Last time on Invest in you, we were talking about the opportunities within acquiring a business that has already been established or starting a business from the ground up. Today we’re going to be talking with a master in business himself and how he created his business from the ground up and his successes and setbacks that he’s had along the way. A lot of the talk that we have here on Invest in you is in relation to this discussion of money, financial literacy, and the creation of
generational wealth and wanting that to be less taboo.

My hope is to help people break down the barrier walls they use as a defense mechanism when asked to talk about their finances. For people to understand that they don’t need millions or even thousands to begin making their way to financial freedom, as well as offer insight and opportunities that are out there to take action, to find their version of success and path to wealth. Because there’s not one way to success.

We simply have to find your way to success. They say it takes a village to raise a child, so why go solo with your finances? My name’s Dena Glasgow. I’m the host here on Invest in youn.

And Today we have Mr. Jason Miller of Miller Chiropractic and Wellness. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Dina.

I appreciate it. Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about your business and how long you’ve been around where you’re at.

Just a little insight. Yeah, no problem. My business, well, I’ve been a chiropractor or a licensed chiropractor in the state of Florida for about 25 years, almost 25 years.

Going on 25 years. I practiced with some individuals at the beginning, about five years, and then decided to leave them and go out on my own. So I’ve been in the place that I’m at in St. Petersburg on 66 13th and 9th Avenue.

Yeah, been there for 20 years. Love the location. Yeah, It’s a good friend.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it. You talk about, why did I make that leap into doing things on my own? I kind of learned that working for someone, there’s kind of a cap.

You know, you can only make so much money, or they’re only going to offer so much money and really to. To make more, you have to do it on your own. Absolutely.

So was it straight out the gate on your own, or how long were you, um. Well, like I said, I worked for this chiropractor for five years. I kind of learned a little bit about the business and then decided to go out on my own.

And I’ll tell You. That was a. That leap was very scary and very stressful.

You know, when you go through and you’re thinking about that time when you want to create your own company, you don’t realize how hard it is. Yeah. All the things and all the moving parts that go with it.

I think part of it too is, is that in the medical profession, you know, if I’m a lawyer, you need desks and stuff of that nature. But, like, for me, I needed, you know, equipment, medical equipment that costs thousands and thousands of thousands of dollars. And so you don’t realize the outlay for it.

And so when I went into business, I was like, oh, I’m going to go this here. I’m going to make some much money right off the bat. All I need to do is this, this, or this.

You know, you get kind of inundated with that thought, like, all I need to do is this. But you don’t realize that there’s just so much more to it. Now.

The advantages of working for someone is you can shut down your brain, go home. Right. And that’s it.

You know, when you work for yourself, when you’re doing your own business, there’s no, there’s no downtime. You’re always on, no matter where you’re at, no matter what you do, you’re always talking about business. You’re always talking about your business.

It’s like your baby, you know? Yeah. So when I first came out, I just didn’t realize that of all the, the hard. It was basically heartache.

I, I remember, I remember getting, getting the space and trying to. Getting contractors to build out. And back then it was so tough for some reason.

And basically I went through this, like, time and it actually caused so much stress that I, you know, I’m not usually an angry person, but I basically had to fire somebody, had to get other contractors in there, so caught that much more money to basically fix up the mistakes they were doing to, to. To get back into or basically to get ready and open. Yeah.

And in the meantime, you know, I’m shuffling up. You don’t have a job, so when you leave somebody and you’re opening your business, there’s no income coming in. So that was the scariest part for me is like, how do I, how do I deal with that loss of income? And you learn really quickly how to basically look around and do things efficiently.

So when I got up and going, it still was such. There’s such a learning curve starting from the beginning, like how to do the whole medical process and to basically make into some financial gain. I mean, I love treating patients, I love getting patients well.

But at the end of the day, I have to pay my power bill. I have to pay the light, you know, everything. So I mean, yes, part of is, is taking care of patients, but part of it also is about making money for sure.

So when you started, I mean, had you set aside a nest egg to really prepare yourself, was it financing that helped, you know, catapult. Oh. So I mean, I was in a networking group.

I had a banker in there and we, we had discussed what, what I needed. And yeah, I did some financing. I took out an equity line of credit on my condo.

I used that to really kind of finance my, hate to say it, my payroll for me at that time. But also I took out a bunch of, you know, business loans. Yeah.

And so learning that aspect of it and having that business load take, I used to call it every month they would just withdraw the money from the account, you know, the business loan. Cause I had to, I had to borrow money for equipment and, you know, X, that being like X ray on my table. I would always call that my Mercedes payment for the month.

So that’s what I would. Oh, there’s my Mercedes. There’s my Mercedes.

You know, so I, I kind of use a little bit of both at first. You know, it’s like I said, it’s exciting. You’re, you’re full of, you know, that bim and vigor of wanting to do it and taking over everything.

But it’s, it was definitely, you know, a learning curve. Because, Gillian, the medical aspect of the business is that you’re never taught, you’re never taught any financial stuff. You’re only taught what to do.

They really just, they kind of clone you as a robot to diagnose, look at patients. But they never tell you how to do it financially. Right, right.

And then also part of it too is the billing aspects of it. You know, you’re never really taught these things and it’s kind of. I wish my, if I could go back in time and talk to my past self is that, you know, get the know how of all the billing, get all that stuff done prior to jumping out on your own.

I think I probably would have done much better, but to be honest with you, it gave me that, that drive or that, that thirst for knowledge on the aspects of everything. You know, when you own a business, you better know how to. I mean, I hear about it in the restaurant business, you better clean toilets, you better sweep mop, you know, you better be chief cook and bottle washer.

That means you got to do everything. You better know every little nuance. Not to say you need to micromanage.

Right. What I’m saying is like, you better know it, because if you don’t know it, things can get by. That’s, I think at the beginning, that’s what happened to me.

I think I just didn’t know it all. And so I felt that I probably lost a lot of money not knowing that. And I know I did.

I know I looked at. I think that sometimes, you know, the trial by fire, so to speak, is a necessary evil in a lot of cases because it’s that you have. You’re forced to learn, you’re forced to jump in and do those things.

And sometimes I think that that really catapults people into knowing, okay, the next time I do things, I’m going to go this route, you know, and it allows you to springboard for the next time, sign the next time, which you always hope that there’s going to be a next time. Right. There’s another month.

Payroll’s still going to keep coming in. How long do you feel it took you to start to feel established after a year? Well, I mean, I’m going to give you kind of a story about what happened and how it kind of things transformed a little bit for me was I had an employee there. I actually, I had somebody come into the office, there was another chiropractor to help, you know, off that bills, which was fine.

You know, I was thinking to myself, you know, this is kind of a win win situation. Yeah. But she kind of like finagled a little bit.

And we hired. Not through nepotism, but we hired. Her mother, you know, was telling me, like, oh, yeah, I know how to do all this.

And. And it got to a point where I started my bank account. I’m looking at my, you know, accounts receivables and all that stuff, and I’m going, what’s going on here? And honestly, when she left, she actually asked me, she goes, do you want my mother to work for you? And I was like, no.

And so, wow. I know what happened was, is that it gave me the. This is what happened.

I had to go back and look through every file, look at every transaction, look at every. Every nuance of what I did, and kind of category or catalog it and figure out, did I do the right billing, did I do that, did I collect the right money, did I collect, you know, all that stuff? And it took me probably about four or five months of staying late, looking through every file and basically going over it through a. With a microscope to find out all the mistakes.

And that actually is the time. It was the aha moment. You know, I was like, oh, wait a second, I missed out on this, this and this.

I mean, I lost a lot of money through that, through that process. But you know, what was almost like I was knocking on death’s door and I kind of rose. I was like a phoenix coming out of the ashes, rising up.

Because at that point in time, I was like, oh, my gosh, you know, this is how, this is how you make money at the job. And so, yeah, it was a hard moment, but it helped me forge, like, new understandings about what to do do. And so I think that moment in time really helped me get to the point where.

And this was probably about, I don’t know, eight, nine, nine years ago, 10 years. I’ve been in biz. I’ve been in business for 20 years.

It took me about eight or nine years to realize what I was doing wrong, you know, so. And when it comes to, I mean, medical, the insurance alone, I think is probably a huge thing to try and understand and get right. Well, you know, they, they.

People go to school for that, just for the medical side of the medical billing. You know, I’ve taken a lot of seminars. I’ve really listened to a lot of boring stuff.

Because numbers, it’s not all about the dollars and cents. It’s all about what, what codes to use, when to use them, are you using them at the right time? You know, are you maximizing? You know, because you could undercode, and still it’s, it’s actually considered kind of malpractice to undercode some of the claims you can overcode. And that’s, that’s malpractice too.

So, you know, you could, you know, people do it, They’ll. They’ll do certain specific codes for a maximum dollar, but they’re not really, you know, they’re not, they can’t really medically make that. I guess what I’m saying is they can’t justify it through their notes or through their, you know, through their reporting there to get those extra, you know, get that extra dollar for that extra code, you know, and it.

So a code is like the service itself or correct. So most of the time in, in our chiropractic world, we deal with CPT codes, and it’s a 98940 to 98941. And those are basic adjustment codes.

And you get paid a certain amount. Now you have to understand, it’s like Medicare itself is, is, is a federal. And they, they have their own program set up basically.

And then you have your major bed and a lot of times with that is that you’re, you could, I could charge a bazillion dollars for an exam, but I’m only authorized to get 30 bucks. You know what I’m saying? And plus the co pay, you know, sometimes, you know, that’s whatever, whatever money at that point in time. But yeah, I mean people get there.

There are doctors out there and I’m not saying chiropractors, I’m saying there are medical doctors up that essentially cheated the system. Probably overcoated or ghost billing. You know, ghosting patients like, or billing for patient procedures that they didn’t do.

You know, that’s highly illegal. And you’ll get, you know, so for doctors anymore, truly, I mean I hate going into doctor’s offices where you feel like you just took the little ticket off the little thing and you only get that five minutes. And if you’re not explaining in that five minutes, you know, it’s just churning it out.

I assume that’s just big business being able to bill for the hours. Not that. Yeah, the pr, the, the service or what is.

So a lot of times they call them E and M codes. It’s basically, it’s a management code time spent with a patient and they know their maximum benefit. You know, A. And I would consider this kind of like a major med clinic.

Someone like you go to your primary care physician. I mean A, they don’t reimburse the doctors a lot anymore. You know, a lot of doctors are coming, are jumping out because it’s, it’s just not fruitful.

You know, you have to see so many patients because you’re only getting reimbursed for so much. And so that, that’s why you probably feel like a ticket. You pay your premiums.

But you know, the insurance companies are not dumb. You know, they have the, you have your, your deductibles and you know, know all the CO pays. And you know, back when I was starting, I could make probably about a hundred, maybe $110 for per patient visit.

And now it’s probably anywhere between, you know, 35 to $45 a visit through insurance. And so I think personally, I think maybe there was some fraud that may have been into it or people over utilizing coding. And, and so I think that, you know, insurance companies kind of, it’s swung towards that way of, you know, being more reliable, I guess patient reliable or reliant when it comes to paying for their own medical costs.

So I mean it, it’s definitely a different era up to even like 20 years ago. I mean, it’s just, it’s crazy. How do you manage now if the cost per.

I don’t want to say transaction. That’s not. Not right.

No, you’re, I mean, that’s a. The cost per patient has gone down, you said, of what you’re getting paid and insurance, I’m sure has gone up. Yeah.

How do you, how do you. You’ve really got to be proficient. It’s really efficiency, you know, proficiency breeds efficiency.

Essentially. You’ve got to be really proficient. You gotta know what to do, where you know how to treat a patient, you know, and, and you gotta make sure that just everything lines up.

But yeah, you have to be very efficient. Everything has to be very efficient. You can’t waste now.

There’s no wasting. I can remember back in the day when a lot of these reps would come to the office selling their wares. You know, they’d have parties and you go to them and they’re very lavish and nowadays they don’t.

You don’t see that anymore. I mean, I think just people are just being very, very lost. Yeah.

Ample and cost efficient. Yeah. And kind of basically just kind of back it up.

I always remember like the first year when I was. First couple of years of practicing, right around Christmas time, we’d always get these baskets, I mean, I mean presents, you know, cards, gifts and all this stuff. And nowadays I’m lucky to get like a, like a Christmas card from a, from the doctor’s office.

That’s how I literally, I used to like put them all over my office just to thank people. Like, hey, thank you for doing that. Now, now I can do it on the thumbtack board, you know, so that’s how cost cutting things are going on.

Are you adding other verticals? Because I heard you say that you are trying to take your business in additional direction. Yeah. There are different ways you can go about it.

I purchased some lasers, cold laser or low level laser therapy. I do rent those out. That’s an additional revenue stream that I can do that.

Normally what I do is that you basically have patients take the lasers home, do self therapy. It’s cheaper for them to do it at home and it’s more effective. So that’s part of it.

I, I have a lipolytic laser that I’m into using for, for more of a cosmetic part of it, but that’s different than the chiropractic side of it. So, you know, those are the things. I mean, now, you know, you talk about like weight loss, everything’s, you know, about the zembec and the, you know, the trisepatides that unfortunately with things of that nature, it’s, you know, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

So when you deal with drugs and stuff. So I try to stay more or less along the lines of healing body, healing the body through natural ways and using, you know, like energetic things like lasers. Also supplementation.

I mean, that’s a, that’s a big part of my practice too as well. I mean, honestly, if I really did focus on it a little bit more, I probably could make so much more money doing supplementation. And people have practice driving practices, hundreds of thousands of dollars and, you know, just doing supplementation, you know, so selling the supplements, I mean, things like that.

Okay. And, you know, nowadays it’s so facilitated through websites that people can, even now they, they just essentially you just put them on a product, you put them in the patient portal and they, they kick back checks to you, you know, most of the time. And that’s easy for you because you’ll have product outlay.

Because a lot of times when I buy stuff at the office, it just sits there, right? And I got to sit there and. All right, gotta get to move it. Kind of like cars on a car lot, you know, they gotta be moved, so it’s gotta be moved.

That’s why sometimes doing the patient portal stuff is good. So those are, those are checks that I do, you know, I get again, it’s like a, a revenue stream, different revenue streams in that sense. I also do some other things with like essential oils.

Doterra. That’s another revenue before the pandemic. And it’s kind of weird.

And I’m not going to get off on a tangent on this too much, but that job was, that part of my practice was very lucrative. The problem though, when the pandemic hit was that essential oils need to be experienced. You can’t do it over a zoom call.

You can’t smell peppermint oil. You know, it’s just, it wasn’t the thing. So I kind of took a nosedive on that.

But you know what you have. And there was a lot of things I learned. That pandemic just kind of.

I worried so much that I was going to lose my business. I remember, I remember looking out in front of it and thinking to myself, how Am I going to, how am I going to survive? My new mantra was going to be, you know, welcome to Walmart. You know, I couldn’t figure out like why, you know, but anyways, you know what the weirdest thing was? I’ve thrived so much at that point in time that things changed.

I had to, you know, patients were, you know, I had to work a little bit longer hours, right at that point in time I didn’t care. You know, I had to let go everybody. It was just, it’s a very eye opening experience.

And that was another, like another bridge into learning a little bit out the, about business and about how you have to kind of diversify because like I said, I was dead to rights because chiropractic is something that you can’t give, I can’t give an adjustment over the, it’s impossible. But if I, if they figure that out, then I will definitely sit on my couch eating bonbons all day, just calling people up, you know, seeing one adjustment. But that doesn’t happen.

So, but so in my business, you really do. You have to diversify, you have to be ready to adapt. I think that’s true of any kind of business.

I mean, you become a one trick pony and somebody else is going to figure out a better way to do that trick. If you’re not, if you’re not careful and you’re not continually increasing it. Right.

When it comes to chiropractic care, how do you think, besides taking aside all the billing changes and everything, has the business itself changed at all? I think, you know, over. And I’m only saying this, Tina, is over time. You know, back in the 50s, 40s, 50s.

I mean, I think we’ve become again, I don’t want to get too lost in the health aspect of it, but we become so much more toxic, so we require a lot more care. I think that’s part of it. I think that we’re, if you look at the business of healthcare honestly, I think that’s probably a good place to go hunt if you have products or do you know, that’s a great multi trillion dollar business because people unfortunately when you look at the United States, and I know this because I’ve been over to Europe
and you can eat the food there and you don’t have any issues because there’s not a lot of, a lot of, they don’t allow a lot of the additives that we get here.

So we as a nation are probably sicker now than we’ve ever been. You know, we would, we would claim that we have the best healthcare system or whatever. I mean, I sit there and I kind of laugh at that because you’re looking at.

I look at the rates of Alzheimer’s. I mean, these are things that if you just focused your business on, or like autism or things of mental health, you could be very lucrative. And I’m going to say this too, it may rattle some cages a little bit, but a lot of times people are having some post Covid issues.

So I’ve been really investigating that aspect of it. I mean, and I love the cold. Lasers definitely work.

It’s just, how do you, how do you market that? You know, you got to be very careful, too, as a chiropractor. You know, we are kind of in a big pharma world, and they own all the. You know, as they say, you know, that’s the golden rule.

He owns the gold, makes the rules. So, you know, pharma is a big business, and they don’t want natural health care to be out there for people to take care of themselves. They want you to be sick.

You know, that makes them money for sure. My thought behind the question was really exactly that, like, we’re putting all these preservatives, these additives, like all these toxins into our bodies. And I feel, and I’m sure you have your own take on this, probably completely different than mine, but I remember the first time I ever went to a chiropractor and I told my mom, I’m going to the chiropractor.

She was like, what are you doing? You should not do. That’s not good for your body to be cracked. And I’m like, well, it’s not all about getting cracked.

You know what I mean? It’s about the manipulation of getting that stretch, getting that, you know, getting the motion back. But when I’m asking about has that part of it changed? It sounds like, yeah, because we need more of it. Because of everything.

Yeah, well, it’s because the, the. The toxins do deposit in. In the fat, and sometimes it can translate into the, to the joints.

I’ll give you a specific example in the sense of smoking. Smoking decreases circulation. Okay, well, the joints have cartilage in them.

I mean, your spinal joints in between each of the bones have cartilage, and they have their own circulatory systems, essentially, you know, bringing in nutrients and taking out waste and keeping those cells thriving. When you smoke, that circulation decreases. So a lot of times it’s not always true.

I mean, I guess, you know, you’re going to have those outliers on the scale when you look at a bell curve. But I mean, smokers typically have more degenerative arthritic changes. Okay, so there’s, you know, that’s, that’s just a specific point.

But like, for me, I think that when you’re talking about chiropractic, you, lasers and nutrition really weren’t that. It was back in the day, it was just adjusting the patient’s spine, keeping it healthy. You, you, you pointed out, you said motion and motion’s the key to life and in anything, and if anything stops moving, guess what? It’s dead.

So chiropractic restores that vitality and that motion and the motion vitality in the joint. So the problem nowadays is we’re just battling a lot, you know, battling a lot of stuff that’s being deposited in our bodies. So before a chiropractic adjustment would help people, People would get off the table and probably walk out of the office.

Well, nowadays they’re just so, they’re so inundated with toxicity or toxins that it takes or requires a little bit more care and time. So, yeah, you’re right. I think, you know, for me it’s, that’s, that’s the truth.

I mean, the thing about chiropractic and I always laugh about this and I always say people always go, oh, I believe in chiropractic. I believe in like, in some spiritual, like, heaven awakening thing. And I tell people it’s, it’s not believing.

It’s knowing that I’m restoring normal motion to a joint. That’s where the body takes over and heals itself. You’re a self regulating, self healing organism.

Nothing can change that. You know, the chiropractic mantra was, you know, healing comes from above, down and inside out. So, you know, it’s not the band aid that heals you, it’s your innate intelligence that heals your body.

So it just needs sometimes a springboard, right? And so a lot of times we take medications, we kind of hinder or alter that healing process. Now, I’m not saying medications like it. You know, I’m not poo pooing that.

So don’t, you know, people say, oh, chiropractors are anti this, anti that. I mean, I, I think for like acute issues, I think the medication is necessary, But I think for the chronic issues, I think we relied too much on it. And I think chiropractic can be that bridge to help patients or people, you know, get well and, and, and minimize costs for healthcare.

Really, honestly, it should be the, the flow of healthcare should be chiropractic first, medicine second, you know, surgery last. That’s the way it should go. And you should go see your chiropractor first.

I think people just get scared. You know, they think that chiropractic is solely about, oh, they’re gonna crack my neck. I don’t like when they do that.

Crack my neck or, you know. Yeah, I mean, you know, the thing about it, I kind of laugh. I mean, I’m not saying crack, you know, adjusting the spine.

I guess they’re watching too many Bruce Lee movies, you know, crushing the guy’s head off. I mean, there’s different ways to approach the problem. I mean, not every, like, you know, I’ll tell you this, I have a patient, she’s 97 years old, she loves to get adjusted.

I hate doing it. I literally hate doing it. But she just, she loves it.

Oh, yes, I love. I mean, normally I use different tools in my office to adjust or to mobilize the joints. You know, I have a table that I spent a lot of money on to help with that problem.

But, you know, it’s, it’s weird. It’s, it’s just, it’s different approaches. What I would say is, you know, you just want to find some, a chiropractor that you’re comfortable with if you don’t like to get your neck cracked.

There’s plenty of chiropractors that do. Activator. I’ve got a pro adjuster at the office.

I have a decompression table that does, does all that work too as well? Some people do love it. I personally am like kind of on the fence on both sides of it. I, sometimes I need it, that joint mobilization and sometimes I just said, all right, I just need the pro adjuster.

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What do you think’s the, the craziest thing that you’ve dealt with in your practice? Obviously, the 97 year old lady you gotta take very good care and be delicate. Right? But outside of her, what’s. I mean, I’m not gonna tell you my craziest story because that’s just probably.

That’s for an up. That’s a. For an off mic moment.

And it was crazy. I’ve seen, you know, taking X rays, you see a lot of weird stuff. But I think, you know, for me, you know, and being a clinician and finding out problems, I’ve had, you know, a couple issue.

I remember this one time, this lady coming, and she was probably about 65, 66, and she was coming in on a walker. I remember this. I remember I was sitting there looking at her.

I’m like, oh, what’s going on? And, you know, we do the intake, of course. I do a very thorough examination. We do a thorough history.

Want to make sure that we see everything. This patient had been to their primary care twice, to the hospital twice for low back pain. And they were shoving pills at her, like hydrocodone or whatever they were shoving up at that point in time.

And the weird part about it is I said, hey, did anybody ever do an MRI on you? And she’s like, no, I’m like, the hospital twice this point. So I remember. So I’m like, I read through the notes and I read through the radiology reads.

Nothing seems to be what, you know, what is causing this issue. This. That didn’t make sense.

It just didn’t add up is what I was trying to think of. And so I remember treating her for the day. And most of the time, like I said, when I do decompression work, it’s very gentle, it’s very easy.

You want to make sure everything’s within the patient’s tolerance. And she’s taking it like a champ. And like, normally people would be, no, that’s too much, doc.

That’s too much. And it just raised hairs on my. On my.

On my hand. And I go, this is not right. And I. And I sat down with her and I said, whatever name that could be.

Joan. Joan, we need to get mri. An mri.

And the weird thing about in Florida is that she was under Medicare, which I accept, but I can’t write a script for an MRI with Medicare, has to go through their primary. But I can, I can write a script and they can pay cash, which generally was cheaper anyways. Like, if you go to get an MRI here in Florida, she went, I remember this.

I remember the day, too. February is a Friday. I get a call from the radiologist, like, Asking me if this person was a, like a drug addict.

And I go, no, it’s this lady who plays tennis, loves it. You know, it’s like she’s very healthy. I mean, if you look at her, she’s healthy.

And he was telling me how he goes, I’ve never seen a spinal abscess this bad. And so he says, we usually see this in people that do crystal meth, like, you know, like, stuff like that. Yeah.

Or other types of abscess. I don’t know exactly what he said, but I remember calling her up, I said, go to the hospital, give him the MRIs. The weirdest thing was that was a Friday.

She went in on Saturday. They drained the abscess, got rid of it. She walked into my office pain free.

Now, I didn’t do a chiropractic adjustment that helped her that, you know, I mean, I know that, but it was kind of weird how they, they just kind of shuffled her through. Like you said earlier, she was a number. And nobody really took the foresight to kind of just break it down and say, why is this going? We’re just going to mask the symptom by getting her payments.

I hate that. Yeah, sounds like you’ve been through a lot. Bring the business up to where it is thriving right now and doing really well.

What would you say is a major win and what would you say is a major setback that you’ve experienced over the last 20 years? Oh, mean, one of the things, it’s weird, it’s only really kind of localized here is that we were always trying to fight like this thing called any willing provider, meaning we would, I would take the insurance rates regardless. But around here it’s kind of monopolized. They only have specific kairos that are on the insurance.

And so, hey, if I want to take $15 for an adjustment, let me just decide that, you know, don’t leave it to the patient to go travel, you know, 20 miles to go see a chiropractor, because I’m not on their plan. They won’t allow you on the plan to me is. It’s been like that forever.

You know, I remember at the beginning I would. I was applying every year and then, oh, we already have too many doctors on the panel. Too many doctors on the panel, meaning you have too many people in the area now.

There’s like four or five people now. And they only say this. It’s not like if you’re, if you’re a minority or a female, you could get all these plans.

And I know Why? I mean, because it, if you, if they didn’t allow that, that’s a big lawsuit. So to me, that’s kind of a big, you know, big setback. It doesn’t allow me to get my, to get out, to touch as many people as I want.

Now, who controls that? The. The insurance company? No. Well, it did.

They did. So there was a specific group that basically in. In the, in the throes of the night, just elected these four people to be.

To manage the gatekeepers to the. We called them the gatekeepers to this. And I would, I would.

Every year I’d get the same letter of rejection back. You know, we already have enough people on the panel every year. I finally, I quit after a while because.

And I found that. I found the letter. It’s funny, when I was going through and cleaning out, I found the letter saying, you know, rejected me for those, those things.

So that’s like Florida Board of Health or. Well, here’s the weird part about it. It’s like, if I think of like, you know, if I went to Ohio, like, I have a buddy up there.

He’s. He’s on all the insurance plans just around here. It’s just in this area.

It’s bizarre. I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe people would say, why won’t you move away? I just don’t want to.

After a while, you kind of establish yourself and just. And after, then, then you start thinking about. It’s like, well, all right, I’m not going to fight over this anymore because it’s just not worth it.

But it’s kind of, it’s kind of disheartening, I think, you know, as far as insurance, you know, that’s very big setbacks. You have to work a little harder. Yeah.

And I think sometimes that you can work smarter, not harder, as I say. But that’s, you know, probably one of the major. I would say, if you’re talking about wins.

I think that I feel like I’m coming into my stride now, unfortunately, at 52. Wish I’d have done this, but like I said, if I go back to my former self and know that. I think part of it is, is that, you know, being debt free.

I’m not saying, listen, I’m not completely debt free. I have rental, you know, equipment loans and stuff like that. But there’s a certain amount of debt that you’re going to have regardless of your business.

But if you can be, you know, I don’t have any credit card debt. I have money in, in a money Market account. I, I, I’ve been able to utilize certain tools that the banks have provided for me to, to kind of play with that.

That’s always been good. But you know, being in business, we’re, listen, it’s, People don’t understand, I don’t think really, they don’t understand how hard it is. And I, when I’m not tooting or pat my own back, you know, I did, I’ve done this all by myself.

I’ve created this whole thing by myself. And it’s hard. It’s, it’s like I said, sometimes you feel beaten down.

But you know, one of the things I’ve always said is like the rewards for me is that I’m able to, I’m my own boss, I can take my own time off, I can go travel, I can do this and do that again if you, you know, those are the, the wins, you know, and then on top of that, it’s like if you work for somebody, it’s just different. I don’t know. I mean, you may know that too as well.

So definitely setbacks are external. That keeps a strain on you a bit. But the wins definitely is.

Sounds to me, at least as your financial journey just, you’ve had a come up through all of this and really figured out what that looks for you. So if you, this is just a rando question here, right? So if your financial journey, so to speak, was a movie, what genre would it be? Oh boy, that’s really good question. And I’m like, I’m like a cinephile too.

I love movies. Oh, nice. So I mean, maybe like a Kurosala, you know, like Seven Samurai kind of like a mini movie or, or a Shawshank Redemption.

Yeah. Breaking out through, crawling through 500 yards of clean on the other side, you know, but maybe I’m an Eddie Dufresne kind of person, but I would say not a love romance, I’ll tell you that my rom com, maybe a, maybe a. Maybe it’s Nightmare on Elm Street.

Yeah. Nightmare on 66th street, right? Yeah. Nah, I mean, it’s definitely, you know, that entrepreneurial journey is not for the week.

You know, you gotta go in with it with a thick skin and know that it’s gonna be difficult at points. But like you said, it turns out worth it in the end. You set your own, set your own life how you see it, Right.

What would be one piece of financial advice that you, you already said that you’d give to your younger self, but that you would give to somebody who was just starting out, getting out of medical school, wanting to start their own practice. I think, you know, working under someone’s good, making a plan or preparing a plan, I would, I would impart to somebody is. Is that.

Why reinvent the wheel? Go out, work for somebody, see if you can not say, take it over, but find a practitioner that’s probably a little longer the tooth, tutelage under them, you know, and then. And then buy them out. Because you don’t have to reinvent the wheel there.

You’re taking over a practice now, there’s going to be some gains and losses there. But I think personally that, you know, instead of putting all the outlay out there, maybe you can work with the chiropractor working. And originally that’s kind of what I wanted to do, but I realized, unfortunately, that after five years, it wasn’t going to happen.

So. With who you were with. Yeah, yeah, it just.

It just didn’t happen. And that’s a story unto itself. But I would say if I could say to myself, like, go find that practice.

I mean, if I. If I could say, I already know what practice, I would say, go find this practice, because you would. You’d be probably retired by now. That’s exactly what I. I definitely preach that to a lot of folks who are interested in diving into business.

Everybody has this mindset that they have to do it grassroots and they gotta do it all themselves. And they don’t really see. They think that that’s the cheaper route, but it’s not the cheaper route, you know, because they don’t.

They don’t have the vision that you have. You know, in retrospect, you. You see what all you had to do dish out to get to where you are now today, where they could have, you know, catapulted themselves, like you were saying, into a position where there would have been more financing opportunities for an established business, you know, they wouldn’t have had to scrape to get all of the.

All of the. The tables and the. The scanners and all of that extra stuff, you know, So I. I love that because that’s literally what my previous episode was about.

Well, and that’s what it. Because when you said that earlier, I was, like you said, buying a previous business. And I said, that’s what I would have done.

Yeah. If I could have done it differently, I would have done that. Not that I. My intentions were to do that, but there was a day that that was, you know, I can remember it specifically.

It was funny. It was like about a month before My birthday, It was maybe 30. 32nd birthday, I think it was.

And, you know, the guy basically says, when your name is out on the. On the front, you know, door, you can call the shots. And I sat there and I said, you know, listen, one of the things you also got to learn is your ego needs to go right out the door.

There’s no. I mean, you could have the biggest ego. And I know people say that that’s important, important for being successful, but I think you got to temper yourself.

And that’s. I’ve said, okay, I understand. That was the moment in time that I said, I’m gonna start working for myself.

I love it. That’s. Usually most people, when they want to throw up that.

That chosen finger to walk out the door, you know, and it’s funny. It’s like, Dina, I was probably the model. Like, listen, in.

In probably in the 25 years that I’ve been practicing, I’ve had to call out sick twice. I’ve never missed a day. If I could.

If I was. If I was at a corporate job, they’d freaking. I’d get the gold flower.

Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, and I was.

It was food poisoning. The two times that I had to, like. I was like.

I mean, and I remember it, I was like, you know, at something. I was like, I can’t be in here right now. And so.

But I mean, you know, never missed a day, never called in sick, never was late, never, you know, none of that stuff. I mean. And, I mean, it’s your baby, right? Well, that’s the way when I work for somebody.

When I work. When I work. I’ve been working my whole life.

I worked when I was 14 doing landscaping for my dad’s. One of my dad’s friends. I mean, I probably.

Probably. Child labor laws out there may get a. Yep.

But I mean, I worked at Rogers Real Pit Barbecue Cleaning, you know, doing busing and dishwashing and things of that nature that, you know, you look at nowadays. I mean, those jobs should be for. For kids to learn how to manage money and.

And why they’re not doing these things kind of beyond me, but I never in my life. I never. I didn’t.

I always had a job. There was never a time that I didn’t have one. I mean, there was a time when I moved up to Atlanta, go to chiropractic school.

In between that time, I. I called up Ronstadt, which was this, like. What do you call it? It’s a company where they. They basically put you in a Job like, all right, yeah, I’ll do that.

It’s like a staffing company. So I went. It could have been just a day of moving furniture.

I got about 50 bucks, but I ended up working for a baseball outfit for. For six months. The guy was like, I want you to work for me for.

You know, I’m like, I’m going to firefighter school. But anyways, I definitely agree when it comes to kids learning that work ethic and not the financing part or financial part, of course, but I feel like so many kids just don’t. They have that work off of hardware, you know, Unfortunately, I think it’s partly.

Yeah, you’re right. And it’s partly because they want. That’s like this.

This. You know, they see the social media and I think it’s all like that. Unfortunately, it’s like this veil of this not real kind of.

It’s only like 1% or less than 1% that, you know, end up going that route. Okay, so couple other questions, and then I think. I think we hit a lot of stuff today.

I really like what we put together. So talking about investing, we’re going to switch gears a little bit. If somebody gave you five grand, let’s even bring it up to 50 grand.

That’s nice. Little jump in change. If someone gave you 50 grand to invest, where does it go? Wow, that is a deep question.

Deep question. I mean, depending on where you’re at, this is just for you today. 50.

50 grand today. What would I do with that? I think honestly I’d probably put it towards buying my own property for my clinic. That’s what I would do.

At least use that money towards that. If you want to invest in a vehicle of some sort, like you said, could you be safe if I had a million dollars, or put it into a core point five percent CD and get like $80,000 a year or whatever. No, but I think that’s probably what I would do with it.

I would probably. At some point in time, I would want to. I would.

I’d probably have to put it aside in some sort of investment vehicle. And then I’d like to use that as to buy support commercial property. Because I always think, you know, my uncle was always saying to me, he’s like, it’s the greatest thing is when you can write those rental checks to yourself.

So that’s like. Or to your company or whatever. Company.

Exactly. All right, so imagine your profession didn’t exist. Okay.

What would you be doing? You know, the weirdest part, when I was younger, if it’s not medical. I was always wanted to be a dentist for some odd reason. My mom was always saying I want to look at people’s mouths.

But honestly, I think here’s the weird part about it. And this is not like just the sugar coat, the run of finance, but I think I’d probably be good in some sort of finance. I’m really, and I, and I say this because I really take situations and I’m very analytical about it.

I, I want to know why. That’s always been my, my thriving of why does that happen? Why did this happen? Why, why did that happen? You know, And I want to know all the moving parts of it, you know, I want to know. And I’ll give you an example.

I was talking to my friend, we were golfing and he was telling me about his practice and he’s moving up to Ohio. He kind of did a dual thing. He’s a lawyer in a Cairo.

And he’s like, yeah, back in the day I was making $2 million. And then I go, well, then what happened? Why, why did this change? What were you doing then than you’re doing now? You know, he said to me, I quit. I was like, well, that’s not a good, that’s not, I need to know why.

Like, what was the, what was the pro? You know, I’m always looking for the why. And I think in finance, you know, that’s, that’s one of those things. I mean, I, I understand there’s, you know, it’s, there’s some things that you won’t ever figure out, you know.

Yeah, most times one plus one still equals to sometimes. Yeah, you’re right. So that’s probably, I mean, finance wise, I think that I would probably thrive in that.

And I had this upbringing for my grandfather. He was, he grew up during the depression, you know, and so it was weird to hear his story. I always want.

I was so fascinated by the stories he would tell me. I mean, he was about finances. I mean, he worked in a department store or for a long time, I mean, and he would tell me, it was so funny.

He hated broccoli. And I was always asking him, why did you hate broccoli? Because I ate it for like a year straight, you know, And I was like, well, that’s why you’re 89 years old, Grandpa. You know, and so during the depression, I mean, to me those things fascinated me.

Every, you know, why was there a depression? You know, this whole thing about it. And so he was a very hard worker, you know, and Then it’s even translated into my father, which is we. I tell people this all the time.

My father retired. He’s 85 years old right now. He retired at 54.

Oh, that’s awesome. Good for him. And so, I mean, he was, he was very financially and so, you know, my mom was always, they were always good.

It’s that kind of that rich dad, poor dad. You ever see that? My dad. My parents never drove the luxury cars.

They always kept everything in moderation. But they’re the retired for 30. It’s almost 30 years.

Yeah. Yeah. So I feel like you’ve been listening to all my episodes and you’re just buttering me out right now.

No, honestly, I need to know. But if you did, I mean, I would tell you, you know what, you should have my dad on here one time. That would be great.

And talk to him about, like, his financial strategies and what he did. Because, you know, and I say this, there’s different eras. Yeah.

My grandfather was in the depression. You know, I mean that it’s different then. And then my, you know, know, my, my, My dad was a baby boomer.

I think I want to say that that generation. Yeah, for sure. And then, you know, our generation or my generation, you know, I, I love that because I want, I actually really wanted to do an episode with my dad before he passed away and because a lot, I mean, by nature we all have stuff that comes from our parents.

Right. And it’s just ingrained in us. And there’s definitely some, some really great things, but there was also some not so great things that I did learn from his habits, you know, but it.

Overall, he was fantastic. And he too, got to retire, you know, early on. Not too early.

I mean, he was, he worked for Ford, for Ford for a really, really long time and, but was very savvy with his investing. But he also, you know, when. Back when the housing market crashed, the, the car.

Auto industry also had its time too. So he lost so much, you know, having a lot of money in 401ks and things capped him out. His Ford stock dropped by a lot.

You know, he definitely went through some things with that too. And I want, every conversation that I have, I want to hear people’s experiences, not just, you know, from, you know, we’re not very much far in age difference, you know, from our generation younger, older. I want to hear everybody’s perspective because it’s, it’s really interesting to know the whys, like you said.

I’d like to know the whys. Where did this Come from? Like why don’t you like debt? Why don’t you know, why do you like debt? Who, whoever’s outlooks there are. I really enjoy hearing them and I think that other people do too and it gives people insight to be reflective on who they want to be and how they might change some things for themselves.

So I’d love that and I’d love to have a little roundtable session and hear even multi generational what, what people have thought about. So that’s really cool. All right, last question.

Okay. How do you define success? Anything you say that I mean, yeah, you can look at, people can look at monetarily wise, you know, success. I, I, I personally, I think is just enjoying your experiences.

Meaning, like enjoying life. Yeah, it, working is, is tough and, and I’m going to give you kind of the why in the sense of I, I love seeing patients, I do. It’s such a wonderful thing to see like different getting people well and to me doing that, it’s not a job.

But I always say that experiences in my life is a success. It’s not, I mean money is, when we, when we leave this place, we don’t take any money with us. We really just take our experiences.

And so yeah, I mean we, it, it. I, I’ve always heard that I don’t love money, but it sure calms my nerves. So what I would tell you is, is that yeah, I mean it’s good to, it’s good to be financially stable and to have those things.

But personally, I mean for me, I, I just, I think if you’re rich in experiences, if you’re rich in law, you know, life and in love and you know, all the family like enjoying your family. And I know you said, you know, your dad, I know, pass away. I’m enjoying my father and my parents and then my brother and my family.

And so, you know, those are the experiences that I have and I’m always want, you know, that’s where I feel I’m rich at. May not be in the bank, bank account, but I’m okay with that. I really am.

I mean I know that striving every day to do the best you can is a good thing, but I think being rich at experiences is really where it’s at. I mean, I mean, and then maybe that’s like somebody would say that’s what a loser would say, but I don’t think so. I think that that’s perfect.

I, I think that you’re quite successful. I think the, the business is fantastic. I obviously am A patron.

I believe in it and appreciate you and just everything that you do for all of us and see you on a daily basis and having your own experiences, that definitely defines success. And I would say the same for you, David. You’re really.

I always, you know, and this is just a two year board, as I always say that you, you know, I. You’re a great person and I, I’m so happy to know you. And I’m saying this and, and I’m so. You’re very genuine and it’s very hard nowadays to get genuine people.

And so I can tell right off the bat, like, you know, know sometimes I’m a great judge of character, but I can always tell when people are good. And so. And I love what you’re doing and you know, and I’m so glad that, you know, we met.

I really do appreciate that. And so those are the things, you know, people in your life and the experiences that you g. And the positivity that you get from people.

So that’s. You’re a very positive person. Even though I know, like I said, your father passed away and stuff.

Those are the lights. Been a rough year, but everybody has those. So now we just keep moving on.

Well, thank you so much for spending some time with you and I’d love. Been fantastic. Yeah, maybe.

Yeah, we’ll do it again. Maybe I get my dad here, teach you little things. That’d be awesome.

All right. All right. Well, that is it.

Another episode of Invest in. You come back and listen to us again. Thanks for spending some time with us.