Dr. Brad Freitag: Launching an independent practice right out of school

In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Brad Freitag, a chiropractor who practices in Belleville, Wisconsin, located in the south-central region of our state. Dr. Brad graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa, in 2001 and now owns and operates Belleville Chiropractic and Wellness with his business partner, Dr. Jay Makovec. In this episode, Dr. Brad shares what it was like learning from his father and the steps he took to open his own independent practice right out of school.

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SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome to the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association podcast, Back to Basics. My name is Dr. Chris Resch, and I'm the president of the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association, and once again, I'll be your host for today's episode. Today I'm joined by Dr. Brad Freytek, a chiropractor who practices in Belleville, Wisconsin, located in the south central region of our state. Dr. Brad graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa in 2001, and now owns and operates Belleville Chiropractic and Wellness with his business partner, Dr. Jay Makovick. Dr. Brad is a second-generation chiropractor, the son of Dr. Terry Freitag, and he currently serves as a member of the Wisconsin Chiropractic Board of Directors representing the Stealth Central District. In this episode, Dr. Brad shares the appreciation of learning from his father and the steps he took to open his own independent practice right out of school. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Dr. Brad Freitag.

unknown 1:08

Dr.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Brad Freitag, how are you doing today? I'm doing very good. Thank you very much. Fantastic. Thank you for joining me on the WCA podcast, Back to Basics. I'm going to kick this off by asking a common question that I ask every guest. I think I know the answer because you're a second generation chiropractor, and we are going to feature this uh interview in our WCA magazine, which is heavily evolving around legacy. So, Dr. Brad, tell me what inspired you to become a chiropractor.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

That's an easy question for me. Um, I was definitely inspired by my father and uh Terry Freitch. He he practiced for about 42 years. Uh he opened up in Monticelle, a tiny town about 1969. He practiced there for 10 years, moved to Monerrell, a little bigger town, took on a partner, and had a very successful practice from there. He was also very active uh in the WCA, which was also my inspiration for getting involved on the board of directors with the WCA. He went as far as president of the WCA. He was also the uh Wisconsin delegate for the ACA. So very inspirational in a lot of different ways, but 100% that's why I'm where I'm at today.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Fantastic. So you're following your father's footsteps not only in becoming a chiropractor, graduated from Palmer in 2001, uh, but then you are now, as you mentioned, and I'd like to also thank you for being on the Wisconsin Chiropractor Association Board of Directors, representing the South Central District. So thank you very much for that. So you are in an office in Belleville, Wisconsin. Tell me a little bit about your practice, practice style, techniques, and commentation demographic.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Well, I was fortunate enough to do a preceptorship with my father. But at that time, we thought maybe uh just based on where their practice was, maybe it would be better if I uh started my own practice rather than uh joining that practice. So that's when I opened up um here in Bellville. And when I first started here, uh I was uh in your typical strip mall leased space and uh won a associate for a couple of years, 10 years into practice, and then uh she moved on to have her own practice with a partner. Uh I've since hired another um associate, Dr. Jay Makovic, and he has been with me for 13 years now and is also uh buying into the practice to become a partner. And we will have a third chiropractor joining us uh January of 26th. Three years ago, we felt it necessary to uh get new space, and so three years ago, I built the building that we're in now, um, which is about a 4,000 square foot building on the opposite side of town, very conveniently located uh adjacent to the UW Hospital Bellville branch uh of the clinic, so that's nice. Technique-wise, uh from the get-go, well, my father and his partner, Dr. Craig Buchanan, had sort of begun to transition from only manual adjusting to investigating some other techniques, and one of them was Activator, and they started to get into Activator quite a bit. At that point in time, uh, as a patient of chiropractic, I really enjoyed that transition from manual adjusting to activator. I just liked what it did for me. Uh, I saw what it did for them uh in practice, both from a business perspective and a health perspective. So I decided that when I started practice, that would be uh the technique that I used primarily. Sort of thought I would use maybe a couple of different ones, but uh, as it's turned out, um, Dr. J and I use Activator exclusively for our spinal and extremity adjusting. We do do quite a bit of soft tissue work as well. We use primarily um ART or active release technique for that. We also do modalities, we do electrical muscle stem, we do ultrasound, uh, we do laser. We do have a masseuse uh in-house, so we use massage therapy as as well. A lot of exercise and a lot of rehab in addition. Part of our demographics are definitely uh athletes on all levels. Uh recently I've been fairly fortunate to start to dabble all the way up into the uh professional realm of triathletes, which has been very interesting for me. Um, but we'll see in a day, we'll see anything. We'll see an infant, we'll see great grandma, we'll see uh motor vehicle accidents, we'll see farmer, you name it, we'll see it. Um and to me, that's really been one of the most enjoyable, enjoyable parts of uh practice.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

You graduated in 2001, did a preceptorship with your father, Dr. Terry, and then decided to open up your solo practice in Belleville. Correct. What about learning curves?

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Anything that uh it's it's still going. Um, you know, it was interesting because uh with the WCA, I was just on campus uh for the first multi-state association uh meeting on campus where the associations had a chance to uh talk with students and explain to them what associations can do for them, the benefits that we provide, so on and so forth. It was interesting fielding some of their questions and being reminded of where you're at mentally in the thick of things at chiropractic school and everything you still have to learn once you hit the ground running uh on on the business side of things, patient management. Uh so yeah, the learning curve it continues.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Anything that you did that you learned from the school of hard knocks that you would do differently? Like I'll give you an example. I bought a digital x-ray machine, it was underpowered. So that was like a $35,000 mistake and had to buy a second one or not working.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Fortunately, but I think there and that was one of the advantages of you know having a father in the business. I always had somebody looking over my shoulder a little bit, and I'd grown up in chiropractic and I'd grown up going to seminars and I'd grown up in the WCA communities.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

So continuing on the topic of learning curve, chiropractors, when they get out of school, especially if they're going to open up their own practice, we're new in the clinic right out of school, but we're also new business owners. Do you have a mentor that you have as a business mentor and then separately as a clinic mentor, or is that possibly the same mentor?

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Uh that is indeed the same mentor, uh, which would be my father. Uh, and also his his partner, uh Craig Buchanan. Uh, in addition to that, I grew up in chiropractic. Um, I grew up going to chiropractic seminars. I grew up with my dad's involvement in the WCA. So I grew up in a you know, a knowledgeable community, one that was always wanting to be learning, wanting to be uh involved, and so that rubs off on you. But also, when my sister was in college at Eau Claire, she met a young man who uh ended up becoming a chiropractor from my father's influence as well. And so he was about four or five years ahead of me uh in the process. So as I was coming into Palmer, I also got to learn from his experience of coming out of school and going into practice, which uh he he definitely had some learning from the School of Hard Knock situations. Uh he had they had moved to North Carolina to practice, and his first couple of things didn't work out real well, whether it be associateships or trying to get an office up and going, uh ended up being hugely successful and has uh two awesome practices in North Carolina now. But um, so I got to learn from that, and then I always got to have uh my father looking over my shoulder a little bit, and so that was definitely a huge advantage on both sides of things, practice-wise uh and business-wise. So he gets all the credit.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

So I'll I'll reverse the roles here a little bit. As a young chiropractor coming out of school and then coming up with some, let's say, fresh ideas, did you influence your father's practice?

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Uh I hope I did. I can I can recall during the uh during the preceptorship, that was really about the beginning of the introduction of um electronic health records, and there just being more computers involved in daily practice. So I think the timing there for them was very good. I remember making up a lot of ICD9 lists and CPT code lists on Microsoft Excel and stuff that was still handwritten, maybe in binders and such. Uh they were, you know, we were just making a transition from the old uh handwritten travel cards into electronic health records. So I think that's probably where uh I made the largest impact on the business side of practice. And I think technique-wise, um soft tissue was just kind of starting to get hot then. Uh so they they weren't currently doing any kind of soft tissue mobilization or anything. And so I brought to their practice um my knowledge of ART, I'd already gotten my certification while in school. And so I did introduce uh some good soft tissue stuff for them while I was there.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Gotcha. What about nutrition? I know you have nutrition in your practice. Did your father have nutrition in his?

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Yeah, yeah, they were already doing, they were already doing some nutrition. I think that was probably a a a win-win for the two of us. I think I probably was a little bit more cutting edge with some of the newer fads of nutrition, so to speak, which honestly that changes so fast, I don't even remember what those would have been 23 years ago. But I mean, you know how fast nutrition changes. And so I I'm sure I brought some new ideas uh into what could be some useful supplements to add to the regimen.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Hello, Wisconsin chiropractors. This is Dr. Chris Rash, president of the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association, and I want to talk to you directly about the role you can play in shaping legislation that strengthens Medicaid reimbursement for the Wisconsin chiropractic services that we are trained and licensed to provide. Thanks to your past support, we've already made big strides, including securing equal reimbursement for exams and x-rays, now matching what medical doctors receive. We also received a significant increase in reimbursement for the chiropractic adjustment, a major win for our profession. But we're not done yet. We're now advocating for full-sculpt Medicaid reimbursement, including extremity adjustments, therapeutic modalities, and therapeutic exercise instruction, because patients deserve access and chiropractors deserve fairness. That's why we need your help through ChiroStrong, the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association's political conduit. We're asking every chiropractor in Wisconsin to make a one-time donation, or even better, set up a monthly recurring donation of just $25. If every chiropractor took part, we could significantly expand our ability to support the legislators who support chiropractic in the state of Wisconsin. Getting started is easy. You can call the WCA office directly at 608-256-7023 or visit the WCA website. Click on government affairs, then click on Chirostron. Let's make our voice stronger, let's make our future brighter, let's stand chirostron together. Okay, Dr. Brad, so you graduated in 2001, precepted with your father, then went off and opened up your own practice, built a building, and you have Dr. J working with you for the last 13 years, who you hired as an associate, and now he's a partner. And now you are going to be potentially hiring another associate in January of 26. So talk to me a little bit about your metrics of looking for an associate, even from the vantage point of a young chiropractor that could be listening to this podcast and how they should prepare to interview to become an associate in chiropractic. What are you looking for and what should an associate strive to uh represent?

SPEAKER_00 13:26

There's a lot of parts to that question. My experience in looking to uh hire an additional associate, I will say what was most surprising to me in that experience was the difficulty in finding uh students, or I should say gaining access to the students, and knowing what portals of entry for uh young doctors that were maybe uh associates somewhere else looking for different opportunities, or young doctors who hadn't yet decided exactly where they were going to practice. For us, and maybe we took the wrong avenues, uh it took us quite a while to figure out how to get the word out to those people, um, which was a conversation I did actually have while at Palmer here recently uh with respect to the preceptorship program uh in the state of Wisconsin and maybe opening up a little better communication between uh the state, the WCA, and the schools with respect to what preceptorship entails in the state. The avenues that we mostly pursued were trying to get on the um classified boards of colleges, uh state associations. We employed uh Indeed. I had, we were getting to a point, because I had been looking for about a year, we were getting to the point where we had considered involving recruiters, um, but I just couldn't get past the cost of what that was going to be, knowing that we were probably close to getting a hold of an associate, just hadn't quite figured it out yet. And we had time. I think as far as what or how best an associate maybe would prepare or uh present to an to an employee uh doctor in the field, is understanding that you've worked really hard and you have a great education, and even if you've been out of school a couple of years, that's still a very minimal amount of experience. Uh, and that there is very much left to be learned yet, even in the practice side of things, and it's but especially on the business side of things. And I think there's great opportunity uh from those of us who have been in the field and are established looking to hire these young docs, you know, what we can provide for them and mentor them. And I probably interviewed more than a dozen, and I got a one of the feels I got from from some of them were that once they were out of school and had a couple years of experience, they really felt like they were really bringing a lot to the table. And uh some of the, I mean, I our offer was, I thought, very, very lucrative for any young doctor. Um, but I felt like too many of them were tied up into what they already thought they were worth pay-wise, and their focus on on financials, and there really didn't seem to be um with some of them, enough of a desire to continue to learn and a realization of everything that there was still to be learned. And so some of the more uh attractive interviews that we had were with those young docs who had come to that realization that, you know, yes, they had worked really hard, they had achieved some great accomplishments, but there was still an awful lot uh to be learned. They wanted to learn it, um, and they were looking to be mentored and accept more learning, I guess, for a lack of a better term.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

So coming in with a little bit of experience helps, but the willingness to learn and adapt is what I'm hearing.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

For sure. And for at least me personally, is I really wanted to get a sense that this uh this person was into it for the patients. I mean, I understand that everybody needs to to make a good living, every business needs to be profitable. We can never forget that. But I really wanted somebody who was driven by uh a desire to help people be the be the best they could be utilizing chiropractic care.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Gotcha. Do you have any favorite cases out there? Any scenarios of uh patient stories that that would be interesting?

SPEAKER_00 17:28

I have one. This gentleman's probably come into the office now almost 20 years. Uh I was probably only in practice for about two years when this happened. And because of that, I I still had some free time some days. And so I was actually out at the front desk uh at our strip mall place this this afternoon, and it was full of windows. And this car pulls up, and this guy gets out of this car, which takes him about 15 minutes, and he is leaning on his car the whole way till he gets to the end of his hood, and you can tell he's trying to figure out how he's gonna get from the end of his hood up onto the sidewalk to my front door because this guy is struggling to walk. Not necessarily from pain, he's like grimacing in terrible pain. It's almost like somebody stuck somebody else's legs on him and couldn't quite control his legs, and he, this guy, is struggling to walk. He gets into the office, he had been everywhere. He had been checked out neurologically, he had seen umpteen specialists, nobody really knew what was going on with this guy. He hadn't yet tried chiropractic. Um, and I actually don't even recall how he he actually got my name from a local farmer. He was working in the egg industry at the time. Anywho, long story short, I would say six to ten adjustments later, he is walking like a regular human being and he has never forgotten it. He has over time actually moved further and further away, still continues to drive to the practice over an hour, never misses a routine adjustment. He sent in you know tons of people. He's just one of your gold star patients. But um I had no idea what was about to happen that day.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

So you saw him all the way from the time he tried to get out of his car up until 20 years later now, and he's referring patients and a great outcome and a great success story. That's awesome. Dr. Brad, do you have any practice building suggestions for our young chiropractors out there?

SPEAKER_00 19:29

I do, and this one comes from having done those interviews of associates and from having recently been on campus. The vibe I get is people are reluctant to want to spend time, put in a lot of time. Everybody's looking to uh right away jump into this three days of practice or no long nights or no weekends, um, which I understand. I mean, it isn't ideal when you're at an age where you're also trying to start a family and such. But for me, I mean, I you have to be involved in your community, and that's just gonna take time. You need to be involved in in the chamber, you could be on the village board, um, you can be involved with the schools, with school athletics. I mean, whatever it is, you can find your find your niche that doesn't make it seem like work, but you need to be willing to put in time outside of your practice so that people can start to put a personality with the name or the face. They need to know who you are, uh, what you're about. And and once they do, you know, then the practice will build itself. But if you don't do those things, then you're just a name. And if there's somebody else out there near you putting in the time, that's who's gonna get the patience.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

I like that. Community involvement that doesn't seem like work, and your practice will build itself. That's awesome. All right, Brad, change the topic up a little bit here. Other than your father, give me someone or something that has inspired you in practice.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Well, this will be one of many, but this is a big one. There is a um, I would say I would call him a success coach. His name is Darren Hardy. Uh, and he's he's global, huge. His favorite client is someone that desires peak performance, both in business and in your person, being the best human you can be, the best Yui that you can be. And he had a particular program uh that my partner Dr. Jay and I took together called Hero's Journey. And that part of that program is particularly great for this episode being linked with legacy, because um, part of Hero's Journey, Jay and I found to be particularly useful in practice was the importance of uh legacy and how you know currently, even in the workforce, we've got multiple generations of people that all learn different, hear different, speak different. Um, and so you know, if I'm dealing with um a boomer or if I'm dealing with a gen y Or Gen X, you know, all of those people have grown up in different cultures. They have a little different lingo that they use. When you speak to them, they hear things in different ways because of what they grew up hearing or how they were raised. And so we found that to be extremely helpful both in dealing with staff of all ages and dealing with our patient base because we've got such a huge variety of demographics. You know, in the same hour, we're dealing with a 20-year-old and we're dealing with an 80-year-old. And we're gonna have to speak entirely different to those two people to reach the same end. Um, and there's a bunch of other fabulous stuff in that Hero's Journey uh program, but that one just sort of winks nicely with the whole legacy theme.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

Very cool. So success mentor Darren Hardy in the program called Hero's Journey. It's a good one. Nice. Okay, Dr. Brad, next up. 23 years in practice. What do you know now that you wish you knew then?

SPEAKER_00 23:05

One of the first things that comes to mind is as badly in the beginning as you want to build your practice and build it quickly, you at least in my experience, you could go to a million different practice management seminars. You can try to get those answers from 10 different people, but until you figure out for yourself what those answers are to building your practice, it's not going to work for you. What I mean by that is coming out of school, I did a handful of different practice management things. And of course, you know, one would tell you to schedule a certain way and to have to run your first one or two or first five visits a certain way, and to use a certain kind of handout uh per se. And they would say, you know, this is built a million practices, just do this and it'll work for you. And uh I got frustrated in the beginning because those things weren't working for me, and all I needed to do was take all that with a grain of salt, absorb that knowledge, but then apply it to what felt the best to me and made the most sense to me, so that when I was saying those things or giving those things to my patient, it was authentic and not me just trying to regurgitate something from somebody else because they told me it would work.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Does that make sense? Does I really like the word authentic?

SPEAKER_00 24:35

I was gonna say, so I mean, I guess ultimately the the 23 years in practice tells the first year in practice me to trust yourself. You've got a great education, you put in the work. Uh just be authentic. You're I feel like this profession finds you. And so if you find yourself here, you're meant to be here. Find your reasons and trust them. And the more authentic you are with your patients, the more they're gonna feel that, and the quicker your practice is gonna grow.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

I think that's great advice. I think it goes really well with something I was taught early on, and I continue to teach it to every new employee, every new chiropractor, every new physical therapist that comes into our office, and I say it's the R word, and I ask them to guess the R word and eventually get it right, some right away, some it takes a little bit, but the R word in our office is called relationships. If you have to develop relationships, one, it will pay off later, but two, it makes your day-to-day job so much better. I mean, I mean it's so great to develop a relationship with the patients that you're helping and the people you're working with, it just makes the working experience so much more beneficial.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

Exactly. My sort of cliche motto around here uh that I've always used, uh, that Dr. J still feeds back to me sometimes is uh if you take care of your patients, the rest will take care of itself.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Good stuff. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Any final thoughts, Dr. Brad? None other than uh thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate being able to tell my story a little bit and just continue to be uh involved both with the profession and both with uh other WCA members like yourself.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

It's been a real pleasure. Fantastic. Well, this is Dr. Brad Freitag, 2001 Palmer College of Chiropractic graduate, practices with Dr. J in Belleville, Wisconsin, soon to be heading an associate in 2026, and currently is the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association Board of Directors member representing the Cell Central District. Dr. Brad, I want to thank you very much for everything you do for chiropractic and what you're doing for the State Association, and thank you for joining us on the Back to Basics podcast.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

You are most welcome. Thank you very much.