Nelson & Liz interview Dr. Burke Larsen, chiropractor and owner of Lifetime Family Wellness in Ogden, UT.
Dr. Burke has been a student and now a coach in a national business coaching program for chiropractors.
In this episode he shares what it was like running his business before he found the coaching and began applying their business model, and how he’s thrived since implementing their systems.
The three discuss the specific job duties of each position he hires for his team, how Dr. Burke and his team hire and train his people, and how he ensures that the team functions like a well oiled machine; seeing many times more patients per day than the average chiropractor without sacrificing quality of care or patient satisfaction.
SPEAKERS
Liz Sears, Burke Larsen, Nelson Barss
Liz Sears 00:01
Welcome to the Business greater than you podcast, where we dive deep into the stories of men and women who have successfully transcended the fragile solopreneur life, and built productive teams with better lifestyle and income.
Nelson Barss 00:13
I'm Nelson Barss, the founder and owner of Utah Independent mortgage Corp.
Liz Sears 00:18
and I'm Liz Sears, founder and co owner of My Utah Agents.
Nelson Barss 00:21
We're excited for you to listen, interact and grow with us. So please share your comments below. And let's get started.
Liz Sears 00:32
All right, Burke Larson with lifetime family wellness, we are so excited to have you on our show today.
Burke Larsen 00:38
Thank you excited to be here.
Liz Sears 00:39
Oh, perfect. Why don't you start by telling us just a little bit about you and what you do and all of that.
Burke Larsen 00:46
Sure. So I'm Dr. Burke, Larsen, I my clinics name is lifetime family wellness. We're here in South Ogden, and what do we do we do chiropractic?
Liz Sears 00:55
And acupuncture, acupuncture. First time you did that? Yeah, I'm like, seriously, you're sticking needles,
Burke Larsen 01:00
acupuncture, we do the laser, a little nutrition, some of those types of things. Our most, our biggest focus is spinal correction, as much as that's possible, meaning we work with the natural curvature of the spine and try to get those restored as much as possible to remove nerve pressure and issues with the spine. We work with a lot of kids, moms, pregnancy as well.
Liz Sears 01:22
Even Babies, I've seen that
Burke Larsen 01:24
Even babies. So we do a lot of pediatric care. So that's what we do. It's amazing.
Nelson Barss 01:30
Awesome. Yeah. We wanted to have you on because we both really admire your business. We've both been patients of yours. But we've seen I think for the first time, I've seen how a successful chiropractic clinic can run, right? I was just shocked. First time I went into your clinic and just saw how many, how many patients were going through how many people are on your team, and how synchronized your team was
Liz Sears 01:53
So efficient.
Nelson Barss 01:54
They all knew my name, right? And I know that doesn't happen by accident. So we wanted to,
Burke Larsen 01:58
For sure
Nelson Barss 01:59
Find out how you run your team, right? This broadcast is all about building a team and business greater than you, right doing more than you could do all by yourself. And the joy of doing that. So
Burke Larsen 02:10
Yeah.
Nelson Barss 02:11
Can you talk to us just a little bit about how you started your business? And I know you this is not your first clinic, right? You've had one before and, and how you landed on the business model that you run now.
Burke Larsen 02:21
So yeah, and that's probably a good starting point, a good story. So I started my first practice in 2010 in Central Utah, and I think that's where we learned how to do things the wrong way.
Liz Sears 02:35
That's often how people start.
Nelson Barss 02:37
It was successful eventually. And really, you know, you leave chiropractic school. You're, you're a good practitioner, but you're not necessarily a good business person.
Liz Sears 02:50
Kind of like E Myth.
Burke Larsen 02:51
Yeah, very much. It's like exactly like E Myth. You know, you don't you like baking pies, but that's about all you know. So, so, in the travels in the first two to three years, you know, we did build a practice, it was very much grassroots built, and eventually was fairly healthy. But it was along that way that I stumbled upon a coaching group by the name of TLC, for Super teams, that's the group that I'm with. And it was through their technologies, and I call them technologies, but they're coaching, that we really settled on a business model that is one sustainable, and two efficient, and then put that in place. And what I do like about them is, it is all about building a team. That's what it's focused on. Its focuses on four pillars, and one of those pillars is a team driven practice. And so it's where it is very much how have you built your team? What does each team member do? How do those team members then overlap in other areas and execute the process as efficiently as possible? And so it was taking that as we implemented that our practice grew, grew to a point where we realized that we did not want to be in central Utah anymore for several reasons, and decided to sell it off and start over up here in Ogden.
Liz Sears 04:14
Awesome.
Nelson Barss 04:15
That sounds scary.
Burke Larsen 04:16
It was scary
Nelson Barss 04:17
Just starting over.
Burke Larsen 04:18
It was scary.
Nelson Barss 04:19
So this coaching program, this is for chiropractors, right, specifically, Specifically built by and for chiropractors. I think the models would work in any situation. Yeah.
Burke Larsen 04:30
But that's what they focused on the most. We've had other people and their dentists and veterinarians and things like that. But for the most part, it's, it's in clinical practice and chiropractors.
Nelson Barss 04:40
So it's interesting. You say, you know, you finished chiropractic school, you have no training really on business.
Burke Larsen 04:46
I mean, not really
Liz Sears 04:47
a lot like realtors and mortgage right like you learned how to pass the test. You learned how to stay out of jail, right? That's about all that you learn.
Nelson Barss 04:53
or doctors or dentists or right? It doesn't matter what your field is. You get the skills to actually do the work but That's a whole different story to try to run a business.
Burke Larsen 05:03
Yeah, and the care part of that, or, you know, the actual doing of mortgages or selling of homes, it's probably only about a third of what I feel like I needed to know, to be successful in practice.
Liz Sears 05:18
So tell me about the difference in the structure that you had with your first company that you built. And then the team structure with, you know, what you have now?
Burke Larsen 05:28
Well, I think, initially, the, the structure we had, honestly was, let's just go do it. And we threw stuff together as we grew. And, you know, things became blatantly obvious as problems and you go, okay, so how do we solve this problem? Versus the new structure is, okay, here are the the things that each person should be doing. And as you grow from, let's say, one employee to two to three to four, how are you going to then split those responsibilities out, and augment them, so they become a lot more efficient? So, you know, the first clinic for the very first three or four years looked very hodgepodge. Now we have a very specific role. And one of the things that we always are looking at is, if we go to this next level, where's our capacity bottlenecks, the most rather that's to team, rather thats processes, or whatever else it is, is and how do we then look forward down the road to that? So when it does come it's it's done? It's if you build it, they will come? Kind of thing?
Liz Sears 06:31
Yeah.
Nelson Barss 06:33
So I'm curious.
Liz Sears 06:34
Clinic of dreams
Nelson Barss 06:35
So maybe fast forward to the present day?
Burke Larsen 06:37
Sure.
Nelson Barss 06:37
How big is your clinic? How many employees do you have? What does your team look like? So we have three, I'm gonna say three full time employees, myself, and then my wife, Mandy acts as kind of a CEO, CFO, in the background of all of that. So that's so three full time employees, and yourself, and then your wife does background stuff.
Burke Larsen 07:03
Yeah, and mostly just managing procedures and things in the background of making sure billing and all that happens.
Nelson Barss 07:08
So can you walk us through how your team works? What do those three employees do? And I assume this is, this is the business model you were?
Burke Larsen 07:15
Yep.
Nelson Barss 07:16
Learning from TLC and Implementing now you're coaching for them. Right?
Burke Larsen 07:17
Sure. Coach for them
Nelson Barss 07:20
Yeah. So how long? Have you been doing their program?
Burke Larsen 07:22
Their program? I've been there for eight, almost nine years.
Nelson Barss 07:26
Okay.
Burke Larsen 07:26
And then coaching in the last year, year and a half.
Nelson Barss 07:30
I'm surprised that there's only three people there because it feels like I guess the rest of people, there are all your patients, because when I go in your office is
Liz Sears 07:36
It is so busy
Nelson Barss 07:36
so buzzing, right, yeah, it's just so much going on. So tell us how they do it and how you do it.
Burke Larsen 07:41
So basically, there's there's three major positions. So you've got a front desk, chiropractic assistant, a financial chiropractic assistant, and a tech assistant. And so each one of those has specific responsibilities as to how and when they engage with the patient.
Liz Sears 08:00
Okay,
Burke Larsen 08:00
So the person who's answering the phone and your initial contact person, we call that the front desk. So she or he is there to receive patients, that person deals with all the scheduling, all the phone calls, all the new patient phone calls, and those types of things. So that's, that's the, the face of the practice, if you if you put it that way is that person, you know, that's the first point of contact, then the second person is if I walked through the first day or second day of a patient first coming into the office, the second person they'll actually come in contact with is actually the tech CA, the person who will be doing the most hands on work outside of me with the patient. So that tech person is there to do whatever needs to happen in the clinic, which is as far as making sure patient flow is good, making sure everyone's where they need to be when they need to be to get adjusted or other therapies, whether like you mentioned acupuncture, or laser, nutrition or whatever it is that they're in those places at the right time. And then the next person is the financial CA, the financial ca does everything with finances. So where the person is with a care plan, what their finances look like as far as what their payments are versus copay. You know, if they've used the visits if they haven't used visits, what the insurance what the insurance is being billed and all that kind of thing. So those are your three basic people and then you have eventually we'll add in what's called a PRCA, which is promotions and marketing person who will mostly do things outside of the clinic for promotion, and that's the next person we looked at.
Nelson Barss 09:51
So I'm just I'm gonna, this the one that intrigues me the most is the tech ca. Okay, I think most of us are familiar with the front desk person and it sounds that way. Very similar, right and the finance person but that, that tech CA, I've noticed they're in the room with you when you're doing adjustments. They're taking notes, you're kind of chirping out notes as you work and you're saying all kinds of funky words that nobody understands lumbar forty two <mumble>, and they know what you mean. Right? Should tell. Tell us more about that? What kind of what kind of person Is that what kind of training do they have? And do you give them or.
Burke Larsen 10:23
sure. So the tech ca really knows everything that I technically don't have to do by law. So in the state of Utah, all I technically have to do is adjust people and set needles, and that kind of thing. So if we're doing any other types of therapies, laser, spinal corrective chair, X rays, and even a lot of the exam that can be potentially done, depending on the state, and what the laws look like, they can do all that information. So they def, definitely she acts as a scribe. So notes and things like that are done in real time as much as possible. So So that's so each account that every time someone comes in, that's being recorded, and put in the note. That's what that person does.
Liz Sears 11:04
So I know when we were chatting earlier, you were talking about how for the first half hour, is it every morning and afternoon? Or how do you set up your day you were talking about that?
Burke Larsen 11:24
So set our whole week is set up in seven sessions.
Liz Sears 11:27
Okay,
Burke Larsen 11:27
So what I mean by that is seven, four hour sessions. There's a Monday and Monday morning and afternoon session, a Tuesday afternoon session Wednesday, Thursday morning and afternoon session. So those seven sessions, we start a half hour early. And we do something called press. And so what press means is, we go over the list of people coming in that session and look at presses anything policies, education, spinal workshops, and referrals. Okay, so we go through and look at those people and say, Is there any of this we need to take care of with these people. So one of the things we focus on is education as much as we can. So whether that's handing out or talking about different research, different things like that things people can do to be more healthy as they go through their journey. And so that first half hour, we're they're putting together that session. So we do one half hour before we start in the morning and a half hours, we come back from lunch, getting ready for those people coming. So we're looking over all of them any specific or, you know, needs that need to be taken care of, or things that need to be communicated to those people.
Nelson Barss 12:37
I love that I know when I've walked in, it's just they know I'm coming. Right? They know my name. Hey, Nelson, how are you? And I'm sure that's part of your press meeting, right? You're going over who's coming in, and making sure everybody remembers who they are and welcomes them as a patient and a part of your family. Right, just
Burke Larsen 12:55
For Sure. And that's the whole feel, is we want to be different in the sense that we want people to feel like we're family.
Nelson Barss 13:00
Yeah.
Burke Larsen 13:01
I think we mostly succeeded that.
Nelson Barss 13:04
Yeah
Liz Sears 13:04
I've heard that sometimes in your half hour meeting, you'll have like Nerf gun wars and things like that. So what are some of the things you do to kind of build the culture amongst your team?
Burke Larsen 13:12
Sure. So the last what we call it, we call it a huddle. So the last 10 minutes before we open, we do something, to break up the monotony, you know, there's on your way to work stuff happens. You know, as you leave your house, there's different stressors, as you get back from lunch, there's different things going on. And, and, you know, we can all probably agree that that's not always the state of mind you want to be starting serving people with. So we always do something fun before we begin.
Liz Sears 13:40
Just to shake off the baggage that you've got there.
Burke Larsen 13:43
So we have a whole we have, we call it huddles, we have a whole huddle kit. And we'll do nerf gun fat fights, we'll play different like five minute games, Pictionary, whatever.
Liz Sears 13:54
Do you ever do minute win it ones then?
Burke Larsen 13:56
Minute to win it type. You know, you've we've played a lot of those different things. There's, there's a ton, if you go to the store, any game can be made into a five or 10 minute game. I mean, just, you know, you get a bunch of cards and do trivia or whatever it is. Yeah, so
Nelson Barss 14:13
one of the things I think is unique about, well, it's not unique, it's good to have you here because your business is like so many others where it's not like you can scale so much that you're not involved in the client interaction, you know, there's laws, you're the one who has the licensing and education to be a chiropractor.
Burke Larsen 14:32
Correct.
Nelson Barss 14:32
So, you know, I could think of photographers or architects or anybody who has that,
Burke Larsen 14:38
Right.
Nelson Barss 14:38
You almost get capped out appraisers, right? They can they can be capped out on how big they can grow. Because it's just how many things can they do in a day, or do they even want to do growth might even scare him, right? It's like, I don't even want to grow. I can't do more than this. Right? So how has that helped you to scale and how would you scale beyond where you're at right now within that business model if you wanted to keep growing Do you want to keep going first?
Burke Larsen 15:01
For sure.
Nelson Barss 15:02
Okay, so how does that work in your business model? Well, so going back, and this is one of the things we talk to specifically about with other chiropractors, as they join in and say, Okay, where are you at? What? How many people do you see a week? How many people do you want to see a week? What does that look like? Because we know at certain numbers, you're going to have to add employees. And those employees are going to have to take on some of that responsibility. As you scale that up. There is a point though, when physically, since I'm the one doing the adjusting, I can't adjust any more people. Just doesn't make sense. And the only way to scale that more is to hire another doctor. Okay.
Burke Larsen 15:40
And so that's, that's our next step. Right now.
Liz Sears 15:43
Thats the next hire you're looking at is a doctor,
Burke Larsen 15:46
Well, that we just found one of our amazing employees is leaving. So moving to
Nelson Barss 15:51
That'll happen sometimes
Burke Larsen 15:52
No, excuse me, not Oregon, Oklahoma.
Liz Sears 15:55
That makse me sad.
Burke Larsen 15:56
It does make me sad, too. So, yes, that will be our next big move. We've got a few things to do before that happens. But that's the next thing on the horizon to say, Okay, how do we then how does that look? And what will that doctor do? Will that doctor eventually need employees, you know, so we're not burdening the employees so much that they're like, you know, I can't handle doing all of this. So we will be, you know, scaling up to that. And so, and those are numbers, you know, for the most part, we know, as a doctor gets to a certain place, okay, you really do need another employee, and we try to get them to hire that new employee before the growth is there. Because if you don't, once the growth is already there, and then try to train that person in that level. It's chaotic.
Nelson Barss 16:47
Absolutely,
Liz Sears 16:47
That is huge for our listeners, because a lot of them find themselves in that situation that they don't want to hire somebody until they have enough business to justify it
Burke Larsen 16:55
I get it.
Liz Sears 16:55
But if you wait too long, you've got both burdens.
Nelson Barss 16:59
It's lots of burdens, and maybe to the point where you will subconsciously start to sub sabotage yourself in that growth.
Liz Sears 17:07
I think anybody who's been in the business long enough, has gone through a self sabotage point, because you're like, I cannot be this busy for this long. And so you'll start to pull back in the ways that cause you to have less business. But what is more beneficial is just to know it's coming work purposely towards that. And then like you said, you know, hire a head of the head
Burke Larsen 17:25
Ahead of the curve
Liz Sears 17:25
of the inflexive business.
Burke Larsen 17:26
Thats right.
Nelson Barss 17:28
So you have this employee who's leaving, right? So what's it gonna look like from here to replace that employee? How do you how do you recruit? How do you find good people? Do you hire people with no experience, or you hire experience I actually prefer not experienced, especially in my field, only because what we do is fairly unique, I wouldn't say we're the only people that do it. I mean, a lot of chiropractors do this kind of a model. But it is unique enough that having someone who has experienced already in the chiropractic world
Liz Sears 17:58
Might fight against your system They are just applying to apply.
Burke Larsen 17:59
Can fight against the system for themselves, not necessarily for me, but for this for themselves. I don't mind some experience. So like we hired a vet tech. And that was amazing, because she already understood caring for people. But the model was different enough that it didn't cause too much conflict. So yeah, I do like experience. But what we do, we the first thing we do is we send out a please help letter, we give that to specific patients, or people in the community that are connected network wise. So I'm not looking to hire patients. And I do state that I'm not looking to hire within the practice that's done that that's a mistake, can be a mistake, it can work out well, but usually doesn't. That's my experience anyway. So we'll hand that letter out for two to three weeks. And then if anyone has anybody that want they think would be a good fit, then we put an ad out on Indeed, or those several different types of places. And we have different ways to limit that. So you know, it's really easy to go in indeed, and just click Apply. And they don't even really look at your ad or what you're looking for. So we have a whole thing that they have to go through before I even look at it.
Liz Sears 19:15
What are some of those steps?
Burke Larsen 19:16
So the first step is they have to take a DISC assessment. And they have to then save that DISC assessment and they have to has a save it as a PDF and then email it to me at the clinic. And if they don't do that email, I don't even look at the application.
Nelson Barss 19:30
Yeah
Liz Sears 19:30
Yeah because if they can't follow simple, technical,
Burke Larsen 19:34
That's that's the biggest part and you'd be surprised of the 200 or so we get every time there might be a 50 at the most that will do it the way they're supposed to. And then we look at that DISC assessment. There's certain people we look for in that DISC assessment. And for each position, so we look at that and then we hold a group interview. And so we interview people as a group first, anyone we liked in the group interview, we then we'll bring back for a kind of a working interview and then hire from there.
Liz Sears 20:04
Nice.
Nelson Barss 20:05
Okay, so I'm curious about the working interview. What does that look like? And what do you get from it? What I'm really looking for, because they, even when we hire you, for the first two weeks, you don't get to touch or do anything, you just got to walk around and watch what everybody does for those first two weeks, while you practice some of the incoming information I want you to understand. And so so that practice that that working interview is really how are they meshing with the other team? How are they, you know, talking and or associating with the practice members and patients? And, you know, what does that look like? Because I can teach procedure, you know, anyone can do procedure, I cannot teach personality,
Liz Sears 20:54
Its a lot harder to teach that
Burke Larsen 20:56
it's a lot harder to teach personality. And so if it's just not a personality match, then then we just and then we kind of as a team vote,
Nelson Barss 21:02
I was gonna say to you let the team members have a say?
Burke Larsen 21:05
For the most part.
Nelson Barss 21:06
That's great.
Burke Larsen 21:06
Yeah. I think you have to.
Nelson Barss 21:08
In our office, everybody knows they have the veto option. If we bring someone in for we do a working interview as well. A lot of it is just I want them to get a feel to as applicant.
Burke Larsen 21:17
Sure.
Nelson Barss 21:17
Where's their desk gonna be? What's it going to be like? And then once they leave, we just talked about them. People are like, No, I don't, please don't hire that person. And that's a good sign. Right? It is. And that's what that whole working interviews for is that time to just see who they are. I mean, because what do you really know even in a group interview, or even a personal interview, what do you really know?
Liz Sears 21:42
Have you ever made a bad hire?
Burke Larsen 21:44
Sure.
Liz Sears 21:44
You went through that whole process? What how did you handle that? What How did you know it was bad hire? How long did it take you? And how did you receive?
Nelson Barss 21:50
You act like, there's only been one.
Burke Larsen 21:51
Yeah, just the one.
Nelson Barss 21:52
There's just that one time. You know, what it comes down to is one of two things. I tell my, I pay my employees all the time, I will strive with you, as long as you're striving with me.
Liz Sears 22:03
Oh, I like that saying.
Burke Larsen 22:04
So as long as we want to be together, and they're willing, and I see that things are changing, I understand that certain types of things, just people don't get very fast. I And again, that's procedural and we're working on it. And I'm seeing that things are improving. Fine. But one of the things we always say and this is, is that there's only two reasons people don't do something. One, you didn't train them and two they don't care.
Liz Sears 22:32
Yeah.
Burke Larsen 22:32
And so the question is, did you train them? And so in the training process of every student step in the, in the clinic, is, I show them, they show me, they show me live, and then they show me they can do it without me being there. And if they've done all that, and then no longer do the step, then they don't care.
Liz Sears 22:54
Yep,
Burke Larsen 22:55
Does that make sense? So in each level of what they're doing, my job is to train them not abdicate it, because you can easily abdicate anything, you know, you're now the scheduler. And if they fail at that, because you didn't tell them. Well, then that's on you.
Liz Sears 23:13
Yep, that makes sense.
Burke Larsen 23:14
And so that's so what we would go through is we go through a, a 90 day, a six month a year type interview, as we go through that, or, or anniversary, if you want to call it that. And look at those periods of time that first year and really scrutinize and I tell my people, you've got six months to screw up as much as possible. Make every mistake you can because yeah, I am been, you know, expecting a perfect level of perfection, right? Everyone makes mistakes. And I'll give you grace again, as long as you're striving to be that we all make. We all forget stuff.
Liz Sears 23:50
Yeah.
Burke Larsen 23:50
But that's how they go, Hey, this just isn't a fit. You know it. Sometimes it comes as a surprise, although I don't know how because we have weekly meetings. I'm saying let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this. And over time, it's just not being done. It's just not a fit.
Nelson Barss 24:09
I love that philosophy though of training versus abdicating. I'm going to remember that because I find myself abdicating often.
Burke Larsen 24:16
We all do. It's super.
Liz Sears 24:17
Its so much easier.
Burke Larsen 24:18
Yeah.
Nelson Barss 24:19
And you got a smart person on your team. They'll figure it out.
Burke Larsen 24:22
And they might.
Nelson Barss 24:23
But at the same time, they're probably gonna figure it out a different way than what I figured it out and the way I would like it done. And then they have to guess if they did it, right. And
Liz Sears 24:34
if they guessed wrong one time, it makes them gun shy to guess again. Yeah. So should they guess wrong?
Nelson Barss 24:39
Very cool. Yeah, that's awesome. What sounds like really cool business you got going and it's, it's just impressive. I can't imagine. So a question I have. You're coaching other chiropractors, right? Do you see characteristics that you notice in some of these students that are good or bad? Like, what's going to indicate to you who's going to make it or not? In their practice.
Burke Larsen 25:02
I think anyone
Liz Sears 25:05
That is a good question Nelson.
Nelson Barss 25:06
So attributes, here's what I tell people. And this is the biggest attribute is, or the biggest thing I think that people need to get over is perfectionism. So people, you know, I will eventually do this thing when I'm perfect at whatever that thing is. And so the the attribute that I feel makes people successful is they're willing to show up no matter what.
Liz Sears 25:34
Even if they know they're not gonna get it right.
Burke Larsen 25:36
Even if they didn't get right you know, my, my job is I'm called an accountability coach. So I keep people accountable to a specific process that they're working on throughout the coaching clinic, the coaching firm. So we have different action steps that they're supposed to be taking, you know, they're supposed to be doing through a certain period of time. And even the ones who may not be taking that to 100% Completion, but are trying, they're they're trying to implement, they're trying to improve their processes, we always see growth, you know, there's, there's always a huge amount of growth. It's the people who don't show up, aren't willing to put their selves themselves out there be a little bit vulnerable to the process
Liz Sears 25:37
Or the best they can can, Perpetuall preparing.
Burke Larsen 26:22
Yeah, they're always preparing you're then you're just, that's the biggest thing. Even if you just show up to different seminars to to the phone calls, even if you're like, hey, I did nothing you told me to do last time, but I'm here to tell you I did nothing. That's something right. That person is reaching out for communication help and growth.
Nelson Barss 26:41
Yeah. Wow. Well, good. Thank you.
Liz Sears 26:46
All right. So
Nelson Barss 26:48
I'm looking at Liz to see if she has another question.
Liz Sears 26:50
Do you have any virtual assistants right now? I know, at one point we were talking about that?
Nelson Barss 26:54
I do not, you know, I don't know how I would have a virtual assistant for the clinic itself. There's too much hands on paper trailing and things that have to be done physically. And so I thought about having a virtual assistant just for myself, and scheduling and doing some of those things. And that may or may not still be paramount. I haven't ever done it. But currently no.
Liz Sears 27:19
Currently, no, but it is something that you've thought about. And so what are some of the pieces that if you were to delegate, what would those be? So you said scheduling what else?
Burke Larsen 27:28
So I'd love to delegate someone you know, to summon my schedule, to tell me to show up at this
Nelson Barss 27:33
I have done that. It's great
Liz Sears 27:36
It is awesome.
Nelson Barss 27:38
it's getting to the point where it needs to be done. So delegating at this point, I think pretty much things are pretty other than personal life stuff. What about your email? Have you delegated that?
Burke Larsen 27:55
That that's the one next thing that's that's the thing we were talking about at one point,
Nelson Barss 27:58
Yeah
Burke Larsen 27:59
Is because it is a nightmare, I wont show you the 10,000 unread emails.
Liz Sears 28:06
I have an assistant and
Burke Larsen 28:08
Those aren't clincial emails.
Liz Sears 28:10
ones that don't really matter. But I do have an assistant that thought that is all she does for me is just go through my emails. And I found that that was an absolute game changer for me because she left for a period of time and then came back and I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I didn't realize how much of a lifesaver. So she takes my emails and categorizes it into action needed. There's something I need to do. Review, if it's something that I need to know about. But I don't need to do and then if it's all small stuff. If it shows up in my action needed and it's something, she could do I train her on how to do it, and then she takes care of that. So that's a girl. Maybe we need to hook you up with that.
Nelson Barss 28:42
I think you did start to and then I just dropped the ball. And I don't know if it's the same place you're using. But
Liz Sears 28:47
it's not. But that would work too.
Burke Larsen 28:49
Well. I would like to know more about it. Because it's Yeah, I did miss
Nelson Barss 28:54
What you just described is almost exactly how we do my email. In my office too. yeah, my on my team, I have two different assistants who watch my email account. And they both do the same thing. Right? They grab them when they come in, they flag them for me to do something. But they know try not to flag them for me because I suck at getting to them. Right? So they'll often reply as me, right? If someone's just like, Hey, are we still closing tomorrow? They can walk over and ask the processor. We still closing tomorrow? Yes. Yeah, come back and say You bet. And it looks like I'm the one who sent the email. For sure. And that's so in the clinic we have that. Okay.
Burke Larsen 29:27
So anything clincial.
Liz Sears 29:28
In your personal you dont.
Burke Larsen 29:30
My personal you know, where there's not, you know, the only thing that goes through there personally would be some of my coaching stuff. And most of it, to be honest, is just junk mail. I need to just not deal with
Liz Sears 29:43
Yeah.
Burke Larsen 29:43
But anyway, but I do need to get that contact from you.
Nelson Barss 29:50
So I'm curious about you know, you've mentioned the first go round, and all the things you learned not to do. Can you give us some specifics of you know, back when you were new and young and you starting out?
Burke Larsen 30:02
Sure
Nelson Barss 30:02
What you did wrong? Yeah, I think the biggest thing was how do you so the the biggest thing was saying, Okay, so I see all this need in a person. They obviously see that need too right? And so if you start caring for them, they will naturally understand that continuing care to get to a certain point will happen naturally. And that's not how people work. You're assuming they would just keep coming?
Burke Larsen 30:35
Well, you're assuming that people will understand that there's a benefit and keep coming. But if you don't communicate the goal, communicate the problem, communicate the solution and what that looks like. And that that is a longer term process. Then, at some point, you're a bandaid. Okay, so you're adjusting someone just when they're in pain? Well, that brings us all back to what's going on with pain physiologically, and realizing if you're only treating pain, you're really degrading the process in their body even more. So the person's technically getting worse through a time period. And not better if you're only going and putting a bandaid on it at times. And that's just physiology. But going back and communicating that to somebody and how that works and why that needs to happen. That was the biggest game changer.
Nelson Barss 31:23
And that looks more like I I think I can see what that's like, because you're pretty. You're pretty slow at getting started with a patient. Right? You you have you have an assessment, we have another meeting, where you talk about treatments, you teach a lot, that's one thing I loved about coming to you, is that you took the time to explain how the spine works and what I was dealing with and why and and is that? That's, that's new now. That's not what you were doing before?
Burke Larsen 31:51
No. Yeah, I mean, I was lucky if we were doing I always had done an exam. So I always wanted to be clinically relevant, in that sense, clinically good. But then translating that into, okay, these are the things I found on the exam, and how do we work through them? Instead of it was, well, you, okay, you have low back pain. And I know what the problem is, I'm going to adjust you a couple of times that back pain is going to go away. But over time, if we're just treating back pain, what we know clinically is you're still gonna see degeneration over a time period. If we get you out of pain and continue treating, then we may not. If that makes sense, we might actually start seeing. So technically, I can't call reversal, but at least we can see that things are holding in place.
Nelson Barss 32:39
no longer degenerating, right.
Liz Sears 32:41
Yeah, there's amazing difference when you educate people on the whole process instead of just the pieces. And that's for a lot of industries.
Nelson Barss 32:47
Well, if you have any service, right,
Burke Larsen 32:49
So care, having a plan for whatever your service is. And that's what I think a lot of businesses don't have is, what's the plan? What are we going to work on,
Liz Sears 32:49
yeah.
Nelson Barss 32:59
System structure
Burke Larsen 32:59
Yeah a system structure. What are we working through? Where am I building the value for you? And what does that process look like? And how do I lead you through that. So it is greater value to you over time?
Nelson Barss 33:10
It's interesting, I think customers can tell that when you when you show up, you know, for example, when you come to my office, you know, it's like, here's how we do business. And we would love you to plug in and go with us along the way we do business, but we're not gonna mold ourselves and do it differently for one client, right. And I think customers crave it, I think they show up and they know a well run business. They know somebody who knows what they're doing, and they're eager to be led, and served in a way that works for all these customers and for for you, right?
Burke Larsen 33:42
And they'll see its efficiencies and results. And I have referral partners, when I have patients come in that aren't into that process.
Liz Sears 33:49
Right?
Burke Larsen 33:49
Fair enough I'm not here to force anyone to do anything,
Nelson Barss 33:52
right?
Burke Larsen 33:53
You know, we want people to do things that are stress free and good for them. And lead them to health. So
Nelson Barss 33:59
So I'm sitting here thinking this is all well and good for someone who's got patients walking in the door right? But what would you say to someone who doesn't, right? They're just they're just got out of school. You know, they're trying to hang up a shingle and waiting for business to come. That's the whole of the marketing side. I'd love to hear how you and your group grow. Yeah, sharing clients.
Burke Larsen 34:18
So you want me to go over that now? Sure. Well, so if you're just starting out for practice, I don't care who you are, you need a group of people who are successful to follow. You know, I don't remember what you know. So, coaching is important. I don't care where you're at if you're a chiropractor- coaching, if you're, you know, a real estate agent- coaching,
Nelson Barss 34:19
Sure. Yeah. How do you how do you get clients in the door? How did you grow from zero to now and. I agree
Burke Larsen 34:46
You need to be coached and you need to be able to what I what I love about the coaching firm I'm in, is the chiropractor who actually runs the whole thing is a practicing chiropractor.
Liz Sears 34:56
Yep,
Burke Larsen 34:56
He lives it every day. He has a clinic. It's not like He's just, well, 20 years ago, I used to practice and this is what I did. You know, so he's still very much in clinic every single day. So the marketing side is, the cool thing is your patients will be your marketing for you.
Liz Sears 35:18
Yeah.
Burke Larsen 35:18
So you ask them when I first started, and this is what I tell a new chiropractor. He's got one or two new patients. Hey, Mrs. Jones, we had a great adjustment today. Is there anyone you know, that doesn't know what you know about our clinic?
Liz Sears 35:33
Love that
Nelson Barss 35:34
I like that.
Burke Larsen 35:35
Yeah.
Nelson Barss 35:35
Little phrase.
Burke Larsen 35:36
You know, is there someone out there who comes to mind? Oh, Bill, great. Give him an action step. You know, what would be the best way to contact Bill? What if I gave you a coupon that would give Bill you know, a free exam or free screening? Or can I call Bill or on Tuesday nights we have spinal workshops. Will you bring Bill to a spinal workshop? So there's always an action step that is in their comfort zone?
Liz Sears 36:00
Yeah,
Burke Larsen 36:00
You know, some people are easy handing out something like a free gift certificate, but don't want you calling them. I get that. And so that's, that's the biggest way I'd start every single person that comes in, every, every day, you know, you're gonna hit that kind of hard, especially if you're just starting out now, eventually, would you back off maybe one or two people a session and just ask, you know, I'm okay with that. You know, so. So there's that. We do. You know, initially we did a lot of we do screenings in the park, and we do screenings at public events, where we checking spines and doing those kinds of things. And that's really how we built it. And now we're in a new versioning area of things where we do less of the in person will always do the internal marketing in the practice. So we have different expansion cycles, where we play different games and, and bring up the energy with our patients. And just just to have that energy, high, you know, we're not necessarily asking anything of anybody. But now we're verging into this new place of social media. And, and, you know, getting our information out into social media, and doing ads and different things,
Nelson Barss 37:12
So wait, you you built all this, without that?
Burke Larsen 37:14
Didn't advertise, I still to this day, have never spent a penny on advertising for for
Liz Sears 37:19
That's impressive.
Burke Larsen 37:19
Google ads or Facebook. Yeah. Wow. So and we're moving into that, you know, a lot of what we do is through referral and word of mouth, because that, that is so much more. You know, I don't know, authentic, effective for everybody involved. And so that's how we've built most of it. And we're constantly doing that, focusing on that.
Liz Sears 37:46
Awesome. Okay, well,
Nelson Barss 37:48
we got a few minutes left. Are you ready? We're gonna go through our rapid fire questions. We're gonna hit you with a bunch of questions. You want to do these Liz? You want me to do it? Okay.
Liz Sears 37:57
All right,
Nelson Barss 37:57
All these questions have been answered in one minute.
Burke Larsen 37:59
Okay. Do my best.
Nelson Barss 38:00
Liz
Liz Sears 38:01
What's your favorite podcast?
Burke Larsen 38:02
So it's the Life Coach School with
Nelson Barss 38:06
Yeah, you turned me on to that years ago
Liz Sears 38:08
Yeah. Love it too. Awesome, favorite business book?
Burke Larsen 38:10
So it's capitalism, the Forgotten ideal, but I don't know if that's a business book.
Liz Sears 38:15
Well, it kind of is, I love it. Who do you really look up to in the business world as a role model? And why?
Burke Larsen 38:23
You know, I think there's lots of people to look up to. I look up to a lot of the forefathers of chiropractic that were willing to get out there. You wouldn't know any of their names. But Dr. Dean Depice, some of the, there's, there's so many of them, but they were they were great people and work hard to be where they're at.
Liz Sears 38:46
Love it. And what's the best piece of advice that you could give to our listeners and watchers.
Nelson Barss 38:53
Be vulnerable, and be willing to be coached.
Liz Sears 38:59
That's huge. Yeah, people put up defensive walls so it's a good one. Well, thank you so much, Burke, how can people get a hold of you if they're looking into both coaching and patient?
Burke Larsen 39:08
So the coaching firm I'm with is give their website, it's wwww.TLC4Super teams.com. The letter for the number four, and then my, my information is, so for patient care, is welladjustedutah.com and our phone numbers 8014793200. We're here in South Ogden,
Nelson Barss 39:36
and if I could just a plug. Yeah. You've seen many of my family members, people from my office. We've had people who have suffered from migraines that you've helped immensely. We've had, you know, people with thyroid issues and people with you know, it's not just back shoulders and I just I just can't say enough about how professional you are, you know, the human body and you know how to help in in amazing ways that that is hard to find. So anybody out there who's listening and needs a good chiropractor couldn't recommend Dr. Burke higher.
Burke Larsen 40:08
Thank you.
Liz Sears 40:08
Okay, I have to give a really quick plug too. So I've had headaches for years and finally went and started seeing you and haven't really had headaches since good. I had problems in my shoulder, which I didn't even know you could help with until you mentioned that one day and for years, I had had like the shooting pain if I lift it in a certain way, and that's gone. And then my son who had back problems from wrestling he had just gotten jolted bad one time, and it had bothered him for over a year and saw Dr. Burke for a few months, I think it was six months or something like that. And he's been great ever since. And I just think what if we had left him kind of janky from adolescence and just grown right into adulthood? That could have been issues forever. So you have been amazing every single person I've referred to you. So thank you.
Nelson Barss 40:20
Well, thanks for coming. Thanks for sharing your insight with us and wish you the best.
Liz Sears 40:42
Perfect thank you. Thanks Burke
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