EP71: The 600 lb log that's crushing your practice

You can have the strongest money mindset in the building and still watch your growth stall. Why? Because your practice doesn't rise to the level of your beliefs. It falls to the level of your team's.

In this episode, I'm sharing a lesson from carrying a 600 pound log through SEALFIT Hell Week. Six people, 100 pounds each. But the moment one person stops lifting, it's 120 on everyone else. And it never stops at one.

Your clinic works the same way. The CA who says "I know, it's a lot" while running the card. The unrequested discount. The team member who decides for the patient what she can afford. None of them are bad people. That's what makes it dangerous. Scarcity delivered with love still sounds like truth.

I also get honest about a situation I'm in right now with a team member who inherited a scarcity mindset long before she ever joined us, and the exact approach I'm using to coach it instead of judge 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 What's up, everybody? Welcome back, Austin Cohen Podcast. Hopefully, you guys are enjoying your summer and really creating some core memories this summer with your family and your friends. T- it's such... One of my bu- many of you guys know I take care of Jesse Itzler, and one thing he always talks about is just summer hard, and really creating those moments, and it's something we chat about a lot after the adjustment when we're usually sitting b- out- outside the sauna. Good reminder to all of us to really focus on the times that we're in right now and having that opportunity to slow down just a little bit. It was funny, shout out to my buddy Justin Brown. He was talking about today how on his... He remembers back in the days, and I remember this as well, when we would go to seminars and all the speakers would make comments such as, "I haven't taken a vacation in 5, 10, in 15 years," and they were proud of that. I would assume in today's world, for those of you guys that have chiropractors you now look up to in today's world, you're seeing those people take trips with their families and create experiences and create memories. And w- I used to also hear, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." Dumbest comment I've ever heard in my entire life. I get great sleep, try to get to bed around 9:00, wake up at 5:00. It's a good eight hours of sleep. So that's, a lot of the things that the old-timers used to say before in my generation, it was very interested to see, nowadays how things are shifting, which is there are a lot more authenticity too as well that's happening. A- and some of that we're gonna tie into today. Real quick I do have my Cohort 2 coaching program starting up. So many of you guys are in Cohort 1. You have had, I know, a great experience. Knock on wood, we take 20 people per cohort and, still the same 20 people months later. It is a business-building cohort. This cohort right now is wrapping up. They've just completely... They have really strong behaviors around their business which t- that are defined and connected to the values of their business. They are also now in the process where they've built out three phases of their team experience. There's eight phases that we're gonna be going through. So they've started the pu- we've done the pursue, they've done the welcome, and now we're going through the reassure phase. Building this intentionally on the call so they'll actually have a playbook. This ain't some rah-rah stuff, guys. This is legitimate business-building structure coaching that we're doing every single week. If you are interested in that, please send me a message on Instagram, email me at austin@chiro180.com, and let's get in touch if you wanna join Cohort 2. That starts September 8th. So what are we gonna talk about today? Something that I'm living right now. And that's what's so cool about these podcast episodes is I'm still in practice with all of you. I'm in there, usually three shifts a week, so I'm still learning and developing and doing the things that... i'm not speaking from a coaching perspective of out of practice or things I'm not doing anymore. I'm literally telling you what's going on in my life right now. So let me give you a quick story. Many of you guys know, if you've listened to this podcast before, you know I did the 24-hour SEAL Fit Hell Week. And one of the things they do to you is they give your team a log. This is not some small branch. This is not some twig thing. This is a 600-pound log. It is heavy as heck. So usually there's five to six people per log, and that log lives on your shoulders, it lives above your head, it lives at your hip. You carry it, you lunge it, you press it over your head while somebody's yelling at you, and this goes on for hours. Here's what I learned under that log It doesn't matter how strong I was individually or anybody else was individually on that team. The moment one person stopped lifting even a little, everybody under the log felt it, and it happens instantly. The weight, what it'll do is it'll automatically shift the second somebody starts de-loading, and you'll feel that grind in your shoulders way before you can look down the line to see who's the one who's dipping. 'Cause you don't even have time because the weight gets so heavy in your arms that you don't have time to be like, "All right, who's the person who's holding us back right now?" On a 600-pound log, six people carrying it evenly, that's 100 pounds per person. Heavy, above head, and very doable. When one person checks out, it becomes 120 on everybody else, and usually it doesn't stop at one because the guy next to him starts breaking under the extra weight, too. So here's the part I want you to hear. It was never the physical weakness that broke when we were doing the log exercise. It was the talking. The moment one person started saying, "We can't do this. This is too much. We're not gonna make it," what does it start to do? It moves down the log almost like a virus, man, and it just takes one voice, and you have six sets of shoulders that are typically in there, sometimes there'll be five, and the strongest guy all of a sudden on the team doubts himself because of a sentence that somebody else said. Your clinic is very similar to carrying a log, and your patients, what they'll be able to do is they will start to notice and feel every pound your team isn't even lifting. When we think about water, we had a flood in our house about a year ago. The bathtub leaked, and what does water like to do? Does it like to find the highest point of the room and rise to that? It finds the lowest one every single time. If you ever had a water leak in your house, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It goes through the light bulbs, and it goes through everything. It will always fall to the lowest point Culture in company works the exact same way, and so does money mindset. You can stand on a stage at your team meeting and talk about the value of your care that you guys provide, and you can have your mission on the wall, your purpose, your vision but the practice's actual money mindset is not usually gonna be set by the most abundant-thinking person in that room. Now, think about what I just said. The practice's actual money mindset is not set by the person who has the highest abundant prosperity consciousness in that building. It is set by the most scarce one. And I wanna get really specific here because I guarantee you're gonna recognize s- somebody on your team, and it could be somebody you love working with they may be a superstar. And it sounds like the office manager or the CA who goes, "I know it's a lot," while she's running the card. Or she a- and she does that because she's thinking she's being empathetic, but what the patient is now hearing is confirmation because the staff even thinks it's too expensive The front desk usually will start then throwing things in let me see if there's a discount I can apply." Nobody asked for a discount, but now the price becomes negotiable and everybody knows it. Or in your office, it could be the team member who decides to the patient Austin, she's a single mom, so I don't wanna push the whole plan on her." Hold on. Who gave you the permission to shrink her options? That mom came in because her back hurts and she can't pick up her kid, and somebody on the team now just quietly decided that she does not deserve the full recommendation? Or, you hear team colluding with each other, "Oh, it must be nice." "Austin, nobody around here can afford that. I'd never pay that much." Oof, that's a cringey one. Here's what makes this dangerous, is that none of these people on your team, they're not bad. I would assume they're very loyal, hardworking people and they love your patients, and that can be the problem. When scarcity mindset is delivered with somebody who loves what they do and had a passion, that still can sound like a true thing, okay? So why does this episode exist today? Because I'm not theorizing this right now, I'm actually living through this. We've got a team member who I'm not gonna say a name, and the details really don't matter because everyone has the same person somewhere in your building. This person, very similar to many of you, doesn't come from money, never had money, grew up around people who talked about everything that wasn't even possible. This person has been in businesses that they've tried to do and just didn't work out. And then, and, like, when those things start to happen inside of a family system that already believes success is for other people, what does that failure become? The failure doesn't become a lesson to them and a learning experience. It actually becomes evidence of what's now the belief system that they've been bred their entire life. And what I want you to sit with, if you're a leader, what I want you to sit with, which every one of us who's listening to this right now, I'm assuming you're leaders, 'cause everyone's a leader. She did not choose that money mindset. It was an inherited system. It was installed in her before she ever filled out the app- but before she ever came to our company and ever she applied and went through our pursue phase and then our welcome phase. It all existed before that, and she's been carrying it around like the rest of us So I have two options. I could judge it or coach it. And what I'm learning and what I've realized that if I judge that mindset, then guess who becomes the scarce person? That's me. Because that's me saying people can't change, which is a lack mindset, right? I'm saying I'm the leader, but oh no, this person, you can't change their belief systems. You can't change their mindset. Here's what we're doing instead, and I share this not as advice, just what's happening in our world right now. We built a money mindset, a self-assessment. By the way, if you want it, let me know. Just shoot me, like I said, a message on Instagram. But hey, how about this? I'll make a deal with you. Share this podcast episode and tag me in it, and if you do that, then I'll send you the self-assessment. Why? This self-assessment has 25 questions in it, and this team member who I'm talking about, it's gonna go all about her beliefs about money, her history with it, how it shows up in her daily decisions, and then the big one. How does it show up with patients? And then we built a 90-day plan around whatever the assessment reveals. So we wanna get the awareness first for her, then we wanna rewire, and then apply the application. But the part w- I wanna highlight though is how we're framing it, because if I hand her that assessment and it feels like, "Hey, listen, we think your mindset's a problem," or she feels like we're judging her and this is part of her assessment or her review, then guess what? She's done, walls up, game over. So what does it start with instead? I've gotta share my story first, which is... 'Cause there is a story around poverty consciousness and scarcity mindset for me. What I had to unlearn and some of the concepts I had to... money doesn't grow on trees, Austin. Things like that. And when the leader goes first, what does that do to the team member? It gives them permission to be honest. So I'm not fixing this person, but we are creating investment in this person. Two completely different things. And is she gonna feel the difference of that? 100%. And here's where I turn this thing around, and I can put it on you now. Because I know what's happening right now. You've listened to this for a few minutes now, and you've got a name in your head I would bet a lot of money on it. Maybe you're thinking about yourself. You may start writing the Slack message. It's your front desk person. But before you do that, I gotta have you answer two questions. One, who hired that person? And question two, what have you ever done to develop their money mindset? And think about that. Who hired them, and what have you done to develop their money mindset? We spend thousands of dollars of training our teams, whether it's softwares and scripts, and some of you guys are in- into insurance, so you've got billing and coding and compliance. We fly people to seminars to learn better adjusting technique, which we've done recently. But when's the last time you spent a dollar or an hour developing how your team thinks about money? That is something, like you cannot delegate a mindset you've never taught and punish somebody for a gap, you've never, ever tried to close even within yourself. Many of you guys know I love Jocko Willink. He always talks extreme ownership. Extreme ownership is something that just does not stop at the numbers. It ta- it's also around beliefs that happen in your building. So if we make this practical, let's do three things. Keep it simple. Number one, audit the last voice. Take every single point in your office where a patient hears about money, the report of findings, the progress report the checkout, the re-sign, the phone call about a missed payment reschedule, if you guys have that in there, like if they miss an appointment, they get charged. And ask yourself, who is speaking in each of these moments, and what is the relationship they have with money? Because I promise you, the person running the card, that person 100% is shaping your growth more than the mission statement is. We've gotta change that. Number two, assess before you address. You've probably heard that statement before. Do not call anybody out. Do not make it about one person. And what I want you to do is running, run this money mindset self-assessment with your whole team as a development exercise. If you want that, the only way to get it is you share this episode, go to Spotify, click that up arrow, share it as a story, and tag me. And here's what's wild about doing it this way. The person with the scarcity mindset, they're definitely gonna self-identify, by the way. And they're gonna be happy to self-identify with this. Does anybody wanna feel that way with the poverty consciousness? No. They've just never had the language for it or really a safe place to say it out loud. And they wanna-- and they know you're invested in them because this ultimately will help them too as well Third thing is coach the person. Do not comment. Okay? Big one here. If you just correct their comment like, "Hey, don't say that's a lot at checkout. Don't say money. Don't say this. Don't say that." Okay, you're changing the words. That's it. But does the belief still exist within their brain? Absolutely. And so for example, some of you right now, you focus more on, you're focusing on new patients, you're focusing on i- and just consistently getting more new patients in. But when we look at the clinic, maybe that getting new patients is just a band-aid for the real belief problems that happen within your clinic around money mindset So coaching the belief under the comment that changes the person, okay? Do not correct the comment of, whatever it is they say. Oh, I know that's a lot of money. I wouldn't pay for this myself. We're not changing beliefs, guys. We got to change the belief that's underneath it all. That is how we change the person. One of those takes a week. The other will take 90 days. So yeah, you could say to them and make those comments. Yeah, okay, whatever. That's a week worth of work. No, I want you to put in this 90 days system that we've built out to work with our team to develop their mindset. Let me bring it back to this log for a sec. When we were doing Hell Week, the teams that kept that log up, this may surprise some of you or may not surprise many of you, they were not the strongest teams. And I watched physically stronger teams drop it. The teams that finished were the ones where nobody let one voice decide what was possible for everybody else. Where every single person kept the shoulders underneath that weight when it was overhead or on their shoulders or at their hips. And your practice is the same. Your growth in your clinic, it's not going to be capped by your market and it is not capped by your location and it is not capped by your marketing budget. It is capped by the most scarce sentence spoken in your clinic this week. So you've got to find it. Do not judge it. Coach it. Because what does everything fall to? As I said earlier when I talked about water, it falls to the lowest point, which means when you raise the floor, everything rises. And like I said, if you want the exact money mindset assessment that I'm using with my team right now, share this episode on social media. Tag me. Run this with your team. I'll see you next week. Once again, for those that love the content that I keep putting out and you are interested in my coaching program, make sure to let me know. Full transparency. The price is $12.95 a month. So basically comes out to $300 a call. So you're going to get a huge ROI on that. But I want to make sure I share that with many of you before, you just jump on it. Because if your clinic's doing 10 to 15K a month, may not be the best time for you right now. But for those of you guys that are over that, usually 20 to 25 plus, dude, let's get to work. Have an awesome 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.