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Hey, welcome to look to the children. My name is Dr. Erik Kowalke. I’m a chiropractor in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we do this show the first Thursday of every month. Thanks to ChiroSecure Dr. Stu Hoffman for all they do for the chiropractic profession. I’m always backing us up and just moving the ball forward.
And we’re just grateful for all that ChiroSecure does. And looking forward to this show where we bring you practical real world. Information that you can use in your practice to get better and grow faster and ultimately serve more people right away today or next week. So I love to do 20 minutes of just content and stuff that you guys can take back to your practice right away.
But this show we’re going to do it a little bit differently. And article a, I came across recently, just made me. Really grateful that I get to be a chiropractor and just serve kids. But I think a lot of times we are going into our clinics day in and day out and we’re seeing people and we just get complacent and comfortable in what we’re doing.
So I want to give you some stats and information today that hopefully will make you and complacent and uncomfortable. And. Just wanting to get better. I think that’s something that as we’re in practice for awhile, you and your comfortability and your busy-ness and just your life, you have an a tendency to maybe not want to grow as, as much personally and professionally as you once.
Did you feel like I know enough I’m good enough. We’re doing enough. We’re getting by and I hope to encourage you today that we need you. We need more, really good chiropractors that are just sharing the truth about chiropractic more now than ever before. About the power of the body to heal itself more now than ever before.
And the information that I came across in the stats on the health of kids in the United States. Should just bolster that idea to man there, there’s way more kids out there that are sick and suffering that need your care specific chiropractic care than ever before. And if we ever think that there’s just not enough of them or they won’t pay for it, or they won’t value it, it’s all in our own heads because.
The date is there, the kids are there. The parents are there. They’re looking for a solution. They just don’t know that you or I exist in their world. And so we need to be creative and Bolden in finding out ways to get the information that we have to as many people in parents as possible. So I’ll start with this 27.5 million kids in the United States need regular medical.
We have six kids, myself. We were sitting on the couch the other night and my daughter, Brooklyn who’s 10 was sitting next to my daughter, Stella who’s 12. And they, somehow they got talking to doctors visits and cell is yeah, don’t you remember when we went in and the guy taps on your knee and you sit on the little thing and she’s no, I’ve never done that.
She’s yeah, it was like a long time ago. So I’m pretty sure our ten-year-old we knew. I don’t know, she claims we never brought her in to a real doctor and had a real exam done on here. 27.5 million kids need regular medical attention. That’s crazy. Regular medical attention means they’re going in regularly to a medical doctor for treatment.
And we know that’s looking at disease cases. Reactionary disease care. That’s really treated with pharmaceutical drugs and there’s better solutions out there, which is what we do as chiropractors. And I bet you out of those 27 and a half billion, 90 plus percent of those, who’ve never even heard of chiropractic care, especially for their kids.
37% of all us children, age 17 and under have at least one. Diagnosed health condition, 37%, 40% of those kids say it impacts their daily lives, at least some of the time. So this is a whole other thing that like you think about, parents coming in, the guy the dad’s hurting really bad, and we’re asking him, is this affecting your ability to go to work or do normal things?
How often are we really asking kids? No, we were just like, oh yeah, you got a headache or you got this going on or that going on, but is that really affecting their kids’ daily life? 40% of those kids it’s affecting their daily life? Which, how is that affecting their interactions with other kids at school?
How was that? Affecting their ability to concentrate in school? They’re not getting good grades or they’re not concentrating, then they’re feeling like they’re not good enough. And that’s going to roll over into like lifelong effects of this kid. Being able to maximize his potential listen to this allergies.
How many I wish I was live with you guys where you could answer your questions, or I could see your face and talk to you in a room right now or something, but how many kids in the United States? So we’re talking 27.5. Million need regular medical attention in the United States, 14.4 million of those 20% of all children’s 17 and under are diagnosed with allergies, 14.4 million allergies.
6.1 million asthma, 8% of kids in the U S have asthma, 6%, 4.4 million have anxiety problems, 4.4 million kids in the United States have problems with anxiety. 1.5 million, two and a half percent of all. Kids have autism 1.9 million with depression, which this is brutal and affects so many. And if you’re a chiropractor, you know how many people.
That have anxiety and depression and they come into your clinic and you start finding subluxations and you remove subluxations and you prove the body to heal from the inside out, and their brain can talk to their body. And all of a sudden they don’t have depression and anxiety anymore. But how many kids even know that’s a thing, right?
They don’t even, they don’t even know what depression or anxiety is. Hopefully they’re just how they feel. And then 2.1 million kids have genetic disease. 76% listen to this 76% of children, six to 17 to not get the recommended amount of physical activity every single day, 76%, 13.6 million kids lack adequate health care access, 9.4 million kids.
Are part of children’s health insurance programs, 9.4 million, which means take 27 and a half million. So majority of those kids don’t even have access to health insurance or healthcare initiatives.
So this whole study is just on how do we help kids become healthier and. I think we need to figure out as chiropractors. Sometimes we just get sick of saying the same thing over and over again, we get up in front of a room and you’re doing a class or a workshop. And you’re like the, 20% of kids who have allergies, 8% of kids have asthma for four and a half million have anxiety one and a half million have autism chiropractic care is a solution for this.
And sometimes you just get sick of saying it, but that’s a lot of people you can say the same thing. Over and over every day for 50 years to new people and they’re going to it’s the first time they’re ever hearing it. And I think we get just bored almost with just sharing principled chiropractic sharing chiropractic is raw it’s ROS form of the power of the body heals the body.
They would just get bored with that. And so we just seek other things and think we need to teach in a different way or. We need to get more science-y with it. And, however you feel like you communicated the best. I think I just encourage you to just own what you really know and what people understand and can take action on in a room.
You want people going like this, but I think it’s really important to understand that our. Next generation of kids, are they getting healthier? Are they getting sicker? They’re all getting sicker. And do we see any changes coming through any other profession or organization that’s moving the needle or driving the health of children and the health of the next generation.
In a positive way or in a negative way. Is there anybody else doing anything that’s driving in a positive way? These kids need to get out and they need to exercise. They need to eat better. They need to do all this stuff. But if they have, significant amount of nerve interference, they have significant upper cervical subluxation.
It doesn’t matter how great the food is. They eat. It doesn’t matter how much the extra. Their life potential is reduced there, their brain, isn’t going to communicate to their body at a hundred percent and their body back to their brain. The potential that they have is reduced their ability to heal their ability for their body to adapt and function at its optimal form.
Isn’t going to happen if they have the vertebral subluxation and nobody else can find that and fix that. Besides you guys, principal chiropractors, this shows look to the children, which is why we’re talking about kids. So if you’re a chiropractor and you’re watching this you’re the one who has the power to do that.
Anybody can tell them to eat better and anybody can give them advice on exercising and their parents and try to retrain their parents to do the right thing. But ultimately. The subluxation is not going to go away by doing anything else than seeing a chiropractor and a chiropractor, assessing it and fixing it finally that fixed it and leaving it alone.
And that’s what we need to just keep preaching and keep educating families and parents and other doctors and every person we can get in contact with because you never know who you’re going to tell. That’s going to create an enormous ripple of. And ultimately improve the lives of so many other kids across the country and across the world.
And if you don’t know, we started a software company called SCAD it six years ago. Cause we see hundreds of kids every week and we just realized that we weren’t making chiropractic care convenient enough for families to be able to make chiropractic part of their normal everyday lifestyle.
Once a week, lifetime family wealth. We weren’t making it easy enough. They got it. They wanted it, they could afford it. They just didn’t have the time and the energy to get into the office that frequently with all the kids and everything that they had going on. So we created a patient app that allow them to schedule and reschedule and actually come into the office.
And we were ahead of the curve on convenience. We didn’t know that 2020 was going to happen. And now look at people, order everything mobily, coffee’s are mobile. Amazon delivers everything to your door. Sometimes the same day, your groceries are delivered, your Costco orders delivered. There’s basically nothing you can’t buy from your phone that gets delivered to you.
So guess what people expect that. When we start talking about expectations versus agreements, if you’re married, you know that if your spouse has an expectation of you and you don’t know that expectation, you’re never going to meet the expectation and unmet expectations turned into bad scenarios, same thing your patients and your families expect it to be quick and easy and can be.
To come into your office, just like the rest of their life, just like every other company, that’s striving to make it more convenient for them to purchase and buy and use their services. We need to continue to move in that direction of convenience without sacrificing our results. So we know how to assess.
We know how to find, we know how to educate about subluxation in chiropractic care, but the whole scheduling aspect and the ability of fitting that into their normal everyday life. We’re reactive more than we’re proactive, the classic chiropractic solution to patients not showing up or patients not valuing their care or that calling, to say that they can’t come in today is to be reactive.
Let’s react to that and find them for not coming in or let’s discipline them for not sticking to the recommendations. They’re just like, I’m just trying to get through today and tomorrow with this family and my job and the craziness in this world and the news and everything coming at me, I value the care.
I want the care. It’s just, I can’t do it right now is what they’re thinking. And so they no call no show or whatever. So what I’m suggesting is you shift your mindset and how do we help them make chiropractic care easy on their life. So it’s not adding stress and they’re not. Having a scheduled time to think about this and all of that.
And that’s what we just know. We sync their chiropractic calendar with their phone calendar and their I Cal calendar, Google calendar. We give that we make it really easy for them to move their appointment 30 minutes, either direction in the same day. As sports come up and things come up, we let them schedule on Sundays, everybody, majority 40% of our scheduled and rescheduled appointments through the app happen on Sundays because that’s when people are planning out their.
So we’re like, okay, this is what families want. Let’s give it to them. Let’s create a scenario where it’s easy for them because we realize you want to schedule on a Sunday. I am not available. My team’s not available to, to answer your phone, look at our schedule and see if we can move an appointment for Monday, attend a Monday at 11.
So we just didn’t have a solution for them. So what are we going to do? Just keep saying if you don’t show up Monday at 10, you get a $75 fine. You’re going to pay for your adjustment. I’m going to be like, heck with that. I’m not even scheduling and I probably won’t even come in cause he just make it so not convenient.
Cause you’re disciplining me when it’s out of my control. So just give him that. Give him another solution. You just gotta think about that in all the areas of your practice when you’re suggesting, and this is assuming you’re really good at educating and they do see the value. And you’re building that in and you created agreements and what their goals are and you know what the plan is in the path and you’re communicating all of that effectively.
So they get it, they want it, they understand it, they have agreement and they’re going to do it like you’ve all, you’ve done. All of that. Now, making convenience, increasing their convenience equals compliance and increased compliance equals results and results equals. Reviews on Google and reviews on Google equals more people seeing that.
And coming in, we push internal referrals and one person telling one person is awesome. We have 60 plus internal referrals every single month. So one of the stuff I’m telling you is exactly what we’re doing in our clinic. Seeing 120 plus new patients a month Rover of 1600 visits a week and adjusted.
We have 500 plus Google reviews of this stuff is real world. This is what we’re doing. Moving the ball forward in our own clinic today right now. But I could tell you that a Google review is going to reach so many more people for infinity amount of time. If I have a family that has amazing testimonial and they tell one family, that’s awesome and we want them to do that.
But if they post that on Google, how many people is that going to. For how long that’s going to impact so many other kids and families. So it goes beyond just bringing in more new patients for you through Google. It’s how many kids lives out of that 27.5 million that are receiving regular medical attention.
Those 27.5 million kids need you. They need a chiropractor. Their mom is on social media. They’re on Google. They need to find your site. That’s why you got. 500 plus Google reviews, five stars with stories. So when that mom that’s bringing their kid regularly for medical attention, sees your website or sees your Google listing.
Cause somebody told them, or they heard about it somewhere. They’re like, man, this is, this place is awesome. Their websites. Excellent. Their reviews are excellent. Their onboarding is excellent. So sometimes you just need to get better before you get bigger. Yeah. Really good. Excellent. You need to work at it.
All the systems, does your onboarding awesome. So this is our onboarding new sign up as a new, you go to our Google reviews. They’re awesome. You want to make an appointment? You click on the link. It’s all electronic. It knows our schedule real time. This is all connected through schedule book. An appointment goes on our schedule.
Bill’s the file automatically sends you an email with a link to paperwork, a video for me, welcoming you to the clinic directions, to the office, online paperwork forms. You fill all that out. Your appointment scheduled 48 hours before the appointment. You’re getting another email with confirming whether you fill out your paperwork or not.
Again, this is all automated. We don’t have to do anything. This is just done 24 hours before. Whereas confirming that appointment with an, with excitement they’re coming in for that appointment this is day one now. So 20 minutes after they arrived to that appointment, they’re getting a text message with the link to download their SCAD app because skid sinks with CLA now.
So we’re doing their nerve muscle HRV valuations on day one. So that information is being some great to their scat app that they’re downloading part of that day one process. So when they get through the day one, and they’re about to leave, our team is showing them that they can see those scans now in their app, they can share those with their family and friends.
They leave for that appointment. So two hours after they arrived to that appointment, they’re already gone. Now they get a video for me saying recapping what the, what was covered on day one and just building excitement into day two, when they’re coming back for their report of findings and their new patient orientation.
That increases retention immensely, all automated, all goes automatically. So then the day before the report of findings or getting another text message reminder and information on where to come, that they should bring their spouse. And this is really important. All this is automatic. They come into the report of findings.
We closed that whole scenario out. They start care, they leave. They automatically get another email with a video, congratulating them on this process. And we’re just excited to start this journey with them. That’s excellent. Their experience is excellent. They’re going to tell way more people they’re going to commit to care.
They’ve created agreements now. We made it convenient for them to move their appointments around. I don’t care if they reschedule 10 times this week, as long as they come in twice or three times or whatever the recommendations. And we’ve got a 99 plus percent show up rate using this model about letting them move their appointment around, but still making the number of visits that they need to that week.
So you just have to be more excellent. You have to work at it. So what it took for us to create that system in our practice to be automated and to have all the videos, it took a lot of work, but it’s a one-time lift, I’m not doing it every single. I don’t have to hire somebody in. Watch the screen.
And every time a new patient schedules go into Gmail and send them an email and make sure you attach this video. That’s how we used to do it 10 years ago. Now you just build systems. We build great systems that allow us to scale and automate so we can move forward and just get to the next level.
And ultimately just chip away at that 27.5 million kids in the United States. Are receiving medical, regular medical attention. And if we don’t get to them now, they’re going to be 27.5 sick adults that are income to us when they’re 30 to 40 years old. And you’re going to tell them the same thing.
And they’re going to say, why the heck didn’t somebody tell me 20 years ago? How come nobody ever told me this? How many times do you guys, if you’re not hearing that you’re not speaking from the heart enough. You’re not sharing the story enough. How come somebody didn’t tell me. Every time. I hear that drives me to just do more.
Do you know, even if we’re going to an event and we’re like, eh, we’re probably going to get no new people from this event, but it gives us a chance to speak truth and chiropractic and subluxation to 50 people. I’m going, we’re going. We’re going to invest in it. We’re going to do it. Cause those 50 people need to hear the chiropractic story.
The chiropractic message. Even if it doesn’t like directly bring new patients that day, all of that comes back to you. And ultimately we just need to educate more people. That’s our goal doctors teacher, and we need to teach more people about the power of their own body to heal. So hopefully you got something out of this today.
If anything, just more fired up on chiropractic and the mission now is bigger than ever, and it’s growing every single day. And you have a unique skillset and ability to impact so many people’s lives. Just keep using it. Keep speaking from the heart, sharing your story and serving more people every single day.
So don’t miss the next show. Look to the children. I’m filming it on the first Thursday of each month. And Dr. Monika is the third Thursday of every month. You’re not going to want to miss there. She brings so much value in science and real world practical things you can use to see more kids every single day in your practice and provide better results in a better experience.
So thanks again to ChiroSecure for hosting. Look to the Children. We hope you guys have a fantastic month and we’ll see you.