EP54: Your Life Is a Mirror. Do You Like What You See?

You keep finding bad partners. Your team is disengaged. Your health is slipping. What's the common denominator? In this episode, I get honest about the hardest lesson I've ever learned as a business owner, a husband, and a father: everything around you is a direct reflection of who you are. I share the moment my wife called me out, why I've never gone a year without a goal that terrifies me, and what Adventure Summit 2026 in Jackson Hole has to do with all of it.

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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 Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Welcome back. Austin Cohen podcast, man. We are what a great week so far. All I've gotta say is that I'm in Charlotte. I'm actually in Greenville, South Carolina right now. I was in Charlotte this morning. I got there last night. Then I'm in Greenville today and tomorrow, and then I'm in Newbury on Thursday and back to Atlanta after that. Just really working with my team right now. We're finishing Q1 and really putting strategy together going into Q2, making sure we're in alignment with our capacity, our utilization, building our relationships, influencers, a lot of things that, we talk about on, for those that are in my accelerator program, which has been awesome and, many of you guys have been asking about coaching with me I'm releasing it first to cohort one. I'm gonna release it then to cohort two. Any leftover spots, what I'll do is those that sent me a message, like through Direct Messenger on Instagram or send me an email letting me know you wanna be on the wait list. I'll go to you next. But essentially imagine us putting together and building out your recurring revenue model. We build programs, we talk branding, we talk marketing, we talk symptom based offers or chiropractic offer. Basically giving patients a path so they know what Visit eight looks like and when they're at Visit eight, they actually also know what Visit 20 will look like, and that's how you build an experience. We're then gonna go into team retention and essentially talking about a lot of things that I've done to build just an amazing team. We talk a lot about culture is gonna be the biggest thing we're gonna talk about in the eight phases through that, that we built out from before we even hired them. To the time they're actually referring their friends and family to work at our company. And then the last thing we're gonna do is do patient experience and we'll go through what we call our wow experience, which is our win optimize, or sorry, our welcome, optimize win. There's different phases broken down under each one, so you'll get that and then sprinkled in between there, like we'll be a whole month just on core values and vision. Then there will be some time we spend on swot, and then there's gonna be some time we spend on your vision piece. Then there's gonna be a time we're gonna be talking about meeting cadence and building meetings that matter. There's so much I've seen in this profession over the last four mo months of really working with these just bomb chiropractors who are crushing in a practice, who are in my Empire program. And I'm excited to take a lot of things that I've learned that have gotten them to that level of these seven figure practices and really work with, more people at scale developing all of these things. So we're gonna start that May 5th, which will be the opening launch of. Accelerator program. Some of you guys are, whether you're in cohort one or cohort two, that's actually a part of the one year. So you're actually gonna be already ahead by about nine by about two to three months. Definitely if you're cohort one, take advantage of that cohort two. You guys will get access next and then we'll move on to the wait list after that. Yeah, man, I'm here right now in Greenville, just hanging out. About to meet with Dr. Justin tomorrow. Met with Dr. Madison today in Charlotte. But it's cool because all these practices are within on, on I 85, essentially on the way back to Atlanta. So it actually works out really well. And listen, today's topic is gonna be one that I think is gonna make a lot of people uncomfortable, and I really want you to not be distracted while you're listening to this conversation. And if you are, just turn this off now. If, because it's not something I feel like you should be listening to while you're driving on your phone watching Netflix. This to me, is something that is gonna be a very uncomfortable conversation, which to me is the point of this conversation we're gonna have today. And here's the premise of that conversation is how everything in your life, your business, your marriage, your friendships, your health, your bank account, energy in your office all of it is one thing. It is all a mirror, and it is all a direct reflection of you. Not your circumstances, not your luck, not the economy, not the wars going on, not TSA situation that's going on. It's you and some of you, it's gonna sting a little if you're truly honest with yourself, because when I sat with it, it stung me too. But here's the deal. When you accept it, that's when everything will start to change. Because if everything in your life is a reflection of you, that means one thing. You have the power to change it, and that's the good news. So let's unpack this now. I've been running corrective chiropractic since 2009. I opened my doors October oh nine in the heart of a great economy. I'm just kidding. That was back when people bought houses for$500,000 and they were now worth three or$400,000. But since that time I've started over 20 clinics. I've got 13 locations now. There are 16 doctors we've been on in 5,000. Three times we've been voted Best place to work one of the top places to work in the country for a small business, all that. But the thing that people don't see is that every single problem I've ever had in my business, I trace it back to one person and that's me, the man of the mirror. Every single one. When we had a location that was underperforming. Which we have. My first instinct always used to be it's the doctor, it's the market. The team isn't getting it. And yeah, sometimes there are real tactical issues, but when I got honest with myself, the underperformance of that clinic was a reflection of where I wasn't showing up, where I wasn't leading that team where I'd gotten comfortable. And if you think about your own life for a second, you keep finding lousy friends. Lousy relationship partners. That's the mirror talking. Not because you deserve bad relationships, but because something about who you are right now. The standard you're setting and the boundaries. You're not enforcing the version of yourself, you're bringing to the table. That is exactly attracting what you're getting. Your business is struggling. Yeah. Look in the mirror. Your team disengaged in weak. Yeah. Hello Mirror. Your health not up to par to what you would like it to be. Mirror. And I'm not saying this to be harsh, I'm saying it because it's the most empowering thing you'll hear if you let it be, because it means you're not a victim of your circumstance, circumstances. It means you get to become the architect of them. And if I look back at my career on why I've been able to get to where I've gotten to. It's because of this exact concept and being able to look in the mirror and see my weaknesses and see my flaws and realize that every single thing wrong in my life right now is a direct reflection of me. Real example, there was a season in my business where I kept blaming the doctors for not hitting their numbers. Yeah. I was frustrated and pointing the fingers, and one day my wife looks at me and says, when's the last time you actually sat down with them and showed them what great looks like, crash? I wasn't defensive on that. She was right. I'd been so busy building the next thing that I forgot to lead, the thing I already had. So the underperformance of the company was not a doctor problem, it was an Austin problem. The mirror does not lie, and I've talked before about extreme ownership many times before because this to me is a piece of the pie that a lot of people are missing. They're always blaming other people when they're the problem. Why do they always have bad associates? They're the problem. Poor leadership. Here's where it gets practical as well. And since 2006 when I was in chiropractic school, I've always had something on my calendar that scares me a little. Something that's gonna be personal, physical but it has nothing to do with business. But what it has to do with is the man I want to be. Now these are things such as not five Ks. These are things like Ironmans. A hundred Mile Ultra marathons escaped from Alcatraz Seal Fit Hell Week. Last year I hiked the Grand Canyon with 16 rock stars. These were not bucket list items, I just checked off. Okay. They weren't like these Hey, lemme do a 5K this year. Check. They were intentional decisions to put myself in a position where I had to grow and I also had to become someone different than who I was when I signed up. Do you hear that? I'm doing the Teton Crush Trail this year. I will be different coming outta that and I've gotta become someone different because I've gotta train for that. And I remember 2006 specifically, that was the year I did the Chicago Marathon. It was early on. I didn't have a clinic yet. And I just remember looking around my life thinking something's missing. I wasn't broken and I was not in a bad place, but I also wasn't on fire. And I realized that the missing piece, I had nothing on the horizon that needed more of me. That was a testament to some of my mentors in chiropractic school, which I've talked about last week, which is Guy Reman. There was nothing that forced me to level up, so I signed up for something that terrified me. And from that moment forward, I made a promise to myself 20 years ago that I would never go a year without something scary on the calendar, not one year. And here's the thing that people will miss. When you have a massive personal goal that is on your horizon, it changes everything else in your life. It changes how you eat. You have to eat differently when you train for these things, it changes how you sleep.'cause you have to recover for these things, how you show up to work because you don't bring your personal life into your professional life. Yeah, you may show up tired, but you're also gonna show up a lot more motivated. It changes the way you talk to your spouse, the way you play with your kids. You can't train for an Ironman, by the way, and be lazy. The rest of your life. It just doesn't even work that way. That discipline that you do will show up in every single thing of your life. It bleeds over. You all have heard this quote before. How you do anything in life is how you do everything in life. When I look in the mirror and I like what I see, it's because I've been chasing something hard. And when I look in the mirror and I don't like what I see, it's because I've gotten comfortable. I've stopped pushing and I let the edge that I used to have go dull. Exact reason right here why I created Adventure Summit this year, Teton Crest in August, and every single year people ask me, Austin, why do you do this? You've already got a business conference, you've got coaching programs. Why do you need another event? The answer is simple. Adventure Summit is my personal goal. It's the thing I get to look forward to. It's a thing that keeps me sharp. It's not some conference where we're sitting in a ballroom, like in sen be taking notes. It's an experience where you gotta put yourself in an environment that demands the best version of you. And here's what I've learned after almost 20 years of building businesses and pushing my body to the edge, the version of you that shows up to a challenge, that to me is the real you. Not the version sitting behind a desk, adjusting spines, scrolling your phone at 10 o'clock at night. The real you shows up when it's hard, when it's uncomfortable, and when you're at mile 27 or 30 and you're extremely tired, you still have 10 miles to go. And when you put yourself around other people who think that way, who live that way, the mirror starts to reflect something different. Standards go up. Your tolerance for mediocrity, 100% will go down and you start to look at your business a little differently, relationships differently, and more importantly, you get to look at yourself differently. Okay? This is why I limit groups like Cohort One is only 10 people. For my coaching program, cohort two, there's 20. My Empire Program. There are six of us Growth Summit. There's only 85 people that can come. Adventure Summit. There's only 16 people that can come. These are not 500 person conventions because when you get a small group of driven people into the mountains, into nature, at these events, into real physical and mental challenges together, something shifts. What happens? The walls begin to come down and you stop performing and you start actually being real. And that realness is the way the breakthrough happens. Whether it's on a trail, on a river, round of fire at night, but the only thing left that you have is vulnerability and truth. And I remember being out there with Justin Brown, amazing chiropractor in Florida who's built a really good company, upper cervical with the collective. And I remember after chatting with him just for two hours thinking we still have 18 hours left, man. Let's go deep in conversation. And there was many other guys in that group too as well, who we just, you go deep with. I see this with so many business owners and honestly, so many people in general, they hit a level of success and they stop. They stop challenging themselves personally. They stop putting things on the calendar that scare them why they've gotten comfortable, and when they wonder why their business plateaus and they wonder why the marriage feels stale, they wonder why they're 30 pounds overweight and have no energy. One thing to look at, and it's the mirror. You stopped growing, so everything around you stopped growing too. One of my mantras in life is you get uncomfortable being uncomfortable. You've all heard that, and I don't just put that on a shirt. I live that every single day. Every single year. It's on purpose. The moment you stop being uncomfortable, you start dying. Maybe not like physically, but there's something inside of you, you know that's gonna start drinking, and that fire, that edge is gonna just start to burn out. Man, I've seen it happen to so many people, guys who are killers in their twenties and thirties, they built. Rockstar things in business, and then they made some money. They bought a house, they got a car, and all of a sudden they just stopped. Five years later, what happens? They're miserable. Not because they don't have enough stuff. They have the stuff, but they don't have anything to chase anymore. They don't have anything that demands the best of them. Don't you wanna show up as the best version of yourself? Here's the part that gets me.'cause it doesn't just affect them. It now affects their kids, their spouse, their team, everyone around them feels it. I love doing one-on-one trips with my kids. I talk about this all the time. Brody and Harlow gets to go on a one-on-one trip with me every single year. It's intentional time, just us. And the version of me that shows up for those trips is directly connected to whether I've been pushing myself or coasting. When I'm sharp and I'm on it, I'm present, man. I'm locked in. I'm exactly the dad who I want to be, and when I've been coasting and chilling, I can feel the difference. And here's the worst part. So can they, that's the mirror at the most personal lever. Your kids are watching, your spouse is watching. They're not just listening to what you say, but they're watching who you are. They're seeing the dad, when I was training for my a hundred miles, they were seeing the dad that woke up at three in the morning to get in 30 miles before his kids woke up so he could take them to birthday parties. Coach baseball teams show up for cheerleading events. They watched that person, he didn't miss anything. He still trained and he still showed up. They watched their dad get destroyed during Navy SEAL training for 24 hours and only two guys made it out of six. And they watched that happen and they also watched their dad show up and finish it. So lemme bring this full circle. If your life is a mirror, then what is it showing you? Sit with that for a second. Don't deflect it. Don't blame. Just look like here. It's easy. Look in the mirror without a shirt on. What does your health look like? That's a reflection for sure of what you prioritize. Hey, what does your marriage look like? What does your team look like?'cause that's a reflection to me of you as a leader. I always think about the people that have ever left our company and some people are like, oh, isn't that sad? They left. But then you see what they've done. And some people leave our company and they do amazing. Some people leave our company, they just say stale. Like I love to see people win. I think it's great. To me that's a testament. It's my leadership. Take a look at your bank account too. Like to me, this is a serious one. Your bank account is a reflection of the value that you create and the discipline you bring. Think about that. The more value that you create for other people, the bigger your bank account, and I don't care what role you have in any company, by the way, whether you're the office manager, marketing person, associate doctor, clinic, CEO, lead, doctor, like it doesn't matter. The more value you provide, the more that will be in your bank account. Very simple. And if you don't like what then good.'cause that means you know what needs to change because it starts with one person. You stop thinking about all these external things that you need to change. It's you. You don't need to hire a new office manager, not a better marketing strategy or switching CRMs. It starts with you deciding to become someone different, someone better, and someone who demands more of themselves. I started my clinic in Buckhead in oh nine with nothing but a belief that I could build something meaningful. And every single year since then, the business has been a mirror of wherever I was personally. And I've been lucky to be around friends of mine who every year they ask me, what's the personal goal? Austin, what's the personal goal? It's exactly why I venture someone was built. Every year that personal goal will get accomplished. Last year, the Grand Canyon, this year, Teton Crest Trail. Next year there'll be another thing. I've almost made it so easy for so many of you, and actually by the way, I do have one spot left for those, that person that wants to take that spot and join a rockstar crew of people and chiropractors that are coming out to do this rockstar event. Justin Brown, Jeb Smith, who's actually a real estate agent. High influencer. If you look up Jeff Smith on Instagram, who will be there? You've got Jacob Stutz, the chiropractor for FC Dallas. You've got Michael Butler with multiple locations. You've got Michael Fester up in New York City. You've got Matt Sle, who's absolutely cro. Just, I could go on by the way of the group, Adam Tedder of Georgia. We got such a stacked crew coming. Put yourself around these people. We, the opportunity is there, and here's my challenge to you. I'm not doing this to tell you what to do. By the way, I'm sharing this whole story right now with all of you because this is what's worked for me and I've also seen it work for hundreds of others. Put something on your calendar in the next 12 months that scares you. Something physical. Something that requires you to train, something that makes you think, oh, I don't know if I can actually do this, and then you start working towards it and watch what happens to the rest of your life. Shout out to my boy, Eric Brown, who's listening to this call and this podcast. He made a commitment to wake up at Growth Summit. He made a commitment to show up and wake up at 4:00 AM every single day, and he's been waking up at four 17 every single morning. Since then, most people doubted him. I doubted him too, as well. I take that back because I'm proud of that man because it's now been five weeks and most people would not have committed to this long, and that's showing up in other areas of his life. That guy, I guarantee you, has a record year watch out for him, guaranteed without question if he keeps it up. His team will also now start to see that behavior showing up in other areas of his life. And he now can become a better leader. Why? Because he may have tolerated laziness before. He does not tolerate that anymore because of who he's showing up. As you watch how your discipline at work changes too as well, when you do this, how your patience with your family shows up energy begins to shift. People around you, they just start responding to this like new version of you, like kinda was sharing with about Eric. They will. The mirror works both ways, guys. When you change, the reflection changes. So if this hit home for you today, do me a favor, share this with people that need to hear this. Go on my Spotify account, go to Spotify, go to the Austin Cohen podcast and hit that up arrow and just share this as a story. Please gimme a tag to as well. And if you're somebody that's interested in joining my cohort for the May 5th. Coaching program and you're not in my cohort one or cohort two of the recurring revenue, then send me a message on Instagram so that way we can get that taken care of and get you on the wait list for if there's any spots available. Listen, I love you guys. I appreciate all of you. Go look in the mirror and make sure you like what talk to you next week. 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.