Welcome to the Thriving Chiropractor!

Thank you for checking us out!

I’m Eric Mitz, DC and this is the inaugural post here at thrivingchiropractor.com!

Herein, I attempt to answer the following four questions, the same questions I have when I read a blog for the first time:

1. Who are you?
2. Why are you doing this?
3. What will this site be about?
4. How can I get involved?

Who are you?

I am a practicing chiropractor and aggressively curious entrepreneur.

I have a wonderful family (married with six kids) and terrific friends. I am active in my community and church, offering up my time, talents and treasure to those who need them.

I like love being a chiropractor.

I have a variety of patients with challenging issues and no two days are the same. My practice’s revenues and profits are growing and my schedule is usually booked solid.

I have a staff of professionals working with me and business operation systems that allow me to focus on my patients, and literally nothing other than delivering outstanding chiropractic care while I’m at the office.

This is what a typical day looks like for me: I drop off the kids at school, get to the office at 7:50am and my assistants have my first patient already loaded in a room, their subjective data entered into our EMR, their outcomes assessments completed and filed. I toss my keys on my desk, touch base with my team and then we go non-stop, loving and caring for our awesome patients.

And we have fun doing it.

At the end of the day, after I have finished adjusting my last patient and within minutes of walking out of the treatment room,  I grab my keys and head home for dinner with my family. In the last five years I can count on one hand the number of times I was the first or last person in the office. One of those times was because I fell asleep in my desk chair: a newborn at home plus a killer clinic schedule will do that to you!

Except for examining, diagnosing, and adjusting my patients, everything else is capably managed by somebody else.  Name it, they deal with it.

If this does not sound like your practice, then friend, you do not own a business, you own a job.

I’m going to help you change that.

Outside of my practice, I quench my entrepreneurial thirsts in many other ways.

I have bought, profitably operated, and later sold four brick-and-mortar businesses employing over 100 people, none health-care related, all while practicing. All of these businesses generated significant passive income streams for my family. I have also been a consultant to several corporations, one big and two small, and have mentored several entrepreneurs through their own growing pains.

I work, pray and play hard.

I am a thriving chiropractor!

Why are you doing this?

Given the description of myself above, you may think I’m either exaggerating or that I am the luckiest guy on Earth.

I believe we create our own luck, but I am truly and honestly blessed!

However, it has not always been so awesome.

Not by a mile.

I have had my rear kicked a few times — both personally and professionally.

Example: my first practice failed.

Miserably.

I mean it. Total and complete epic failure.

You don’t know what you don’t know, and back then I didn’t know the first thing about:

• running a solid business with systems designed to automate every possible operational process,
• developing a brand and marketing plan for my practice,
• building my practice around profitable patients who I actually really enjoy working with and not just filling it with warm bodies
• recruiting, incentivizing and retaining superstar staff members
• and on and on and on…

…and back then, I felt like I had nowhere to turn.

Oh sure, like today there were dozens of “rah-rah” practice management groups and consultants teaching scripts and emotional-manipulation and cheesy posture screening tactics. I could never get comfortable with the fact that they were (are?) more interested in maximizing PVA then they were (are?) in developing patient-doctor relationships built on trust, respect and clinical competency.

I never fit in with those groups, and I suspect many of you feel the same way.

I was frustrated and I felt isolated.

I desperately wanted a mentor, somebody who would help me obtain the levels of professional success I knew I was capable of achieving.

That never materialized for me. At least not in the traditional sense.

Instead, I read (voraciously) hundreds of books by successful entrepreneurs and business executives, looking for commonalities and applicability to my situation and profession. I studied the many business disciplines that one must competently exercise to be a successful entrepreneur.

Most importantly, I made innumerable mistakes.

And I learned from them.

And here I am.

I never want another doctor to experience the years of frustration and fear and isolation that I experienced. I never want them to own a job, an often low-paying one at that.

What will this site be about?

This community, this tribe of superb chiropractors I am developing, is my attempt at putting together the direction, training and resources I wish I had at the start of my career as well as the information I find useful today.

The regular posts, podcasts and resources will attempt to serve as a roadmap to help all chiropractors achieve significant success, mostly professionally but also personally.

This is about helping Chiropractors thrive!

The Thriving Chiropractor’s mission:

• Cultivate a tribe of superb chiropractors dedicated to helping each other thrive

• Create fresh, useful, and professionally produced content that will help our tribe

• Seek out others with knowledge or skills that will benefit our tribe

How can I get involved?

First, please subscribe to our email list. Yes, right now!

Second, please subscribe to the podcast via iTunes (when it is released). Leave positive feedback and share this site and show with all of your friends and colleagues you think would be interested in the content. The more people participating in our tribe, the better for all of us.

Third, please leave comments! Ask questions and answer questions! Be passionate, challenging and controversial!  But keep it clean, on topic, impersonal and apolitical. I enjoy robust debate more than most, but this is a place for us to set aside our professional and political differences and pursue commonalities. Iron sharpens iron, but iron also cuts deep. Please treat others the way you want to be treated.

Fourth, please give me your opinion via the Contact page or via the voicemail link on the side of the page. I want to know what you like or don't like about this site or the show. Tell me what topics or questions you'd like covered on the blog or on the podcast. All feedback is most appreciated!

 

Friend, I am so excited to begin this journey, I hope you are too!

Thrive!