A Basketball Injury Led Dr. Jeff Block To Chiropractic Care

A single bad fall can change everything, especially when the “standard” plan is pills and bed rest and you keep getting worse. That’s where Dr. Jeff Block’s story starts, and it quickly turns into a bigger conversation about what chiropractic care really looks like when it’s built around athletes, movement, and consistent problem solving for back pain and neck pain. We talk about the moment he realized he wanted a career where people get better and the clinician actually enjoys the work, not just survives it.

From there, we get honest about entrepreneurship and small business growth. Jeff walks us through opening a practice with barely any patients, then building momentum the old-school way: walking into local businesses, meeting gym owners, offering something useful first, and earning trust over time. We also hit the professional stigma chiropractic used to carry, how that reputation has shifted, and why personal trainers, physical therapists, and chiropractors do better when they stop competing and start understanding each role in the rehab and fitness pipeline.

The second half goes deep on mindset and decision-making. Jeff shares the “car theory” of focus, how written goals change what you notice, and a Rolex story that proves preparation can turn a random moment into a real win. We also dig into AI in healthcare, practice management, HIPAA constraints, and what leaders need to learn from younger clinicians and new technology. Finally, we talk patient compliance, behavior change, and the hardest lesson of all: you can’t care more about someone’s health than they do, but you can coach them toward ownership.

If you got value from this conversation, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review. What part of Jeff’s approach are you going to try this week?

Transcript

How We First Connected

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey guys, and welcome to another episode of the Anthony Amorish Dell today. We've got another great episode following today. Somebody I've known for quite a long time now. Going back seven years. Paths have intermittently crossed each other. Yes, sir. Funny story before we do a fun introduction, just to relay the audiences. When I first started this company, I wanted to do something different. And I wanted to incorporate different paths of how fitness was incorporated in this world. And what I mean by that, instead of coming out and being like, hey, we have one time a week training, two time a week training, this and that, I wanted to have memberships that reflected what people's pain point was in order to help them get better. And we two different segments. We had a weight loss transformation, and then we had a pain relief one. Inside that pain relief one, I was leveraging my brother, who at that point was in his uh residency for pain management to help develop a program to help people get out of pain. Because of that, we stumbled across local chiropractors in the area. Yes. Found you, reached out out of the blue, and just said, hey, I hope he lets us have a conversation with him.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

And I think it was more than seven years ago. It was a little while ago. Yeah. I mean, I'm old, so time is a reference and that's you know difficult.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Well, actually, no, we're in 26, so this would have been 2018. Early 2018. Yeah. All right, so there you go now. Even well, time flies. So we were like, let's just go. We we walk into your office. You don't know this. I was scared. Really? Uh scared out of my mind. I didn't have business conversations prior to this experience. And my brother's like, don't worry, I'll like help God. He's way more confident in like those type of things, be able to talk through things. So if you remember, he did all the talking.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

And did I ease your fear or did I feed into it?

SPEAKER_01 1:54

No, you totally eased it because you were just communicating with him because he kind of took the helmet.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Oh, we clicked you right out. I was like, this is Benny. I'm not involved in this whatsoever. Right, but you the more you do things, the better you get at it, no matter what it is. Exactly. Everything takes practice.

The Injury That Changed His Path

SPEAKER_01 2:11

And then we were planning on doing seminars at your place. Yeah. Back when you were doing workshops. Yes. And I remember trying to coordinate times and it just didn't work out. We were going back and forth, and then COVID a year later. And that changed. That was the end of it. Yeah. But anyway, this is Dr. Jeff Lock. Hello, nice to meet everyone. So take us back just initially, because that's my introduction to you. Is what made you decide to become a chiropractor? What got you initially involved?

SPEAKER_00 2:39

You know, I was on the plane yesterday coming home from St. Martin, which by the way, I highly recommend. Plus St. Martin. And uh I'm sitting next to a young lady, and we start talking, and she is in her fourth year of Columbia, and she's pre-med, and we're talking about your her journey. I want to know why you are going to medical school. And so she asked me, and so it is fresh in my mind. But anyway, you know, I was pre-med at Stonybrook. I was playing basketball, intramurals. We were in the championship. I was going for a layup, someone took out my legs, I hit the ground hard, went to the infirmary, saw an orthopedic resident, checked me out. I'm like, oh, I'm pre-med, pre-med, pre-med. And they gave me pills and bed rest. And a week goes by and I'm getting worse. So my dad dragged me to a quack called a chiropractor. And I knew of chiropractor because my dad had been going his whole life because he had a bad back, and unfortunately, he passed that on. And I went there, and the environment is really what turned me on because here was a man that A was having fun, B was treating a lot of athletes, and C fixed me up relatively quickly. And so I asked if I could shadow him, and I noticed the two things. He's having fun, people were responding to that, and he drove a cool car. And I had previously shadowed a couple medical doctors earlier on, and I noticed that A, they were driving cool cars, but they weren't having fun. They just seemed stressed. Now I'm an 18, 19-year-old kid, and I could feel the stress, and you know, and I was nervous as heck to be there, and I could feel their stress. And so I'm like, oh, I'm going to chiropractic school. And I never gave another thought until I graduated and realized that chiropractic at the time was the black sheep in the medical community. It has since changed, but you know, it teaches you lessons.

From Internship To Opening A Practice

SPEAKER_01 4:42

So you were shadowing this chiropractor. You were doing this, and I know you did a bunch of residencies and stuff through chiropractic school, right? So what got you to take the shift into doing yourself as opposed to working under somebody?

SPEAKER_00 4:57

So while I was in my internship, I had finished all my requirements and I shadowed the orthopedic department. There, at the time, there were really two specialties in chiropractic, orthopedic and radiology. So there are chiropractic radiologists sitting in dark rooms looking at images, and there are orthopedics. And um in other states you could do a lot more than you can in New York. But anyway, I shadowed this department. I saw what they were doing. I just said, hey, the guy, the head guy was Dennis Skogsberg, who helped start the Texas Back Institute, which is world famous. And he's a chiropractor, him and the guy, Jay Triano. But anyway, I said, Oh, can I come in and like clean up the room? Whatever you need. And after about a week, you know, they're asking questions, interviewing the patient. I say, okay, Block, what do we do next? And I would say, oh, you know, let's take an X-ray. It's great, go do that. And so that sort of sparked my interest. And then when I got out of school, I I actually came back to New York. I didn't break up with my girlfriend from Illinois. I just came back to New York because I had to take my boards. I take the boards and I said to the people then in 1991, hey, you know, what how do I know when I passed and when can I start working? Like, well, it takes about three months. You know, it wasn't computerized. It takes about three months to see if you passed, and then it'll take about two, three months to actually get a license. I'm like, okay, so can I go work under another chiropractor like I was doing while I was still in school, not in New York. And so I'm like, all right, so six months and I can't do anything, and I have student loans. So I call up my girlfriend. I'm like, hey, I'm thinking of coming back to Illinois and getting a job because I can't work for six months, but I'm not sure if I want to get an apartment. And she said, Oh, you can live here. That's what I was fishing for, by the way. So I went back, I worked for someone, and I realized that I certainly had some definite opinions on what I wanted to accomplish. And uh, you know, I stayed about a year and then I came back to New York and started my own thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

What was that like? Like going to your first, like I'm doing this on my own.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

So I opened, I thought I would hang a shingle and people would walk in. And now I'm sitting in my nice, beautiful new office, and I'm there, and I had 10 patients to start. My girlfriend, my mother, my father, two or three friends, and some of their parents. And so you know, I was treating somebody. And you know, in our world, if you have uh, you know, one person an hour, it takes you an hour to treat them. If you have four, you could do it in 15 minutes. And so I realized I don't know anybody. So I went and I literally walked the streets and I went to every single business nearby and said, hey, my name's Dr. Block. I'm a local chiropractor, I have a board, and I like promoting local businesses. Would you like me to put up a flyer, you know, on the board so all my patients can see them? All my patients. And everyone said yes. So I got to meet all the owners of all these local businesses in Hopog. We're now in Smithtown, half a mile away from there. And I said, Oh, in exchange, can I leave some business cards on the counter? And so, of course, everyone said yes. And within a few months, people would come in. I'm like, Oh, how'd you hear me? Oh, I've seen you around town for years. I've only been practicing a few months. And then I started knocking on doors of the gyms. And you remember Lucia Roberts? Yeah. So, Lucio Roberts in Smithtown, I said, Hey, I'd like to do body fat testing. I got my calipers and I'll talk about nutrition. They're like, sure. So I sat there for three hours on a Tuesday and three hours on a Thursday, and I met people and I checked their body fat and we talked about health. And I didn't say, I wasn't pushy enough to come in. Oh, here's my card if you ever need anything, here's what we do. That was a conversation. And slowly people just started coming. And you know, it was just a grind. I also knocked on every medical doctor in the area. And if there were 15 whose doors I knocked on, 14 wouldn't let me through the door, and one would. And what he said was, Well, I'll see your patients, but I'm gonna tell them not to go. I'm like, okay, I guess we're done here. Meanwhile, he was smoking while we were having this conversation. You know, time heals all wounds, time marches on, and now the medical doctors are knocking on our doors. You know, they want to meet us.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

But uh, I'm even more curious, right? It's because I think it's so intriguing because we've all come from similar stories. Is that initial lease signing and money up front? Is where did that money come from? Is that something you had planned back, or was this like an oh shit? I'm taking the dive into it. So I had saved$30,000.

No Plan B And Street Networking

SPEAKER_00 10:21

My first job was a really good job. The guy was paying me way more money than it was worth. Although I I didn't invent the knocking on doors here in New York. I did it in this guy's practice. He told me I would get my salary plus benefits and 20% of growth. So on my off time, I really had nothing else to do. You know, I was young. I mean, I wasn't single, but I was young, and I was either exercising, working, promoting, or hanging out with my girlfriend. And so I met everyone in the town of Lamont, Illinois, within the first week. It's not a big town. And again, we left cards and I shook hands and kissed babies, and I just met people.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Do you see the difference between that avenue to where the avenue most people take in? I'll explain it a little more. Most people are so afraid to do things in their off time. I'm not working, I'm not getting paid for this, I'm not doing this. But you went out and you said, okay, my off time is now an opportunity. I can enjoy life, but I can enjoy life while meeting people. Yeah. So I can go out, shake hands, I can go out, meet people, I can go out and do this. So you always hear like the argument, well, entrepreneurs are just a different breed. No, it's just you take the 1% different time and you just prioritize building your network. And having a big network is always going to end up benefiting you in the long run because then you have a place to work on. And then you initiated what we call the real reciprocity, right? You give something to someone, they give it back to you. That's exactly right. And that's exactly what you did going through. Like, why weren't you nervous walking into those rooms? Like, especially like the owners, for example, is a doctor's office and asking them for referral.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

So I was, but I had a secret weapon. I really had no other options. I didn't think I'd be good at anything else. Like, I really like sports, and I've played sports my whole life, but I can't make a living playing sports. So I figure I'll have to treat the athlete if I want to be involved in higher-level sports. But I had no plan B. So, you know, there's nothing to fall back on. This is what I'm doing. And I was really interested in it. I'll talk to you about health anywhere at any time if you're interested. I was probably a little pushier when I'm younger, but you learn things. But if you ask me questions and want to know, I mean, I feel bad for you because I got lots of stories. I could sit here a long time and talk.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

No, it's all good. This is the point because people it's just it's that jump, right? That's that jump that so many people are afraid to do. They're so afraid. And we just had a conversation in a previous episode about burning the boats, right? Burning the boats, Cortez. That was the name of the general. I couldn't think of it. Last time go back, I said there's a general that did this. I don't remember his name, but he was Spanish.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

That's exactly right.

Chiropractic’s Reputation And Reality

SPEAKER_01 13:08

And you have no option, you burn the boats, and it gives you that opportunity now to only look ahead and figure it out, and that's what you were able to get through. Now now a touch point, because I'm very familiar with this. The you mentioned chiropractors being a black sheep. Yes. And I'm so close to, I don't know if you know this, but my grandparents founded Nikom, which the medical school.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

I know Nikom, although I didn't know about Nikom, you know, which is a cross between really MDs and DCs.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Exactly. And my grandma was the first female ever to go through. She went to Chicago's DO school and was a big like pusher in DOs to make them equivalent to MDs. Because for years and years they weren't. They were the black sheep. Yeah. So what was that like redefining what chiropractor is to make it more of what it is today?

SPEAKER_00 14:06

So I'll tell you what I think is funny. Back in the day, if someone said, you know, someone said to me, Oh, Dr. Block, excuse me. And other people said, Oh, you're a doctor, what kind of doctor? I always said the same thing, a Jewish doctor. Because if I said chiropractor, they either went like this and said, Oh, I got this thing. I love my chiropractor. Look at my thing on my neck here. I love my chiropractor. Or they would say, Oh, you're a chiropractor. End of conversation. So I started trying, whether it's funny or not, I used some humor and it broke the ice. I had we would, I used to do anything you could. You know, there was a health fair in the mall with the local hospitals and massage therapists and gyms and chiropractors. And I would go and set up a table, and a nurse from one of the local hospitals comes like this, you people, and I'm wearing my Dr. Block outfit and all says Block Sports Chiropractic, you people. And I said to her, and she was angry. I said, What? The Jews? And she said, No, no, no, no, no. But I broke her consciousness, it was coming at me. And I said, Listen, if you want to have a conversation, let's let's go. Because there are bad chiropractors, there are bad personal trainers, there are bad medical doctors, there are bad podcast, you know, equipment people. There's bad in every profession. So at the end, she goes, Well, you're a good one. And I said, And I know a lot of good ones, and I know some bad ones, and good nurses and bad doctors. So, but how do you break that mold?

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Right? So, how do you bring and level up? Because to give you like cross-reference, we're going through that right now. Personal training is like black sheet for to physical therapists, right? And it's something we're trying to level up to get closer and more equivalent to that and treat people because there's a lot of bad trainers because there's no protection over us. You have a licensure, we don't, so get stuck.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

So I think it's probably the licensure, but you know, physical therapist and personal trainers should not be in competition with each other because the physical therapist is just is rehabbing them through their injury. Exercises for life. People don't understand that. And, you know, sometimes you gotta you gotta like if I pay you to come exercise and we have a date at a certain time, I'm showing up, I paid for it. What I do is my buddy and I work out, we're going for a run. 6 30 in the morning, I'll meet you outside in front of our houses. I don't want to get up, but I know he's gonna be there, so I get up.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

I hope you're not running at 6 30 in the morning. What do you what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Better off late later in the day? No, just I hate running. I hate running as well. I hate biking and swimming, but for years I did triathlons. Oh my god. I did it because I thought it would be great exercise. And we we have a 3.1 mile loop in our neighborhood. So there's a one mile loop and there's like a 3.1 mile loop. So the 3.1 mile loop, sometimes my buddy is like, oh, let's, you know, it might rain. Let's take the one mile loop and we'll do it three times. And I always say no, because I get by my house, I'm like, ah, that's enough. But if we do the 3.1 mile loop, I'm now a mile and a half away from my house. I have to get home. It's gonna rain. I better run faster. So I gotta trick myself.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

I mean, it's the same thing with what we do to ourselves in business, right? Don't give yourself another option. There's no option, right? I wanna, I really just wait, did you have an involvement? I think that's more of my question of bringing up chiropractic itself, like on a local level, to make it.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

I spent about 20 years working hard for the New York State Chiropractic Association. Okay. Um but what was interesting is at the meetings, I really found it hard to continue to go. Because at the meetings, you know, my fellow chiropractors and some great chiropractors would say things like, you know, insurance companies stink, they don't pay well, the co-pay is so high, nobody will go, I can't make a living. And I say the complete opposite. I'm like, yeah, those things might be true, but because people are stressed, everything's expensive, they're hurt now more than ever, everyone needs it. I look around the office, it's packed. So their reality is they made it themselves. If you tell yourself something over and over, you will make it true, good or bad. That is just how our psyches work. I was just watching something about it, it was on depression and anxiety, and the problem is people with depression and anxiety can get stuck in a loop. The what if loop, what if this, and then that happens. So you don't have to make those things wrong, you know, just put them aside and maybe do some exercises like the what if positive things. Well, what if the good thing happens? What if that good thing happens? Because it's just as true. You ever hear about the car theory?

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Tell me. You buy a new car, it doesn't matter what kind of car it is, right? Say it's a Toyota camera. You're driving this car. Oh, look, there's another Toyota camera. Oh, there's another Toyota camera. Yeah. Now you see that's all you see. Yes. Were they did they just appear? Or were they always there and you just couldn't find them? Yep. Because your brain blocks out the noise.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

That's exactly right. I usually do a thing with patients. I'm like, all right, close your eyes. And in our office, we have a lot of blue furniture, all the chairs. Do you know why it's all blue? Because I'm red, green, colorblind, and that's a color I can see. So it's all everything's blue. So blues and grays. And so I say, okay. And there were a couple of tan things. You know, how many tan chairs did you see? And they'll think I think, oh, maybe one. Okay, open your eyes. There's like seven tan chairs. Because just like you said, the car theory, people pay attention to the things that they want to pay attention to. So sometimes you just gotta change what you concentrate on. So how do you fix it? You you know what? I'm a big believer in writing down the things I want to accomplish. Because if you don't have written goals, then you're not gonna trip over something, but you won't even know if you're you won't even know your goal is there if you trip over it. Can I tell you a Rolex story? Yeah. Okay, this is stainless steel submariner. I'm like two years in practice and I have a lot of time. So I'm looking through uh, you know, the magazines, I see stainless steel submariner, and I figure out the time it's like$4,400. So I cut out the picture in the magazine and I put it over my treadmill in my basement, and I write down in my things I want to accomplish stainless steel submariner,$4,400. And I take an envelope and I write stainless steel submariner, I throw$20 in it, and I put it in my safe. Time goes on, I throw a five, a 10, a 20, whatever. I'm throwing money in it. Uh, when I got engaged to my wife Jill, I had a stone for my great grandma, which was a really pretty stone, and I got a$200 setting. I didn't have any money, and you know, it doesn't matter what it is, she was. Thrilled with anything. On a 10-year anniversary, my parents were friends. My dad was in a luxury and gift store in a Smithhaven Mall for a whole bunch of time. It's been gone since 93. But anyway, one of his friends who had luggage stores in Iowa, they also, his family had nine jewelry stores, and he was part of that as well. And so I'm like, oh, any chance your friend with the jewelry stores, you know, can help me out. I want to redo Jill's ring. So it turns out the son does private custom jewelry. Uh we mail stuff back and forth. I send him a picture of what I want. We want platinum, this and other. And he did a really nice job. It was maybe a couple thousand dollars. We turned her ring into a beautiful ring. And I'm sending him the final payment. And we're on the phone. I'm like, oh, Alfred, any chance you could sell me a really discounted stainless steel Submariner Rolex? He goes, Well, first of all, Jeff, if I get caught discounting it, our family chain of jewelry stores will lose the ability to sell Rolex. So I would never do that unless I have a used one. And I can't believe you asked me for a stainless steel Submariner Rolex because I sold one to someone a week ago and they brought it back for like the two-tone gold version, which is$11,000. I could give it you for my cost$32.50. Now I didn't have$3,250, but I looked in my envelope where I was throwing 20s in, and it was$3,500 in there. And I'm like, Alfred, I'll take it. And so this watch means you could really have anything you want, but maybe it can't be like this generation and want it yesterday. Maybe you got to know what you want. Maybe you got to study it, research it, plan for it. And that way, when the opportunity comes by, you'll recognize it because we all have those opportunities. It's there for the taking. We just don't know it.

Learning To Respect New Perspectives

SPEAKER_01 24:03

I I couldn't agree more. I guess that begs the question is what's one of the hardest lessons you learned from owning your practices? And how did it change you?

SPEAKER_00 24:15

You know, probably being willing to listen to other people. Explain. You know, again, can I explain with the story? Yeah. You know, Jensen Wong? He's one of the three founders of NVIDIA. So the three founders, they all have masters in some type of engineering from Stanford University. And they worked, and this is in the early 90s, and they worked in the Stanford Computer Lab, and computers were fairly new. Uh, and there were also computer uh game, they were gamers, and whatever the games were at the time, it's obviously nothing like it is now. And they all graduated Stanford with master's degrees. And Jensen Wong in 2011 gave a speech. You could Google this. It's an hour-long speech that I thought was fascinating. And he said to his parents, hey, mom and dad, I know I graduated from Stanford, and I could work at like IBM and Microsoft and any of these giant computer companies. They all want me because I all have letters from them. But my buddies and I, we're gonna work, we're gonna try and make video gaming cooler and better. We're gonna develop a new chip so that the gaming looks realer than like Pong or whatever there was. So, what do you think the parents' perspective was? Probably called them crazy. Yeah, you think the parents want them to go and waste their education? Well, they could have a job making tremendous money at the time, or they can sit in one of their basements trying to develop this chip. So, anyway, we all know what NVIDIA has Nvidia has done, right? It's a trillion-dollar company. So he tells the story, it's now 1998, and they have tons of investment in their company, and you know, they're now known around the world, and their chip is doing amazing things. And these guys come to him from a company and like, hey, we got this idea about the internet. At the time, the internet was free, and you could go on yellowpages.com and write, you know, redefined fitness or block sports chiropractic. And if you're registered with a website, you can find it free. And these guys, like, hey, we got this idea, and you know, we want to, you know, make this website and you're gonna and it's gonna be paid and and it'll be a search engine. And Wong said to him, Why do you want to do that? His perspective was it's free, just like his parents, like eight years earlier. And those guys were Yahoo. And so he told them it was a bad idea, and he told Google it was a bad idea. But what he realized was his perspective, his experiences, right, led him to do what he did so successfully. Same with myself to answer your question. And so I'm realizing now, like I'll say to a kid, like, what do you mean you're doing it that way? Get out and meet people. This is how how you could do it. But that's my perspective. Maybe they could just go online with a podcast and everyone knows them. And, you know, it could go around the world where I've got to knock on doors to meet people.

AI, HIPAA, And Practice Management

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Yeah, it's kind of this you don't want to shut yourself up from future technology about where that's gonna take you. So I'm trying to learn to, you know, be open to other people's perspectives. So, what is that, how does that lead into a specific question to AI now? How how does that incorporate into your business at all? Is that something because I know it's big in the medical fields right now, is doctors are getting worried about AI. So, how does that whole world should be worried about AI? I agree. So, what does that mean for like your specific industry? Is this something you're looking to adapt? Are you fearful from it?

Helping Patients Actually Follow Through

SPEAKER_00 28:05

So, I am trying, you know, as an older guy who graduated uh Stonybrook in 1987, which is a while ago, you know, I'm trying to learn AI. I'm actually looking now. One of the things I do, I actually was fortunate when I turned 60 in October, I stopped treating. I'll cover if someone's out sick or vacation, but I'm not regularly treating. I'm trying to do more of business growth and development and management. And so I've been looking at AI because I review every new patient narrative report that's written. I want to make sure from a diagnostic standpoint, my younger chiropractors are on are on point. Plus, I'll I'll give them back three or four questions. Hey, what do you think about this, this, and this? So I can help their growth and learning. Anyway, so I'd like AI, because I've I've recently reviewed like two, three hundred narrative exams, and I have all this data. It's just challenging because um of HIPAA rules. I can't just plug it into Claude, which is what I've been using lately. It does some cool things. I can't just plug it into Claude because you can't put people's data out there, and I could scrub it and put it in, but I want something that would maybe do some of this work for me, and then I could just double check it. So that's what I'm working on now. And I wrote a book about 25 years ago that I've been updating, never put it out there, never finished it, never thought it was good enough. But now I'm using Claude to put some polishing touches on it, and maybe I'll put it out there. So you're writing a book with no intention of publishing it, or you just Well, I really wanted something for my patients so that they could have my perspective on health. And, you know, if other people want to see it, that's fine. But that's that's my goal. So if I'm not there, one of the things about our practice, when I was at the table, I would take any opportunity. If I'm talking to you, our place looks like yours. It's a gym, right? We just have chiropractic physical therapy tables. We have a bunch of closed rooms, all exams are in rooms, but it's an open concept. It's like a training room.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

So if I'm educating you, and I know that your partner here is really slacky. He's not doing his exercises, uh, he misses every other appointment. I'm using third-party communication because you're doing so great, Anthony. You never miss an appointment. You know, we'll talk about you know how you're doing, how we're progressing on exercises, but I'm really, because you're already doing it. You know, I'm just fluffing you up, but I know he's not. So it's a lot easier for him to be listening and decide for himself, man, I want what Anthony's got. I'm gonna start doing my exercise. I'm gonna show up for treatment. Because the second I say, you're hey, you're off your plan. What's going on? And I'm attacking you. Well, he's got two options. What are they? Do it or give up. Well, yes, it's usually fight or give up. Yeah. Or do it. Yeah. So those are the options. So I don't want to fight with them. Also, to answer your question, I have learned that it's really hard for me to care more about your health than you do. And that's really, really hard for me. Like, but what do you mean that you don't want to eat better? Like, your complaint, your knees swollen, your ankle's swollen, your back hurts, your neck hurts, you're tired, you're you're wrinkly, you have pimples, you I mean, everything is going wrong. But you're eating poison, you're literally poisoning yourself. What if we back up and let's change what you eat? Let's just see how it goes. But you know, if you're not willing to do that, it's really hard. It's really hard to care more about a patient than they care themselves.

Deathbed Advice And Enjoying The Game

SPEAKER_01 32:16

I couldn't agree more. I think the final question to kind of summarize this up. If you got to sit in front of two people, the first one is Jeff when he's 20 years old. The second person is Jeff when he's on his deathbed. What do you what advice would you give the 20-year-old? And then what do you think the 80-year-old would say back to your disc current point?

SPEAKER_00 32:41

I could tell you what my grandfather said to me on his deathbed. Um, and he survived that. My parents were working so hard, it was Christmas time and the luggage and gift world, 20-something hours a day, you know, through that whole Christmas period. And so they couldn't go. And I was a year and a half in practice. I'm like, I'm going. I closed the office for a week. I went down. He was in the hospital, which he survived that. And we moved him back up here, and he lived another year, and that was a great year. But anyway, you know, he wasn't doing well. And I'm I'm like, oh, grandpa, you know, and he did fairly well in his career. Like, oh, you know, my brother Rick's in chiropractic school. I'm looking for a second location. So when he comes out, you know, we can, you know, I got something for him to do, and and here's what we're doing, you know, uh trying to invest, and here's where our business is going, our plans. And he listened to everything. At the end, he said, Jeff, that's great. He said, just remember it's playing the game that counts because nobody wins. So you really have to enjoy everything, every step, every, you know, some people say the seasons, like you have seasons of life. You have to enjoy if you got two young kids and a business and a family and a house and a mortgage and car payments and all kinds of things, you gotta enjoy all those things because in an instant you're on to the next season. It goes like that, and it's hard to see it at the time because you're in it. But if you could look back at what's going on now, would you be happy with how it's going? Maybe yes, maybe no, or would you change things around? So my wife, you know that song uh Cats in the Cradle and a Silver Spoon? Yeah, yeah. So if that comes on, or my wife, when I was younger, would play that.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

So you know, I was working hard, putting a lot of hours. That's so funny. It's my favorite question to people, and you kind of answered it with your story. But it's if you had the option to go back, like start all over again from being a newborn, knowing what you know now, would you change anything?

SPEAKER_00 35:11

You know, I don't think so. I there's one thing I would have changed. I would, you know, I grew up in like the Huntington area in Greenlawn, and my wife wanted a new house in a new neighborhood. Her dad was a builder in Wisconsin, new house in a new neighborhood, because rightfully so, she said there'll be young couples and a lot of young babies and kids, and our kids will have a lot of friends. And she was a hundred percent right on that. We got a great house, and we got a I was on the younger side for the neighborhood, and we had a great neighborhood. It's turning over. Uh, but I would have lived probably closer to the Huntington area. That's something I would have changed. But I think everything else, you know.

unknown 35:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

I think it's mind-blowing hearing people's answers because my answer is I wouldn't change a thing. Because then you risk not being here. Yeah. Right, you make one little change, and yeah. Well, Dr. Diplock, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you guys for watching this week's episode of the Anthony Eamon Show. Please don't forget, like, subscribe, share. Until next time.