EP39: From Control to Connection: The Transformation I Didn’t See Coming

What does transformation actually look like when nothing “breaks,” but something still needs to change?

In this episode, Austin Cohen shares the quiet, uncomfortable evolution from control to connection. He opens up about the early years of building his business, when everything ran through him, listening to phone calls, managing payroll hour by hour, and unintentionally limiting the growth of the people around him.

Through honest stories and reflection, Austin explores how an unhealthy version of high achievement and Enneagram 3 tendencies can shrink your world without you realizing it. He talks about the shift from being needed to building systems, from working nonstop to becoming intentional with time, and from chasing approval to choosing alignment.

Most importantly, Austin dives into what became his greatest asset: relationships. Rebuilding his circle, becoming selective with where his energy goes, and discovering that time with the right people compounds faster than any metric or milestone.

This conversation is for founders, leaders, and high performers who feel successful on paper but sense there’s another level of fulfillment waiting, if they’re willing to step out of their own way.

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Transcript

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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? Welcome to episode 39. This is a, this is gonna be a fun one today. I'm actually really excited to share this one today. I posted on my Instagram this morning after I got outta the gym. I said, Hey first off, this is my three Enneagram talking right now, just so you guys know. But essentially what it was saying was I had, there was about 130 people that I was in their top five for their Spotify wrapped and. In my brain. Listen, I was proud of that'cause we just started this in May and so to have that many people to be their top five, but then I was like, you know what? I'm be number one. So just want to keep delivering content, keep delivering value, because if we're number one, to me what that shows is it shows impact. And that's really what this is about anyways, at the end of the day is having impact for the profession and having a legacy where chiropractic just grows and gets better as time goes on. So that is. Really important to me. So number one reflects that. It's like volume is fine, but and revenue is great. But what those do is those also show you impact of your clinics. If you have high revenue, you're probably making an impact in the profession, which is great. So let's not confuse. Business and impact from each other because they go hand in hand with each other. So today what I wanna talk about though, and this was my buddy Matt Granados, who is not a chiropractor, said, I want to hear about the transformation on how you went to, from who you were to who you are. I was like, man, that is a really good, that's really good. Let's talk about that actually. And maybe there are some things that people can see in themselves on opportunities on how they can grow to as well from within to help grow externally from the to the outside. So I thought that was such a great topic of conversation. It was something we could dive into. It's different, but it also has a lot of power in it because. It's not about, all the things you do or how you do it, it's all about who you are. And everyone's heard the mantra before, B plus do equals have, right? It's like you've gotta be the person that creates the success. You gotta do the things and you get to have the results. And it, it's like you see everybody focus on the ha the I wanna do. Do. Yet they never focus on the B part, which is why people that win the lottery go broke because they did the thing that needed to happen to win the millions of dollars. They now have the millions of dollars, but they never became the millionaire mindset, and because of that, they lose their money very fast. So what I wanna share today is going more in that B category and talking about who I had to become in order to get to where I've gotten to, and have the transformation that I didn't see coming. People ask me about it all the time. I've been in practice for 16 years and by the way, like I've always been a driven person. I've always been a disciplined person, but I'm a three Enneagram, and that can either help you or it can hurt you. And for me, I never really had, along my journey, I've never really had a transformation that occurred because of a failure or like a breaking point or something loud that happened. Yes, I've had many failures in my life and I've had many breaking points in my life, but it wasn't like a one time thing that transformed everything for me. I wasn't dead broke, and because of that, here's how I turned it around. It wasn't like that, but it was a journey along the way because from the outside of my life, things looked really good. Like we, I was growing my business in 2009, which is when I started my practice. I'd always had a full calendar. We had momentum, but internally my world was actually slowly getting smaller, which I didn't realize. And if you understand Enneagram threes, by the way, this will hit you. Or if you're an Enneagram three, this will really make sense to you. A three at their best. We are builders, we're focused, we're driven, we're reliable. We're the achiever according to the Enneagram types, outta the nine enneagrams. At our worst. Everything becomes about control. It becomes about performance and being the one who people depend on. And that was me. Everything ran through. Austin decisions happen because I made'em. Problems got solved because I jumped in. The business worked. Why? Because I worked and I told myself that was leadership. And you know what? It wasn't. It was fear. Dressed up as responsibility. And here's a moment that says a lot about who I was. I used to listen to the phone ring back in the days, in my early career, probably between 2009 and between 2014, I was in a very small office, about 1200 square feet where the front desk was right behind her. There was a filing cabinet right behind my office manager at the front desk. There was two filing cabinets, and behind that was my adjusting bag so I could hear everything and when the phone would ring if I was in the office, I would pause and if I was nearby, I would tune in and what I wanted to hear, what was being said on the phone, how it was being said, and how fast it was handled. And at the time, I convinced myself that listening to my office manager on the phone. Was about standards, it was about caring. It was about protecting the brand of corrective chiropractic. Looking back, it was lack of trust and not in my office manager, but it was in the idea that the business could not survive without me monitoring it. And that is the kind of control that will send a message, even if I've never said it out loud.'cause I never did say it out loud to my team.'cause I'd always justify why I was right. Was that I don't fully trust you. I'm still the safety net. I'm the one holding this place together. And when you lead from that place, people stop growing. And it wasn't the type of recording where I was like recording these calls and then we were doing it as part of a training process. No. Like it was every single time the phone ran. And so I should, I'm supposed to be present with patients, but I'm over here distrusting listening to my office manager. On a call and thinking and critiquing about how we can make that better. That same mindset showed up in how I handled money and time. For example, early on, if we were slow, let's say between five and 6:00 PM I would send my staff home early. It would save me an hour, maybe two on paper, right? That made sense. It's oh, I'm saving money underneath it all though. Pure scarcity mindset. I was optimizing for my payroll and I wasn't optimizing for people. So every time I did that, I was reinforcing short-term thinking into the culture at corrective, and I had no idea that I was teaching survival in my business instead of stability. And that became. These moments, like this is what I was saying. It's like there wasn't one big thing that happened for my transformation. It was small moments like that. And I'm a huge self-awareness person. Somebody could tell me, you, there's a lot of people in this world. You say to them, you're like, Hey, can I be honest with you and give you feedback? And they all say yes. And then you do, and then they take it personally, right? Like they, they break the four agreements. And the four agreements are, don't take anything personal. Be impeccable with your word. Never assume anything and always do your best. And if you can follow those four agreements in life, you'll win. And listen, that's do Ru Miguel Ru's book right there, by the way. That's nothing I created that purely comes from his book. And I read that book and I own that book To the point that is a transformational book. Like that to, that book, to me was part of my transformation too. And I think for me. I had to look within and create a lot of self-awareness in order to grow because I could see a lot of people justifying why they're right. Sending people home early, listening to every phone call, being in control. Horrible way to lead people. And I think one of the parts that took me the longest to see. Was not giving people space to grow. And it's not because they weren't capable of it, but it's because growth needs space. If you want your team to grow, there's gotta be room there for them to grow. But what does room feel like to, as the business owner in an Enneagram three? It feels risky. So if someone stepped up, I had to step back and if someone made a decision, I couldn't be the one making it. And what I felt was, I always felt I had to stay needed. Like I stayed close to everything. I solved problems fast so I could feel valuable to my team. That was my perception. That is a very unhealthy Enneagram three pattern. Where worth comes from being needed, not from building something that works without you, and the cost of that is really high. Like I was hurting my people's leadership. I was hurting my team's growth because I wanted to make decisions fast, and I never gave'em the space. I call them every single day. Why? Because if I didn't call in every day and I went three or four days without talking to them, to me that felt that I wasn't needed and then I'm not providing value to them. That was the la that was the mini, that was the limiting belief that I was telling myself. And what was happening was it's like people weren't failing, but they were plateauing. Now I hopefully have created a culture where I give people a lot of space now. There are a lot, there are check-ins that I have with them because I do want them to know that I've got you and we are a team and we work together in order to grow. Like I have weaknesses, I have strengths, they have weaknesses, and they have strengths. How can we compliment each other in order to grow faster? Everyone's always heard the quote before, you can go far by yourself, but we can go further together. And that's how my mantra is with my team. I wanna look and see for them, like where are the opportunities that they're missing, where are the leadership capabilities they're missing, where are the marketing pieces they're missing, the culture pieces they're missing. Like I take my six growth engines, and I apply those to them. And I think of like where could we, like for example, one thing we just recently did is for every single clinic I met with this clinic CEOs and we talked about what is their utilization rate per clinic based on. Every single service, decompression, chiropractic, new patient exams, report findings, progress exams, and progress reports. And we book people at certain times. We don't deviate away from that booking process. And if we don't deviate from that booking process, what is our utilization rate? And what happened was when we found that some clinics were maybe between 25 and 50%. Our 2030 vision of our company is 75% utilization by 2030. And we identify what does that look like? What does that look like financially? What does that look like clinically? And we had to get very crystal clear on that. But that was something we had to do together, not it coming from Austin. I have leaders on my team and I always say we don't build companies, we build leaders. And it's been fascinating because my team, if I look at them and I see their growth, to me that's like the ultimate testament of success. It's like I want. Austin Cohen podcast to be number one for all chiropractors because of impact. And if I focus on the leadership of my team, there's impact that comes from that too as well. Financially for them. Financially for me, financially for the company. It, you take clinical care, oh my gosh, like the impact that has for their communities is massive by building leaders too as well, and they become that leader in the community. For example, corrective chiropractic. Buckhead right now is a leader in the community. New businesses, existing businesses, anybody in healthcare in Buckhead, if they own a gym, if they're massage body work, whatever it is, they know about corrective chiropractic and them being the leader. So whenever we host events, whenever we do anything in the community, they want to be involved. And that is a great place to be. Like I said, for me. The realization was not anything dramatic. It was a pattern though I couldn't ignore anymore. And this all happened about 2015. By the way. It's like the, so all these behaviors I'm sharing all were around 2009 to about 2014 to 15. It's like the business only grew when I was exhausted and it stalled when I tried to protect myself. So if I took personal time. So my belief, my limiting belief back in the days was if I take personal time, that takes away from my business. If I pour into my business though, that takes away from personal time, which is the biggest limiting belief. I hear people say all the time I don't want to spend so much time at work because that takes away from me being a good father or mother. It's or you could have both, because I came from the mindset too, as well where they came from. I used to have the same mantra. I can only be a great father or a great business person. I can't be both. I can only be a great husband or a great business person. I can't be both. I can't have it all. Because I'm pouring in my business, I'm taking away from family. Or if I'm pouring into family, I'm taking away from business. That is a lack mindset. That is a scarcity mindset that I had to come to a realization on. And for me that a lot of that's when it started clicking. If everything depended on me, nothing is actually scalable and worse, way, worse than that concept, by the way.'cause I'm still young, so it doesn't even need to be scalable right now. Way worse than that. No one around me can become who they're capable of becoming. That to me was the most important realization that forced me to change more than anything, especially my leadership. It forced me to change my life and around this time I made a hard commitment to myself. Not because anything was wrong, but because I wanted alignment. I like, I love when people grow. That's why I got into building multiple locations and building leaders. This is why I got into Chiro 180. This is why I get into Growth Summit. Adventure Summit, my Empire Program next year. I love seeing people step into their potential. Now, that only happens when I give them the space to grow too as well, and I've had to learn that along the way. But I decided when it was time for me to grow that some of the biggest things I had to step into were growing myself and getting com and getting comfortable, being uncomfortable. This is why Adventure Summit. It was such a huge hit last year. I do something hard every year and that forces me to grow, to get uncomfortable. It's very easy to stay comfortable, but when your why becomes big enough, then you will start creating opportunities for yourself to get uncomfortable. Not as a reaction, but as a decision. It helps me show up better as a leader, as a husband, as a father, and the commitment I made to doing hard things. Has changed how I thought, how I led, and how I chose where my energy goes. And I think what surprised me the most was my biggest transformation was not in my business, but it was actually in my relationships for years. All I did in my life was work 24 7. I used to work, I used to go to a gym at five in the morning during the week. And I would work that gym till seven in the morning. Then I would go to the office till noon, have lunch with somebody in business, a transactional relationship for lunch. Then I would go back to work. Then I would go to another gym at about five or six o'clock to screening and be home by eight o'clock. Then on the weekends I would sponsor art festivals, other fairs, fall festivals, you name it, I was there. Anything in Atlanta that was a festival. I was there every weekend, 24 hours over the weekend, but. For me, it was also, I wanted to get to a point where I didn't have to do that as well when my kids got to a certain age, so I could have that time with them, but also have a lot of freedom from the financial to be able to create opportunities for them where I didn't wanna have to be stressed about money, but I knew the work that had to go in before they were, two, three years old. I knew it was gonna be a little bit different. And like I said, for years it was 24 7, of my life. I never, I, gosh, you could ask my wife being home was just like, it wasn't my home. There was a night early in my career in 2012 where I didn't have a new patient on the schedule that week. And it was a Monday night and I was looking at my schedule. I just got done doing a screening. It was eight 30 at night. I got back to my office'cause the gym that I would go to was downstairs. It was an Anytime Fitness. I came back upstairs into my office and I'm looking at my com, my scheduler and I noticed that. We don't have any new patients that week. So I got on Twitter, I got on Facebook, I got all these different platforms to do these searches to see for anybody who's dealing with low back pain or neck pain. And that night I actually ended up sleeping in my office. Here's what's interesting. It was three in the morning and I got on Twitter and by the way, I slept on one of those massage tables, those IST tables in the office. And what ended up happening was I got on Twitter. And I saw that there was a DJ jockey in Atlanta who was dealing with neck pain. He was looking for a chiropractor and I reached out to him and he came to the office. When he got off at work at 7:00 AM the next day, that guy became a part of our wellness club, which is like our lifestyle patient in, which means he was in the Century Club as well. He was an unbelievable patient. But that was an energy, right? It's patients don't come to you, but they come from you. And the commitment I made. And I'm not saying by the way, people are just sleep in their office, but if you're not where you want to be financially, yeah, I do think there's a level of work ethic that goes into it. I do think there's a level of grind that goes into it because if you're somebody who has young kids, that window's gonna be short because between the age of five and 18, those 13 years, it's gonna be really tough to grind like you're grinding, but you have the time now. You have the capacity now, especially for those that don't even have kids right now. So anyways, that is just some of the transformational stuff that happened. But, talking now about who I've become to as well. One thing I had became really intentional on, and this is over the last five years, was and I, by the way I'm really tired of hearing people in business talk about how they don't have friends. That's one of the questions I ask my team. Always, I ask my team, I say, who are your friends and who are your, what are your hobbies? That should be really good questions, by the way, for people to ask their team. Why? Because if you don't have friends and you don't have hobbies what are you doing? Like, why are you doing this? For me right now, my core values are relationships and experiences. And what I had to be really intentional on over the last few years was rebuilding my circle. And I especially had to do this in chiropractic. But not more people in my life. But I wanted the right people in my life. I want people who challenged me. I want people who think long term. I want people who leave me better. After every conversation. One night I was sitting around a table. I remember with close friends, there was no phones. We were not in a rush. There was no agenda. And it hit me. This is the asset, the clinic, the metrics. No, it was this. The time with the right people. Compounds faster than money ever will. Those are the friends that bring me up when I'm in my circle of friends. Like for example, yesterday I was in a four hour meeting with eight guys. I would say the average net worth in that group is probably 10 to$15 million. That was intentional though of putting that group of people together. When I travel and go like to dinners. And by the way, it's not about money, but they're having impact to those people. And they're also great fathers and they're also great husbands and they're also really care about themselves. And so the, but they happen to have large net worths because they put, they understand how you do anything, life is how you do everything in life. And so those are the circles. And when, and what I said about chiropractic, like right now I'm very selective on who I work with in chiropractic. Why? Every person listening this to a chiropractor has been burned by another chiropractor in business, especially B2B. Whether it's a software company, whether it's a coaching group, whether it's a marketing company, you've all been burned and so have I. And this is exactly why. And by the way, I think it's cool'cause I think this is why Chiro and 80 has such high retention, because I built Chiro 180 because out of a need we need in our company and it's like I'm a chiropractor, a very successful chiropractor that happens to have a software company. Most softwares are business people who happen to have software like they're not people still operating clinics, so they don't understand the needs and the necessities of software where we just made like four or five updates just in the last week, right? Like you can now see all the drop offs that happened in 2025 to reactivate them for going into 2026. You can see all the resigns that happened in 2025 moving into 2026. Now you can look at, there's so much you can do by the way. But we made all these updates. Why? Because like it's part of my business. It's who I am and that's why I think why we have Higher Retention Growth Summit. Over 90% of the people that came in 2025 are coming in 2026. Why? There's no bs like the I'm, I'll be there talking. I have for workshops that I'll be doing with everyone and I'm gonna be talking about certain concepts that are concepts that you just don't hear about. I start and here's what's interesting, right? Like I started Growth Summit because I was tired of going to chiropractic conferences, the same speakers I hear all the time. And what happened was I would go to these events and I was never growing. Yeah. Like I felt better and maybe I was growing personally is maybe what they would say. But at the end of the day, like it wasn't translating to objective differences in my life. Zero. And that's why I started doing Growth Summit. So for me, like some of the topics you'll hear from me are gonna be like I'm, I talk about removing the bottleneck and the actual reason why you're at Growth Summit, and we talk about the four C's and then we talk about how to fix the bottlenecks in your practice, and then I go into the six growth engines to building freedom in every area of your practice. Then on Saturday morning, I come right back on at nine o'clock and I'm gonna talk about the numbers that most clinics are not tracking that will move you forward. Then after that. I'm gonna talk about my automated practice method and that's how to build programs that pay you every single month. And then in the afternoon you get Charlie Rocket, who has over a million followers on social media platforms, and he's gonna talk about how to build a personal brand. It's, you don't get those topics at chiropractic. And all the topics I'll be talking about are things that I utilize in all 13 locations. And for me, that right there was part of the transformation that was selecting who I want to be around. Because the people who I've been around at Growth Summit, the chiro 180 clients who I've been around my empire, clients who I hand selected, all of this has been part of the journey. And I, hopefully you took something from this conversation today, maybe about areas of your life where you could be looking for transformation, where maybe you need to be a better leader, maybe you need to be a better leader with yourself. Not be such a control freak thinking that if you can't do it, then nobody else can do it. Giving your team space to grow. I can go a week or two without talking to one of my clinic CEOs knowing that they've got it handled. I want them to have that space. Now in the background though, I do think it's important to make sure that, what are you doing in the background though? To make sure things are growing and we're constantly doing that. I think if I close on this, it's just. Looking back of, I didn't stop working hard. I stopped working alone. Listen, I still grind. Like I always say, like I'll outwork anyone anytime, any day. I'm very intentional with my time and everything has a block in it. But I moved from control to connection and I started moving from approval of my life in every area, just going to alignment. And feeling like I was being needed to then start building something that gives others freedom. And that's the transformation. It's not becoming someone new, but it's shedding what no longer fits. And if you're listening and feel that quiet tension, that sense that something needs to change, even though nothing is wrong, that's not a problem. It's more so an invitation. And here's what I'm gonna leave you with is this, is that I went to a seminar one time and I listened to Ed Mylet speak. It's the only time I've ever been to a seminar before and I've actually cried listening to a speaker. And the reason why I got emotional was he had a great story where he talked about his father and the relationship there. But the one thing that really stood out to me was this. He said, when you get to heaven, he said, the person that I envision when I get to heaven is the best version of myself, and that person's gonna look at me and say. My man, Austin, you became the exact person who I intended you to become. We are best friends. Or that person's gonna look at me and say, Austin, I gave you 90 years on this earth to become this man, and you only scratched the surface for who you could become. You were designed to create impact. You were designed to develop leaders. You were designed to show others what's possible for their lives and you didn't do it, and it's something I wrestle with every single day. Am I becoming the best version of myself? Our time is very limited. I'm 43 years old right now. I could have potentially already lived half of my life. I have no idea, but based on odds, I've most likely lived already 50% of my life. The mindset becomes, what am I gonna do with the other 50%? And I can tell you right now, building leaders, building great teams, building people that get to enjoy life, that one life we get and helping people see that within themselves, that is exactly what I'm committed to. And becoming a healthy version of an ne Enneagram three is where it starts. Hope you guys enjoy your day. Thank you Matt Granados for having me share. It's just some transformational journeys along my life. 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.