an easier win for at least me as a hip and back are. Like, it's such an easy win that it's like you can do it, like, almost blindfolded part of the time.

Not cocky, just confident. But so, if the listeners are thinking, like, well, I'm good at all these things, think about the one that you can almost do blindfolded. Because the other ones are, like, you're good at it, but you don't need to make it your target demographic. Right. They're going to come in and trickle in, and you're not going to turn them away if you can help them, obviously. But if you can drive all those people to you, then that's better. Easier days and more nights sleeping well, right? That's right. And then you can also do a lot of your targeted marketing to them or do all your copywriting towards them.

Which brings up probably the other thing we should address here is how are you going to market your business? And I know we had talked about websites. You talked about, like, talking to your emergency room people. What do you think? Yeah. In these stages right now, I'm developing content directed towards that population for my website. And, you know, slowly starting to shoot videos, working on my communication skills, because I tend to get, you know, really deep and gravelly like this, and then people can't hear me. So I've been trying to speak more up here, you know, so people can hear me better and they're a little bit more interested.

So those are two things, just developing content, both with articles and videos. But also, since I'm pretty well connected here, I've been, I'm going to reconnect with the surgeons, the MDs, the physical therapists, the personal trainers, massage therapists, and chiropractors as well, that I know in the area, trying to figure out how we can kind of have, you know, like how we can benefit from each other and refer patients back and forth. They're opening a really large spine center on the top of Reno Orthopedic Clinic. And there's actually potentially an opportunity for a chiropractor to work up there.

And I know the guy that's the head partner there. He's a trauma surgeon. He's a good friend. So I'm going to meet with him and try and go over some ideas there, as maybe I'll work there a couple days a week in the early stages, or maybe we can just kind of refer back and forth and figure that out. And also, I think I'm actually going to join a bunch of meetup groups, because there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of local outdoor things out here. And luckily, I've exposed myself to a ton of different outdoor activities. So I'm fairly competent in most things. And I think just developing a relationship with these people, and not necessarily selling, selling, but basically just getting to know them, and getting a community with all these like mountain biking and rock climbing and whatever it may be.

I think that's a good place to start. Yeah, that's kind of where I'm going now, because I'm about four months still from graduating. And there's obviously the networking groups, which might try and get in for the early stages of opening practice, like BNI and Chamber of Commerce and stuff like that. I like it. Yeah, the meetup groups, I think, if I had to critique your ideas, I think the meetup groups are the best idea. But I know down here, I know there's not as much outdoorsy ones. There's like, let's say mountaineer and wilderness types of ones. There's more like dog walking and beach. There is beach volleyball.

That was a good one to go to. But I don't think for the listeners wondering like, well, I don't have as mountainy area to like, it doesn't matter who you like. You can just go to any of them, really, as long as there's a big enough number. It's the connection, not necessarily the activity, although the activity is helpful for your target. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm going to target there. But obviously, I can do anything. Maybe I'll do like a dancing one or something. Who knows? Yeah, you should. You got to watch out in those. Those are like, as I've observed going through, going to meetups, they're typically people who just move to the area.

And like, so they don't know anybody. And so they might think that you're also one of those people and that you're single. So, but at the same time, they probably were relocated for a job or something. And so you're the only dude they know, chiropractor. Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah. Okay with that? Yeah. I can see now just a bunch of chiropractors joined meetup.com today. And you go to a meetup and it's just five chiropractors hanging out talking about. Yeah. No, that's funny. So, what else do you think is useful for students? Because I know that you wanted to rerecord this because you thought you could do better.

Right. Yeah, I just, I thought it was less important to talk about my personal story and what led me to here. And just more important to ask you a few questions and go over kind of the things that maybe I would change going through school and changing my outlook or changing emphasis in certain things. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead and take the mic then. I had a couple mental notes. I think one would be focused on what you can control because there are a lot of frustrations throughout the program. And I think it's going to be really challenging, challenging, challenging at the start. And then you're going to get to this point where, well, why are we even paying for these classes and we're not learning anything?

You know, it's just a part of the process and enjoy the process. And I think every chiropractic school has these little holes where there's high turnover rate in faculty and it's just part of it. So, if you're already in school and you've already made the decision to jump in, then just fully commit to the process and be okay with where you're at. You can only, you know, you can only control your attitude throughout the whole thing. And having a negative outlook on it is going to do you no good. So, try to avoid other people and their negativity bringing you down, you know, and bring them up with you.

And if they don't want to, then let them go. So, that was one thing that there was – I went through a period where I was a little down on the school and pretty negative, you know, and I thought about transferring. But it just was – it was wasted space in my brain, you know, wasted space where it could have been spent somewhere else. You know, Dan John talks about some of that wasted space stuff, right? If you've got to go to the DMV and it's on your to-do list, just – I can't cuss on here, can I? You could. I'll just have to mark it explicit. It's okay. But just get it done. Get it out of your brain.

You don't have time for it, right? Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what you told me. I said, oh, man, I've got to stop cussing my workshop. She said, no, it makes me believe you more. That's true. Let's see. I think also focusing early on school on anatomy. Getting a really strong foundation in anatomy is very useful. And I think most people early on in school, that's when they're most motivated. So hopefully that's going to take care of itself. But I do know some people that kind of just breeze through that and they're like, oh, I'll just get a C and this and that. But, no, I think it's really important to know the anatomy, especially the extremity anatomy and the spinal anatomy very well.

And that's – it's going to be so much easier later on when you're learning, you know, the myotomes and all these clinical skills. It's just going to click like that rather than having to go back through your notes and learn everything, you know. So especially – and also if you're going to be an ART doc, you know, which I'm not going to do, but there's – it's definitely useful in some scenarios. Then you're going to know where the origin insertion is, right? You're going to know that – you should always know that – what do they call it? The O-I-A-Ns, the origin, insertion, action, and nerve, so innervation.

Probably to add to that too, it's probably important to be pretty good at open and closed chain mechanics. Sure. Absolutely. For muscles. That's another big hole is, yeah, also strength and conditioning, which I think most – most chiropractors are pretty awful at. It's important to know because if you're working with – some of your best referral services – referral sources, excuse me, are going to be from personal trainers and strength coaches. So if you can't speak the language with them or with your patients coming in, then, you know, you might not be as well-respected and they might not send you people.

Go ahead. Yeah, actually something on that too, I think it's – I've hit it a couple times in this podcast before, not this one, but other ones, is that I think you're probably like a really good one to ask on this is because I've noticed that a lot of quote-unquote docs who lift talk about lifting and loading and then I don't think it always equates the skill set. Like, honestly, I lift a lot less than probably most docs who are promoting docs who lift, but clinically I feel very sound about coaching it. And so you've had a lot of experience lifting. Tell me what you feel about the difference of both because I know you – I have an idea what you're going to say.

I think you'll say it in a better way than me, though. Yeah. Can you reiterate the question one more time? So I think what I wanted to clarify was just because you lift a barbell doesn't make you qualified to teach loading and active care. Right. Yep, absolutely. And I think I was better – for me personally, I was better as a strength and conditioning coach. Like, for patients that are in block three, block three plus maybe, like they're moving through traditional strength and conditioning, but they're more advanced and they're more reaching for performance. So for me, I was more comfortable with that, and I thought going through school, like, oh, I mean, I've been a trainer and a strength coach for, you know, six, seven years now.

It should be no problem. But then when it came down to coaching the patients through the block two stuff, I kind of struggled early on. I was like, oh, how do I communicate what I know and how I move to them? So learning these internal and external cues from you was very useful. And that was actually something I had in my notes a while ago that is completely missing in school. There's really no talk of that, internal and external cues. We only got that from DMACC when he came into the school in the early terms. But I think practicing on one another as students is very important, or practicing on family members early on throughout the whole program would be very useful.

And I think you'd be surprised to find how poorly they move and how difficult it is for them to get to do what you want them to do. So you came full circle, and I think you were really good at performance as strength coaching, but it's a different thing to be good at working with someone with an ache in pain of a compensated movement or a pathology. Right, or someone that's just not comfortable with movement at all or has never worked out before. Right. And so I just want to challenge the listeners, too. And I'm getting better at this weekly. I always come up with new cues or things that I realize I could have done better.

But if you think just moving around a weight because you can do it and you feel good doing it, it doesn't always carry over to somebody else learning how to do it and using that as a therapy. So I think there's a big gap in there that it needs to be filled. And there's not a lot of places to learn that. Right. But the more reps you get in with someone and ask them really what they're feeling when they're moving the weight, probably the better, especially if it's a triggering type of thing. Yeah. And I've got tremendously better even in the last month. Even a month ago, I thought I was pretty good.

But I haven't seen my mom in a month. And I coached her last night here at my house through some things because she's been having a hamstring thing. And, yeah, I got her to go into the position so much easier than before. I was like, man, maybe I just didn't coach you right the first time because you're not doing what I want you to do. You had to do a – you Dan John cuter, didn't you? A little bit. But Dan John and a lot of your stuff. Yeah. A lot of your stuff and some stuff that I'm starting to come up with on my own, which is going to develop – going to develop over time. I can't wait to see now what you're going to say.

Just like when Jeremy – like when he comes back, I'm like, what are you doing? Teach me something. What are you doing, guy? What do you got to say? How are you doing? What are you doing? How are you doing? How's your hair? So we have – we're about 40 minutes into this podcast. I told you there will be a hard stop at some point here because I have a patient coming in. Is there any questions you have for me? Yeah. Let's see. I had a few in mind. Hopefully I can remember them here. So building website content, it seems – you know, when you go to a website like yours and you see all these articles and all these things and all these links here and there and all these videos, I think, you know, when you suggest to a student that you need to start doing that, it can be a little overwhelming and it's kind of difficult knowing where to start.

And I know that Jeff Langley has talked about this on his podcast and it's helped me, but I think maybe you could offer some good insight. And I'm sure there's people that listen here that haven't listened to him. So where would you suggest starting if you're a student and is there any difference in if you start in, you know, term two or three as opposed to starting in term six, seven or nine, ten? Or you think you just start here and then you start growing slowly? Yeah, I think – well, it's funny. I think in term two, you'll have a – you'll write a better article that will have a better feeling.

Like there will be more emotion with it and you won't be as clinical because you don't think you know as much. Term seven, you're going to write it like a biomechanist. Right. Which is not fair for the patient to want to read either because it really is like – like it's – like they make the decision to come to you based upon their gut feeling. It's like – like you could – you can throw all the biomechanics at them within that article, but it's going to have a very different feel than like, you know, reading – I don't know why I'm – Helen – was it Helen Keller? Didn't she have a – I don't know.

What's the one where the girl was in Nazi Germany and she had to hide in her room? Oh, oh, oh, man. This is something Frank? Yeah, yeah, Anne Frank. Diaries of Anne Frank. Anne Frank. So, I mean, there's nothing technical. It's just a story. So, there's – people get more out of that than they would out of the biomechanics part. But I think where the magic comes in is where you can blend the two and you make it so the person feels like there's some hope and some easy wins in there. So, I would definitely start writing stuff in terms of – mainly about things that you're experiencing personally. One of the articles I wrote on oblique strains is one I personally felt and it was – I could have made the details up, like that you had to be part of it.

But I couldn't recall them for the life of me right now if I wrote it today because that was like five, six years ago. I also wrote the book on lumbar spine or I Will Be Back Pain that – by the way, you can buy on Amazon if you want – that was based on my personal experiences. And I actually – I did a diary format thing when I was seeing DMACC for it. So, I actually took some videos. I took some audio clips and so on. So, it formulated a really good story. And I've had people actually message me from – actually, the guy messaged me from England the other day. He said that he bought the book and he wanted to find somebody.

And I was like, I don't know any out there. And he found – he found Joel's – McGill's protege, Joel, in London. And so, you drive people to people but it's the story that kind of starts them there. So, when people are starting to write their online content, I would first start with just something you feel comfortable talking about that resonates well with people. And so, you might resonate well by writing your sciatica article and based upon lifting. Someone else might resonate well with, you know, writing a hip pain one as a runner or whatever. And so, maybe the things that you tried that worked and didn't work and so on.

And what you're going to – what's going to happen when you start to write that article is you're going to realize, oh, I just talked about a bridge. Well, they're going to wonder what a bridge is and then you're going to make a video. So, these content circles tend to happen and then you're going to have to house that video somewhere because you might not want it on the same page. Or maybe there's another article you wrote which say you talked about groin pain, FAI versus label tear versus, you know, pectinous strain. And they're going to be like, huh, what is that? And so, the person might then go to a different page which is not your page because you didn't supply it.

So, give them the option to click through. So, there's these little roundabouts and ideally, in my opinion, ideally you want to get people to multiple touch points. And so, I've started to do more of like say that – say we're talking about the sciatica one. I might then – well, actually, let's talk about that hip one. So, maybe pectinous strain and adductor strain and FAI and label tear and so on. I might have videos on Instagram about all of them. I might have a podcast on one. And so, I'm trying to drive them to other drip sources of mine such as Instagram, YouTube, and podcast. And if you want to later, you can retarget them via some type of Facebook ad if you want to.

However, though, when you're writing things, like the hardest thing is writing it right the first time. Don't worry about it. Just start writing something. And you didn't see the student syllabus, Kyle, I don't think. But the other two interns, their responsibility was to write an article for my page. And I just tore it up after that. Like, just Google Doc suggestions all over the place because they don't – like, they think it's good. And it was good when I first started. It would have been great. But it could be better. And so, the second article is for them, for their website. But they don't tend to – not everyone is going to realize that they're like, why should I – you know, why practice?

It's like, the experience of getting your article just destroyed and improved is the experience that they need to actually write productive articles later. Sure. That makes sense. Does that answer the question? Yeah. So, it sounds like starting off as a student, it would be best to write some personal experience. I think so. How you've dealt with this and that. And then you can go from there. Yeah. And you can always add to it later. Things that you've learned over time that worked and didn't work. You can always throw it away if you don't want to, if you don't want it. I know that I started with a really long one and now I've started to make them much shorter.

Because to me, it doesn't seem like – well, I know my personal experience, I prefer things that are a little bit shorter, more to the point. And then I prefer a click-through. So, if I see something that's more interesting, I'll click through to another page or a video, kind of like you mentioned with the bridge. Rather than embedding all of that in the same, like, 20-page article. Mm-hmm. Well, also, too, for – at least at this point, when you're talking about Google ranking, like, user experience signal back to Google is like, if they go onto one page and they bounce right back out of the page or back out of the page, it's a sign that it was not a good – it was not a good resource for the thing that they searched for.

And so, you want them to dig deeper in your page anyways, so. Because they kind of – as Google kind of looks at the consumer experience, right? And then that ranks you a little bit higher? Yeah, they used to – I'm sure they changed it over time. But before it was like, you can scam it. You can – people used to do, like, black hat types of things where they would dump a bunch of keywords like computer. So, the word computer, because they're trying to rank for computer. They would put white text on white backdrop. Like, they would just scam the system. I didn't know that. Yeah, so there's a bunch of, like, scammy things out there.

But for the most part now, it's like, if you went through and typed up, like, gray video game system in the 90s, Super Mario Brothers. Like, you don't even have to say Nintendo. It will show you a picture of Nintendo. And so, it's to get them to the result they're looking for, not just necessarily the only of the search. Got it. Makes sense. Okay. What do you – I just had another question that just came up. Maybe list a few things, maybe three things that you would do differently now if you were going to open up shop as opposed to when you got out of school and you were a new doc opening up. Opening up, not internally.

Yeah. Let's just say what you would do now differently if you were going to open up your own office as opposed to when you graduated. Or you can even say the pluses and minuses of what you think about opening your own versus being an associate. Do you want to slide that in, too? Well, I think probably – I like your meetup idea. I would do meetup, probably. Actually, I think I told this to Nathan the other day because he asked, how did you get your first patients? And I said, well, I went to a B&I – I was in B&I for about, I think, six months or so. And I was also in a track group for six months.

Between both of them – one of them was free, one of them you had to pay for. Between both of them, I made pretty much the equal amount of money within about a year's time and actually liked going to track group. So I would pick things that you like doing and just hang out. I mean, the people that still refer here were from that track group, you know. So there's something to build in those relationships. So I would probably – meetup sounds good. I'd probably pick up a couple new hobbies that I want to try out and stick with the one I like. Just from a business perspective, then, if you're going to start your own, you should keep overhead really low.

I started around $1,000 a month of paying somebody, and that was back in 2008. So more money now, probably – what is it? Probably, let's just say $1,400 now per month, which is too much. So I would keep it much lower in the beginning, and once you feel comfortable getting your revenue stream in and you have people returning, then you can venture out into a little bit more. I still wouldn't buy a place straight away, and I wouldn't purchase anybody's practice. Agreed. So, good. And let's see. What was another question there? I just – I embedded associateship first. Oh. Your own thing. So here's something I've been thinking about because if you're – people who are associates have probably never owned their own business, and people who are starting their own business decided not to be an associate or at least initially.

And I think there's a – I think what people tend to forget is there is a give and take with everything. Everything has a benefit and everything has a risk. If you're a – if you're starting your own business, you risk not making it. Like most small businesses don't make it. There's a lot of hidden fees. There's a lot of taxes to pay. There's a lot of work that people don't see to get patients in the door. So, on that note, if you are an associate and you don't do physically anything to get anybody in the door, but that doc is taking like, what, 50% of your money, I think you're still kind of lucky.

You know, but I think as we see that when someone wrote an article that was interesting, it was like they say that – and I've never been an associate, so I can't necessarily speak for everybody here. But I thought, huh, that's good logic with it is because I've had friends who were associates and they got really irritated that the doc was taking their money, quote unquote. And so, the article mentioned something about people have a number in their head that they think is okay to give to that clinic. Like the associate might say, well, if I give the clinic 10 grand this year, I'd feel good about it.

But if I made them like $30 million, I don't feel good about it. And so, there's like a breaking point. But I think the thing that they don't see – and this is something that I want to make sure that anybody who's an intern of mine does know ahead of time now – is that I spent three months training you to become useful at some point for my business. You get one-on-one education with it, like stuff that you won't have gotten to school, but just know that just because – so, you spent three months learning. After that, it's kind of like a – it's like my risk was that you leave. I don't want you to leave.

But I didn't need to spend all that time. I could have spent other time doing other things. And what I really want them to understand is in the beginning, I spent time working on you. Later, can you spend time working on my business, right? But then at that point, they might think, well, it was part of school. You didn't pay me for my time and blah, blah, blah, right? So, I think this is probably a bigger conversation for different podcasts, but associates have to understand what is being given up by that doctor to supply you with a job and education. People who are doing their own business, they fully understand how hard it is to run your own business and also learn clinical skills.

It's very hard to do both. Yeah. True. I hope I didn't sound mean. No, not at all. Okay. So, we have about five minutes here. Can I ask you then, how can I improve this podcast because I want to make it better the coming year? What do I need to do more of and less of? How many are you releasing a week right now? One. I can't do more. I was going to say, just put out more. No. I think they're all great. No, I'm just kidding. How can you improve it? Yeah. This isn't one that I really thought about beforehand. Let me think. Well, let me ask you this, and I'll think about how I can answer that better while I ask you the next question.

What do you think, in your experience, are the most important things that make up an excellent clinician? I think some empathy and just giving patient empowerment. Understanding where people have been with their injury, I think, is a really important part that will guide the clinician skillfully into not only getting the person to do the things they're supposed to be doing for that problem, but also, too, understanding where they're at mentally. I've said this multiple times. It's hard to be a patient. Even in the book that I wrote, I Will Be Back Pain, it's hard to be a patient. You might think you know the stuff until you have to do it on yourself, and so I think knowing the problem that they have and empathetically knowing where they're at is important, but you'll get more of that if you have the actual problem.

And I guess the other part is the patient empowerment is that I think it's poor form to be, like, the hero of the situation. You should be guiding them, in my opinion, and getting them to be on part of the team that is their recovery, and you just tend to be, you're just, like, you're literally just the guide. You're like the wine connoisseur guiding them through their experience. So I think tools for empowerment is helpful because if you only have tools for dependence and pain relief, it's really hard to empower the person. I like that. Yeah. I feel like so many people come in and just say, oh, fix me.

Oh, this is out. I need you to put it back in. And it's like, oh, you don't need me to fix you. You can fix yourself. I just want to be the guide. So I think that's a good way to put it. Yeah, probably on that same note, though, too, like, people are going to ask for certain things, but I think Henry Ford said it, is if people, if I listened to what people wanted, they would have got faster horses. So I think you have to innovate for these people, listen to their concerns, but also guide them. It's very hard to be a patient. Sure. You know, one thought I had about the podcast was, I don't know how you feel about it, but it would be interesting to see how it would go if you brought on some really straight chiropractors and interviewed them.

And, you know, they could obviously talk about their philosophy and the ideology behind, because they fully believe 100% in what they're doing. And there's something to that. And they're also very good salesmen. So it would, to me, it would be kind of an interesting conversation. And I don't think it would need to be, like, combative back and forth. It just might be, it might be, like, a different perspective to see. And I know it's restoring human movement, and it's more of a rehab-based, but it was just a thought I had. Maybe someone, maybe even just one person, might be something interesting to throw on there and see what people thought.

I'm open to that. I think, though, so if there's any listeners that know of a straight doc who's very open-minded about just sharing the conversation, not being combative. I'm not saying everyone's going to be combative, but I think if, I think if, I think there's something to learn from everybody. And so if somebody knows of somebody who is willing to have this conversation, because I don't know anybody, have them reach out to me, and I'll kind of screen them and see which one has the best report, and maybe we'll do that one. I have an idea for you, but I'll send it to you. Okay. One other quick thing I was just wondering, what are your thoughts on people chasing so many certifications and letters behind their name?

Yeah, it's, I think it's a hard thing, like the, like I'm thankful for the education I've gotten through ART over the years. However, I think that when we go down the route of like too many like specific certifications, like your FMS, your ARTs, your SFMAs, and so like, I think there's all the important parts to it. However, I mean, I think we all have to consider that these are businesses too, and they've done a very good job of promoting themselves, or promoting their methodology, which I do like their methodology, and I use parts of all of them. However, if you get too deep into it, since they are good at, they now have a name, they can charge a lot more, and there's, I know how it is to be a student.

I literally cannot afford anything else other than that one certification in that year. And so, I think the, I think the, the knowledge in there are important. However, I would really do a cost-benefit analysis of figuring out what you can also spend your money on, and is it going to be worth more clinically than learning, learning more of that similar topic. I do, I do advocate that everybody go to an FMS, an SFMA, an ART, a TPI, like all these ones. Like, I haven't been to FRC yet, but I'm probably going to go to one. And I want, because I want to see what I can learn from them. However, going further into that, it might not have a more benefit for the dollar.

An example of, of something that I, that I think I've told you the story after about, I mean, I spent a lot of time doing manual therapies for about five years. Not until I met DMACC did I really realize that we could, like, like one of the, one of the modules that we have on Pro Chiro is $100, literally $100. It's so cheap. And if you apply that, you will be surprised how much shit you will not have to do manual therapy on anymore. The one with DMACC? Right. The one I bought? I bought it. Yeah, I know you bought it. Kyle was the model for one of them, so I feel bad. He bought it before I could give it to him.

I'm happy to pay for it. It's great content. It's, and this is not just like promo for, I know that, by the way, I do make money if people buy Pro Chiro. But, like, like I said, I think that, so if you have not, if you don't fully understand, like, the context of what I'm talking about for, like, your, like, your, like the ARTs and so on, is that, so I, the last podcast we did was the four block system. And so, the first one is first aid. Second is corrective exercise. The third one is resistance training, then there's returning to playful movement. Block one, it could be anything you want it to be.

It could be your ARTs, your Grastons, your, your Neurodynamics. It could be McKenzie's. It can be literally anything you want, but you've got to have one that works well for that problem at that time for that person. So, there's a time and place for it, however, I don't think we spend enough time learning blocks two, block three, and block four. We're very good at block one. And so, I don't think learning more and teaching more with that is going to be fruitful for people. But that one that you got, that ProCyro one, is, it was lower extremity loading and cervical spine and upper quarter loading.

They're literally the best money that people will ever spend on, on CEs or non-CEs. Like, it is money. Okay. I guess that was a... And you got DMACC. Yeah, you got DMACC. You won't find DMACC's information anywhere else. But, yeah, I guess I feel bad about saying that about those cervications. But, so everyone knows, I have no ill feelings to them. It's just, I think I spent the first five years of my practice getting dug deep into those holes without learning those other parts. So, I want you guys to kind of be a little bit more... I want my interns to be where I was faster or be where I am now faster than it took me to get there.

Right. Cool. So generous of you. You should be better, right? That's the... If you're going to be a coach, your athletes should be better than you. Absolutely. So, as we start to close out here, is there anything you want to leave off on? You know, I think just keep all doors open, you know? Don't be narrow-minded. Keep all doors open and find a good mentor that models the lifestyle that you see or that you envision for your future. So, I think that that's most important. Right on. So, I'm going to keep you on as we close it out then. Thanks for much being on. That was good. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. So, everybody, if you're looking for Kyle, then how does everyone reach you, Kyle? Well, you can reach me on my email. As you can tell, he hasn't thought about this part of his business yet. Yeah. I have a website, but I haven't launched it yet. So, you can't reach me there. You can reach me on my email, kylrayhemsley at gmail.com. Or Instagram, it's at kylrayhemsley. Hemsley is H-E-M, as in Mary, S-L-E-Y. And then I'm also on Facebook. So, happy to answer any questions if you guys want to just direct message me on there. Be happy to share my experience, and I'm sure I can learn something from you, too.

Nice. And if you don't mind, actually, can you, since you've been through most of the pro chiro stuff, can you give me a quick, give everyone a quick synopsis of what you learned, what can be improved in there before I, because it was a sponsor of this podcast, so. Yeah. Cueing, number one, is probably the biggest thing I learned. And that is most found in D-Max courses with flexion intolerant backs and upper quarter extremity, something like that. I can't remember what it's called. The internal and external cueing is, and tension. Tension is a big one that I think a lot of, well, people that don't lift and also people that lift a lot are missing.

I knew, I thought I knew tension and how to deadlift properly, but I really didn't. I wasn't creating enough tension. For example, last night, I went out and used some of D-Max stuff, and I was doing like 10 seconds of tension isometrically before I even picked the bar up off the ground. And that dramatically changed where I felt the effort. I think that's, I haven't, I haven't seen all the Pro Chiro ones, to be honest, but those are my two favorite. And then the upper extremity one exam with Ben Ramos was a great one, too. Oh, nice. Well, thanks for sharing the testimonial. I know that with our, I was thinking about, I can't go too long, it's probably patient staying outside the door right now.

But I really do want our profession to improve, and I want to improve. Actually, I learned a lot through D-Max upper extremity and lower extremity ones, as well as, well, actually all of them. Ben's was great, too. I feel like I've learned a lot, and we're not going to make any more material until these ones sell. And so D-Max is going to come up with a, he wanted to do a knee one as well. So I really wanted to see what else is there is left in the tank. So I believe our profession can get better, and pushing this is probably going to be the easiest way for me to accomplish that mission anyway.

So I hope everyone's on board with this. Well, you also have a 100% money-back guarantee, so there's really no risk if you don't think it's useful. I think you can say that on air. I didn't clear that with the boys or not, though. All right. Well, you have a preview, don't you? You do have a preview. It's a 10-minute preview. Then you can see. All right, everyone. I'll let you get to your patient. Well, everyone, thanks. Thank you so much, Kyle, for being on. And the closing now, by the way, this is the first, I think it's the first time here. It's going to be, so the listeners are called the movement.

Oh, thanks for being part of the movement. Movement. No Eagle Scout? Well, I realize it's about the listeners now, but not about me. Okay. All right, we'll see everyone later. Thanks.