EP34: Everything Changed When I Started Saying Yes

In this episode, I’m breaking down the one word that quietly shaped the last 15 years of my life: yes.

I’ll share the real stories behind the opportunities I almost missed — walking into CrossFit Peachtree when I didn’t know a soul in Atlanta, saying yes to dinners I was too tired to attend, showing up to networking events where I felt like the smallest person in the room, and how each of those moments opened doors I never could’ve planned.

I also unpack what leaders like Richard Branson and Ryan Serhant teach us about saying yes before we feel ready, and how that mindset can completely reroute the direction of your life and business.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, hesitant, or waiting for the “right time,” this episode will hit home. Because the truth is simple:

Your next breakthrough is usually one yes away.

📩 Join the newsletter for weekly business & leadership insights:
http://eepurl.com/jghu5I

📸 Follow Austin on Instagram:
 @draustincohen

🌐 Explore events + resources:
 www.austincohen.com

Transcript

0:00

This is the Austin Cohen Podcast where we talk real strategies for chiropractors ready to grow beyond the adjustment. If you're building a business, developing your leadership, and trying to build wealth without burning out, you are in the right place. Let's get to work what's up everybody? Happy Thanksgiving week. Wow, this is awesome. I am leaving later today to head to Charleston, South Carolina to see my family. We have a lot of traditions. We do for example one of them is tonight we will actually go see the Festival of Lights. Which opens up today in Charleston. So we'll get to drive around this cool area at James Island County Park where we get to, see all the different holiday and festival lights. There's a rock climbing wall, there's hot chocolate. It's really fun for the kids train ride. Thursday morning, we do the Turkey day gobble wobble, which will be fun. So we all do a 5K as a family on Thursday. So it's really cool. I'm just, I'm a big believer and many of you guys that know me, I'm a big believer in traditions. I do believe that there's a correlation of happiness and how many traditions you have in your life, the more traditions you have. I think ultimately that leads to a more great grateful life and, I know for me personally, when I didn't have a lot of traditions and I didn't have a ton of hobbies and I didn't have a ton of friends and I really just focused on work and grind that didn't work out well as I thought it was going to work out. I actually was more successful when I started incorporating traditions and hobbies and friendships and really building those systems into my lifestyle. Yeah, I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving. Man, I just had, there's so much to be grateful for this year. This is a wild year. I really focused a lot this year on just brand and taking everything I've learned over the last 16 years and successful practice and building over 20 clinics, building software. We've been building this CHI 180 software over the last five years. We didn't commercial it out until just last year, and so to really see what everything's turned into, yeah, for those of you guys that are in the system, like you're in my collective, your My Chi 180 Collective. You've been to Adventure Summit, you've been to Growth Summit things are just getting started. So really excited to see where this goes over the next few years and how we just continue to grow and expand. Yeah, just a lot. Share some gratitude for all of you and thank you for trusting and the systems and keep sharing the feedback. I love learning about. How just some of these little things can go so far and be so impactful for so many of you. Sometimes, I take it for granted because I've been doing certain things for so long that, I always wanna remember like where I came from too. And, like the early times and the grind beginnings. I will never forget those weekends that were like 40 hour weekends I'd be done Sunday with festivals at Sunday at five, six o'clock, and then turn it around the next day. Be at a gym Monday morning at 5:00 AM to screen again. But that was just my why was big. And I think the bigger your why, the more you're gonna want that hustle and that grind. And, the people that sometimes are on your team aren't always gonna see that. They're not gonna see what got you to where you are. But they gotta want it too as well. And that's where Raising leaders helps out. Yep. Shout out to everyone. Have a great Thanksgiving and let's talk about what I want to share today and. Something, an idea I've been really sitting with lately, and when I think of the success rates of people and how they've been able to be more successful than others, a lot of the big moments in my life personally, at least, were not planned. And some of it, by the way, wasn't even strategic. There was no vision boards, there wasn't any perfect timing. It came from something smaller, which I'm seeing a correlation on for very successful people, and it's one simple word. It's the word. Yes. And you know the strange thing about Yes is that most of the time it doesn't even show up looking to alter or change your life significantly. It actually shows up a small decision, like an invitation somewhere, a person you may meet a small moment that could easily be ignored. But if I look back over the last 16 years of clinic building, team building, relationship building, family building, like every meaningful chapter in my life began with a yes. I was not ready for. And I wanna share some of those stories today because many of you are presented with opportunities all the time, but you're saying no because that's the easy way. You're tired, you wanna leave the party early. You don't feel like it, but you're not where you want to be in life yet. So what gives you that freedom to say that rather than maybe staying an extra 15 minutes, who knows what could happen? Showing up somewhere. Maybe it takes an extra hour of your day. All right? You don't get to go to bed, 30 minutes earlier. We all think we've earned something when we've earned nothing. And for us as humans that want to be successful, there's a c If you wanna be successful, then you gotta get through the half toss and the have tos is saying yes more often. So that's something that I really want to start encouraging everyone to start saying yes more and thinking as we go through this, when I got to Atlanta. Or when I opened my practice in Buckhead, listen I had no, there was no social media. I didn't have a lot of connections. There wasn't any real name recognition for corrective chiropractic yet. No real marketing. But I knew I had to do something different. I was big into running. I shared I was big into doing marathons. In 2006, I opened my first clinic in oh nine. But what I knew was I knew that I had to start getting into the community and building relationships. So what I say yes to, I said yes to a place called CrossFit Peachtree, which does not even exist anymore in Atlanta. Did not want to go because it was after work. So I'd go there at six o'clock at night and dude, like I got to my office at 6:00 AM'cause I would do new patient exams report of findings at six 30 so that way I could fit'em in.'cause I didn't want to do new patient exams or reports during shifts. I felt like it was better for me to do'em off hours.'cause then I had that personal time with the patient. So what I would do is I would, grind from like I said, I would do screenings from 5:00 AM to 6, 6 15. Then I would get to the office at 6 37. I'd do a new patient report of findings. I stay over lunch, do special reports. Then I would go to CrossFit Peachtree at six o'clock and I was behind. Dude, I was not confident there. I just, I was a runner and I didn't wanna meet new people by this point, because as a chiropractor, you won't know this. You're talking to so many people throughout a day. The last thing you wanna do is talk to more people. But you know what I said? Yes. And what did that Yes, give me, it gave me a massive community and it gave me a real community and it gave me friendships that still matter to this day. A lot of those people became patients in my office who 16 years later are still clients in that office. They still refer patients and there's a whole tree that funnels down through all those relationships that I've built there. There are mentors that I met there because people who I introduced myself to after a workout. I did not realize that was gonna become a cornerstone of my life in Atlanta. All I did is walk in and I said yes, and I know so many of you enjoy working out at home and you would love your running. Invite people to run with you. Join run clubs. Say yes to opportunities where you can build the relationships in. I get it like that's your time to be away, but if you're not where you are yet in professional life. All I can encourage you to do is just say yes more. Because when you say yes more, the opportunities will start showing up because you're seeking them out. When I was early in practice, same thing. It's like there were so many nights in my twenties where friends would text me, Hey, come grab dinner. We're hanging out after work. We're grilling out tonight. Come swing by. And every single emotion in me wanted to say no. Once again, just like tired, stressed out, overwhelmed by the. Just the grind of building a business from scratch. But I knew I had to say yes, and those dinners became conversations that completely transformed my life. There were other business people in there sharing stories of the grind that they were going through too, as well. People writing on napkins, like real estate deals and how they were doing real estate deals and just learning from those experiences, people that were talking about how they thought in decades, not days. I remember how a friend shared his, saved his marriage with a complete mindset shift, by the way. And he talked about a book that he shared. It was like the me versus You, or you and me were booked. There were conversations like that I will never forget why saying yes, and I can look back today and draw a straight line. From those dinners to the mindset I have now to the assets I've built to the network I rely on, and even to the father and the husband, I've tried to work on and become all because I said yes to tacos or steak dinners or whatever it was, rather than when I wanted to stay home. Like looking back early in my career, I would go to so many networking events and some of you may have even been to a networking event before, i, I personally, for me,'cause you think people think in their head, they're like, oh, networking events are boring. Everyone's in it for themselves. I looked at it from the sense of I'm going to a networking event because I wanna be part of my community. I wanna learn from my community, I wanna support my community. I want to put economic back into my community. Everything was about my community. It wasn't about what can I get from this experience. It was about what can I do for my community? And when I shifted my mindset about being part of a leadership of my community. That's when everything changed. When I looked at it from the standpoint of what's in it for me, I'm not getting anything from these relationships. It never worked. But when I looked at it from the sense of Buckhead is my life. It's where I raise my kids. It's where I spend my money. It's where my wife and I go out to eat. It's where my kid's school is at. It's where my kid's sports is at. Like everything about it. When I looked at everything from every relationship I built from pouring back into that community and giving back into it, everything changed. Like when I would go to networking events, I just remember even being there and thinking like, wow,'cause I don't love to dress up. But everybody looked polished, they looked successful. They were a little older, more wealthy. They were more established. I was there, I was a solo practitioner with a chiropractic clinic that had zero traction. But listen, I just kept saying yes, and I kept showing up. Eventually those small yeses turned into victories. I learned how to communicate really well. I learned how to listen better and not just talk about me. I learned how to present myself. I learned how to pitch in a way that can connect with other people. I learned how to be comfortable in uncomfortable rooms. See like it was not comfortable to go to these places, but I did it'cause I said yes to the opportunities, knowing what was gonna come out, even though I didn't know it was gonna come out at the end of this day. I knew at some point it was gonna be worth it. And slowly those rooms started to become familiar. Opportunities started opening up, people started inviting me into conversations that I did not have access to before. Like looking back, I wasn't being invited because I had anything mastered. I was being invited because I said yes enough times that people just started knowing my name. So I want to really encourage all of you to start thinking about that. What conversations have you been saying no to? And where are the opportunities that you could say yes to that could potentially have a pretty large impact in your life? And and so many of you, you wanna do it when you wanna say yes, when you don't wanna say yes. Like you're in your brain to already saying no because you're justifying what else you could be doing, but you don't realize the opportunities that could come out from that. If I look back of why I've gotten to where I've gotten to, it's by saying yes more. You look at a guy like a Richard Branson, okay? Guy built his life on saying, yes, I love Richard Branson's stories. He was stranded into Puerto Rico after a flight got canceled. Most people do what? Complain. They grab a snack, they wait. No, not Branson. He said yes to this idea of chartering a plane. So he got a chalkboard. He wrote on it$39. One way to the bbis, he filled that plane with stranded passengers, no airline, no money, no experience. He just said yes to solving a problem that was right in front of the face, which eventually became Virgin Airlines, which is now multi-billion dollar business from one spontaneous yes idea he had. How about Ryan Sirhan? I love Ryan Sirhan. Dude, he's hilarious on Instagram and his TV shows too as well. If the guy moved to New York to become an actor, he didn't come into, he didn't wanna get into real estate, he became an actor, broke as heck, could barely pay rent couldn't land any roles, barely surviving. And then one day his friends said to him, he's Hey, you should get into real estate. You don't wanna do it. It wasn't even part of who he was, but what did he do? He said, yes out of necessity because he needed to. So eventually, what Million Dollar Listing shows up. The TV show, he has a brokerage, he now has a brand. He's a global media company, massive educational platform of selling real estate, and now he's got the Sirhan Empire. Like his story is such a great example of how saying yes can reroute your entire life. If you're not where you want to be yet, you've gotta say yes more. You will never get there on luck. Chance Hope wants wishes you say yes more. Most people wait to feel ready. Yes comes first. The more I reflect on this, I'm telling you guys, the more I realize something important. Most people think that clarity comes before action, but in reality, action comes first. Clarity will eventually show up. You say yes before the confidence comes in, just like I did many times in the networking events and the business opportunities. You say yes before the certainty comes, you say yes, before you feel even qualified to be in those rooms with those people. For me, building over 20 clinics did not come from one big plan. It just came from one. Yes, and then another, like when our second location happened, because I said yes to a CrossFit gym that asked me if I wanted to lease from them, like it was like 300 square feet. And I said, yes. I didn't have a chiropractor yet to put in that facility. We didn't have X-ray machines, we didn't have the system figured out for multi-unit, but we said yes to the opportunity and now that's turned into the empire. It's turned into, same thing with the real estate portfolio I've built. My real estate agent said to me in 2013 when I was being kicked out of my space because they were building a high rise. He said, Hey, I just want to give you a heads up. What did you ever think about buying a building? I was like, I think about it, but I'd rather maybe just lease. I'd never even thought about buying a building. And that one yes, opportunity showed up into now a pretty large real estate portfolio. Same with Growth Summit Chiro 180 Adventure Summit. This podcast I just kept saying yes. And the truth I've watched play out in chiropractic is the chiropractors who grow, who like really grow. Are the ones who say yes more often, not like recklessly and not without thought, but they're doing it courageously. And listen, this is where I see it show up today. A couple years ago, I presented Growth Summit. I wasn't even ready for it yet, by the way. And there were people who didn't even have trust in it yet as well, because it's something, it wasn't, it is not like some of these other seminars that had been going on forever like Mile High, Cairo Fest. Some of these ones Parker Seminars, these have been going on forever. Growth Summit was an idea like a year and a half ago. And listen, like people were unsure, they were nervous, they were busy, but some people said yes. Anyways, we capped it at 25 people from day one in 2024 was the year one. And then at 2025, we had 50 people. And all of these people have walked away with Clarity Strategy, a new community of chiropractors that are very successful and now momentum that's been changing their practices. And I've been sharing this for the last, like few months. Like I have four slots left this year for Growth Summit. There will be a lot of people that get left out why they're too scared to say yes. I don't get it. They keep telling me they wanna come, but they need to figure out their schedule. Gross Summit is three months away. That's it. And if you've looked at the agenda is what chiropractors really need to be hearing right now. I'm not a rah guy, I'm not here to pump you up, tell you how great you are. It's nuts and bolts man. Like it ain't some like bougie festival where we're gonna have these fancy dinners and these fancy things like that. Like it's just straight grind and that, that's how I roll. It's people know I have a farm and sometimes be like, oh, tell me about your farm. Yo it's fricking redneck my farm, huh? And I love it. It just humbles me. I love it. That's just who I am. Like I like, that's my lifestyle. I love it. Grisly, like I said, Gris it's, we got four slots left. I've already shared this a hundred times. You gotta use code podcast. If you wanna get$50 off. I'm not running any Black Friday specials. I'm not running any deals. I have four spots left. We don't need to run it. We're gonna have 75 people this year. Now this will forever be the capacity. We will only be able to able ever to have, kinda like Adventure Summit. I can only ever have 16 people. I bet that all 16 of those guys will be coming back next year. I bet that outta the 75 people coming to a growth summit, I bet 65 come back maybe more. Next year we had 92% of people are coming back. Why? Because they said yes to an opportunity. Most people do not regret saying yes, but think about it. They almost always regret saying no, and they don't even know the opportunities that would've showed up had they said yes. Same is true for Chiro 180. Like people hesitate over the$195 a month. That's$2,400 a year, and I get it like money always feels tight when you're trying to grow. The ones who say yes have ended up so far higher PVAs, higher black holes, fewer drop-offs, cleaner systems, a predictable patient journey. They have staff who understand their numbers now. Why? Because we have a collective, our Circle app. They're in our community asking questions, which they're gonna get way more than$2,400 a year on. That's not even a care plan for most offices. They said yes to having a real system for their business. Chiro 80 is an operating system for your business. When done correctly and in the Circle Collective, I have for you, the top 10 ways to make money from chiro 80 day one spinal health scores, the plan builders. Utilizing the business development side, the new patient manager, the black hole number, utilizing the patient master in order to create tags for your newsletter systems. Looking at doctor performance reports, looking at the value by referral source. There's just so many ways that you could utilize in order to generate income. So what is the invitation of this episode? Okay, because I've probably said the word yes now maybe 200 times just on this episode, because I want y'all thinking as we move into 2026, the power of that word. This episode is not about going to CrossFit or do or going to your friend's dinners or networking events or software or business giants like Branson and Ryan Sirhan. This episode is about something bigger. Your life is shaped by the yes, your willing to give today, not the one you think you're going to give someday. And here's the question I want you to reflect on. Where in your life are you defaulting to know, not because you don't want the opportunity, because you don't feel ready yet. Lemme repeat that question. Where in your life are you defaulting to know, not because you don't want the opportunity, because you don't feel ready yet the version of you 10 years from now. The one with the confidence, the clarity, the momentum, and the impact. That person is gonna look back at one specific Yes. And say. That was the moment everything shifted and you don't know what Jess it will be. So you've gotta give your per yourself permission to find out. I hope you guys enjoy this episode. I obviously, you can tell I'm very passionate about this concept because I see so many people saying no to opportunities that could present themself massive for them, and I don't love hearing about people complaining or being negative about certain circumstances. But that's just more so the amount of nos that they've set boundaries on in their life. I want the yeses. I want the success. I want this profession to grow. I want you to have a great life, and I also want you to have a great Thanksgiving with your family. Hope you all enjoy and we'll see you next week in December. Thanks for listening to the Austin Cohen podcast. If this episode helped you grow, share it with another chiropractor who's ready to go beyond the adjustment, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. To learn more about building your business, leadership, and life on purpose, visit chiro one eighty.com or follow Austin on Instagram at Dr. Austin Cohen.