The Framework for Sustained Energy and Chiropractic Success

 Welcome to the Chiropractic Deep Dive, a part of the Successful Chiro Podcast. We’re brought to you by Five Star Management, and today we are really digging into the true engine of any successful practice. We are. We’re talking about sustained commitment and energy. We know this challenge so well, don’t we?

Oh, absolutely. Hmm. I mean, you’re busy, you’re talented, but some days you look around and, um, the passion just feels low. The team feels tired, and you find yourself struggling to follow through on all those great ideas you have. It’s, you know, it’s the constant challenge for every single practice owner and the symptoms are universal, right?

The necessary tasks start to feel daunting. The path to growth looks like way too much work, or you just can’t get your team on the same page consistently. Exactly. And we’re not just talking about patient visits here. We’re talking about the quality of life in the practice. Yeah. The goal really, as Dr. Noel Lloyd put it in the session we’re pulling all this from, is about making clear decisions, taking action, and just staying the course.

And measuring that success in things like consistency, joy, growth, and uh, maybe most importantly having fun. He said Fun is job one, which I love. It’s so true. And what’s really key here is the framework Dr. Lloyd provides. Commitment isn’t just it, it’s not an accident. Right? The most energetic, committed people.

Have developed this specific language, you know, a conversation they choose to have with themselves that literally generates their own energy. It’s all about intentionality. We have the gift of choosing our thoughts and from there, choosing our actions. So that means we have to do a kind of internal audit.

Okay, so let’s unpack that. Where we start. What are the specific thoughts and actions that are actively draining that commitment energy. The biggest enemy. The place we see it start is in that internal dialogue of frustration. Okay. A participant in the session called it the stoic fallacy, which is a great way to put it, the stoic fallacy.

What does that mean in practice? It’s when you observe reality. Let’s say you know the patient volume is down for the day, and then you spend all your energy insisting that it should have been different. Ah, okay. So it’s that friction, that gap between what is and what you think should be. Exactly. And that gap is a commitment killer.

It just sends you spiraling into pessimism because you’re trying to control something you can’t control instead of working with what you have right now. And that leads straight into the next big enemy, which is comparison. This one’s huge. We see this all the time. All the time. You’re looking at these huge success stories and you start comparing your own often messy journey to someone else’s 10 year perfectly optimized plan, and you just stop focusing on your own path.

Comparison really is the thief of joy, and in this context it’s the thief of capacity. If you or your team look at the next growth target and the immediate thought is, whoa, that’s too many people, or that’s gonna be too hard, you’ve already created an artificial ceiling for yourself. You have, yeah. If the belief isn’t there, the achievement won’t be either, and that lack of belief, it just, it turns into fear, right?

Even when things are going well, yes. We see practices hit a new weekly record, say 425 visits, and instead of celebrating. The worry kicks in, this can’t last or our team’s gonna burn out. It’s a refusal to trust. The success you’ve actually earned. Dr. Lloyd had this great analogy about fear, like a thunderstorm.

The thunder crashes and you panic, but you have to remind yourself, the lightning already struck, you’re still here, right? You achieve the new volume. So the next thought has to be, how do we stabilize this, right? Not when is it all gonna collapse. So speaking of thoughts. What about the questions we ask ourselves, that internal self-talk?

This is critical. You know, we often talk about the QBQ, the, the question behind the question. Mm, bad questions. The ones that kill energy almost always start with when, why, and who. Why do those specific words drain energy? Because they point outward. They’re blame focused. Why did the insurance company do this?

Or who is responsible for that mistake? There are unanswerable questions that just bleed the limited energy you have for the day. Exactly. So let’s shift from thoughts to actions, because even with the best intentions, we all sabotage ourself. Oh, for sure. And it’s usually in tiny daily ways. Dr. Lloyd points to the simplest one hitting the snooze button.

Ah. It’s a small, immediate decision to just opt out of your commitment to your own routine and that mindset, it expands. It becomes a pattern. You start opting out of a difficult thing. You choose the easy task, like checking social media over the essential one that actually requires focus, that’s procrastination in its purest form.

Another huge trap is the shiny new thing. Ah, yes. You go to a seminar, get all excited, and suddenly you drop the priority you’ve been working on for three weeks to chase this new interesting idea, which guarantees nothing ever actually gets finished. It’s a recipe for commitment exhaustion. Okay, so we’ve identified the enemies, the fear, the comparison, the bad questions, the distractions.

Let’s flip this. Let’s do it. How do we choose the conversation that builds energy? Where’s the starting point? It has to be clarity. Absolutely number one, when you feel totally overwhelmed, that feeling of being up to your tail in alligators, it’s a signal. It means the vision has gotten murky. So the answer isn’t just to work harder.

No, the answer is to stop. Meet with your team and get back on the same page about the single fundamental vision for the next quarter. And from that clarity, you need manageable steps, right? You can’t do it all at once. No, and the most supportive thought you can have is I can’t do it all, but I can do the next thing.

The next thing. One participant shared this great mechanic. If you’re overwhelmed with ideas, write them all down a thousand of them. Then pick the top three. Okay? Then with just paper and a pencil, write down only the absolute next single step for priority number one. That’s it. You break it down into one bite, which brings us back to the power of asking the right question.

The QBQ. Exactly. So instead of the debilitating. What’s wrong with me? The question becomes, what do I need to do to get what I want? And that question instantly generates action, puts you back in the driver’s seat. It’s that micro focusing, you know, one day at a time. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

It turns this massive scary goal into a simple sequence of tasks you can actually conquer. And when you start identifying those tasks, you realize pretty quickly you don’t have to be the one to do them all. Ah, yes. The shift from thinking how. To thinking who. This is a huge leadership insight. It really is.

Instead of agonizing over how you can possibly do a new project, you ask, who on my team knows how to do this even better than I do? And you delegate. You leverage capacity, leveraging capacity helps you manage what we should call pressure, not stress. I love this distinction. It’s so powerful. A practice owner in the group broke it down like this.

Pressure is anything that can be fixed by time or money. If you can fix it with money, it’s not a problem. It’s not. It’s a pressure point. So if you’re drowning in paperwork and you can hire a CA to handle it, that’s not existential stress. It’s a resourcing issue. It’s a fixable pressure point. Exactly.

Stress on the other hand, is the stuff time and money won’t fix grave health issues, relationships, safety, we have to categorize them separately and not let the pressure of a busy schedule masquerade as real debilitating stress. Right? And the most immediate tool to reset your thinking on this is just gratitude starting the day by focusing on what you’re grateful for.

It separates the minor modern pressures from the truly grave matters. There was a beautiful affirmation shared that just nails this. It acts as a mental reset. Thankful for yesterday. Grateful for today, and hopeful for tomorrow. I love that. Thankful, grateful, hopeful. Okay, so these thoughts have to translate into daily practice.

They do. And one of the biggest shifts is changing how you even define a win. Yes. We have to get away from comparing ourselves to the top 1% of practices. A participant said he used to hate focusing on wins until he realized they have to be relative to your past self. That’s the key. If your associate saw 10 new patients today and last month their best day was seven, that is a massive win.

You’re competing with who you were yesterday. So to get into that positive mindset, you need like a trigger. Mm-hmm. A routine, right? One practitioner shared that his trigger is his morning drive to the clinic. He tunes off the radio and just organizes his gratitude for his team. So he’s focusing on their specific capabilities, what they do well, yeah, and Dr.

Lloyd told a story that just perfectly illustrates this. He was in this like three day silent, frustrated fight with his lead ca. We’ve all been there. Oh yeah. He was driving in angry. And on that 15 minute drive, he forced himself to list all the things she could do, process hundreds of visits, manage these huge events.

And what happened by the time he got to the office, his entire mindset had shifted from resentment to genuine appreciation. He walked in, the tension was gone and the interaction completely changed. The moment he chose a different conversation, the situation transformed. That’s so powerful and that intentionality leads to the final and maybe most important insight from Dr.

Lloyd. It’s the act of refusing to give up. He closed with a very personal story, didn’t he? He did. He talked about taking over a clinic, firing the entire staff, and he was working 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM. Alone. Wow. He was so tempted to just sell the practice for scrap, just to make the pressure stop. I can’t even imagine.

But he didn’t. He didn’t. He decided he couldn’t ask his patients to commit to their health if he couldn’t commit to his own business. He refused to give up, and he rebuilt it step by step and eventually sold it for a huge profit. But he said the money wasn’t the real payoff. The real payoff was, and this is his phrase, building a reputation with myself.

A reputation with yourself. That’s That’s it, isn’t it? That internal confidence that only comes from following through when everything in you wants to quit. That’s everything. So if we just synthesize the key actions mm-hmm. Clarify your vision and bring it to the daily huddle. Focus only on the very next step toward your goals and use that powerful affirmation.

Thankful for yesterday, grateful for today, and hopeful for tomorrow. So what does this all really mean for you listening right now? Well, you know, commitment energy isn’t some trait you’re born with. It’s not a random blessing. It is an intentional conversation you choose to have every single morning, and it’s a daily commitment to your own personal accountability.

These principles are really the mechanics for sustained growth and just as importantly, joy in your practice. We hope this deep dive into Dr. Lloyd’s framework helps you start to shift that internal conversation today. And if you’re ready to take these strategies and really implement them into a structured growth plan for your practice, we invite you to take the next step.

You can book a free, no obligation introductory call with Dr. George Burnbach of Five Star Management. The link is right there in the show notes. And of course, please remember to subscribe so you don’t miss any of our future deep dives and essential tips.  As we leave you today,

just hold on to that powerful idea, building a reputation with yourself, that certainty, that deep down knowledge that you will follow through, no matter the pressure that is the greatest source of energy you can possibly generate. So challenge yourself this week. Find just one area where you’ll absolutely refuse to fold.