EP58: "Good." What I think every time a doc tells me they're overwhelmed

Since Growth Summit and the Accelerator, I keep hearing the same thing from docs: I'm overwhelmed. Too much to implement. Too many things exposed. And my response every time is the same.

Good.

In this episode I'm talking about what that feeling actually means, why the docs who pull back at this point almost always end up in the same spot a year later, and what I've found is almost always underneath the overwhelm when I dig into it. Spoiler: it's not a business problem.

If you've been doing growth work and you're starting to feel the weight of it, this one's for you

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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. What's up everybody? Welcome back. Austin Cohen podcast, man. Hope everyone's enjoying this lovely spring weather for those of you guys that are in the Southeast if you know me, by the way, this is my favorite time of year. I love when it gets warm out. I like when it gets hot out. You're gonna hear me talk a lot about that because I just freaking love it so much. I don't do well. Anything below 50 degrees for me is just woo. I prefer heat. I love summer. I love the heat. I like when it's a hundred degrees and humid. I love it. That is fun for me. Yeah. What are some oh, one thing on Thursday night on April 23rd at 7:30 PM I want to do a 30 minute conversation with everybody. About what I'm seeing is a black hole in this profession of teams staying together for 18 to 24 months, and that's like their black hole for employee experience. And I wanna talk about how ours is around 6.7 years about our average. If I, when I did the Excel spreadsheet companywide. We have some docs celebrating 10 years this year. I've got some office managers celebrating 11 years this year. We've got some docs celebrating nine years this year. We, we've done, I think, and I don't even wanna say think but I wanna say we've done a very good job, I would assume, on, just leadership development. Team culture and just really pouring into team experience as a whole. So that's gonna be talked a lot about Thursday night at 7:30 PM Just go to team dot chiro one eighty.com and you can register for free for that 30 minute webinar. But what I wanna talk about today is something I keep hearing about and for those of you guys that are in any of my spheres or circles in circle community is where a lot of these conversations happen. And I'm not hearing what I'm about to say as a complaint. I wanna be very clear about that upfront. The people saying these conversations to me are not complainers. 'cause they're actually the ones who showed up to Growth Summit. They're the ones coming to Adventure Summit. They join the Ex Freedom Accelerator program. Like they're doing the work and they're some of the best people in the room. And what they keep telling me is that they feel overwhelmed, right? Like they came to Growth Summit to learn and to grow. They learned Freedom Accelerator to learn and to grow. But they felt overwhelmed and there's too much to implement. Too many things got exposed in their practice of weaknesses and opportunities. Too much. They didn't know that. They didn't know. And now they're sitting there with a practice to run, a family to get home to patients. See, and there's a list of things that they need to build that that keeps getting longer and longer. And I hear it, like I do hear it, and every single time someone says it to me, I think the exact same thing. Good. Sit with that for a second. A few years back in 2015 and 2016, I was training for my I was training for a couple Iron Men, and specifically more so in 2015, I was training for my first Ironman. And if you've done one of those, you know exactly about what I'm talking about. And if you haven't, just know that at a certain point in the training. You hit a ball, a wall where your body is telling you it cannot do what you are asking it to do. Your legs do not work the way they're supposed to. Your sleep is completely off eating every single thing in the entire house and wherever you go to dinner, you are tired in such a way that a good night's sleep does not fix anything. And when I was training for the Ultra Marathon, it was the same thing. Like I would have to run 20 miles on a Saturday night and then wake up and do 30 miles the next. And if you don't know what that feeling means, you quit. You think something is wrong and you think you've gone too far and the plan isn't working. But if you've been around endurance sports long enough, you know that feeling has a name and it's called adaptation. Your body is rewriting itself. It's tearing down the old version, and it's building a stronger one, and the discomfort is actually not the problem. What is the discomfort? The discomfort is the process. What you do in that moment decides everything. You either the docs who came to Growth Summit and went through the accelerator program. They signed up because they wanted to grow. Like you knew something wasn't working and maybe it was the team, maybe it was a revenue ceiling, maybe it was the feeling that you were thinking you were working harder than ever, but you're still not getting ahead. You showed up, you did the work, and through that something happened that you didn't fully expect. Your weaknesses got exposed. And this is not in a crushing way. Think of it like this, it's in a clarifying way. The Freedom Accelerate program is designed to do exactly that. Growth Summit was designed to do exactly that. Adventure Summit. For those of you come in, will 100% do exactly that. You cannot fix what you can't see and when you suddenly can see it, it can feel like a lot. And to me, that's not failure. That is exactly what's supposed to happen. The problem is most people just don't have a framework for that feeling. So what do they interpret it as wrong? They think the overwhelm means they're behind, when actually they are right on the edge of that next level and where it gets real. Because when you hit that edge, you have two choices. There's a fork in the road. You either press in or you pull back. And what I wanna talk about, what pulling back actually looks like, because it doesn't always look like quitting. That's the thing. Most of the time it looks like completely reasonable. Like it looks like I need to slow down. I need to get this one thing figured out before I add anything else. Let me just focus on what I already have. Let me just get through this quarter, and none of it sounds wrong. Some of it's actually smart, but where is it coming from? It's coming from fear. And if it's coming from that overwhelmed feeling that you haven't reframed yet, then what's happening is you're managing your discomfort instead of moving through it. And 12 months later, and I see this all time, you're in the same spot. Maybe slightly improved, but you're not transformed. And I've watched it happen more times than I can count with chiropractors, docs who were so close. If you could see my fingers right now, guys, you were so close and they pulled back, and when I see them a year later, they've got a reason for why it wasn't the right time. And listen, the reason sounds logical and they're not wrong. That life got busy but busy was always gonna happen. And the question is whether you built the container to hold it. This is the part people don't want to hear. When I see a doc who's overwhelmed by the business work, by the implementation, by the amount of new information they're trying to integrate into their practice, my first question is about the business. My first question is always about their personal life systems, and we just had this conversation in circle the other day because I found almost universally as this, when the business feels like it's drowning you, it's because the foundation that is underneath the business, it is not built yet. And by foundation, I'm not talking about like morning routines and things like that, like where you're just like, rah, Tony Robbins. Okay. I'm not even talking about jumping in a cold shower and journaling at night, like I've always talked about those things as well, but I'm talking about specific repeatable structures that create enough white space in your life to make you think. And for those that in my Empire program, for example, like I invited them to do my, to join me on my Sunday night reset. Sunday nights, not a long ones, 30 to 45 minutes. You look at the week and identify the things that are gonna happen. And it allows me at the end of that Sunday night reset to close the laptop knowing what Monday morning and the rest of my week's gonna look like. All agendas are planned out for the week. All deliverables are planned out for the week. Now some things are gonna get thrown in that mix, but it allows me to plan for the entire week, 30 to 45 minutes of alone time to get clarity on the week, clarity breaks. I talk about these, are they built into your calendar for me? They're every six to 10 weeks or so. Vacations time away where you're not working on the business, but you're working on yourself. What do I want my life to look like? Am I on track for where I'm supposed to be going? It doesn't have to be some like lavish vacation, just a weekend. Clear the brain, do a hobby, hang out with friends, hang out with family. The things I always tell people, do the things that you enjoyed doing when you were a kid. Like to me, those are the things that I found that have brought joy to so many people, and it's just built, but it's building in this repeatable structures into life. And these are the foundations where everything is built upon. Same thing like are you protecting your morning, right? I go to the gyms pretty early in the morning, not because I love being in the gym at 5:00 AM but what does that one hour do? It sets a tone and it reminds me of one thing. I'm in charge the day before the day even starts, and I know by going to the gym that's gonna be a win for me to already start my day. How can my day, how could anything go wrong in that day with me starting my, my, my morning with already a win rather than just waking up, not going to the gym, not getting movement on my body. And I'm already starting scrolling through emails and text messages and whatever negative things that I may see on my phone. How about family meetings? Sounds strange. I know. But if home is chaotic, usually your mind's gonna be chaotic too as well. They're very connected. Alignment of goals. What does support look like? Infrastructure. These are not optional things I do in my life when they're being reactive. These are things that create the capacity in your life to hold growth, and what ends up happening when you don't have these things. Your new ideas, the new systems, the new piece of information, right? What does it do? It becomes a pile that gets heavier. And what does it end up feeling like? It feels like too much personal life systems will allow you to build on your business systems. When I started the Freedom Accelerate program, it was because I wanted to give docs. A version. A version of a lot of things that I learned and they had eight weeks and it was architected eight weeks to go through this and learning how to build programs, recurring revenue, it was great. And a lot of docs are doing very well with that. And for those that are cookies for days, baby, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And every week was built on the last and it's been working really well. Like people are getting very good results and I'm proud of what's been happening, but I kept noticing something and it's just eight weeks, not enough time. And it's not because the content's not right, it's just when I used that word earlier, which is transformation. Transformation is not a sprint. The people who are getting the most out of it were the ones who had the foundations I just described, the ones who had space in their life to actually do the work. And the ones who struggled, who felt overwhelmed, maybe they didn't fully implement, like they're not weaker, they're just missing the container. And this is essentially like why I built the Ascent program, like 20 people. No rush. Each week is different, but we're building things when we need to slow down, we slow down. When something comes up for the group, we address it. We build the frameworks and the systems over time, not in a sprint. And the first thing we work on is not the business, it's operating principles. Because if I learn that you can give someone the best business playbook in the world, and if they don't have the structure to implement, it becomes another thing. So if you're a doc who went through growth Summit or the accelerator and you've been doing any kind of work lately and you're feeling that weight, I want you to hear this. That feeling you're having is not a warning sign, but a compass. And it's showing you exactly where you are. You are on the edge, but the question becomes, what do you do with it? Don't manage the overwhelm. Don't try to make it quieter by doing less. Look at your life systems first. Not your business systems, your life systems. Sunday night resets, clarity breaks, mornings protected family meetings. Get those in place and then watch how differently the business work lands. You are not behind. I can promise you that you are 100% building and that is the whole thing. So the encouragement. Is to keep pushing on because when I see so many of you at Growth Summit next year, I want to see that transformation in many of you. 'cause I can already hear some of you pulling back. No. And I know that's gonna happen for some. I wanna see you guys pressing in. Build the life systems, let's build on that with the business systems and let's create the life you've always dreamed of. Have an awesome day. Hope to see so many of you on Thursday night. Which would be April 23rd, 2026. Go to team.ki.com. 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.