EP47: Growth doesn’t happen by accident. Community doesn’t either.

In this episode, I break down how Growth Summit was built months in advance with intention, structure, and clarity. No guessing. A clear agenda. Trusted relationships. A capped room to protect community.

I share how this same framework applies directly to your clinic. From running better meetings, to building real team and patient connection, to getting clear on who you’re actually meant to serve.

Growth comes from intention, not chaos.
 Community is built on purpose, not by chance.

The question is simple:
 What are you building on purpose right now?

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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 back. Austin Cohen podcast. For 75 of you, you are 72 hours away from, I believe it could be one of the most impactful weekends of your career. If you know me listen, this is not a fluff weekend. This is not a make you feel good weekend. This is gonna expose you. It's gonna show you opportunities and areas for growth, and I'm so excited about that. And you're gonna walk away Monday morning, have intangible action items to know what to focus on for 2026. It's gonna be very simple. And for those that know me very well. Listen, there's no, there's just no bs. There's no fluff. It's just pure, it's tactic strategies. I want the best for all of you. You signed up for this event to grow and I'm delivering. It's gonna be awesome. The group of people that are coming to who I've built in some networking opportunities and some relationship building opportunities like this bonfire we have on Friday night, the luncheon on Saturday, the dinner on Saturday, the after party on Saturday night. It's an after night, like this is how y'all should know me, like Saturday night we're having a keg party. That is, if you know me well enough that is so perfect for me and who I am as a person. And then Friday night, of course bonfire party. I've got coolers, a beer, like it's just gonna be a fun down to earth tactical weekend. So yeah, hope everyone's excited about that. And the weather gods are participating'cause it's gonna be in the sixties here in Atlanta. Yeah, I just can't get over how pumped I am for that. And but here's what I will say. Many of you I will be talking to about for Adventure Summit, which is coming up in August. We're still about seven months away from it, so there's plenty of time. But my goal by the end of this weekend is the nine slots that are available to fill up by the end of this weekend, which I'm assuming will happen. So if you're listening to this and you're not coming to a growth summit. And you've been thinking about coming to Adventure Summit, I would highly encourage you to get signed up for that because by Sunday I will guarantee you there will be zero slots available for Adventure Summits. So I would strongly encourage anybody who's not coming to Growth Summit and is looking for a personal challenge to help lead to professional growth. I will strongly recommend you. Get signed up for Adventure Summit and the limiting beliefs that are holding you back from signing up for Adventure Summit are the same limiting beliefs for why you're stuck for where you're stuck. Anytime I've ever done something hard in my life personally, it is always translated into a great professional year. I know that when summer hits and I'm in the midst of my training for adventure Summit and even through Adventure Summit, it's gonna translate into such a great year because of the behaviors and the habits that I'll be building. Over that time, but knowing there's something to look forward to as well, that's gonna push me. So once again, if you're not coming to Growth Summit, I would encourage you to go to.com, click on Attend Adventure Summit, and you will want to be there for that. So here's what I thought I would do today since Growth Summit is only a few days away, is really talk about. The lessons of how Preparing for Growth Summit will translate into you building a successful practice. There are a lot of similarities in this conversation, and what I wanna do is pull back the curtain for a lot of you and build this and show you exactly how this works. So for those that know, growth Summit, preparation for Growth Summit 2027, we'll start on Monday. Growth Summit didn't start a few weeks ago. This has been months of preparation. Every year is months of preparation for this event. There's clear intention. There are clear outcomes I want for everybody coming. There's a complete agenda. There's absolutely no guessing, and that matters because most frustration and your clinics, your meetings, the internal and external events that you do not come from a lack of effort. They come from one thing and it's a lack of clarity. And this is why I feel that Growth Summit sold out so early this year by Thanksgiving weekend, four months a advance. It ha I think it had to do a lot with the preparation that led up to it. And of course, last year we had a 92% of the people that came last year are coming back, and we also increased it as well by 25 more people. So now we're at full capacity. And let me go through with all of you the four topics that I really want to hit and how they translate into your practice. Number one is this preparation creates presence and this is where the dots get connected. This weekend, you are gonna be listening to me speak for seven hours. Seven hours on four hours. You get me on four, four and a half hours. You get me on Friday, then you're gonna get me for two to three hours on Saturday. And I didn't build this delivery this weekend just by winging it. I built it by deciding three things. What problem are we solving? Who is this for? And what should people walk away thinking, feeling, or doing differently now for your clinics? How does that translate? Many of you have staff meetings that feel chaotic and there's no agenda. If you asked your staff at the end of every staff meeting, you said, let's rank our staff meetings one to 10, you can't use a seven. It would be interesting to see the average and using that data in order to enhance and create better staff meetings, and then you can build better agendas. Team trainings in most clinics fall flat because there's no why and there's no clarity. Clarity around that. We've been there like we used to do staff meetings that were 30 minutes, sometimes they were an hour there. There was no clarity in that. Right now, we built out a perfect model for team trainings. Every Wednesday from one 15 to one 30 is office manager training. I think there's 12 office managers in our company and. It's a great time for them to connect for 15 minutes. Update on the company for five, train for 10. That's it. If there's no updates, then it's a 15 minute training, but there's an agenda and there's clarity in that of what do we want everybody to know by the end of that 15 minutes. The other one is this patient experience. I've seen clinics, now that I've been doing my onsite visits at clinics, I've been seeing where teams are just guessing what's important in that moment in time. So a patient may walk in and the staff may say, Hey, I don't know if you're doing decompression or adjustment first. You know what? I don't know what exercises you should be doing. Lemme go grab the doc. Hold on one second. Lemme go grab the doc. I don't know. The patient experience is falling short. Here's the lesson. If it is not written down, it is not real. When you build out agendas, whether it's for staff meetings and team in preparation, they don't have to feel rigid. All you're doing is you're respecting people. You're telling people when you have agendas, your time matters. This weekend, everyone will know their time was really important to me. I value that they spent money to be there this weekend. I value more importantly though, that they're taking time away from their family and their clinics to be there this weekend. It's very important for me to make sure that this weekend is about being rigid, but it's more about being prepared. And I am very prepared to deliver these seven hours of content this weekend and it's gonna be a lot. But it's gonna be high value. Number two is this. Right now the product in our society is community. Big one right here, guys. People are not starving for information anymore. Chat, GPT exists. Google, Gemini, Claude, whatever. They don't need the information. Everybody is starving for belonging, and this is why right now you're seeing run clubs, dinner clubs, book clubs, small gatherings together. Lunch and learns are crushing it right now for companies. Dinner with the docs are crushing it again. You're seeing a screenings are huge again, and a lot of these things have gotten popular again because of the sense of belonging that people are looking for in today's world. So Growth Summit works because it's not just content. There's also a lot of connection that's involved as well in the weekend. Now, how would you translate that into your clinics? People don't come to your office and just stay for adjustments alone, by the way. They're staying for a sense of belonging. People don't go to Starbucks for the coffee. They can get coffee anywhere. There's a feeling they have when they go to Starbucks. Teams in your clinic are not gonna stay with you because of just pay. They can go make money somewhere else. Why are they staying with you? They're staying with you for culture and a sense of belonging. And by the way, you'll get a lot of that this weekend. People stay where they feel seen, they're known, and they're part of something. And when you can make people feel part of that,'cause that is exactly what people are starving for right now, you win the game. And my hope for a Growth Summit, adventure Summit, Chiron 80 Empire Program and Freedom Accelerator program is that intention of belonging. I don't just, we don't just sell it bla, I've never run an ad for anything I've ever done. Not saying that's the right or wrong thing for me, that's what's worked out really well and it also works well.'cause like I still have 12 other clinics I'm operating as well that I own. So between everything that's going on, it's very important that the people that are there feel that sense of belonging, that we don't make it too big. When I did my first cohort of the Freedom Accelerator program and I took on these 10 people that I'm showing them how to build out a practice that is 80% recurring revenue with 25% profit margin, which creates what I call level five on the freedom matrix, which is freedom. Now, what I just said to you, you're like, what is he talking about? Message me on Instagram. But if you're coming to grow some this weekend, you'll definitely hear more about it and you'll, you guys will hear more about this on Instagram too, as well down the road. But like right now, my cohort one for Freedom Accelerator program is absolutely crushing it. And I know the sense of belonging to as well that these people have. Why? Because we kept it small and tight. I didn't have a hundred people in that first cohort. I could have, but I didn't. Why? I want it to feel like community. And here's why. If your clinic does not feel like a community, then guess what Someone else's will. You wanna make sure that doesn't happen. Number three is this relationships over randomness. This is where the sponsorships that we've done, the philosophy and how I do sponsorship matters a lot. Like I don't have a vendor hall. I have relationships, and these are people that I trust that I'm already in a relationship with and they're aligned with me. Jill Cherry built my website in every website I've ever done. Why I trust Jill at Cherry Picked, and she's always done an excellent job. She has great communication, she's always prepared, and she does great work. I respect that. The guy who's sponsoring all of our swag. Brick fst. He has a company called Reliable Paper, and then KBS, we order office supplies from him. We order products from him. Every T-shirt that we have at our company, retreats comes from him. All of our hats, everything comes from him. Why? I have a relationship there with somebody who I can trust and that matters more than anything. Tristan Shab, he's sponsoring the after party on Saturday. I trust him. I do business with him. Se be Real Estate. I've bought property from them. I trust them and I know that some of you have financial resources that you wanna deploy out to investment opportunities. They're gonna be there on Saturday sponsoring the luncheon. They're spending almost$10,000, by the way, to sponsor that lunch on Saturday. It's a big deal. All of that though, is intentional. And how can this translate into your clinics? One is this your relation, your referral partners should feel aligned with you. They should not feel transactional. And that's why I always say it's not about relationships. It's all about real relationships, making sure that the relationships that you have are real fundamental relationships. The other one is community partners should feel trusted, not just random people. I could have easily had sponsors and people come in that would've paid money to make this event a profitable and, increase the revenue of this event, but I didn't. Why? Because at the end of the day, these are people that need to be trusted. I can't have one of you guys doing business with somebody I don't trust.'cause that falls back on me. And ethically, at first off, I couldn't even do that. But I want people in this room that you trust. And when you're working with your business partners, it's the same thing. You're only gonna bring business partners to your community of people you trust. Here's the lesson on this guys depth, beats, breath, every single time. It's not about how many, it's not about casting the net wide, but it's about being intentional about who you bring on and really focusing a lot on those business partnerships. And the last one is this capacity creates quality grow. Somebody is capped at 75. That's not an accident. That is a decision. Could I have this at a hotel ballroom in Atlanta somewhere? A hundred percent. Why not? And if you've been to grow something before and you've been to SIV before, you know why? This is an intentional decision. There is a wait list pretty significant for people to come to this event. There are more people that want to come to Growth Summit that I can handle, but for right now, the people that are there, the people that are supposed to be there, these people that are coming. What I love is looking around the room and how many of you are ready? You're committed and you're aligned with the season you're in. I want a hundred percent. Of everybody who comes to come back next year that should, that is a testament to a successful event. 92% of the people from 25 will be here at 26. That is a testament to me that there's 8% opportunity of people that you know aren't coming back, which is fine. I love the 92%, but what can we do better to the 8%? And it created space for more people to come. That should be there as well. How do we translate this into your clinics? By the way, like you don't have to serve everyone. You're not meant for everyone. You don't need to be everything for everyone. You also don't have to say yes to everything. One thing that matters is the clear niches will create clear outcomes. And when we identified what's called our psychographic and our demographic, everything changed for our practice and the growth of it to as well. When you try to be everything for everyone, you dilute the experience for the people who actually belong. And to me it grows Summit for those 75 people. I want them to have the greatest experience possible without diluting anything. So here's what I wanna close with and bringing this into your clinic. Every meeting agenda driven, I'm thinking 10 minute huddle. Those are some of the most important part of the days. I've talked about that before. And if you use Rouch Server, please reach out to me'cause I have a great agenda for you. But every meeting has an agenda, whether that's your quarterly retreats, your annual meetings, your internal retreats, whatever it is, everything has a agenda. Two, who is your clinic for? Not everyone is your patient. That is a feature, not a flaw. Psychographics and demographics, define them in EOS, entrepreneur Operating System. In the book Traction they call, they have something called A VTO, which is your vision Traction organizer, and in there. In the beginning they talk about core values, core focus, psychographics, and demographics. Who are you for? I'm pretty clear on who I'm for, by the way. For Growth Summit. I'm clear on who's Chiro 180. I'm clear on Adventure Summit. I'm clear on Freedom Accelerator and I'm clear on corrective chiropractic who we're for Get clear on that for you. Build your community on purpose within your team and with your patients. More importantly, your team though. Team Health. Probably the most important thing you have going on right now for your business. One thing for those of you guys that listened to, we had the CEO of true food with us last year, and one thing he talked about was he talked about you have your team health, your financial health, and your patient health. Where should you focus first? Team health number one, patients number two, and then financials number three. And he talked about that because if you lead your team, everything else will follow from there. Number four, you choose relationships over your reach. I'm more about going deeper with less people, and then as time goes on, the systems and frameworks will allow for more people to jump in, but really going deep with the people that matter. I will know every single person's name this weekend. You and I will have a connection this weekend. Why? Because that was intentionally built. And the last one is cap things to protect quality like growth without intention creates what it creates noise. I've talked about this before, not results as you walk away. The question you I want everyone to be thinking about is this. Where in your clinic are you still guessing and where could clarity change everything? Now, if you're coming to Growth Summit, you don't need to answer that right now'cause we'll be going deep into that this weekend. And we'll be talking about clarity, commitment, consistency, compound growth, which to me are the four Cs for success. But if you're not coming to Growth Summit, where in your clinic are you still guessing? And where could clarity change everything? Is it your meetings? Is it your patient base? Is it your business partners? Whatever it is. I've given you a ton of different examples in this podcast already. Dial'em in, get clear. Let's freaking go. And I'll talk to you all next week. Have a great day. 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.