Palm Harbor Local
Welcome to Palm Harbor Local—where we celebrate the heart and soul of our community by sharing the stories of the incredible small businesses that make Palm Harbor thrive.
Hosted by Donnie Hathaway, a Florida native, real estate expert, and passionate community builder, this podcast is all about Building Community—connecting people, businesses, and ideas that shape our town.
Each episode, we sit down with local entrepreneurs, business owners, and changemakers to dive into their journeys—the dreams that sparked their businesses, the challenges they’ve overcome, and the impact they’re making. From brand-new startups to long-standing local favorites, we uncover what makes these businesses special and why they matter to the community.
Whether you're a fellow entrepreneur, a proud Palm Harbor resident, or someone who just loves supporting local, this podcast is your inside look at the passion, dedication, and creativity fueling our local economy.
Because strong businesses build strong communities.
Join us as we shine a light on the people behind the businesses, share valuable insights, and inspire you to engage, support, and grow alongside your community.
Subscribe now and be part of the movement to Build Community, one story at a time.
Palm Harbor Local
Chiropractic, Mindset & Wellness: The Story of Mana Chiropractic
In this episode of Palm Harbor Local, host Donnie Hathaway sits down with Dr. Dyllon Mawn, owner of Mana Chiropractic, with locations in St. Pete and Dunedin. Dyllon shares his early introduction to chiropractic care, how it changed his family's health, and why he felt called to pursue it as a career.
We dive deep into:
✔️ Dyllon’s first adjustment at 15 and how it shaped his future.
✔️ The philosophy behind chiropractic care and its impact on overall wellness.
✔️ The difference between traditional and "principled" chiropractic approaches.
✔️ How Mana Chiropractic evolved into a thriving wellness practice.
✔️ The connection between mindset, movement, and long-term health.
If you’ve ever been curious about chiropractic care beyond just pain relief, this episode is for you!
Stroll through the laid-back streets of the Palm Harbor community with this informative podcast, proudly brought to you by Donnie Hathaway with The Hathaway Group, your trusted guide and local expert in navigating the diverse and ever-changing property landscape of Palm Harbor.
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Welcome to Palm Harbor Local, where we bring you inspiring stories from the heart of our community. I'm your host, donnie Hathaway, and today we are joined by Dylan Mon, who is the owner of Monarch Chiropractic, with locations in St Pete and Dunedin. Now our show is all about celebrating those who put in the sweat, overcome the hurdles and still find time to give back to the community. If you want to be inspired by how they got started, what keeps them going and what they're doing to make Palm Harbor even more awesome, you're in the right place. In today's episode, we'll talk with Dylan about the story of his first adjustment, why Dylan believed so strongly in chiropractic care and how monochiropractic became what it is today. Now be sure to follow us on Instagram at palmharborlocal for behind the scenes content and join our weekly newsletter at palmharborlocalcom. Let's go meet Dylan. Dylan, welcome to Palm Harbor Local. Man Excited to have you here.
Speaker 2:It is great to be on. I'm excited to be here as well.
Speaker 1:So it's been a. I was just thinking about this before, but we've been talking about doing this podcast for quite some time, and just life got in the way and stuff.
Speaker 2:Yes, Well, life hurricanes, children running a business, expanding a business, just all the things Like. I think I first caught wind of Palm Harbor podcast when Dr Caleb was on. Yeah, and he was like dude, you got to get out on this podcast, you got to meet this guy and it's been like in my field since then. And here we are, maybe a year later, and like finally making it happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's all right, man, it's a life happens and yeah, I'm excited we're here. So you're, you're a chiropractor. I want to start there and, like we were just talking about, from the chiropractors that I've spoken with and I've had on the podcast and stuff, they've all kind of came into chiropractics like later on in their career or they like in college, like they're trying to figure out what they wanted to do, and then met somebody who was in chiropractors and then, you know, took off from there.
Speaker 2:Your story is different, like you've, you've known about chiropractic from an early age and been involved with it from an early age, right, so for me, um, I found chiropractic when I was 15 years old, when, um, I wasn't looking for it for myself, which is part of the reason why we do certain things in our practice the way that we do. Um, my, I grew up in a blue collar family home. My dad owns a landscaping law maintenance company, Um, and the story essentially goes that my mom was tired of hearing him complain about his back pain and said, like listen, there's this chiropractor in town. I hear good things about it. I think this guy could really help you go schedule an appointment. Um, my dad goes and schedules an appointment, lands in a chiropractor's office that I now understand to be what we call a principled chiropractor in the industry, and essentially all that means is there is a variety of a spectrum, uh, for how to practice. Chiropractic is why you can walk into one office and experience one thing, walk into another office and experience something totally different. Um, that spectrum, um, we'll have some chiropractors sort of being what we call accident chasers, where they're just kind of chasing car accidents and picking up the, uh, the pieces that are there. Um, you have some chiropractors that are more rehab focused, where it's like, uh, following around athletes and um, people that are getting injuries that way, or maybe older people and kind of trying to rehab injuries when they inevitably happen. And then you have some chiropractors that are focused on more holistic health and healing, and that's going to be where you're called your principled chiropractor, which basically means we have a philosophy on how health and healing works and we practice chiropractic within that philosophy.
Speaker 2:This chiropractor back in the day for my story happened to be a principal chiropractor, and so what that meant was, even though my dad came in looking for help with his back pain, what he got was so much more than that, and what he got was education and understanding how health and healing works in his body, and not only that for him before his whole family.
Speaker 2:And so, uh, the doc, dr Matt Simons, uh, the guy who got it all started for me, um, he invited our whole family to come in and sort of learn this principle of health and healing. Okay, and I remember I was 15 years old I'm sitting in the back of the room while he's giving this class, of which we are actually developing videos for, um, but he's giving this class and he's teaching you like, hey, your body's designed to heal, your body's not designed to be sick, and then talking about what does it mean when you are sick and how your body's trying to respond and heal and process something I remember the big aha for me was when he talked about just the common cold.
Speaker 2:Right, the common cold, when your body sort of is fighting a virus and so it creates a fever, it creates a runny nose, it creates a headache, body aches, all these symptoms of your body responding to fight the virus, and in Western culture what we take is we take medicines to reduce those symptoms and that being this like symptom-based care, and so it just inspired me. I understood that there was something different for how to facilitate health and healing. My dad went on to have a pretty miraculous story with this chiropractor. Um, about a month into care, all of the pharmaceuticals that he was on for his uh, diabetes actually was dropped by 50 or 75% by changing nothing else in his lifestyle yet just getting adjusted. And that sort of got me really curious. I started asking questions and learning how, when the brain and the body are connected to one another, the body can heal, and then kind of took that down as far as the rabbit hole would go.
Speaker 2:I started interning with this chiropractor and volunteering with him. My now wife, then girlfriend, had migraines at the time. So I was like listen, I know that this could help my girlfriend. Can I volunteer for you to like pay for her care? You know, I was just. I understood this concept and I just wanted to get it, the message out to the world and everyone that I could help. And that was the beginning of the end for me. You know I was 15, then I'm about to turn 33 next week, and so for over half my life I've been growing in this principle, that is, the chiropractic principle. And how can I get better at delivering this to more people, so that more people can discover that their body heals naturally and on the inside?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Were you so at 15, like this is when you were like curious about it and started interning and stuff with with him. Yeah, when does that curiosity come from? Like, are you just curious by nature?
Speaker 2:I think I think so. Um, I I found spirituality in like fourth or fifth grade which, being an adult and kind of looking back to when I was, um, starting to get really involved with the church, and kind of have those like early memories. You know you, you go back and you're like involved with the church and kind of have those like early memories. You know you go back and you're like was I?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no.
Speaker 2:I remember those thoughts and I can. I remember the childhood, dylan, that was contemplating ideas of God and truth and reality, and I think it always just kind of evolved with me. Like you know, you have a fifth graders mind, but I just always had questions. I was always very curious about what's real, what's true, um, what are we here for? Um and from from a young age I do think that was just always in my nature.
Speaker 1:I worked with this chiropractor at an early age, and then you went to school immediately after, after you graduated high school.
Speaker 2:So after high school I went to undergrad. I had a full ride for undergrad with a like prepaid stuff and some scholarships, and so I figured I wasn't in a huge hurry. I wasn't going to go straight into chiropractic school. I wanted to have a more normal college experience. And to my mom's notion she was like, listen, you've wanted to do this since you were 15, but who knows, maybe you'll change your mind Like let's keep the field open, right? So I went to UCF for undergrad. Never changed my major once. I was like, just on a one track shot of get out of my way, get me my degree. I want to be a chiropractor. I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to help people heal this way for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and did you so? Going to chiropractic school, did you learn like the different, like you're talking about before, like the different modalities of way to practice chiropractic?
Speaker 2:So chiropractic school is it's going to. It gave me the baseline knowledge. So the chiropractic school a lot of school is actually very similar to all doctor school, meaning whether you become an MD, a DO, a DC, these are all portal of entry doctors and so we need to be able to like catch anything that would come in that might be a red flag or something super serious. Chiropractic school does a really good job at preparing you to catch those things. It does a good job at making sure that you're not going to hurt anyone. It does a good job at making sure that you'll be a mediocre chiropractor. School is not set up to make you great and, coming from a great chiropractor, I figured this out rather quickly. I looked around and I saw both my peers and colleagues and even like the teachers that were teaching it, it was like fairly lackluster. I was lucky that the school that I went to has the most clubs and seminars that would come through out of any other school.
Speaker 2:And so I got very involved with extracurricular clubs, finding teachers that would travel through different seminar circuits, and it got to a place where, just a couple months into school, I was traveling more weekends than I was staying local.
Speaker 2:I ended up doing 60 chiropractic seminars while I was in school and I started to figure out for me that it was like, okay, school is going to get me the degree, school is going to get me to pass the boards and it's going to get me to like check the boxes, but if I really want to do this in a big way, the way that I've seen other chiropractors doing this, it's going to take me getting outside of school and learning from people that are doing it the way that I want to do it. Um, when I unlocked that, that's when everything changed for me. Um, and so chiropractic school ended up being this four year process for me that I just started to change um and really started to dive deeper into who I was. I really found myself. It's like it was this process of you know my whole life I'm visualizing towards wanting to become a chiropractor and I'm at the very end of this thing before I'm finally about to be a chiropractor, and I can never undo that.
Speaker 2:So, what I realized was school was this like initiation process? I discovered breath work. I discovered the art of facilitating hands-on healing, which is it's a wild phenomenon. It's it's wild to be able to place your hands on someone and to feel what they're feeling. Um, I remember, I remember the me before I knew that that was possible and learning that it's possible to lay your hands on someone and to know what they're feeling.
Speaker 2:And like going through different trainings and experiences of having people lay down and pick an emotion and feel that emotion and without me knowing what emotion they're feeling, feeling what emotion they're feeling, feeling what emotion they're feeling, it starts to really. For me, it started to really challenge a lot of my previous conceived beliefs of what was real and what wasn't real. Yeah, and then I started to question every single belief that I had ever had, especially if it was a belief that was maybe given to me, right, Um, that maybe I learned um in religion, or maybe learned in a book, or maybe learned in a podcast, like anything that I knew that I hadn't found on my own. I was like, okay, let's unpack that a little bit more.
Speaker 1:Let's dive deeper.
Speaker 2:And in diving deeper, I just um, uh, I found. I found who I was in chiropractic school. I left chiropractic school very different than I entered Um. I left being someone that um was just like all the way in the deep end of you know. Even the human experience right here is like rather weird.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Um and so kind of took everything off the table of what's normal and what's not normal, and I think that put me in a good place to being able to be a provider for people, because everyone's coming in with their own unique story and when you're more open to listening to that, I find that that's when people start to process and hear and feel exactly what they need to, which allows them to change specifically to them. There's no single person that has gone through the exact same healing experience. In my practice, everything is unique and that just comes from recognizing that we're all having a unique experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So a couple of things I want to dive into there. One is school. Do you think school should do more to set you up to be a better, to be a great chiropractor?
Speaker 2:Yes and no I'm. I'm of the notion of like taking radical responsibility, and so the no in me is just like everyone can just figure it out.
Speaker 1:You know, I had the exact same resources that everyone else had and I was able to do what I did with it.
Speaker 2:The way that I did, um, the yes part is, you know, yeah, there's a lot more that's being left on the table. It's it's a watered down version, um, but when you create something that is that large and designed to be reproducible across the board, how much can you get out of it? Yeah, true.
Speaker 2:You know it's, chiropractic is a philosophy, a science and an art, and so I think that school should do a very good job at um making sure that everyone knows the philosophy, everyone knows the science and everyone has an opportunity to explore the art. Yeah, Um because different chiropractors are going to practice differently and different arts just have to be fostered from within true?
Speaker 1:yeah, that makes sense. It makes sense. I feel like I was thinking back to, like you know, real estate school, although it's like much different than chiropractic school, but same thing like we always joke about, like you don't learn anything you learn in real estate school, like it's not usable in in what you're doing and a lot of it's not yeah, I find that that's most professional schools. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The schooling is just a little bit behind it and so it's like, yeah, well, we'd like to do it for sure and there's other ways to get through it. I think that the gauntlet of school, of just like proving that you can go through this long, committed process and not give up and have the multiple exams and finals it's like we've gone through things to experience, you know, different heartache that just kind of causes you to level up in different ways in your own just human development.
Speaker 1:And maybe it's just like the school is just like the foundation of whatever you're you're going for, right, and then you explore whatever you want to do after that.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I like that. So so talk to me about like the. When I first met dr caleb and and you know he was kind of explaining like what you guys do and how you guys practice and everything but like the, the art of, uh, like feeling someone, like when they're on the table and stuff, and knowing what needs to be adjusted, like how does that?
Speaker 2:so a lot of this comes with, uh, training the intuitive mind. You have your um, you have your intellect and then you have your intuition. These are both two different parts of your mind. Everyone's experienced both. You've experienced when you know something because you've learned something and oh, I know that information Um, we spend a lot of our life building up our intellect. We've also all experienced just having that gut feeling and that gut knowing. You've had plenty of times that it's been right right.
Speaker 2:What I've learned is, as you build up the intellect, you have capacity for the intuition, right, and so school does a really good job at giving you all of the stuff you need to build up your intellect.
Speaker 2:School taught me what muscles connect to what muscles, what parts of the body is controlled by other parts of the stuff you need to build up your intellect. School taught me what muscles connect to what muscles, what parts of the body is controlled by other parts of the body. Like, school gave me the whole roadmap, right, if you will. Yeah, the intuition comes in in learning how to simply take what you know and just listen and be present with it, right, and so the more that I know the body, the easier it is for me to come up and not look for anything but to allow the body to talk to me, right. In the same way, you told me earlier that you've been doing these podcasts for five years, right, you know when a conversation is just starting to get good you know when it's like, okay, I've got this framework that I'm going to be building off of, but then we might go totally off the framework and just kind of follow this organic thing.
Speaker 2:You can start to feel when it just starts to happen, there's a good conversation happening. That same thing happens with me and my people every time that they're on the table, but with my hands, in the same way that you can give someone a hug that you know well and you can tell if that person's having a good day or a bad day, if they're on or off. No one had to teach you that, you could just feel it. We've trained our hands to start to get there Right, and so the way that we do that in our practice is everything is connection based. So at no point in time are we just trying to take you through a process or just trying to have a means to an end. Every time it's about how can I connect with you and how can I get you to connect better to the present moment. Now, the beauty of the person that is trying to connect you to that present moment is that person is someone who understands more about your body than you even understand yourself, and so, in the pathway of bringing you to you and bringing you from being out here to being in here and present and connected with yourself. That pathway inward, there's going to be lessons along the way. Those lessons along the way, some of them can be learned in an instant, in a moment when that adjusting force comes through and you feel your body move differently and all of a sudden it's like, oh wow, I didn't know my body could move that way and maybe maybe, cognitively and intellectually, you feel something different. That is now teaching your neurology how to move in that pattern. Then you couple that in with the education on being told like you're holding your body in all these different ways. Now you're also learning to shift things outside of it. It becomes a journey where the chiropractor is just your guide to bring you into more harmony with yourself.
Speaker 2:And how we do that at Mana is by discovering where is there a disconnect between you and the functional you. Why the functional you? Because the machine that is the body has correct ways of working and incorrect ways of working. When the incorrect ways of working are happening for too long, it leads to pain. The pain leads to you coming in to find me. I help you to understand that pain is from these dysfunctional movement patterns. When you get them moving right, you start to feel better, but you're also more connected to yourself. So it's just like two-part journey, where it's like you're trying to get out of pain, I'm trying to bring you back oscillation with your body, the you in your head, the you and your heart, connecting with the you and your body. And when all of that's moving in frequency and harmony, now we have true opportunity for healing, where you feel a heck of a lot better and you're thinking better, you're moving better, you're making better decisions. It's really really, really fascinating to see how people change when you get everything vibing at the same frequency.
Speaker 1:Yeah, does that take? Like, how long does that? Typically is there, like you know it takes, you know, a couple of weeks or so it's different from person to person.
Speaker 2:Um, there, it's very much so a process. What I will see is the people that want it more, we'll get into it more. The people that are resistance of it more will have a uh, it'll take more time, typically within a month or so. That's when people are really starting to have big changes. Um, you're feeling a lot better in two to three weeks. You're feeling a lot different in three to four weeks. And when people start to have those changes, that's when we start to have them through the momentum phase, where now it's easy to just add things on top.
Speaker 2:When was your first adjustment 14, 15 years old.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, so right when your dad was going yeah, crazy, and you've been did you stick with being adjusted regularly at that age?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've essentially been getting adjusted since I was 14, 15. Um, right, whenever the family kind of found it, and um, I'd say, the longest I've gone without an adjustment is probably less than a month, um, since then.
Speaker 1:And you, how often do you write Like if you're, if you're on schedule, how often do you get?
Speaker 2:if I'm on schedule, I get adjusted once a week. Once a week, yep, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:That's what I've been doing. Now is once a week, but yeah, I would say like I noticed the changes. It'd probably be like a month in, right, it was probably, you know, three, four weeks in is like when I started to notice, like just feeling better, not having like the because I came in because of my neck was tense and whatever sure um so like just feeling more relaxed and more comfortable, good like three, four weeks in good for me what I do.
Speaker 2:I use it a bit more now for learning about myself, um, knowing that every single adjustment is changing my brain, that every adjustment is creating more neuroplastic change, which is the ability for the brain to change over time. I like to lay on the table and just start by breathing and noticing where is breath maybe moving differently from one side of my body to another? Where do things feel stuck? I like to play a little game of almost like feeling. Where do I notice things feel stuck? I like to play a little game of almost like feeling. Where do I notice things feel, um, not at ease in my body? And then, where does the doc feel it? Um, I like to kind of feel that connection between the two. And and then just like learning, you know learning. What do they feel in my system? How can I feel things open up differently? Um, the more present that I am with my adjustment, the deeper the adjustment always goes. It's just like a little moment to shut everything else off and to just be fully present with myself.
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Speaker 2:So that's actually a great question. Instead of telling them or instead of seeing if they find it, I am actually asking myself the question what are they going to discover about this? This is a good one for us to get into. I'm feeling something. This is a good one for us to get into. I'm feeling something. What I understand about the body is I know that I could be feeling something in that area, but that might not be the area where it needs an adjusted thrust, and so I'm going to take this into my hands of like okay, I know that I feel that there, but I know it's also connected to other things. What are they going to feel so that I can learn about how I can change up my movement patterns outside of here? Right, so I'll intentionally not tell them where I'm feeling it, but I'm also intentionally not seeing. Will they find it? Rather, I'm seeing they're going to find it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What are they going to be able to tell me about what I'm feeling, so that I can change the way that I'm moving between sessions? Um, and every time, what's funny is, even if, like the joint, that I wanted them to pop, because that was where I felt that if I didn't feel it right there, if it didn't get popped right there, if I'm just quiet, give it 10 to 15 minutes. A few minutes later, my body's like that's exactly what you needed. And it kind of dials everything in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, because I've done that with, with caleb too, where it's like I I'll let him, kind of, like you know, do his his, his thing or whatever, and and I would, I would agree like same thing, like, even if it's not like oh, that was like you adjusted that spot, or whatever, or like my shoulder or something like that. Um, it usually like later that day or the next day, like it's, it's gone.
Speaker 2:It all. It's all interconnected. It's just these high points where you feel like the tension point but it's, all interconnected, and as long as that gets unwound then it's going to be better. Yeah.
Speaker 1:What do you love about chiropractic?
Speaker 2:Ooh, the thing that I love the most about it is how it can help people to experience more of themselves. Um, I thought that I loved chiropractic just as being another holistic healing modality. What I love the most about chiropractic is watching people feel themselves. Um, that's the biggest fascination that I find in it. When I see people take that deep breath, um, have that release, feel that like that, that that elated feeling of like, oh, that was it, and now I can just breathe and be there, that's my favorite part.
Speaker 1:I like that. I like that. So you guys recently changed to to Monica chiropractic. How long have you um been? Uh, did you? Did you start your business like right out of school, or did you practice elsewhere?
Speaker 2:So when I graduated school I moved out to Oakland, california, to join a couple of friends of mine in their practice. I was an associate. The practice was called the Source Chiropractic and at the time there was two locations, one in Oakland and one in Denver. The vision was always to build, like a franchise or a practice management group, something to kind of take these systems out to the masses. And while I was an associate out at the Source in Oakland, we had COVID hit and so that radically changed everything. We kind of like rebuilt the business structure and really just dialed it all in Before I was ready to leave. We wanted to take it and turn it into a franchise. The guys that were about starting that was Dr Brett, dr Darren and Dr Jordan. They asked me if I wanted to do it with them. They asked me if I want to be the fourth franchisor and help them to. You know, take this brand nationwide.
Speaker 2:Um, in my time working with them out in Oakland, um, I had always planned to go off and do my own thing. Um, but I really loved the thing that we were creating. We had a lot of fun doing it. Um, I felt really inspired by the brand and the mission, and so I said you know what this feels, right, let's, let's go ahead and do this. Um, I decided to join them in that mission.
Speaker 2:Um, and man, the truth is just starting a franchise is it's hard?
Speaker 2:Um, starting like a big business, like that's really tough.
Speaker 2:Um, and I just started to realize, as we were launching the business out here, first we started with the source in St Pete and, man, we crushed the small business, local stuff, so well that a year later we already launched the source in Dunedin and I had just really fallen in love with being a small business owner. Um, I put so much energy and passion and grit into all the things that we could do in our local communities that I was losing momentum and energy for, like the bigger picture of it all. Um, there was a number of things that I wanted to do to to continue changing the business. The problem is is, when you're launching a franchise, that much change, that quickly, kind of it doesn't give it enough stability. And so I realized that the franchise mission was just not in alignment for me, that I was much more inspired to stay local and to kind of focus everything here, that there was too many things that I wanted to change too quickly and that I was not just an artist, as a chiropractor, but also as a business owner.
Speaker 2:And I needed like to just express some artistic expression and the ability to change some things, and so talked to the whole team, felt where they were at with it. Everyone felt really good with wanting to branch off and create our own thing. And so we've rebuilt our initial exam process. We are rebuilding our long-term care process. We're bringing in some new technology that's measuring the nervous system differently. Um, we built, uh, some different long-term offerings for our wellness clients, just kind of like wanting to change a number of things, and in all of the changing, it's like this just isn't the source anymore.
Speaker 2:Um this is something that's turned into something new, and we decided to name that Mono Chiropractic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool. Did you ever want to be a business owner? Was that always part of the plan?
Speaker 2:Being a business owner was always part of it. I grew up in uh in a small business family.
Speaker 1:And so I've never seen mom and dad.
Speaker 2:They both ran the business together. So I've never seen like a steady paycheck. I've never seen um just like clocking in and clocking out is dinner talks. Uh uh, business talks at the dinner table every night.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what do you like about? About being a business owner?
Speaker 2:Uh, the freedom, you know. Um the freedom to, to have just radical expression, um staying fully authentic with who I am, what I'm doing, um only really myself and my clients to answer to. When I say freedom, I don't mean the freedom to work less either. Um, I think that's the biggest misconception for business people. Like I want to get new business ownership so I don't have to work this 40 hours. You know, nine to five, yeah, like I want to get new business ownership so I don't have to work this 40 hours, you know 9 to 5.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like.
Speaker 2:I work more. I'm working on the thing that I want to all the time, right, and I still have the freedom to create exactly what it is that I want to create. I like betting on myself. I've got a high risk tolerance. I'd rather bet it all on me and we'll see where we land. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'd rather bet it all on me and we'll see where we land. Yeah, and maybe that falls back to like your you mentioned like early on, like being able to like discovering yourself like the end of chiropractic school right, like having confidence in, like who you are, where you're going, what you want to do. You're just like, I'll make it happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think if your vision's clear, you can accomplish anything. That's one of the things that we do as a team. Every single year.
Speaker 2:we do our vision quest at the beginning of the year where we go out of town we just had it this last weekend we go out of town and we spend the entire week and focusing on three things.
Speaker 2:First piece is just connection with each other and connection with ourselves. The second piece is visualizing like where do we want to actually take this business? And so that's by looking at our numbers from the year prior and then projecting into where are we going in this next year, as well as what are the things that we did this last year that worked really well and what are the things we want to implement going into this next year. And then the last thing that we do is we work on just personal growth, and so two years ago we did human design. Last year we did a strengths analysis test. This year, uh, we had just done, uh, the enneagrams. But it's always something to unpack something deeper in, like our psyche or our strengths and like how we operate in the world, because when the team is that dialed in, it just sets us up for success every year, so if the vision's clear you're, you're on track.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did you? What did? What have you, um like, think back to your childhood. What is one thing that you think you learned from your parents, like in those dinner talks, or just them being business owners?
Speaker 2:I'd say the biggest thing I take away from being raised in my parents' home and the way that they run a business is how they always like put their team first. My parents owned a landscaping and law maintenance company, but every single year there was still a Christmas dinner. Right, and even employees that were maybe newer on the team that you're not supposed to have a Christmas bonus until you've been on the team for six months. My mom would still always give a Christmas bonus, even if they had only been there for a month or two.
Speaker 2:she would just prorate it Right, um, but in that industry there really isn't even a Christmas dinner you know, Um like my parents don't even speak full Spanish, but they would still bring the whole team out inviting their families, always with like plus one, plus two, like bring the whole crew. I remember being at Christmas dinner parties of like 50 people, of which 10 of them speak English and everyone else only speaks Spanish. It's just this big party and watching everyone feel really happy and connected with like that always really just stuck out to me as like, okay, that's something that a boss could do, that's different. Um, that just makes people feel appreciated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you get, um, you get buy-in from your, from your team members, right, they want to be there and, and and are excited to be there and excited to, to you know, live out that mission that you have.
Speaker 2:It's gotta be about about more than just a job. If it's just a job, at the end of the day it's always just going to get flat, it's going to get stale. Um, but if you're building something where this is year after year, it's valuable for the team members to be on the team. Then, year after year, that's going to also have a trickle down effect that it's valuable for your clients to still be involved If the team's growing then the whole thing grows.
Speaker 1:If the team starts to get stagnant, everything else also gets stagnant. I think more business owners need to understand like that aspect of it right, because they they get so focused on just trying to make a dollar and trying to make the business grow, whatever they forget about who's making the business grow.
Speaker 2:Right, you know everyone can feel that too. Yeah, I talked to so many other um, even just chiropractors or other team members where it's like I can, I feel like everything that my boss wants to do is just about the bottom line. Um, and if that's what it always feels like, you start to build a team of people that feel like they're just working for you, just working on like you helping you get your nut. Um, if, if it ever turns into that, like I'll be out of business. That's not what.
Speaker 1:I'm here for. It's just too empty of a life for me. Yeah, so bringing on staff or bringing on other chiropractors, how has that process been for you, like any tips, anything that's worked for you to find those right people that fit. I think that's the hardest part, right, like finding people that fit. Think that's the hardest part, right, like finding people, um, that fit. You know you're gonna hire culture.
Speaker 2:You know it's. It's like hiring culture is a big thing for me. Um, let me see so you focus on.
Speaker 1:So it's culture, like that's your number one, like they've got to fit the culture, yeah, then they've got to have the skill set or the knowledge or whatever like they've got to have the basic skill set Um, um.
Speaker 2:So for docs, you have to have the skills, you have to have the culture, you have to have the principle. Um docs like I have a very, very narrow, um uh, a narrow pool of which I'm hiring from. There's very few docs that I'll hire to join our team. Um, for CAs, that's been more of a learning process because you're finding, like, who fits this other aspect of your team. I am a chiropractor and so I know what my chiropractic team is gaining or lacking right. But in my CAs I've actually found that hiring also from within the client base has been where I've found some of my best CAs.
Speaker 2:Oh, really yeah where I'm found some of my best CAs. Oh really, yeah. Um, so my best CAs are CAs that have been clients first, have experienced this work, have, uh, this sort of like just heart for it, heart for it in, like, a way of like really enjoying it, desiring it, seeing how helpful this can be to other people. It's like if I can hire the heart, I can teach the mind. Um, if I can hire the passion, I can teach the skills. Um, but I can't teach passion, I can't teach alignment. Um, we, we, our team, like, we live our life a certain way. Like no one on my team has had an antibiotic in years, if not decades, um, there's not a pharmaceutical anywhere in my house, right. And while I can't like legally hire someone and say, hey, listen, right.
Speaker 2:And while I can't like legally hire someone and say, hey, listen, you need to be all in on this team, it's, it's not that, but it's like there's this unspoken of we're all on this same team, living life with the same values, and as long as there's that, we have a lot of alignment. And if we have this alignment, then I can teach the skills that need to be fostered.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I was talking to Caleb about the pharmaceuticals or someone. But, um, I had been to a CVS or something recently and, uh, to pick up some, some antibiotics for our daughter when she was going through some stuff, and um, like in that moment, I walked into the CVS and you know you go to the pharmacy in the back or whatever and the amount of prescriptions that were filled and like ready to be, you know, picked up in that one CVS was like insane.
Speaker 1:And I'm looking at this I'm like it is wild, it's a lot, man, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a lot. I uh, I can't remember the last time that I took anything as much as even something over the counter.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's the piece of like, just stacking compounding wellness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:We're all very familiar with what what it looks like to have compounding illness and sickness that's been stacked on we. We see these people walking around, but what you can also know is like you can stack compounding wellness as well, and so when I get sick which it happens, I can, just I can pile through you know, I'm okay.
Speaker 2:I can be uncomfortable for a few hours. I can be uncomfortable for a couple of days. Um, I've had a headache before. Um, I can have a headache and I can ride the wave and just experience it.
Speaker 2:But what's nice is I don't think actually I can confidently say that I've never been sick enough that I've gotten worried, and I'm realizing that not a lot of people feel that way, that plenty of people like you start to get sick and like there's a, there's a point in time when, like, people get a little worried. If you've ever been sick enough that you've gone to the ER, you've been sick enough that, like you, got worried. And if you're living a life such that you've ended up in a place where this sickness has made you worried to the point of I might need to go to the ER or the urgent care or something, cause I just don't know, you've left a lot on the table for a long time. That's just the blunt reality of it. Um, that you've been living unhealthy for a long time, that's now. This is possible, yeah, um, but if you're living healthy for a long time, that's way less likely.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Way less likely.
Speaker 1:So what are you doing to, besides getting your adjustments and stuff weekly, what else are you doing to, like, take care of you? That's like your, you know top three, top five things like health habits.
Speaker 2:Totally Um. For me, the number one thing is your thoughts, your thoughts and your mindset. Everyone wants to go with all the different things you can like, add in on top of that, but thoughts and mindset. If you're eating well, moving well, but you still think terrible thoughts about yourself or about your life and you're waiting for the shoe to drop, you'll still just constantly keep manifesting that, and so I'm a delusional optimist. Milton flooded our house. I haven't been in my house for however many months that's been.
Speaker 2:Um but I'm a delusional optimist and like life genuinely is good. Uh, when my clients ask me how are things going, the knee jerk reaction is thanks for feeling good. I'm good, um. Next thing is I stay moving Right, um, and it's just an active lifestyle. Uh, I'm not. I'm not Caleb, and so Caleb's in the gym nine days a week. He's in the gym nine days a week, and that was not a typo there.
Speaker 1:He's in the gym nine days a week. That's not quite me.
Speaker 2:But I stay active. In no way would anyone describe my lifestyle as sedentary. I'm moving every day quite a bit. I've got push days, I've got rest days, but I'm moving every day quite a bit. I've got push days, I've got rest days, but I'm moving every single day. And then eating real foods. Right, I stay away from the seed oils, I definitely stay away from anything processed, and in the middle of the grocery store I still like some ice cream here and there. I'm still living life. I'm a bit more well rounded, if you will, but my meals are based on living food. Living food. Drink water, eat living food, move your body, get adjusted, have positive thoughts. It's not that hard.
Speaker 1:What are you so your positive thoughts or mindset, like what are you doing to control that? Like, keep that in check?
Speaker 2:staying curious, and I believe there might even be a soundbite between you and Dr Evan, because he's another one that's big on curiosity. But saying curious, I am not a delusional optimist in the sense of just lying to myself, but delusionally optimistic about the fact that there is some way, shape or form, that this is happening for me and I'm gonna figure out how I'm gonna pull the goodness out of this. I'm going to live through, how I'm going to pull the goodness out of this. I'm going to live through this experience, and with gratitude, and if I can accomplish that, then there's going to be something good in this for me. So that's that's where it's just like staying curious and trying to understand. Um, how can I experience more out of whatever the situation?
Speaker 1:is Love. That Do you. Is that mindset always been there for you? Or is that something you learned like in school, or I think for me it actually started with religion.
Speaker 2:Um, I grew up in like, uh, a pretty religious Christian home. Um, uh, story continues to go back to pops, and so dad was, um, dad was an alcoholic found recovery Um, recovery and chiropractic just a few years apart from one another. But he found recovery and a lot of that was with the church. And so at a young age I was just watching things happen in my family's life and no one had to convince me if God was real or not. I watched my parents go from dysfunctional and problematic to functional and loving each other and like steering our family in the right direction. And the addition, there was this God character and this book that we're now reading and studying, and these good people that are coming into our lives, kind of like making my parents better, making me better. I'm like, okay, this God thing seems to fit Um and in, in going into that and just kind of like learning about that. That's where the, the discovery for truth, just kind of started. So I was always curious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think it's a big thing. Like people just need to be curious at all times, right, I think that can lead to so much growth and discovery. Um, if you're just curious, yeah, yeah, I love it. Okay, so your, I've only been to actually I took that back. I've been to one of the chiropractic clinic before, but the way you guys operate and your your open concept, right, where everyone is getting adjusted in the same room yes, is that, is that normal for, like, your style of chiropractic, or is that just something that you guys have done?
Speaker 2:It's something that we've developed. It's I don't know if it's so. Our style of chiropractic just isn't normal. Yeah, like that's definitely one qualifying piece. I couldn't find you a doc in every major city in the US. The practice is like that, like practicing like that. Okay, so like just qualifying that.
Speaker 1:You, I couldn't find you a doc in every major city in the U S and like kind of like practicing like that.
Speaker 2:Okay, so like just qualifying that, um, many that are blending the more structural work with the energetic work. Um, I will see more in an open bay style and the reason for that is it just like gives the person some more time to process.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. Um, if you're going in for an adjustment and the adjustment sole purpose is to just move joints, I can do that really efficiently in a private room. Come in the room, just boom, boom, boom, boom, awesome, see you. Floor gives me the ability to not serve you on a specific schedule but serve you within the boundary of a schedule. So you might come in one day and you need some more time to lay on the table and process. Maybe you just need to breathe for a few minutes. Maybe I need to lay you on the blocks that we use and help gravity to unwind your pelvis for a bit longer. Maybe you're coming in and like life's just been a little bit heavy and today's an adjustment that like moves some emotion for you Rather than ushering you along and like being like, okay, I've only got this amount of time, like we've got to get through this. I can let you lay there and process. I can let you listen to the music, I can use some of my sprays and my smudges. Just let you be in the healing environment. And that's the other piece.
Speaker 2:Healing has always happened in an environment, right For millennia, when we were living as human beings of community, the way that healing would happen in tribal space, would be more ritualistic, and so there was healing rituals and ceremonies. That was developed amongst human beings. It would always happen in a ceremony type setting, and so we like to create more of that environment where it's like hey, listen, we're all humans, we're all on this journey together, and with that, the piece is very often someone's laying on the table and they hear something from a doctor, two tables down, that they just needed to hear that day. That was like the perfect thing for them, and that's where everything's happening all at once, the exactly the way it needs to be. So that's the reason why we do it, yeah I like it well.
Speaker 1:I mean, one of the things I like about it is like there's been times when I you know, I think for I think the best adjustments that I've had are when I'm totally relaxed and open to the adjustment that day or whatever and I notice sometimes I'll come in there and I'll be a little tense and anxious or whatever, just for the day or the busyness of the schedule or whatever it is. But going in there and being able to lay on the table and just calm my breath down, take a few deep breaths and just kind of like, get into that, into that zone, um gives you that opportunity to do that. I agree, yeah, I love it. I love it. So what is last question here? What is one thing that you want people to know about chiropractic? What?
Speaker 2:is one thing that I want people to know about chiropractic, that I want people to know about chiropractic. The one thing I want people to know about chiropractic is that it is about the nervous system. If people knew what I knew about chiropractic, it would be the number one thing that anyone that values wellness would be building their wellness foundation from, and that is that it is for the nervous system. We are less interested in working on even the body. We are more interested on basically being the functional trainers of your nervous system. Every single time that you get adjusted, you are changing brain activity. Different parts of your spine stimulate different parts of the brain to change. When you get the brain to change, you get to unlock everything. Why do you get to unlock everything? Because everything that you experience in life you're experiencing through your five senses, through your nervous system.
Speaker 2:When your nervous system is stuck in a state of arousal which is where most people are at, it's typically a state of heightened arousal from the blue light on our phones, from the go go go society that we're in, from the poisons in our food, from the anxiety of constantly trying to catch that thing where I can constantly take. Like, get to that place where I can take a breath, like that's just our society, we're all we're. We're very oftenly stuck, ramped up and when you can tune the nervous system to slow that down and have a clear perception to reality, your entire life can change. Um, I get to watch it with my practice members that recognize it's not about just a single adjustment, but it's about this compounding wellness and it's just about continuing to work on my nervous system. The adjustment shifts, the nervous system changes. The nervous system allows for the body to be a clear filter of life, not a body that is stuck in hyper arousal. That just makes everything a lot worse and a lot more stressful.
Speaker 1:I love that and I love the idea of like compounding wellness too. I've never like heard that before or thought about it in that way, you know, but it's like it's just small wins and everything that you do, like your mindset, the adjustments, like moving your body, the food that you ingest, like you know, you're just compounding wellness, the more things that you can be compounding wellness in in life.
Speaker 2:Your life just starts to become really healthy. Yeah, as Healthy is a pattern, just like sickness is a pattern. Anytime that you've fallen into sickness, like most of the time when we do come down with something, we can also acknowledge it. It's like I haven't been sleeping as much. I've been pushing it a little harder. I wasn't eating all that great. I went out drinking last weekend and, like most of the time, it's like yeah, I knew there was some shit going around and I can also acknowledge that I've been off my game a little bit and so now my body's responding to that. You know, can we all be perfect all the time? No Right, we're here to live life, for sure, but recognizing like sickness hasn't happened to us, it's like it's it's always something that our body's not responding to. It's always something that we can get our bodies to be better and we don't have to live a life just waiting for the next sickness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, not a good place to be. No, yeah, awesome. Thanks for being here, man.
Speaker 2:Dude, thanks for having me on. I'm stoked to just get to know you more and be a part of this, uh, this Palm Harbor community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, dude.
