He Built the World’s Fastest Growing Chiropractic Clinic And It Nearly Cost Him Everything – Lessons from Dr. Peter Camiolo

Transcription

Guys and girls, welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast—Yuri here. In the last episode, we had a great conversation with James Swanwick, who’s the man behind the famous Swannies, those blue light blocking glasses. If you haven’t listened to that episode be sure to go over and listen to that today, because there’s a lot of great insights on how to come up with a great idea your audience is gonna love, and that just kind of catches like wildfire. Plus a lot of other cool things you’ll get from that episode.

Today, we’ve got an amazing conversation. I’m telling you, you’re gonna want to listen to this one on half speed because there’s so many golden nuggets of wisdom here, you’re gonna want to take notes.

My guest today is Peter Camiolo. Just let me give you a quick rundown of who he is and his background, and then I’ll just segway into our interview.

He is a chiropractor by trade and, out of the gate, he built one of the fastest growing practices in the history of the chiropractic profession. You’re going to see how he did that in this interview.

Also, most importantly, what he talks about is … It’s not that he got this amazing amount of growth very quickly, but he sustained it. He’s had a high volume, high profit practice in the chiropractic profession for a decade. Seven figures a year, 100% cash practice—so no insurance, no third party stuff.

He was actually classified as one of the top one percent of all health and wellness practices in the world.

He’s going to share some really important lessons of what he did to get there and some of the mistakes he made on route. And right now he’s launched a company to coach other physicians to become CEOs of their business, because of some of the big pot holes and shortcomings a lot of doctors and chiros are dealing with. They might be great practitioners, but not necessarily great CEOs. And he’s going to share his philosophy and what they’re doing with serving that.

He also served as the Team USA chiropractor for the 2012 London Olympics Team, which is pretty cool. I’m telling you, you’re gonna go through this interview and you’re gonna just listen to Peter speak … Very well spoken, he knows his stuff, he’s been in the trenches, he’s put in the work, and he figures out a way to save himself, save some important relationships, and now help a lot of other doctors do the same—to impact more people, make more money, but also run a business instead of being a slave to their business.

Even if you’re not a chiropractor or a physician … If you’re a trainer running your own gym, if you have any kind of physical establishment, even if you have an online presence—what you’re about to discover in this interview will be greatly valuable. So with that said, let’s jump in to the interview.

Peter, welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast. How’s it going man?

Peter:              Going great. It’s going great, Yuri, thanks for having me on.

Yuri:                Yeah, for sure. I’m excited to talk with you because you’ve done some pretty amazing things as a chiropractor. You were the Team U.S.A. chiropractor at the 2012 London Olympics, which is no small feat. You’ve built a massively successful, 100% cash-based chiropractic practice, now you’re helping other physicians become CEOs of their business, which I think is much needed.

Let’s talk about that for a second. Why do you feel that other physicians are … Why are you serving other physicians? Let’s just put it that way.

Peter:              The thing that happened to me, Yuri, was I went through the pain of discovering the fact that I felt like I was being trapped in my practice and my business. I looked around at all my colleagues after I discovered this idea of becoming the CEO, and actually took the steps that were necessary to put myself in that position.

I realized that all of my colleagues around me—people that I know, that are my friends, but many who I don’t know—feel the exact way that I do. Because I’ve been sharing with them the pain, the struggle, and the journey that I’ve been on, and many of them have been sharing with me that this is the exact position that they’re in, they’re feeling trapped in their practice.

I think the answer is that we’ve never been trained how to become CEOs. We’ve never really been trained in business, we’re trained as technicians, to be physicians—but nobody really trains you on how to become a business owner.

That’s, I think, a major problem in my profession.

My brother went to business school, graduated business school at the top of his class. And I asked him, “How many people that graduated your business school actually went out and started businesses?” He said, “None.”

And here you have doctors who don’t learn anything about business, and they get out of doctor school and they go and open businesses. It’s a real problem that we have right now, and we’re hoping to be able to help, come alongside doctors and solve some of these problems.

Yuri:                It’s amazing. I’m happy you guys are doing that, because it’s much needed. As you said, health and fitness professionals in general—not even just doctors—are great technicians.

I remember when I started my business online, I was an amazing trainer and a great nutritionist, but I had no clue how to run a business. And it’s not taught in school. The only way to learn is just do it.

So I think what you guys are doing is great, by helping people just get in the fast lane and doing things properly.

So, you built one of the fastest growing practices in the history of the chiropractic profession. That’s a pretty bold statement.

How did that happen? How did you do that?

Peter’s initial journey

Peter:              I think it was … Grind would be one word, hustle would be another word, if I was to summarize it.

I think I was just unwilling to settle for anything less. I had this standard set in front of me of reaching this volume of visits and this dollar mark. And I just was relentless at making sure I hit that. And to be honest with you, Yuri, it almost cost me my marriage and my family life. I’m not necessarily proud of the way that I did, I’m proud of the fact that I was able to accomplish it.

What I’m more proud of is the fact that I was able to recover all my relationships, but also I was able to maintain that level of performance year after year.

So what I see a lot of people go after this big number, this big goal. Let’s say it’s a seven figure income, a certain volume of people, whatever it may be. But then they hit it and they collapse afterwards. Everything falls apart and they go back to their “normal status.”

For me it was … Not only do I want to go there and hit it, but I want to be able to then grow from there and maintain it, even grow to the next level. So, yeah, we were able to get there fast—within a year we were seeing over 1,000 patient visits a week, collecting a million dollars a year, 100% cash. Those are numbers that, in the chiropractic space, one percent or less maybe ever get to. I was able to do it in 10 and a half months, and then maintain it for almost a decade.

The reality was, yeah, I got there—but what I’m really proud of is that I was able to figure out how to stay there.

And that’s what my journey is—when I’m out working with doctors, my mission is to help them reach whatever level of success is … You don’t have to call it a volume or even a money thing, whatever your definition of success is. I think financially is important. I think how many people you’re helping is important.

But are you satisfied and fulfilled in your life?

A lot of chiropractors are doing good, helping people, but many of them are unsatisfied and feel burnt out, stressed out. They can’t take a break without their business falling apart.

That was the thing I had experienced. And then I had a journey through that.

So yeah, I guess it’s bold to say that. But I was told that, Yuri. I’m not telling you this, people told me and said, “I don’t know anybody in the history of the the profession who grew a practice this size as fast as you did.” That’s what was being told to me at the time.

Yeah, it’s something to be proud of, but I’ll tell you, it wasn’t all pretty, that’s for sure.

Yuri:                Sure. So, out of curiosity, because I don’t know this and there’s probably a lot of chiropractors listening to this … What is the average yearly revenue for a chiropractic clinic? Is there a data center that collects this type of information?

Peter:              I think there is. I think the average chiropractic office volume is probably around 80 to 100 visits per week, and probably about a quarter of a million dollars in revenue. Probably about there, maybe 300 thousand.

So yeah, I was seeing 100 people in the morning on Monday. So to be at 1,000 visits per week and then a million dollars a year in the first year … And doing it all cash … So many chiropractors actually depend on third party reimbursement.

With that being said, they don’t have to sell anything. For me, I had to sell myself. I had to sell my product.

I had to convince people who had insurance to say, “I’m not gonna go to the guy down the street, but I’m gonna actually come to you and I’m gonna give you my money because I believe what you’re saying and I actually want you.”

And then, we built our office on referrals. So, not only did I have to sell them but I had to resell them every single time I saw them. Because for them to directly refer their family and friends to me they had to be loving what they were getting.

That’s the model that we worked.

Yuri:                Let’s talk about that. How did you initially get the people into the office, into the clinic? And then, what did that referral orchestration side look like?

Marketing and referrals

Peter:              Initially, it was doing these health screenings. We would go out to events in the town, set up our 10 by 10 E-Z Up tent if it was outside, with my spine if I had power, we’d use the scanner, I’d have my little nerve chart, I’d have a little questionnaire.

That was it. We did a lot of that.

If I could speak anywhere, I would go speak. I spoke at the library, I spoke at churches, I spoke at small businesses, I did lunches, I bought lunch, I would go to any business and speak. I had a radio show in my town where I was doing a live show every weekend.

And that’s what I did. I was going seven days a week. If I wasn’t in my office I was out marketing. So, that’s what I did. It was seven days a week, just go, go, go.

Yuri:                Can I stop you there for a second? Because that is so valuable. Not necessarily the 24/7 part, but I think what you talked about is so immensely valuable.

Essentially, what you were doing was you were putting yourself out there. Which is essentially marketing—you’re adding value, you’re giving people a free sampling of your awesomeness. And then, just saying, “Hey, if you wanna go deeper, you can come to the clinic and we’ll take you to the next step.”

That is something so many people fail to do.

I say that because I recently went to seek out a chiropractor where I live, in Toronto, and I basically based my decision on who was the closest chiropractor to my house. Which was a terrible way of making a decision.

And, obviously, I realized that after a few treatments. But had there been someone like yourself who was proactive in getting out there, putting out content online for instance, or going to events and being of service …  I would have surely done business with them.

I just want all the listeners—no matter if you’re a chiropractor, trainer, nutritionist, whatever you’re doing—that is such a valuable lesson that Peter just shared. So, thank you.

So, you got them coming in, you’re doing all that great stuff, then you’re in the clinic doing the treatments and adjustments, taking care of the patients … Once they’re satisfied, once they’re getting results, what is the next step? How do you get them to refer their family and friends?

Peter:              It’s interesting, Yuri, so we have our onboarding process for new clients or perspective clients, before they actually became a payment client—because they would basically buy some sort of a membership plan to our facility, because the cash model enables you to do that pretty simply.

I would actually seed two ideas from the first visit. Number one, that we are a lifestyle chiropractor—so yeah, we’re gonna help you with your acute pain or chronic pain, but ultimately we want you to be a part of our lifestyle culture, which is including chiropractic as part of your regimen in staying well.

So we would seed that, but we’d also seed, through our communication, the fact that everyone could probably benefit from this. And the words are “could probably,” because you want them to think that for themselves.

So you want them to say, “Wow, it sounds like this could help with this and this. And wow, I know people like that.” So seeding the idea.

And then for part of my initial conversion process I do what’s called a doctor’s report, where I would actually take them through a class, and I would actually teach them, basically, what I learned in school, eight years of school.

I taught them a 40 minute class. Basically on the science, the art, and the philosophy of what we do in chiropractic, and then I actually invited them to partner with me in helping more people, reach more people.

Before they even signed up I asked them if they would be willing to do that.

And I was kind of bold about this. But literally, the day that they signed up, I would ask them that day when they checked out, I would say, “If you have any family members or friends that haven’t been checked, my staff is going to go ahead and talk to you about getting them scheduled.”

And then, on their next visit we would just ask them flat out, “Who do you know?” That question is so powerful, just, “Who do you know that might be able to be helped by a chiropractor that lives in the area? And if they don’t live in the area let us know because I’ll try to find them somebody outside of the area.”

We weren’t just looking to build our practice … And what’s the objection? “Well, doc I’m not gonna help you build your practice until you’ve helped me first. I wanna get results before I tell anybody about it.”

How do you bypass that? Well, it’s simply saying, “Is this true or not?” And if it’s true for you now, when you’re feeling terrible, it was true for you two days ago when you weren’t.

Therefore, it’s also true for the people who aren’t feeling bad yet. And it will help them prevent feeling like you feel now, which is terrible.

So it’s actually helping people have a bigger view—a holistic view—of the world and also humanity. And truly just saying, “Hey, I’m willing to help pay forward, help other people with their health as well, and be a contributor to them.”

So I would say, “You’re gonna be one of the people they’re never gonna forget because you’re gonna help them change their life.”

Yuri:                Absolutely. Makes them a hero.

 Peter:              Yeah, they’re a hero.

 Yuri:                That’s great. That’s super smart. Completely out of left field question here, that I’m hopefully gonna tie back in. What did you wanna be when you were growing up?

 Peter:              Me? Early, I wanted to be a professional athlete, football player.

 Yuri:                Okay, cool.

 Peter:              That was early, early. Then I wanted to be a pilot. Then I considered being a pastor.

And then, I always loved working with my hands and I was intimidated by going to school for a long time—just academics intimidated me. But it was that challenge that motivated me at the same time. That’s where I gravitated more, getting into the chiropractic space.

So it was athletics, flying planes, then it was pastoring, which was more like working with people, helping people heal and moving forward in their lives.

And then, combining all that was chiropractic.

 Yuri:                That’s very cool. That’s actually a very similar path as me. I wanted to play pro soccer when I was growing up and I was able to do that. I’ve always been obsessed with flying, so I’ll happily go to an airport and just watch planes all day.

And, obviously, being in the health field is serving other people. So it’s pretty funny.

During your teenage years, when you were younger, did you ever have your own business? I remember shining shoes at people’s doors or stuff like that. Did you ever have any of those entrepreneurial ventures?

The transition from employee to CEO

Peter:              I wish I did. I didn’t. I just started working early.

I found jobs early, started making money, bought my own car, paid my way through college, undergrad. Early on, I grew up early. But no, I wasn’t an entrepreneur, I was a hard worker.

And actually, Yuri, if I may say this, that’s actually part of my discovery that I had—I was actually working out one morning and I had this revelation that came to me, I literally had this voice that I heard, it says, “You’re a great employee.”

And I was like, “Hell yeah, I’m a great employee.” I was doing burpees or something and I was crushing it that morning.

And I was delirious, but I heard this voice and when I finished working out I actually started writing—which is pretty typical, I do a lot of writing after working out.

It was almost like this voice came and says, “Yeah, but you’re not an employee. You own a business and you’re acting like an employee.” It was this conflict that had to be resolved in me.

I realized, every business that I had worked for up to that point, Yuri, whether it was landscaping—I do a lot of landscaping, construction, a lot of manual labor stuff—or even as an associate chiropractor in another chiropractor’s office … Every person I’ve ever worked for asked me to be a partner or buy into their business, from the age of 15 all the way up.

And here I am in my own business acting like an employee still. In a business that I own.

And the problem was that I never actually bought into this idea that I was an owner, that I was a CEO, that I was this person. And because of that, I never behaved like one. And that’s where a lot of the personal issues come in, life stuff kind of goes off.

Yuri:                That’s amazing. So it’s like this internal punch in the guts, being like, “Hey, you’re not really the owner of this company if you’re a slave to it!” And then obviously taking the action to change that around.

So, you had the revelation, just in speaking with you I can tell you’re someone who has been in the trenches, you’ve practiced this, you’re very persuasive—because you’re passionate about what you do—and that translates into higher conversions.

It doesn’t really matter what it is you’re doing. If it’s patients or online or anything else, that’s a skillset that takes time to develop.

How did you build that? How did you develop that? Was that something you had innately, growing up? Is that something that you started going to courses for? Or learning from different people? Or just practicing in the trenches?

Peter:              I always say, Yuri, a lot of it is just from being in the trenches.

I have an amazing wife as well. I’m gonna give her a shout-out, too, because she pushes back all the time on things that I’m doing or not doing. She really helps me vet a lot of the things that I’m walking through, a lot of my emotions, a lot of my behavior.

And she is one of the people that’s just been saying, “You can do better than this. We could be doing better. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

She always helps me question what I’m doing, what I’m believing, and how things are going. And she’s really helped me to actually dive into it, ask the questions and find out for myself,  like, “What is this? Why am I feeling this way? Is this the way that it has to be?”

So yeah, I think a lot of it came through working hard in the trenches and getting to that place of being burned.

Here’s the conflict—”I love what I do, but I don’t wanna do it anymore.” That’s not a good place to be. So it was that feeling of, “I love what I do and I’m really good at it, but I don’t wanna do it anymore. But what else am I gonna do?”

And so it was like, “How do I do this?” And I looked around at my colleagues, thinking, “Well, everybody’s doing the same thing. Everybody’s feeling the same way.” Or, they’re bailing out or selling out—which it felt like in many ways.

So I was like, “How do we do this well? How do we maintain integrity? How do we maintain excellence? How do we maintain some level of a standard for ourselves or even as a profession, and still rise to that next level? How do we go to that level and stay fulfilled and satisfied?”

For me, that’s what it was. And I’ve always had a compassion for my fellow colleagues. I’ve always wanted to help them do better. And that’s something that’s been inside of me since my young days—I did a lot of youth work, a lot of retreats, a of sports camps, other things. And I realized that my passion was always pouring into people and raising them up.

And so, for me personally, that’s where I started to discover this calling or this desire to work with chiropractors and help them succeed at a higher level in their practice. Not saying I have arrived and figured it all out, but just saying, “If you could partner with somebody and we could do this together, I would love to be a part of that.”

Yuri:                That’s awesome. That’s great, man.

So, you talked about a lot of your relationships almost falling apart as you were growing your practice. What is the biggest challenge that you’ve faced in growing your business? Would that be the biggest? And what was the lesson you learned from that?

Peter:              The biggest challenge, honestly, was … Well, the relationship thing was the hardest, because it hit the closest to my heart, it hit the closest to home. When your wife is saying, “Take it or leave it. You either change the way this is or …”

Because here’s the deal, man. I would leave my house at 4:45 in the morning, I would go to my gym. I built a gym, which ended up not being a successful business. That’s a whole other story.

But I built a gym and I would go and I work out there, and then I’d go and see patients, and then I’d be training teams, meeting with people at lunch. I’d be doing talks, work all afternoon, work into the evening.

I would come home exhausted. I didn’t know my kids. My wife was feeling disconnected.

Yeah, there was food on the table, the money was there and all that. But the relationship piece was gone. And deep in my soul, I was so numb. I didn’t even realize that I was doing that. I thought I was doing the right thing. Like, “Don’t you appreciate me and what I’m doing? And can’t you see we’re helping people?” Right?

Yuri:                Sure.

Peter:              But it’s like, “No, you don’t see me. You’re not meeting me where I’m at.”

So, the relationship aspect was probably the biggest thing in my heart that really needed to be resolved. Not everybody can relate with that, but that was my journey.

But the other side, professionally, was … I realized how fickle everyone in my office was. Because when I stepped out of my practice, at one specific time when my wife was really sick, my practice dropped by a third in 90 days.

And it was that moment that I realized this was so unsustainable. This thing was so dependent on me. I had all these amazing staff and I was paying them well, but this thing will literally be gone in six months if I don’t do something about it.

So, there was a professional moment where I realized I was not doing a good job.

I thought, “Oh, I have this great practice, and I’ve been on stages speaking.” But it’s like, “Dude, you know what? At the end of the day if he doesn’t show up, it’s over.”

And that’s not a business, that’s a job.

Yuri:                Absolutely. So, how did you turn that around?

If you were to sit down with an up-and-coming chiropractor who is starting their own practice or working in a clinic, what can you share with them from that experience to help them avoid those same mistakes?

Sustainability, scalability and long-term success

Peter:              I would say you have to have a vision and a plan in place pre-opening for hiring specific technical help. Whether you’re coming up with a business plan and you want to get money, however you’re doing it—you’re getting investments from your family or somebody.

You need to lay it out for them. If you’re gonna own a practice, you already need to be looking to hire another doctor to help you right out of the gate, because the only way to build a sustainable model and a scalable model is actually to get other technical help.

In the industry that we’re in—because it’s so hands-on, the transactions are so individual, and it can become so dependent onyou as the transaction person—you will literally trap yourself by the fact of what you do. So you build that into your initial model, pre-opening.

Now, this is also great for doctors who don’t want to be owners. They want to be associates and they want to be working in offices. Because I’ll tell you, if you actually work for a doctor who has a great business mind and business plan and they’re thinking like a CEO—they’re going to enable you to have a great career. They’re going to be able to pay you more than any of the other doctors who hire as an associate—because in those other cases, you’re only going to be there for 6, 12, 18, 24 months, and you’ll be out of there. Because you realize this is a terrible business and you can’t do this anymore.

And that’s what happens in our profession. We abuse young doctors who are coming out of school for their labor. We pay them barely anything—they can barely pay their student loans, they can’t start a family, they can’t move forward with their life. And the owner is trying to take home as much as possible.

And so, there’s no business plan, there’s no business model for a professional. It’s 77,000 doctors.

What I would say to a young doctor coming out of school is, “If you’re going to own and you want to open a practice, you’ve got to be a CEO from day one.” You might say, “Well, Camiolo, I’m going to follow the path you did. I’m gonna grind, crush it, do it myself, and then I’ll build a team.”

I would caution against that. Because I don’t think that’s the wisest path for sustainability, scalability, and long-term success. And you build a lot of bad habits, too.

So that’s what I would say. Come up with a business plan, present it to the bank, to whoever is giving you the financing, wherever the money is coming from, and say, “This is where we’re going to go.”

Within 6 to 12 months you’ve built a team, a manager of the business and a technician who can deliver the services that people are paying you for, so it doesn’t have to be all on you.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. What do you think the role of the CEO should be in a chiropractic office?

Peter:              Great question. And that is the question that everybody wants to know. I’d say the first thing is you cast vision. If you’re an owner of a business, you have a vision! Otherwise you wouldn’t have birthed it! One of the things you have to do is you have to keep casting it.

I always tell my staff, I’m like, “If you go fishing you don’t just throw the line out once. You throw it out, you reel it in, you throw it out, you reel it in. You’ve got to keep casting, casting, casting.”

The bottom line is, visions are caught not taught. So if you want somebody to catch your vision, your team is the first person that needs to catch it.

You want your patients to catch it, they’re following. But they’re not gonna catch it if your team is not on board. So casting vision and recasting it. Coming up with ways to do that, building it into your weekly or monthly rhythms.

Equipping the team, making sure that they’re being trained. Equipping, for me, is training my team on all of the best practices for everything that you’re doing— rom how to respond to an email, how to pick up a phone call, how to check out a person if they ask this question, whatever the thing is. Equipping my team to succeed, to win.

Coming up with strategies. I don’t necessarily expect my team to come up with strategies to optimize a system in my practice. I would say that’s part of my role, working with my office manager and collaborating with my team, but ultimately it’s my job to lead the conversation and say, “Hey, we wanna come up with a better strategy for this.” Whatever that may be.

I would say that scaling your systems is the role of a CEO. Figuring out what systems you have and how you can scale it. It’s easy to say, “Well, I love our system for collecting new emails.” Well, great, but is it scalable? Is it the best possible system? It’s always asking that question.

I always tell my team, “Is this the most excellent way?” That’s the question I always ask. Because if it’s not, then there has to be a better one, so let’s go find it.

Yuri:                That’s awesome.

Peter:              Three more things.

Building culture. Culture absolutely comes from the CEO.

Measuring performance. You’ve got to be measuring it, you’ve gotta be getting your metrics and statistics daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. You got to be able to look at those things and make decisions on them.

And the final one is managing key partnerships. Building relationships, partnerships within your profession and outside your profession, in your community, whatever that looks like.

So I would say that’s really the CEO’s role.

Yuri:                That’s wicked. I love that statement, “Vision is caught not taught.” That’s a good one. What if you’ve got the chiropractor who just wants to see patients?

Peter:              Great question. This was me, Yuri! I thought that was me.

I could absolutely relate with that doctor. I would say to them, “Absolutely. If that’s your vision and that’s what you want, do it.” Here’s my catch though. “Tell me what your ideal schedule is. Yes, you want to see patients, but how many patients? And how often? And how regularly? What does that look like?”

Here’s the feedback I get from them. “I do want to see patients, but I want to see them on my own schedule. I want to make the schedule. I want to do it around what’s best for me.” Great. So we say to them, “What’s your vision? What’s your ideal life, work life, look like?”

So we have them write out their vision. “Oh well, ideally I would see patients twice a week,” or, “I only want to see these types of patients—weight-loss patients.” or, “I just want to see chiro patients.” Or whatever it may be. “I just want to speak at the events.”

It’s saying, what’s your ideal schedule? Because whatever it is, you need to build it into your model. It just has to be built into your model.

It’s absolutely still CEO. You’re still CEO, but it’s not completely dependent on you.

Yuri:                That’s great. Great wisdom there. So, if you were to go into a completely different market, let’s say selling tomatoes at a farmer’s market. Anything. Knowing what you know now about business, would you do anything differently if you started again? And, if so, what?

 Peter:              Yes. The answer is yes. One thing I would do is I would first start with a plan, a real plan. A plan to scale from day one. That would be number one.

I would look at building a team earlier, right away. Starting with a team. I actually started with just myself, and my wife was part-time at the front desk with a baby in tow. And that was great, because from a budgeting standpoint it’s the smartest way to do it, we were lean.

I would still stay lean, but discover who the key people are that you need. I would also say, if you could partner and outsource any of the work—consider that as an option. Like hiring people to do more consulting for your business.

For example, I hired a nutritionist in my practice who I don’t pay, she’s not on payroll. But she gets paid per service and so do I. So, she’s incentivized to help get more people in her books. I’m incentivized to get more people on her books, but I’m not responsible to pay her to sit around and wait for her to get people.

Setting it up where you’re hiring people almost as contract laborers, considering that as an option. Things that drive revenue add value to your current clients and add profitability to you in the bottom line. I would look at ways to do that right away.

I would also look at marketing. Marketing is so big, so I would look at automating marketing for the tomatoes. I’d be like, “Well, everybody needs tomatoes. Can’t you tell? Life is better with tomatoes!”

Yuri:                That’s right. Good with pasta sauce.

Peter:              We’ll figure this out. I’m Italian, so we gotta have pizzas and pasta sauce. It’s always better with a little red sauce.

We’d just start coming up with a clear vision statement, mission statement, and core values. I would look at developing those earlier in the game. I know I’m kind of all over the place answering your question here, but yeah, those are some of the things I would do.

 Yuri:                That’s super valuable. And hopefully what our listeners are getting at is, it’s not about being the technician. You can be a technician and you’ll grind yourself into the ground working 24 hours a day. But if you really want to create freedom and a scalable business that impacts more people, creates more freedom and money for yourself, you have to think about this stuff.

Because if you don’t, you’re never going to even have time to think about this stuff.

So I think it’s really, really good advice. If you’re listening to this and you’re a chiro or a physician or a trainer—it’s all the same stuff. It’s a very similar approach. Peter, this has been awesome, man. Thank you for sharing all this stuff.

Peter:              Absolutely.

The Rapid Five Questions

Yuri:                So, are you ready for the Rapid Five?

 Peter:              Bring it on, I’m ready.

 Yuri:                All right, so you’ve got no prior knowledge of these questions, there’s no phone-a-friend, nothing like that. Whatever comes to the top of your mind, just go with that.

Number one. Your biggest weakness?

Peter:              Listening. 

Yuri:                Cool. Your biggest strength?

 Peter:              Taking action.

Yuri:                One skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

Peter:              Adjusting.

Yuri:                Like chiropractic adjusting?

Peter:              Yeah. That business. I would say the other one would be influencing through speaking.

Yuri:                Cool. What do you do first thing in the morning?

Peter:              I drink a glass of water, immediately go to my prayer room, and I pray and workout.

Yuri:                Awesome. And complete this sentence. I know I’m being successful when ____?

Peter:              My wife is happy and my family is fulfilled and I have joy and peace in my soul.

Yuri:                Awesome, man. Good for you.

Peter, this has been a pleasure. Just so many nuggets of wisdom that have been shared. For those of you listening, if you want to go back and listen to this, just listen to it at .5 speed and take a bunch of notes if you missed any of the stuff that we talked about, that Peter has shared.

Peter, what’s the best place for our listeners to stay in touch with you, follow your work, what is the best place?

Peter:              Probably two places, you can go to chiro-ceo.com. Also the10xdoctor.com is another website, where we host our live events. And then, Facebook as well—you can just look up Chiro CEO, and follow us on Facebook.

Yuri:                Beautiful. Peter, once again, thank you so much. I appreciate all the work you’ve done, that you continue to do, and for going through your own journey so that you can come out on the flip side to help others who are hopefully not going to go down the same path you went down.

Peter:              Absolutely. Thanks, Yuri. Thanks for having me on and letting me share.

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Yuri’s Take

Pretty fascinating stuff, wasn’t that? What Peter was able to do just through hustle and grind was amazing. And eventually he realized that maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing to do. But, nonetheless, he has built an amazing practice, learned the hard lessons, learned them the hard way.

And as he said and I’ve said before, the whole “ready, fire, aim” approach needs to be taken with a bit of caution. Because as he talked about, if he were to do things all over again he would really strategize and think with a plan to scale right from day one.

Because if you don’t, you’re essentially ending up as an employee—a slave in your own business.

And that’s why I like to use the analogy of “strategize, then strike.” Take the time to think. Take the time to map out your vision. Get clear on where you want to go 5 years, 10 years, 25 years down the road—and then work on the immediate 90 day plan to get the cart moving.

Don’t worry about what’s going to happen six months or a year from now, because there’s so many things that can change. But if you have a clear vision, you have your North Star, you know everything comes back to keeping you on path for that.

You focus on that, you focus on what’s the plan to help us move in that direction that we can implement over the next 90 days—and that’s how you create magic in your business.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. Once again, if you’re not subscribed yet on iTunes, be sure to subscribe today because I’ve got a bonus episode for you coming tomorrow, before the new year kicks around—which is called The Year Ahead.

And it’s a bonus. Literally, it’s an audio training—I’m going to walk you through and show you how to create an amazingly productive and focused 2018. This is an exercise you can repeat every single year if you want to.

So, if you want access to that episode, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it. And all you have to do is go to iTunes, go to Healthpreneur Podcast, and subscribe today. While you’re there, it would be great if you could leave a rating review. It would mean a lot.

And once again, I hope you’ve had an amazing year. I hope you’ve enjoyed these episodes, enjoyed these conversations, that you’ve taken notes, that you’ve been inspired, and you’ve been awakened to what’s possible, but also a lot of mistakes that you can hopefully avoid.

It’s been my pleasure bringing this episode to you. Thanks for taking the time out of your life—I know it’s the holiday season, but you’re with me still, which means a lot. So, thank you so much.

Continue to be great, do great, and I’ll see you in our bonus episode coming up tomorrow.

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Follow Dr. Peter Camiolo At:

https://chiro-ceo.com/

https://the10xdoctor.com/

Facebook

 

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