Marketing 101 for Chiropractors
Digital marketing is evolving faster than ever, and as a chiropractor, you're not just a healthcare provider—you’re also the CEO and marketer of your practice. Without a solid grasp of marketing fundamentals, it's easy to fall for one-size-fits-all strategies that waste time and money.
Join us as we break down proven, cost-effective, and innovative marketing tactics designed specifically for chiropractors. From social media mastery to Google Ads that convert, we’ll equip you with the tools to attract more patients, build lasting relationships, and dominate your local market. Stay ahead, stay profitable, and take control of your practice’s growth!
Marketing 101 for Chiropractors
What You Don't Repair Will Repeat: Dr. Mel Krug on Personal Growth
Taking a pause from traditional marketing advice, this powerful conversation with Dr. Mel Krug explores the deeper personal patterns that may be blocking your practice growth and business success.
Dr. Krug shares her transformative journey from rugby injury to chiropractic revelation, explaining how childhood experiences before age 10 often create unconscious patterns that manifest in our business challenges. Her powerful insight—"what we don't repair, we repeat"—illuminates why many chiropractors find themselves stuck in frustrating cycles despite implementing numerous marketing strategies.
Through her AAA methodology (Awareness, Acknowledgment, and Acceptance), Dr. Krug demonstrates how confronting our shadows and wounds becomes the pathway to discovering our greatest superpowers. She specifically addresses the "broke healer paradigm" prevalent among chiropractors—the tendency to provide abundant healing while struggling to charge appropriately for services. This disconnect between service and sales often stems from deeper beliefs about worthiness that require conscious rewiring.
The conversation takes us through her seven areas of life assessment (physical, mental/emotional, social, familial, vocational, financial, and spiritual), showing how these interconnected domains influence our practice growth. Perhaps most profound is her observation that "the very thing you're seeking exists in the very thing you're avoiding"—a paradox that explains why our greatest growth opportunities often hide within our deepest wounds.
If you've tried numerous marketing tactics without sustained success, this episode offers a refreshing perspective on why internal work must precede external strategies. Your frequency and energy ultimately serve as your most powerful marketing tools—but first, you must heal what's holding you back.
Ready to transform your wounds into wisdom? Follow Dr. Mel Krug on Instagram @drmelkrug to continue your journey of personal and professional transformation.
- Join Marketing 101 for Chiropractors Facebook Group here
- Learn more at EnricoD.com
- Book a free discovery call with Enrico to level up your business
Hey everyone, Welcome to another episode of Marketing 101 for Chiropractors. An awesome guest this week. A little bit of a pause button with Dr Mel Krug. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2:Thanks, enrique, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Yes, this is different. We're not talking about marketing. We're not talking about go, go, go, like I typically do. The intro to this podcast is like a boombox, like grow, scale, grow, and they can burn us out. It can really just start to fizzle you out. You could lose your passion, you could lose your purpose, you can lose a lot of things with that and you got a cool story that I think people need to hear, especially this group. So thanks for being with us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for having me, you know. I think it's. It's important to have moments where we can just pause and reflect and be, and oftentimes I find when we give ourselves those moments, we can actually quantum leap to the next level.
Speaker 1:Love it, yes, love it. Tell us about your story. Go right in. This is going to be exciting.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think the listeners would probably benefit them to know I did not grow up with chiropractic, I did not grow up with marketing. I am the first entrepreneur of my family and I got into chiropractic from a rugby injury. Believe it or not, I played rugby for 10 years and I always I always joke that that was the injury that changed my life and it got me into chiropractic. Sure enough, I start chiropractic school experiencing some amazing results.
Speaker 2:You know, healing from childhood trauma, healing from I grew up with divorced parents, a lot of instability growing up, and it healed for more than just my my shoulder injury and pain, but from a mental, emotional perspective and things I didn't even realize could be touched by chiropractic.
Speaker 2:And so I had such an inspiration from the work and being in school and serving so many people going on mission trips where, as soon as I graduated, I opened my own practice right away and I've been in practice for over eight years now serving people, mainly a lot of healers and leaders and entrepreneurs. I see a lot of other chiropractors and really getting to those deep core wounds that oftentimes do prevent us in our next level of growth, whether it's our own businesses, our careers or marketing or putting yourself out there. So I love really going deep with people. Because of my own experience and I'm so grateful that chiropractic found me and I think we can you know, what I've discovered is it's in those moments of crisis, in those moments of injury, that our greatest gifts can be discovered. So that's a cliff notes of my journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that definitely a cliff note, for sure, and I mean for people listening right now. I want you to think about, you know, the Achilles heel of your life. It doesn't we always define it. I've gone through, you know, 18 years of practice. Now I'm like man, I am not a chiropractor.
Speaker 1:I had to just tell myself this story because for so long you hammer it into your life and you're like I'm a chiropractor, I'm a chiropractor. And then you do, you define it and you're like well, I'm not that, I'm not a chiropractic table, I'm not a technique, I'm not, I'm not a people pleaser. Every frickin day, I can't do this forever, like this is nuts, you're stupid, you gotta get out of my practice, like there's just ways, and then it can become such a big part of you and then you don get in tune with this. And that's where I think you've done way better work than I have and I'm still working on myself. But yeah, what are some tips? Where do people start to be aware? I think awareness is one thing, gratitude is a different thing, but awareness that's where it all starts is just being aware and being honest with yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree to that and to expand on that. You know we cannot change that which we don't have a relationship with. So I teach a lot of my clients, whether it's in the office or in my programs. The AAA concept and awareness is the first piece. Right, and what this looks like is humbling yourself and realizing you know what, as great as I am and have these things going for me over here, I also have blocks.
Speaker 2:You're human, I say before chiropractic, before chiropractors or business owners, we're humans first and as humans, we inherently have wounds and things that we go through. And part of what I like to teach is how do we turn those wounds to wisdom. And it's being real with yourself and saying you know what. There are things that I've experienced in my life that as much as they've served me, they could also be holding me back. So awareness is number one. The second piece is just acknowledging, acknowledge where you're at Rather than trying to run away with it. Being real with yourself is, I think, one of the most I say. Humility is the gateway to growth and I think the more real you can be with yourself and say you know what? The Achilles heel, I have it. I'm not Superman, right. We all have our own kryptonite or Wonder Woman, right, we all have those versions of ourselves. But when we can acknowledge that we have things that we can work on and humble ourselves, that can automatically lead us to more growth.
Speaker 2:And the last piece of that is acceptance. And when I say that, it's not acceptance from a place of apathy, it's acceptance knowing that you, as a human being who perhaps has some wounds that you can grow from to serve people at a greater capacity, you have to take radical responsibility and accept the fact that now you're aware of these things that are blocking you, these beliefs, these stories, these patterns that we tell ourselves from, most of the time, childhood, before the age of 10. When you have acknowledgement and acceptance of that, now it's your turn to take radical responsibility. Because if you don't, I can promise you and I say this in teaching my work these feedback loops will come around to say tap on the shoulder, and eventually the tap on the shoulder leads to a brick and eventually the brick in the face leads to a truck. And that's what I believe, enrico.
Speaker 2:And when I had my rugby injury, there were a lot of things going on in my life that I was not in alignment with who I am. I was not in alignment with my values, as I say, and as much as the injury sucked, it set me on a path to becoming more of who I am and, I think, for your audience, as people who are looking to grow their business, there can be a lot of things internally that are going on that we need to take inventory of, so to speak. In that sense, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I mean, for the faith believers out there, we say God's just going to bring the next lesson harder and harder and harder. Yeah, and then you nailed it. It's so true. Where has this brought you in your life? Like, how has this gotten you not to where you are just today, but how has it progressed and level up Right, like it's almost like a Mario game. It's just level two, level three and you're just, you're just going through this. Uh, you just think, when you have it that you're leveling up and it's you're never right. Yeah, it's going to come on its own time. How has this worked for you in your life? How have you leveled up in consciousness?
Speaker 2:really, it's what it's all about yes, it is what it's all about. I love that you use video games because I I'm a child of the 90s and I grew up with Mario 64, specifically jumping into the windows, and every single window you have a boss to beat, and so life is kind of like a video game and you can either be the non-NPC player or the main character. It's really up to you. But I say that with every mystery in our life that we choose to solve and master, there's a new mystery, because life is about expansion and it's really a nonlinear process. And I tell people listen, there's no end to this. Until you die, there's no end. And so what I found is when I can just surrender and accept, the game of life is a constant journey of expansion and evolution, knowing that there's no escaping the challenges. I think we, as entrepreneurs, it can be very easy to be like, okay, when I accomplish this goal, everything's going to be better. And then, guess what? There's another challenge that emerges and people will say, you know, new level, new devil, right? Or I say, new layer, new slayer, whatever you want to call it. There's always going to be challenges, and in the challenges challenges it's where we can grow.
Speaker 2:So a specific example of this as my first business as a chiropractor. I've then gone on to grow my programs and coaching, but my first business, what I noticed in Rico was, every time a practice member would stop care, I would go into this emotional response and I think this will probably really resonate with the chiropractors and service providers who listen to this. My own ego would get in the way, my own pride would get in the way and I would go into this self-judgment, angry self-criticism of like, oh, what did I do wrong? Like I didn't. I didn't make the sale, I didn't market her well enough, I didn't explain the work well enough. And what I noticed is I started noticing these patterns and I would invite your audience to consider Okay, if you keep noticing the same shit show up in your life, it's an invitation for you to evolve from it. It's happening for you and you can choose to see it as something to avoid or something to grow into. So back to the woman that quit care. When I was brand new in practice, it happened again and I said, oh my gosh, like I keep having the same emotional reaction. And through the work I've done with thankfully amazing mentors in my life, I said. You know what this is.
Speaker 2:What's actually happening here is, every time a person leaves, I'm being reminded of when I was younger. My parents would fight. I was about four or five years old. My parents would fight and I vividly remember this. I was in the basement. They would be upstairs fighting and every time that there would be an altercation that didn't go the right way, my dad would leave. And so every time a client would leave, I would have this four to five year old reaction in my nervous system, even though I'm a grown woman, I'm a grown adult.
Speaker 2:I'd done the mindset work, but my body was having some challenge with that. So it wasn't until I started to actually look at these things and learn to rewire it and learn to recalibrate it in not my mind, but my body is when I really started to grow. I started to see my practice evolve. I started to see different types of clients show up, the sales became easier and my practice just became more fun.
Speaker 2:So, to answer your question, that's really how I've grown as a leader and as outside of business, as a person. Right, not trying to avoid these challenges, but see these things that come into our life and say what we don't repair, we repeat. And what we don't repair, we can become resentful of. So getting curious around these emotional feedback loops versus thinking that I'm doing something wrong, it was just an invitation to become more whole and heal myself, and we all have these things from childhood that we're either avoiding you know some people call it trauma or root experiences but either way, if you're a human on this planet, you have things that you've experienced that I guarantee are impacting the growth of your business, and it can go much deeper than we think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, that was a bomb. What you don't repair, it repeats. I mean, if you really want to be successful in business, it's not marketing, it's not making people happy, it's not any of that stuff or customer comes first, it's really you come first, but if you keep seeing cycles in business, it's typically a personal problem that just keeps repeating itself. Yes, and you, I love that. You said repair. What a great word. What you don't repair, it's going to repeat. So from my perspective and I know you go deeper into people's personal lives with working with you From a business perspective, if you find yourself in cycles and I don't mean just a off season, you know snowbird issues, I'm talking about repeated cycles Like you think you're getting ahead and then all of a sudden it smashes back down. You think you're getting ahead and you hit the glass ceiling and you come back down. Trust me on this 18 years in practice it gets tiring and again you're going to burn out. So, 18 years in practice, it gets tiring and you're going to burn out. And the reason why you can't smash through the glass is because you just never repaired anything. You're just getting older and you're getting the same old 1988 Camaro is only going to go so far. You've got to level up. The new ones are pretty nice. The 2025s Get one of those and repair and move forward. So I love that. That's great and that's deep and that takes work and it's.
Speaker 1:Guys are horrible at this. How hard it's been for me. Women are a little bit more in tune. I'm sure your clientele is probably a little bit more leaning towards women, but that's organically because guys are just like nah, feelings, nah, I'm good, I had a good childhood, and these things translate into the rest of your life. So, yeah, how do people connect with you? What's a way if they had a question or they wanted to work with you, how do they connect with you? What are your handles? What's your website? And then we'll continue on with the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, since I'm a millennial, I love Instagram, so you guys can find me at drmelkrug, find me on there. I will actually DM you and say hello, it's not an AI robot. I love teaching on there, specifically on my story. So I would say, enrico, that's probably the best way for people to follow me, because I have so much content on this. If you want to go deeper, and well, how do I start to look at these things? How do I start to look at these patterns? I also have a YouTube channel, so you can search my name, dr Mel Krug, and you'll find me on YouTube, and I have podcasts and teachings on there, all for free, for you all to really start to do this work on your own. So I would say, yeah, instagram and YouTube are the best places.
Speaker 1:That's why I wanted to do it right in the middle of the podcast, because I know you got people like, okay, who's this girl, who is this girl? Yeah awesome, yeah, continuing on so breaking these things. So what does it look like when you, when you make that leap and you're like yeah, I really, where do you start? Where do people start?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So one of the questions I ask is I look at their current patterns in their life. Where are they feeling stuck? So I have them assess their own patterns that they're noticing from the seven areas of life. So we've got our physical, like our body or health. We've got our mental, emotional. We've got our social, our familial, our family right. We've got our vocation or our career. We've got financial and then we've got spiritual.
Speaker 2:And if you're not a spiritual person, I would say what's your purpose? Beyond, beyond you, beyond your ego, like, why are you here on this planet? What are you here to create? So I look at that and I do a thorough assessment of where do you perceive your acts? Do you feel like you're a 10 out of 10 in each of these areas and you're solid, you're golden, you don't need any help.
Speaker 2:Most of the time, as human beings, we have some gaps and the truth is, as we evolve and expand, new gaps and new mysteries show up for us to solve and I think when you can understand where you're starting and where the gaps are, I can come in and help you bridge that gap. That's one of my superpowers, I say, is helping people bridge the gap in all these areas of your life and I'm sure you've heard this, Enrico, from similar mentors that we had is it is all interconnected. So as much as we try to compartmentalize our life, you better believe that what's happening in your family, if you're having fights with your spouse, if you're having intimacy issues, you better believe it's going to show up in your business. Or vice versa, if you're struggling with marketing or business or finances, you better believe that stress is going to come into the home and impact how you show up with your kids. So I like to synergize and synthesize, rather, these areas of their life and say, okay, where are we at now, what are the immediate constraints that you perceive you're dealing with, and how do we get to the next level? When it comes to the next level, I mean, how do you live more in alignment with your values? And everyone has a different version of what next level and evolution means to them, and what I really care about is just teaching people that you can live a fulfilling life.
Speaker 2:But you've got to know what matters to you first, and so many people haven't been given the opportunity to actually question what is it that I want in my life? Because if you haven't been given that opportunity, you will often live into the injected values of other people. Well, you should do this, enrico, you should become a doctor, you should do this. It's like, yeah, and is that really what you want? So I like to pause and say what do you want, what do you want to create and what are the immediate constraints that are blocking you from getting there? And that, oftentimes, will reveal the fears, it will reveal the emotional patterns in which, then the way that I'm trained in the methodology I'm creating is, I look back and say, OK, where did this start? And it's often, like I said earlier, before the age of 10, our these patterns can get ingrained in us, that absolutely show up in all these areas of our life. Love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love it. I mean, you got to start somewhere and you know what the toughest thing is for I think most people and as educated as you are, as smart as you are, is no like trying to find out what you want.
Speaker 2:That's a hard question it is it really? It is it really? Is I?
Speaker 1:find a lot of people don't even know. It's because I've done a lot of work and I still have a long way to go that you start to get really, really honest with yourself. It's pretty crazy. So knowing what you want, I think, is the first, hardest step. But then you can work with people like you and really figure some stuff out. So that is super cool. Is it all virtual with you? Is there camps, is there?
Speaker 2:boot camps.
Speaker 1:How do you work with this?
Speaker 2:I love that question Hybrid so I'm a big fan of in-person connection. I think now more than ever it's needed. At the time of this recording, it's 2025. Ai is taking off and there's a lot of virtual stuff and podcasts and technology is amazing. Right, you and I can connect across space time in a moment, and I have found, with the acceleration of technology, there's so much isolation that's happening.
Speaker 2:So in my programs, I make sure to have in-person connection. I call them my signature immersions. I've got different forms of immersion business and entrepreneurship, mental, emotional mastery, and then my inspire immersion, which is actually receiving network spinal care, which is the type of chiropractic that I do. So if you choose to enroll with me in any of my stuff, I make sure that you know I've got clients all over the world. We can connect virtually. And then, of course, opportunities to come in person.
Speaker 2:There's group experiences, because I think community is a really important piece to helping people realize I'm not alone in this. As you said earlier, I think often men have a hard time tapping into that because of the conditioning. Now, that doesn't mean we want people crying all the time, all over the place and, just you know, spreading their emotions everywhere and, at the same time, if you keep suppressing those things, how do you think that's going to show up in your physiology? So just a caveat there. But I love the community setting, I love the group setting, and then I also, in some of my programs, do one-to-one work where we really go into these things and rewire it so that you can have access to more confidence, more courage, more health and better relationships.
Speaker 2:And oftentimes, when we're doing that, talk about marketing. Right, we, our frequency and our energy is our best marketing strategy. When you step out into the world, believe it or not, whether you want to accept this or not, you are selling in marketing all the time based on not what you do but who you be. So if you're living with these patterns and hiding or people pleasing or feeling like you can't express the bigness of who you are, how do you think people, when you step into a room, are going to perceive you? So there's something to consider there. I know that was kind of a tangent on your question but I think it's a.
Speaker 1:It's great. No, this is absolutely wonderful. My next question was going to be what do you see uniquely? And it may not be an answer within the chiropractic clients that you have versus others, is there a tendency of some type of patterns that you, now that you've helped so many people, you're like man? Do chiros have this unique intertwined web? Maybe not, maybe. I'm just curious. I I don't know. Have you noticed that?
Speaker 2:you're intuitive 100. I was just talking about this with a friend and I love you, chiropractors, I love you so much. Please do not take this the wrong way. I I had to rewire this myself. It's the broke healer, because us, as chiropractors, we we have such a big heart like our, our philosophy and our service is big right, it's impactful and we just want to serve. And yet I find this interesting pattern with chiropractors of afraid to charge what they're worth. They're afraid to make the sale or market themselves and put themselves out there and take risks and make claims that you know maybe they get rejected or they get criticism or judgment. But it's that broke healer paradigm where you've got such a big heart and such abundance in your healing and your philosophy and your skills, and over here on the business side we think it's separate and so I like to merge the service and the sales hand. But that's one of the biggest patterns I see with chiropractors, fortunately and unfortunately but, I, see more people growing in that, so that's a good thing, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, that was just a. It was unique. Um question. No, that's fantastic stuff. Um, that's, I mean, I don't want to cut it short, we can go as long as you want. What else do you find? Like, where should people, people, the chiropractors it always comes back to, I feel like money is always a trigger. Where they're in america, it's an odd thing where they're comfortable seeking help to try and make more money, but then they don't want to talk about. You're not allowed to ask your neighbor how much they make. That's the most offensive thing you could ask someone in america. I grew up in canada. You ask the person next door, the, the police officer, how much did you make? They're like, yeah, $67,000 a year In Canada, it was normal. And then here, if you were to be like that's offensive, I'm like why is it-?
Speaker 2:How dare you ask?
Speaker 1:that. Yeah. Why is it such a money thing here? I feel like that's where entrepreneurs and chiropractors go there. I'm not saying predominantly that chiropractors are men. That's not true. It's almost 50-50. However, the ones that are trying to just plow through the industry are typically the men. They're trying to just acquire as much assets as possible. Women just don't care. In general, at the bottom they have to push themselves in the entrepreneur phase. So my question is what's that number one thing that pushes people to seek maybe you, and be like listen. I heard a podcast with Enrico and you said something. And what is that? Because there's a lot of listeners out there, there's a lot of bystanders, there's a lot of people on the sidelines. That's where most of the population lives. Very few people are willing to get up onto the field. Who are those people? What happened with them? What spark went off for them to take action? Because my point of the question is like how can we help people that are?
Speaker 2:listening right now, take action? Yeah, great question. You know, I like to work with the people who are stepping from mass consciousness to mastery consciousness and what I find is that the people who step into that one have put up with enough. They've tried a lot of things and there comes a point where they're like you know what, I can't do this anymore. And that emotion of some frustration and anger I think can actually be pretty serving if you choose to listen to it. So they're often the people who are like you know what? I have tried these things, I've done all this stuff and I know there's something deeper, and oftentimes they don't actually know what it is, but they know that there's something deeper underneath the surface.
Speaker 2:And, as you can tell, Enrico, I am not a surface level person. I like to go deep with people because I've lived a life of some of my own depths, I'll call it and I find that people who are willing to go there, everything starts to blossom. And I find that people who are willing to go there, everything starts to blossom. But, to answer your question, it's that they're done with kind of trying to do it all and they are ready for something different, and it's often the inner work that they know they've perhaps avoided. But they keep getting this little whisper and tap on the shoulder of like, hello, I'm not going away and I think with a lot of the work that I've done and I know you it sounds like you've done some work too inner work.
Speaker 2:The more that I work on myself, the more I find people are naturally gravitated towards me because they feel safe, because I'm real and I'm not here to judge you, I'm here to serve you and I've gone through my own myriad of stuff that I'm not afraid to talk about, and I think having that human to human connection is really what can pull people to that, that next place to help them step in the field. Cause you're right, you know it's not gonna. I posted this roomie quote the other day. That was the path does not reveal itself until you actually step onto the path, and the path reveals itself as you walk it. So you cannot wait to be feel ready. The readiness comes as you take the action, even when it's scary.
Speaker 1:Yes, love it. It's great. M E L K R U G, you're going to go on Instagram, you're going to follow. Very simple, you're going to do that and you're going to fall and watch what you'll see. And so she's got. She does some great stuff. It's been awesome watching you grow entrepreneur wise. You're just taken off like a rocket ship way to go.
Speaker 1:And guys, this is probably you know, don't ignore the dark corners of our life. That's where I think that's where you get held back. So get out there, seek some help. Maybe it's not Mel I working. You know it takes a lot of, takes a lot of trust, it takes a lot of different psychologists, it takes a lot of um workshops, it takes a lot of just networking with people and it takes a lot of work on yourself, both chiropractic adjustments, getting in tune, practicing um, gratefulness and positive affirmation, and then just smashing limiting beliefs. You really have to go there and understand that these programs are really holding you back. It's like a game that you just don't have the cheat sword with and you just can't get to the next level. It's because you're not breaking the limiting beliefs. So that's my story. I'm glad you helped share a little bit of that too, because I don't think I've ever shared that publicly with anybody.
Speaker 1:But that's great stuff Leave us with something cool, and I'm definitely gonna have you back on the show.
Speaker 2:This is great stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you, my friend, um something cool gosh this was all cool, but the quote that I often tell people is the very thing you're seeking exists in the very thing you're avoiding, which I think dovetails exactly with what you've said, in the sense that it is those deep, dark places that, when we choose to go into them with courage and support and intentionality and accountability and an active strategy, that is where your superpower lies. I can guarantee it. 99% of the time, this, what I see, is the very things that we avoid, are wounds, or dark side, or shadow side, whatever you want to call it. That is where your superpower lies. So, rather than avoid it, befriend it and listen. If you need a hand to go into that cave with you, I've got you. Enrico's got you, we've been there. So don't be afraid to go into those places, because I think you'll be surprised and delighted at what you'll find.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's great advice. Thanks, mel, appreciate your time. God bless, take care, we'll see you soon. I want I hope I see you in person again soon.
Speaker 2:That'd be great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, enjoy your summer. Thank you, you too.
