Adjusting the Mic
Adjusting the Mic is the homegrown podcast from the New Zealand College of Chiropractic - where we sit down with leading voices in chiropractic, share stories from the field, and spark ideas to help you grow your impact in practice and in your profession.
Adjusting the Mic
The Retention Advantage: Dr Jodie Blackbourn’s Playbook for Sustainable Growth
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Chiropractic leader Dr Jodie Blackbourn breaks down the unseen mechanics of a thriving practice - retention, team culture, and doing the small things consistently well. From returning to practice with young kids to doubling patient numbers, selling practices, and planning exits, Jodie shares hard‑earned lessons on longevity in chiropractic. If you care about retention, culture, and building a practice that works for real life - not just numbers - this episode is essential listening.
– Introduction & Jodie's Chiropractic Origin Story
MattHi everyone and welcome to Adjusting the Mic podcast. I'm with the irrepressible Jodie Blackbourn today. So, Jodie, for those of us that don't know you, can you give us a little bit of a history about your chiropractic journey?
JodieUnlike a lot of students coming in, I hadn't had chiropractic care before I started chiropractic college. But I knew that I wanted to be in healthcare of some sort. So luckily I'd done the prerequisites with respect to that. It was actually my auntie who suggested it, my dad's sister. My grandmother on dad's side had chiropractic care until she was well into her 90s. I mean, she lived to 104. So I'd like to assume that that's because she had chiropractic care regularly. And so I wasn't 100% sure what I wanted to do. Went along to the interview, enjoyed the interview. Luckily, they enjoyed my interview. So, I was lucky enough to get a position because I studied at RMIT, it was actually Phillip Institute when I first went through. And obviously, there's been changes with respect to RMIT now, but back then it was the main chiropractic college in Australia. Sydney had started, but Melbourne had been running for quite some time by that stage. And there were 5,000 applicants for 70 places.
MattWow.
– Chiropractic Education at RMIT: Rigor & Externships
JodieSo I didn't know that at the time. And I think because I wasn't 100% sure that I was going to be a chiropractor or do chiropractic, I was pretty relaxed in the interview, which probably was to my advantage. I don't know.
MattVery greatly.
JodieThat was back in 1988. And obviously that's a four-year degree, it's the same as it is here in New Zealand. And yeah, I really fell on my feet with respect to I had interviewed to consider osteopathy, but I'll be honest, because they were studied at the same college at that stage. And the interview for chiropractic was significantly more fun. I'm just going to say, you know, maybe chiropractic was a little bit more pedazzled. So I'm really pleased that I started it. I think back now, and I think unbelievably lucky to have fallen on my feet into a profession that ticked the box in so many ways. And so obviously, five-year degree, we had full body dissection. So our anatomy was with cadavers. I mean, our science department was significant. We had to do 38 hours of contact lecture time.
MattRight. That's a lot.
JodieAnd one of the other things in that degree at that time was we started five weeks before every other university in the country and degree in the country, because we actually had to squeeze nearly six years worth of hours into five years. So for five years, we started five weeks early. And if you consider that's an extra six months of degree, right? So we started before all of the other degrees. And the reasoning behind that with the college was in order for them to get the degree accepted, they had to go above and beyond. We had to do ridiculous things like 35 hours of parasitology. They had to make sure that there was no reason why anyone outside the chiropractic profession, and I mean the medical profession, other health professionals, et cetera, there were no arguments to stop this degree from being implemented. We came out knowing how to sort out a snake bite and what worms look like, intestinal worms, all sorts of stuff that really probably isn't relevant. But what I also loved was we finished our academic year in the middle of our fifth year, around about June. And for that second part of our final year, that last six months, we had to do a certain amount of externship hours, some of which had to be practical, some of it which could be observation, but there was a set amount. And once we'd had those qualifications signed off, then obviously the degree was. So I actually did a part of my externship in Australia. Um at that stage I'd met my now husband and he decided, because he was a year ahead of me, he'd done the bulk of his externship here in New Zealand with some pretty impressive names. So he'd worked with John Nolan.
– UK Externships & Early Career Reality Checks
MattWow.
JodieHe worked with Lloyd Buscomb. He worked with Dr Dobson.
MattDr Graham Dobson?
JodieDr Graham Dobson, because Graham had not long had his very bad car accident and couldn't do any manual adjusting.
MattRight.
JodieSo he was lucky enough to have some real icons in the profession.
MattWhat a start.
JodieAnd he was working for them under their direction through his externship. He then went to the UK. So I did a little bit of my externship there, and then I finished my externship off in England, in London.
MattIn London?
JodieYep. So finished it off there. That was before you had to do board exams. So luckily for us, we were able to just move on over. Kent worked for his cousin over there and his cousin's parents, so I guess second cousins, actually helped set up AECC. So they studied at Palmer like everybody else. And so Russell, Kent's cousin, Russell Bennett, his mother is first cousins with Kent's dad. And so there's a long history. I'm the 34th chiropractor in my family.
MattWow. So this is the chiropractic through the generations.
JodieYeah, and I did discover that we're also related to the Barham's. So now we had that chiropractic family, which is extensive. I'd be really interested to do the numbers down the track. Anyway, so Kent started working for his cousin over in Guildford and Surrey. And so when I went over, I just went, okay, I'm just going to visit other chiropractors that are around there. And I got an associateship or started an associateship. Well, I actually I didn't start the associateship first. I started with my externship, ours, which then turned into an associateship. It was interesting because I went into a practice and I've been in this situation where he'd been on his own, never had an associateship. So I didn't know what to expect. He didn't know what to expect. Very much trial and error. Pros and cons. Often when you do an associateship, you get some amazing mentoring, but you also often find out what you would prefer not to do, how the front desk runs, what your expectations are, how you feel as an associate. So I'd like to think that that colours what happens when you employ your own associateship. Kent went into a practice that had had a lot of associates over the years. So it was a bit well set up, but chiropractic in the UK, under UK trained chiropractors, was quite different with respect to how they look at volume, time spent per patient, whether you x-ray full spine, or um, just a regional. And so lots of things, you know, and Kent had done his externship in practices that were very dynamic, heavily full spine.
MattYeah, subluxation-based.
JodieYep. And all of those practices always also had strong focuses on linking x-ray use with practice. And so he moved into a practice where they had x-ray facilities, definitely, and he changed it. Luckily for me, I actually moved into a practice and they had x-ray facilities. Dr David Young had x-ray facilities. And I started working part-time there. And then I also met a really lovely chiropractor that practiced in another area just outside of where we were living. And so I ended up doing two externships and then two associate ships. And there's pros and cons to that too. And I know sometimes people come out. I probably wouldn't recommend that only in as much as you do half a job at both practices.
MattOh, so it was a split split associate, different practices. Okay. That is different.
JodieAnd that happens a lot now. I see that more so in that you maybe reach a certain number of patients and then you don't feel that that's enough. So we see people starting another associateship. But in my mind, you're doing half a job.
MattYeah.
– Associateships, Capacity Myths & Career Readiness
MattIt's that whole split focus idea.
JodieYeah, I don't think it does you any favours. I think the bank balance looks good, but you end up doing a mediocre effort in two separate practices and joining that together to make it seem like it's profitable in a way, you know. I mean, we're looking after people, but we're still making a living in what we love doing. So it's funny, I never really thought about that till right now that I had done that, and that's something I discourage when I get the interns here talking, because obviously I'm mentoring here at the College now. So often I see principal chiropractors get a bit disappointed when somebody, for example, doesn't mention it and then moves to another chiropractor as opposed to working hard to build or embellish the practice that they've started in.
MattIt's that feeling of reaching capacity. And I do hear this a lot from former grads. They're like, I'm at capacity now, and actually it's not thinking about the throughput. And so you might be at capacity based on those systems, and going to another site might not be the best option. It might be better to actually streamline what you're doing in your practice and help build that.
JodieYeah. The only problem as an associate that you might come up against, it very much depends on the nature of the practice you're already in. You know, obviously we came back from the UK, we spent five years there, did our OE and tripped around in the V-Dub kombi van like all Kiwis and Australians do. Obviously, you've heard my accent. So, you know, I was born in Australia. I'm now a New Zealand citizen as well. But we did our tripping around, and it is a good time to try different things in terms of associateships and stuff, because there's a high probability, and this isn't always the case, but your first associateship will not be your last practice that you work in. You know, you might be a bit disillusioned because you're thinking things are going to be different, or you might find some of the systems don't suit you, or perhaps there's personality clashes. All of those things happen. And there's only a few people I would say that graduate from here that are actually capable of immediately going in and setting up practice for themselves.
– Buying an Existing Practice & Returning to NZ
MattDo you feel like that's a mindset thing, or do you feel that's a capability thing?
JodieI think it's a life skill thing.
MattOkay.
JodieI think you've got people that come in, mature age students, for example, that have lived a life and have some life skills because despite what you need, you need those when you're going to practice, or they've already been in business. So they've had a business and changed their focus and they want to go, you know. But I really encourage interns when they're looking at to find an associateship. And God only knows there's a lot of availability here in New Zealand, crying out for chiropractors. Overseas are crying out for chiropractors, especially NZCC grads, because generally speaking, our adjusting skills from here are better than others, and yet we've still got a lot to learn when we come out, which is fine. So we came back. We worked for as associates in the UK, and then we, when we came back, we bought an existing practice that was a retired Dr Peter Wells. He'd been heavily involved in the chiropractic profession here for many years, obviously trained at Palmer. We took over, he was in his 70s when he retired. It was, it's it is a really not that that happens that often, but it's a great time to buy a practice, in as much as the practice is has slowed down a little bit. Yes, it makes it more affordable for you to buy in. And but you've got this really loyal existing practice base that you know are ready to sort of get back on board again. When you start. So that worked. I came back and I didn't actually start practice because obviously back in the good old days, you had to sit New Zealand board exams. So Kent actually, when he very first came, like he hadn't even finished his degree, he sat his board exams, a bit like some of the Canadian students decide, or people deciding to work somewhere else, do their board exams before they graduate from here. So they've got that under their belt. And to be fair, you're never as academically bright as the moment you walk out the door. You might have the art down pat or the you know the communication skills down pat, but academically you're as bright as you're probably gonna get unless you go into research.
Matt100%. That fresh knowledge is there.
JodieAbsolutely. So if you're gonna do board exams, I would so encourage you to do it then. Because what happened with me, obviously, I went straight to the UK, practiced there, came back, and back at those days I only did board exams once a year, and it was in June. So we came back in December. Board exams were in June, and so I hadn't studied for nearly five years by that point. So of course I panicked, as you would, and I couldn't practice until that point, until I'd sat board exams and passport exams. And then also found that I was um we'd gotten married when we were in the UK, and um also found that I was expecting a baby. So consequently, by the time I sat board exams, I was six months pregnant. Then obviously, there wasn't any point in me starting buying and getting an annual practicing certificate because I only had three months before I was going to give birth, and then I didn't practice for another. That was quite a scary time for me. Because by that stage, when we were finishing off travel around Europe after we'd been working, by the time I got back into practice, it was two years since I'd actually practiced. And I don't think I've ever been more petrified actually than I was at that time. Um okay, I'd adjusted Kent, barely, because I had a huge I had a huge belly, I could only practice so much and whatnot. And um, so I'd done minimum virtually no adjusting. I hadn't been communicating with people, you know, adults. Communicating with babies and whatnot. So, and we had an x-ray machine, and and if anyone knows, when you move to a different practice with an x-ray machine, you've got to learn you've got your basic principles, but every machine is different. And so you have to learn every machine. And of course, the one thing you don't really want to do is, and this was when it was film and we physically had to develop it and dip it in the
MattI remember
JodieYep, good old playing film in the dark room. And we didn't even have an automatic developer. So this was back, we had to mix chemicals and all sorts of stuff. And so you didn't really want to have to take a second shot aside from the the radiation.
MattDefinitely not.
JodieYou really don't want to be doing that, and I can tell you it was quite frightening to have all of that back on board. I sort of almost had to relearn everything, like just relearn the the routine and the nature. And and luckily, you know, obviously I started um, dare I say from scratch and moved into a practice that one was pre-existing, that Kent had been running. And we very quickly built. When we took the practice over, we're saying 100 patients a week. No, less than that, sorry, probably 80 patients a week.
– Rebuilding & Scaling a High‑Volume Practice
MattHe was tailing off.
JodieHe was so tailing off, I think he forgotten half their names. And you know, yeah, we had a we had an interesting time. But having said that, he still had practice members coming in that had been seeing him for years and they were travelling. We were in Papakura. You know, at the point he set up that practice, he was the only chiropractor from Thames, Morrisville, Cambridge. There was no practice in Cambridge. People came to see him. And in fact, funnily enough, Papakura at the time, and this is probably why he decided to set up there, was one of the towns that had banks. So Thames didn't have any banks, Cambridge didn't have any banks. Back in, you know, there was nowhere to go and do banking. Everyone came to Papakura, we had a lot of farmers, um, a big rural community. And so it did not take very long, probably within the first and bearing in mind Kent had already worked in a reasonably busy practice, he it did not take long, but probably doubled the practice within three months. You know, I couldn't practice, but I could go in and help with our we we and I would really encourage this. Um kept the CA that um make sure there, if you're buying a practice that you you try and have some good transition and overlap with your your staff. And she knew everybody. And she was a really appreciative when we started working and and but we grew very quickly, um, very, very quickly. And it was funny really because Voray was just so lovely. Um, but she did have dyslexia, and it was back in the time of manual files.
MattRight. And we did discover that somebody, I don't know, surnamed Johnson, had five different files or with because she couldn't find one, so she'd just make a new one. So we had Johnson's about five different ways, but it was the same person. So we did do a big file audit and try and consolidate all of those things, but she was she just loved working, but then the volume got beyond her and she was older, but she worked for us probably for a year and a half, but by that stage Kent was seeing over 200 patients a week. Right.
JodieAnd we'll talk more about that. For we were lucky that we had such a loyal practice base. Yes, there weren't too many chiropractors around at that time. Kent, like Dr Wells, was a predominantly manual adjuster, and so was I. And so there was an easy transition, and a lot of the older practice members who, you know, because Dr Wells was obviously struggling with volume, he wouldn't have been able to cope with volume. They just started coming back on board. We did do some calling.
MattOkay. Yeah.
JodieJust to let them know, you know, it's an it's a perfect opportunity to let them know just that the practice had changed hands, that we've got their file, and if they need it, and that was very successful for us. Very successful. Voray at the time at our CA started doing that too, and she was doing some of them. I was doing some cold calls. Uh well, they weren't cold calls, they're warm calls, aren't they? So that was very successful for us. Just and it wasn't it wasn't pushy. It was literally saying, look, just to let you know, Dr Wells has retired. We've still got your files on on board. You know we're here. It was sort of pre-emails. We didn't have computers. The appointment book was a nice we had to change the appointment book because we were seeing a certain number every 15 minutes. Ngaire Cannon was such an icon there. All the CAs, we did Ngaire Cannon seminars for the CAs, and a lot of stuff that Ngaire brought on board, we still use today. You know, new patients are still green. So new patients, you know, every time that I think they're green here, isn't it? And every time um the phone would ring, you know, her encouragement was every time the phone rings, you pick up a green pen, you pick up the green highlighter because it's going to be a new patient.
Matt100%.
– The First Adjustment Call (Retention Game‑Changer)
JodieAnd all of her we used, you know, in terms of how to answer the phone, uh Papakura Chiropractic, this is Jodie. All of those things that we still utilise today came from Ngaire back in the day.
MattAnd that touch is so personalised to that person. And at the moment, we have a lot of our grads coming through that are in a generation where it's mostly text messages or Snapchat or Instagram, and the whole contacting someone or contacting a practice base may seem quite alien. From that perspective, what do you feel is the benefits of actually picking up the phone and calling people?
JodieThere is nothing more personal than a phone call. You do have to be a bit careful that you're not hounding someone. But I, for example, when someone I always phone. We don't, you know, I almost always phone. We do have some practice members that prefer email, that prefer text messaging, and and that is a different generation, but we still have practice members coming in that don't do that, that don't prefer that. I always do a first adjustment call. It's one of the things I cannot encourage that enough. And you can, and it isn't I do those personally. I know people who have their CAs do them, and that's fine. Personally, I prefer to do that myself. I find it has three amazing effects. One, they're feeling so much better and they're appreciative. Two, you're going to call, you're calling to make sure that how you know that the adjustment work, that they had a good experience, and that maybe they didn't. And at that point, that's fine. You you can often say, look, that happens sometimes. Don't worry. We'll recheck you tomorrow and we will look at what we can change and make sure that moving forward, we're looking at how best to, you know, to work with you. So sometimes they're better, sometimes there's no change, sometimes they're there's worse. There are reasons for all of those things. They appreciate the phone call, they appreciate that you care, they appreciate if there is things that you're going to be proactive in looking at those the next time. The times where I've had someone not turn up for their third appointment, so as as in the after their first adjustment, have always been those times I've not phoned.
MattRight. Yeah.
JodieSo I haven't mitigated, you know, it reinforces their next their next adjustment. It reinforces whether you need to bring their next adjustment forward. It reinforces whether you need to look at a slightly different technique or how you adjust them. You know, you get to pat yourself on the back if they're feeling amazing, they're appreciative. They honestly, no matter what the answer is, they're so appreciative that you've phoned that you've mitigated any potential problem moving forward. And you've got a heads up on what's going to happen on that next time, whether you're going to do something similar, whether you're going to do something different, whether you're just going to do the same, whatever that might be. And, you know, um during COVID, after we had obviously been closed for some time, we all got together and our CAs and Kent and myself, we phoned everyone to get them back. And pretty much had 100% back on track. I mean, we're lucky in as much as, yes, we weren't practicing enough during COVID, but when we kicked back in, we just went straight back to where we should have been.
MattOne thing I remember from John Hinwood, if you remember him from Powerful Practices, he had a thing about the first adjustment call. It was that whole mitigation discussion and that feeling of connectedness with your practice member. But the other side was he would say, Well, what would you hear in the background is the partner saying, Who is that on the phone? Yeah. Oh, that's my chiropractor. Your chiropractor's calling. And then you're like, What did he say? He told me about this or she told me about this. All of a sudden, they're like, Oh, this is not just about me, you know, having a number in the in the practice.
JodieBut this is someone going, yeah, above and beyond. And we used to, you know, John and Judy were, I mean, they were very much um uh interwoven with Ngaire. And we did, I mean, I remember as students, we went to Dynamic Chiropractic. Which was a big seminar, you know, and it was alongside Lyceum, I guess, and even Fiji on Fire, very much that positive how to practice management, how to do things ethically in a way to build and be busy. And ultimately, you know, I often tell the the interns, don't worry about your numbers. Worry about how good you are and what you're doing and how you're because if your mind is in how good can I be and how much can I do for this practice member, you will get busier and you will earn more money in this in that because your focus needs to be in the right direction, the better you get, the busier you'll be. It is always the way. But I remember as students, we couldn't afford to fly up. We took an entire bus from RMIT of students, hired the whole bus, it's a full bus, to drive up to Queensland. Now that's a long trip.
MattThat's a long drive.
Jodie2,400 kilometres.
MattYes.
JodieSo lying in the things and and oh my God. And off we went. And I remember Ngaire saying, oh my God, Ngaire Cannon. We panicked a bit when we heard there were so many students coming. We had to change our food. We needed to think of student food, you know, lasagna and stuff, all the food that was part of the seminar. They had to, you know, couldn't have like small fancy things. They had to go and think, okay, let's do salads and lasagnas and you know, what can we how much carbs can we prop them up with? I don't know if that's true.
MattWe probably weren't eating properly as students anyway.
JodieBut I mean, you know, for some of us it was the first time we actually socialised with practicing chiropractors.
MattAnd that's a big thing. Chiropractors are more than happy to socialise.
JodieWe love to talk the talk, don't we? I mean, gosh, it's part of the reason I work here. Because, you know, I mean, it's why I come. It's I get to socialise with other chiropractors, but also I get to obviously have a hand in working with the students. And so it means that I have more colleagues when I come out. But, you know, we love to be able to pass on our knowledge and help them do what they want to do and and get them out. Because, you know, at our height, we were in terms of numbers, Kent and I were probably seeing 300 patients each a week. And that wasn't in full time because we still had children and whatnot. So practices like that though have a lot of systems and have amazing front desk staff and have a lot of things in place. And bear in mind, we do all our progresses. Most of our patients were x-rayed, whether you choose to do or not. We did an adjust on that first visit. Our reporter findings included in our case, sometimes a video and further care. We always did our first adjustment course. We weren't scrimping in that time in terms of quality time with the practice member and with our patient, you know, patients. And you have to also have to understand that your front desk staff are so important because the visit starts the moment they walk in the door, right?
Matt100%.
– Staff Culture, Systems & Practice
MattYep.
JodieThe healing. I've just had this discussion with students this morning when I was doing the integration class about how people will start to come out of their shells in the waiting room because chiropractic practices are such positive environments. Or they should be. And the the better your staff are, we know we would do, especially at our height, and even now, we would do pre-shift huddles a bit like we do here. And we would literally go through every patient and just, okay, make sure we know about them, we know what's going on in the background. Often the CAs will say, Oh, look, I don't know if they told you, but their mum wasn't well last time. Um, someone's getting married. You need to know, not just because you're nosy and not just because you're going to use the information about your practice members to build and encourage family members and friends and family to come in, but also so you know what's going on in their lives and what stresses are going on, what good things, what bad things, so that when they come in, you know, yes, you can be focused on your adjustment and vertical subluxation, but you know what's going on in that practice member's life so that you know what you need to be wary of, what you need to consider, what's going on in the background and why they might be more subluxated than they normally are, for example.
MattAnd that's authentic. And you're actually caring about each person. And it's one of those things, they don't care about how much you know. They don't think you care, right? And so as a chiropractor, that definitely comes through, I know, to your practice rooms and patients.
JodieThey know you care.
MattThey know you care. One of the things you talked about before was the fact that you and Kent were in the same practice. What are the challenges of having maybe a family member or a partner in that space? And how do you manage that and keep the home life at home and the practice life with practice, if possible?
– Working With Your Partner in Practice
JodieI'll first say, as everyone should know if they're if they're even remotely chiropractic, we're not like other professions. We love to talk about work at home. Compared to other professions. And it's not uncommon all for people when you're out at a you know, a party or someone, they find out you're a chiropractor that they'll ask questions. And you don't care about that. I don't care about asking, answering things or talking about different things. Absolutely don't care. Love it. So when Kent and I obviously had our, because we actually had two practices, but when we bought our first practice, we worked, you know, and we built and worked that practice together. So it was more seamless in many ways. What naturally occurs, of course, is that you have different strengths. So typically with different strengths, you'll find yourself deviating. My focus, Kent, Kent's focus or or skills really are in the flow of practice, making sure we're well set up in terms of the computer, the appointment book, the running progresses, using doing prime time, busy periods, loves his Titron scanner, all of those focuses on making sure people have the best care plan, if we call it that, or what we're looking at, what types of care we're looking at, corrective maintenance, whatever it might be, has amazing focus on those things, what's working. And we were constantly adapting because we went, we were using, like a lot of chiropractors do, different practice management coaching. And every coach would have similarities, but you'd you'd have, over the over the 30 years or so that we were in practice, we would have different things that would, you know, we'd always get something out of the things we went to do. And that would be his focus. I was far better, dare I say, at dealing with staff, talking to staff, talking to CAs. They they didn't cry after I spoke to them. Um, and you know, also my I was by far the best at practice building in terms of how to generate new patients, those things. Kent was amazing at patient retention, so we we learnt from that, you know. But I was amazing at working out of getting new patients on board on on how to do that. It becomes very natural, you know, sometimes we underestimate how much in practice building we can do, you know. So we would often look at different promotions. Now the good thing about owning your own practice is you can do a reduced fee for initial consultations or for family members. You might have promotions running within the practice. You might look at things like, school holidays, bring school bags and and posture checks for kids. You might look at different times of the year, different stresses. You might have a sports focus. We we did at different times. We used to have, we not so much as we were semi-retiring, but we always had, and I know this the chiropractors that have since bought our practices carry on doing, we used to call it spinal care class, but we have lots of different names for it. We'd have different focuses. It might be an exercise class focused on, there'd always be a bit of chiropractic education, but focused on some specific exercises to help with posture, to enhance your chiropractic care. Also, just becoming, I became even more involved in the community. Because my premise and the thing I talk often about here with the students is you need to have your fingers in at least five pies to be generating regular referrals from the community, other than from your practice members that are referring in. And obviously in the practice we had a big focus on family, checking full families. And at different times we've had family fees, and I know that does work in your favour, and that's worked sometimes, and then we changed it, it's all you're always adapting. But I find that you must, must, must have at least, and probably people do these without even realising. So, you'll be a gym member. And I was always doing screenings or posture checks, etc., at my gym. I was regular there, I had a face there, you know, I wasn't going in, and they were always really successful for me. And we would potentially have still some sort of um, we had x-ray facilities even when we first started, and we would potentially reduce cost of those things or whatever in a promotion, same with the initial consultation. So I was a gym member. I joined what was called Zonta at the time, which is Kent was a Rotarian. I was Zonta, which is like is a women's service group. Minimal cost to join. You are full on doing service. It's not full on networking like a B& I. That's still very good, those sorts of things to do. And I know currently both of the people that have bought our practices, young chiropractors, are B & I members. And that's a really and the nice thing about B &I, dare I say, even though you pay to join it, is it's unashamedly about networking and building practice. There's no, there's no shame in going, you know, I'll scratch your back, you come in, I'll use your services and come and use my services. But I joined Zonta and it was full-on service. And I was a Zonta member, dare I say Zonshin. Or I know it's an international, again, service group, they're you know, they have speaking rights at United Nations and all sorts of stuff. So it's international. But you know, you are working, it's it's about advocacy and and service in the community. So you're physically doing things in the community, whether it be to fundraise to buy uniforms for a school that can't afford them, or whether it be actually getting um making knitting for premature babies and getting funds for those sorts of things, or whatever it might be. And I was a member for 16 years, and I still have patients that, you know, I'm in it, I was in it for the long haul, not just to go. You've got, for example, my kids went to Play Centre, which is a New Zealand um you know, uh institution, if you like. I've not seen it anywhere else, but it's a parent-run, not daycare, but a parent-run kid children facility. And my kids, we did we did kids checks there. And the nice thing about play centers is that the parents are there. So of course you've got the parental permission. So many of our play centre mums and dads and families were practice members, heavily involved in the kids' primary school, with respect. The principal of my children, who are nearly 30 and is still a practice member of mine. And so are half the teachers that I used to see that, my hairdresser, my beauty therapist is a patient. Ah, my nail lady is a patient too. But the more involved you are in the community, so it can be harder for people that have to travel to the and not impossible, because you can still be involved in that community. But certainly we personally lived and worked, kids went to school in the same community. And so we found we just had long-standing relationships in the community because you're not going to get someone from your gym every week coming in as a new patient. You're not going to get someone from Play Centre coming in every week, for example. But could you have one from all of those things or two of, you know, a number of those things providing um referral? Absolutely. And so I would so encourage that you get, you know, you that volunteer kind of stuff is important. And it's dare I say it's within our nature as chiropractors to be helpful. And I think it's easy enough.
MattAnd that's the whole thing. They know you in a different domain. You've established your credibility as a person who supports them, helps them, and they're like, what else do you do? And all of a sudden they're like, Well, they're good in this area. Why would they not be a great chiropractor?
JodieAnd they know you're not, you know, I'm gonna say they know you're not unusual, although you could be unusual, but chiropractic sometimes has you know, people have mixed feelings or have inaccurate information about chiropractic. And so they find out, oh, you're normal, you're practical, you've got children that go to school. You've got, you know, you're normal, but you work within a cool environment and you're always talking about work. Anyway, I did digress. So initially, when we first started working together, Kent and I, it was reasonably fluid. You know, we argue anyway, if anyone knows us about normal things, let alone chiropractic things. So, you know, that wasn't any different. And that's fine. And we would have, you know, occasional differences of opinions with respect to those things. But because we started in, you know, we'd been associates and then came together to work in practice, we just naturally would deviate to our strengths, which is great, you know, and and you know, and then we um dare I say reached a bit of a plateau in practice, which a lot of people do. And at that point we were also looking at moving house. And so we moved to and decided we would set up a practice in Pukekohe. And pretty much they started in 2000, we moved house to Pukekohe and within a week we had started working. Because the funny thing is, because we were although though there were a couple of other practices, we had actually a reasonable amount of patients from Pukekohe that as much as they left the Papakura practice, but that was really already growing and but had reached a bit of a plateau, our Pukekohe patients came with us to Pukekohe. So that basically was our seat, I guess, and our start. So we set up Pukekohe from scratch. So we've pretty much we've done everything, if you like. We've worked as associates, we've started a practice from scratch, we've bought an existing practice. We've been locums, even now, still do a little bit of locuming, but we started that practice from scratch. What was nice, I guess, to our benefit was, and here I am, I was busy saying, don't go and spread your talents everywhere. But we it was nice having a practice close to home, but we had that full-on existing practice. But what what ended up happening initially is we in our own minds thought we were very indispensable and that none of our the patients that only saw me would only see me, and the patients that only saw Kent would only see Kent. But what the reality of that was was there were a few patients that would travel still to see Kent or travel from Papakura, for example, to see me. But we found that with our family growing a little bit, that we were busy driving, we were both practicing at both practices, and we just found that wasn't practical in the end.
MattYou weren't seeing each other.
JodieAnd I was still working part-time because our Bradley was only one in at that time and Jordan was four. So the kids were still, I was only working part-time because predominantly I was still working with the the kids. Pukekohe was a part-time practice, so it made sense that Kent would stay at Papakura. We used, we didn't have x-ray facilities at Pukekohe, but we would just send them to our Papakura practice to get x-rays. And so we ended up, and then we started practicing separately. We'd get together, CAs, and initially we'd have a bit of a swap C with CAs, but initially obviously we we just got CAs for Pukekohe and CAs for Papakura. But what that did, we became our own little bosses in our own domains. And obviously I had some strengths and I had weaknesses, and Kent had some strengths, and he had weaknesses, and and so the strengths became more dominant, and the the weaknesses sort of probably didn't get worse, but they stayed the same.
MattMore noticeable, maybe.
JodieAnd so we soon worked out, I guess, that going well, we did try to practice together because we um just after COVID, we just had looked at slowing down a little bit. And so we sold our Papakura practice. I'll talk more about that later in terms of how you prepare to sell a practice, but sold our Papakura practice, and then Kent came to work to Pukekohe. So we were both, once again, practicing together. That did not last very long because we were our own bosses and we both wanted to be bosses. And you know, given so Kent probably worked at Pukekohe for about a year. And then I said, look, it's you know, it's not a happy environment. Like it's you're you, you know, you don't like some of the ways I practice, and I'm pushing back against some of the feedback or what you're wanting to do and how you're communicating with the CAs, etc. And I said, we've talked about having a home practice. Why don't you just go and enjoy and work from home? And what was nice was the bulk of he had a few Pukekohe practices, uh practice members, sorry, but he also had quite a few Papakura practice members that had come with him. Because we knew we were going to be selling, and Kent started doing some hours at Pukekohe, we literally had transitioned some of the practices members to working with him. So that was all very above board in terms of we knew we were eventually going to sell, but we had we weren't stepping on any um uh what do we call it? You know, in restraint of trade. We knew it was happening, so we said, okay, is there anyone that's not gonna want to stay if Kent goes? Before we'd even sort of to started talking about selling. And he started doing some days in Pukekohe. They traveled with him. Those that um had weren't so worried about that. And we'd taken on a couple of associates from the College by that stage, a married couple. They came to work Khan and Ilaaria. And they'd started working as associates for us. They lived down the road. So um we'd started. I mean, that would be what I would recommend, you know. Obviously, the most likely person to want to buy into your practice in some way is going to be someone that's already working there.
Matt100%.
– Selling a Practice, Transitions & Long‑Term Planning
JodieThat's invested in it, that's started to enjoy it.
MattAnd has already made connections with people too.
JodieSo that's probably the best way. So if you're practice, and Kent and I practiced on our own for many years, um, before we'd had associates and then, and you know, they'd moved on to own their own practices and things. Um so anyway, but that would be what I that's probably the best way. Because the problem is, you know, selling a practice is a little bit like selling house. You think it's worth a lot, or what you think it's worth what it is, someone else thinks it's worth not as much, and somewhere in the middle is the reality of what it actually is worth. And I guess this is good, sensible stuff, and and most of the people that perhaps are in my situation that can slow down a little bit at my time of life and be able to give back to the chiropractic profession working here, etc. You are never going to be rich off selling your practice. You're never going to sell your chiropractic practice, and that's your retirement. Because you it's hard to quantify goodwill.
MattTotally.
JodieBut a good chiropractor in a in a good functioning, busy practice has amazing cash flow. So our cash flow is what it got us through. We personally moved into property. That may not be as easy in this environment. But you certainly need to consider potentially investments and things like that. Because when you it's when you sell, it's not like selling Microsoft or, you know, a toy company, or it's not even like practising that. That's the other problem, um, I guess, with practice, even though it's amazing, is it's heavily dominant on you. And as much as you potentially might make money out of having multiple practices, and you end up having multiple headaches. Multiple practices, multiple CAs. You just you just magnify the things that potentially you might deal with in one practice by however many practices you have. And there are people being really busy doing those things, and there certainly are people that move in into consultancy, although you've got to have something to sell then. And that is a good way of um, you know, bringing in an income that's not so heavy. Heavily dependent on you being in the office. But ultimately, you are the practice. So when you leave, potentially, and that's why it's good if you've got good associates working through, you've still got it something, they're already invested in the practice. You know, they've started, there's always a transitions phase where you've started to, um, they've started to see some of your practice members as you drop, and the practice members ideally are happy with those, you know, and as I said, you'll have the odd one that isn't that would, you know, that transitioned and stayed with Kent or went to a different practice. It's always going to happen. You're always going to have some drop-off. And you, you know, you've just you really have to accept that and not be too devastated that not everyone likes you.
MattYeah.
JodieSo, you know, we find you really have to, in your years of chiropractic, use what you earn in your cash flow to set yourself up so that you can be in maybe my position ideally, where I can still do what I love without having to be in practice all the time. I still have, you know, obviously, we also then, you know, we Kent came to work. That wasn't ideal. He started up a home practice, which he loves. And we're really well set up there. We made sure we took one of our really good tables and one of our new Omni-tables that we love. So we don't have a portable table at home. We have the one with all the bells and whistles. We're really lucky in how our house is designed that we can keep it professional. You know, you're not wandering through the bedrooms, through the kitchen to get to our practice. It's easily accessible into a reception area and then into there. So we're lucky. So he did that. I continued to practice in Pukekohe. All was good. And then I started to feel that I was a little bit jealous, to be fair, that he was practicing from home and enjoying, you know, living the life.
MattSemi-retirement. Yep.
JodieYeah, and I'm fine, like and I was still obviously working at the chiropractic college because I've been here. This is my 12th year. Which I love, and that's why I do it. Um, and so, you know, I luckily I blatantly used my contacts in here with different, in fact, the reason Khan and Ilaaria bought Papakura and came to work for us is because I was working here and I headhunted, you know. And then James, who bought our Pukekohe practice, he always wanted to come out buying a practice. He'd already done a business degree by that stage. So we had the, and we made a call that taking over at the end of the financial year would be perfect. So he had the perfect opportunity to come in and work technically as an associate. And I handed him over all the new patients. He took over most of the practice. I kept adjusting, gradually reducing my hours. He took over, and in that time we were negotiating the sale, and that always takes a while. So, you know, because again we think something's worth something. And most of our negotiation, funnily enough, was around restraint of trade, which I could completely understand because our home practice is in Pukekohe, and this practice is in was in Pukekohe. So I had to, I had a and I made sure I honored it. So that's the other important thing. You know, we often talk about the fact that restraint of trade has no legs to stand on, but you're talking about a colleague and you're working in a small profession. So really, I would so encourage you to not go out and abuse your restraint of trade. I did negotiate in my restraint of trade, though, that I was able to see Kent's patients as a locum. And I continued to work for just one day a week in the practice as his associate. Originally it was only going to be for 12 months, but it ended up being for 18 because I just was enjoying myself and he was enjoying having me still there. So, and then I stopped working there and then fully transitioned after a period of time, maybe another six months to working from home.
MattIt sounds like you had the perfect transition and set about the perfect transition in and then the perfect transition out.
JodieAnd I would say to you, he had the perfect transition in because he got to work as an associate, even though he knew he was buying the practice. And dare I say he immediately, because I was very old school, still written files and all that kind of stuff. You'll be pleased to know at home I actually we have a digital system in terms of note-taking, etc. But the moment he took over, everything changed in a good way. Like he kept our CAs and most of our CAs are still there working for him. And I would say that would be the one thing I'd say, please, if possible, keep your CAs. It's a cooler transition. And he immediately changed to a digital, and I had to like drag myself out of, you know, out of the eighth file century into the you know 21st.
MattAll the codophiles are all sitting there in the cupboard.
JodieAnd you know, that was a learning curve for me, but good. And I one thing I've discovered the moment you know one digital system, even though they're all different, it's actually not as hard to so I've worked when I've done locums with different digital systems, and it's not as scary, so you know, it's not so bad.
MattAnd it is the future. Obviously, the next thing is AI.
JodieThere's a lot of people now that just verbalise their notes, which I think is actually amazing.
MattAnd it should improve the quality.
JodieAnd and that's right, and you don't miss things that you'd be too lazy to type down potentially, or that you might, you know, write down one way but mean something else. But anyway, yeah, so now I, you know, as far as I'm concerned, I feel like I'm living the dream. I'm I'm working here, enjoying it. And I work only just one day a week from home. Um bit more flexible to go and do things.
MattAnd now you can travel more.
JodieYeah. Dare I say? Everyone reminds me here that I go on too many holidays.
– Best Advice, Stats That Matter & Practice Wisdom
MattYou've earned it. If we're looking back over your practice life, you've met so many different people in the profession. You've already given us so much today in terms of great advice. What is the probably the best piece of advice you've ever been given by maybe a mentor or someone that you've met in the profession?
JodieI talked a little bit before, before we started recording, about funnily enough statistics. I'm going to talk more about um and how, you know, as chiropractors and certainly as principals, we typically keep we're we're all about numbers, aren't we? We're we're looking at patient visits and new patient numbers and and we look at patient visit average, and if you'd not, you should, so that we can work out, you know, if we want to see a certain number of patients, how many patient spaces do you need? So, for example, you need, you know, almost double the number of spaces you need. If you want to see 100 people, you need, well, maybe 150 spaces, to be able to see 100 people. So you've got to extrapolate that out in terms of how many you want to see. But one of the things that we found, and having been in practice so long, and we've kept stats all through those sort of those years, especially when we're in full-on practice, is we compare year to year, not month to month. So what I mean by that is we compare January last year to January this year, or January this year to January last year, February this year to February last year. Because as much as a lot of the practice building things will say, you should, there should be none of the, there's no external factors, it's all about you, it's all in your head. If you're going up and down, you're doing something wrong. I would dispute that. I've been working in Pukekohe, 20 years now. It's heavily self-employed area, farming, market gardening. And I can tell you that we every halfway through Mar into March, April, certainly April. April is one of our quietest months and has been for or ever since I've known it in Pukekohe, because Papakura is different. More employed people there. They don't have different fluctuations, yes, different things stress them out. But the financial end of the financial year stresses out self-employed people. And we would typically, we'd be pretty our regular patients were busy, that wasn't an issue, but our new patient numbers would always drop. So I would encourage you not to get disappointed from month to month, but also use those trends to go, okay, April's quieter. So you know what? I'm gonna do something in there that is practice building specifically because I know one, I'm gonna have less new patients. So I'm gonna actively do something, even if it's in-house. Because I'm gonna have potentially less to accommodate for that, to increase those numbers. So you can use your patterns to go, okay, we need to, we would always do spinal checks at the um and um yes, and posture checks at the Pukekohe AMP show. That was always in February. We always had massive February months because sometimes you're quiet in January because everyone's away, and then February, you know, we we do this in February, and it was always amazing, you know, it always worked really well for us. That might be something we can talk about another time. My forte is I would say to you, one of my forte's is spinal posture checks or external. I get a reasonably good rate of booking from those things. So anyway, but that is that's my strength. Not Kent's strength. He's different things. But that's nice. It's nice to work with different people that have different strengths, right?
MattTotally.
JodieYou tick all the boxes.
MattSo definitely the whole idea of record keepers or record breakers. I liked your point about having the extra space available. Obviously, when we have a a new grad, the risk is that they open up a big space in their book and then they start booking people all over the place. Still cluster booking, still bringing people together because you need that vacuum.
JodieYep. You need to work out what times people there are times, and and people don't get sometimes don't get this. There are times when patients want to come in, get adjusted and go to work, or come home from work and get out. You wouldn't book long talkie appointments in that time.
MattDefinitely not.
JodieYou might have one light at night, one late night available for a new patient, for example. But the good thing about that is for whatever reason you haven't got a new patient then, you go home early. It's not a big drama. But if you have a whole pile of regular patients booked here and you book a new patient and there's no one then. Having said that, you need to utilise your time better.
MattTotally.
JodieYou need to be able to utilise your time if you're rolling up x-rays, writing up your printing out um stuff for the ROF, your practice building, you're working on something that perhaps the CAs need assistance with, whatever you might be, you've got to use your, you've got to be good at using your time.
MattAnd you have to block those out as well. You have to say, this is our training time, this is our meeting time. If you don't, it won't happen.
JodieAbsolutely. And I just think it's very difficult to put, I call them talkie visits.
MattYes.
JodieProgresses, ROF's, maybe a free spinal check, for example, because I if you're not already offering free or complementary assessments within your practice, because it's a perfect way to encourage someone that is, for example, maybe a little bit hesitant to come in and find out you don't have five heads and that look at all these people and look at these amazing CAs we have, and look at all the amazing equipment we have and look at what we do. You should be doing it. But those talkie visits cannot be in your what we what used to be called prime time. I don't know if people still use that. Peak times. You know, don't book those things in there. You have to be sensible. Otherwise, you won't get busy. You have to get used to being busy in the prime the peak time to be able to be efficient, do everything you need to do, give that practice member the the care they need. Because I can tell you, and I've said this, or maybe I shouldn't say it. I won't say it. Um, but what I just suddenly thought uh.
MattThis isn't going anywhere.
JodieNo, but you do people the physical time that you spend with someone can feel rushed or not.
MattTotally.
JodieSo whether you're spending five or fifteen, five can feel like fifteen and fifteen can feel like five. So, you know, and if you do all the groundwork and you've got like I say, in my case, x-rays, and you do good physical exams, we do full physical exams, all of those things. If you do that, it must be your patient, um, if you do that, then you you it's okay that you're seeing perhaps less time in here because you've got all the background information and everything that you need to do. So, yeah. You don't want to cut corners.
MattDefinitely not.
JodieBut yeah. So there are ways in which you can be busy but still give quality care, yeah.
MattExactly. Yeah. And it's all about that connection and meeting that patient where they are.
JodieAbsolutely.
MattPerfect. Jodie, thank you so much for today. I think we're definitely gonna have to do a part two. But really appreciate you being on the podcast. And we'll see you next time.
JodieOkay, thank you.
MattThank you.
