Welcome & Introducing Dr Margaret Bryce

Matt 0:01

Hi everyone and welcome to Adjusting the Mic with Dr Matt. Today we have an amazing chiropractor, Dr Margaret Bryce, who's going to talk to us today about longevity and practice, amongst other things. Margaret, welcome to the podcast.

Margaret 0:14

Oh, it's fantastic to be with you, Matt, and with everybody else. Hello, everybody.

Matt 0:19

Fantastic. Now, for those of the profession that don't know you, I don't know if there is anybody who doesn't know you or doesn't know of you, talk a little bit about your journey from chiropractic college. It's been 37 years, am I right?

Margaret 0:31

Yeah, 38

38 Years On: Margaret's Journey Since Graduation

Margaret 0:32

years since I graduated, but 37 and a half years in practice.

Matt 0:36

Fantastic. Well, tell us a little bit about your journey since you left chiropractic college.

Margaret 0:39

We came back to New Zealand from Australia and we had no money. As of course, students have no money. And so my husband managed to rent a place in New Plymouth, which is where we had chosen to go. It was kind of halfway between my parents and his parents, but not Waiuru. And so we set up practice in an office there, and I put my two ads in the paper that I was allowed to put in. And I got a response from two or three people. And I very, very slowly built a practice up. Some while after that, I got really frustrated with how my clients were treating chiropractic. Like they really seemed to like me. But they would like me and they'd come back in a year and they'd say, you really helped me last time, and why don't you do exactly what you did and make me feel good again? And yet with my children and my family, I was never like that. I was always, you need checking regularly, and you have a fall out of the tree, you need checking extra. And I thought, why don't my clients do the same as my family? And I thought, well, Margaret, it's your fault. And so I had a little sit-down, had a little talk to myself. And I think that a real sit-down, talk to yourself is a very important thing from time to time. So my talk to myself was if you want people to look after themselves like you think they should look after themselves, then you should tell them that. And why don't you tell them? And I thought, well, I'm frightened that it will cost them too much, frightened that they won't like me. And I thought, well, would you do that for your family? No, I wouldn't. I would do anything that I could to make sure that they were adjusted and looked after and cared for properly. So I thought, well, Margaret, you're in charge of the fee. Why don't you change your fee? And so that was my very first start with the idea that long-term chiropractic care should be affordable for people. And at about that time, I went to a meeting in Taupō with the Chiropractic First people, and Reggie Gold was speaking, and he said, Who here has a family fee? And I didn't at that stage. And he talked about why a family fee was really important and that you should aim to have a family fee that was affordable for a family. And so really that's what I started doing. I started looking to how I could make chiropractic care affordable for a family. How could I make them able to do it for year after year after year? And that surprisingly does not mean making it cheap. It means making it valuable . So I had to work on my ability to explain chiropractic so that people understood what I understood. I know that old thing. If they knew what you knew, they'd do what you do. So that they could have the option to do that. And that's really my thing now. I only do long-term care. I say to adults, if you want occasional care, you're at the wrong chiropractor. I can give you a list of plenty of chiropractors who will see you. But if you want to see me, you need to do it the way that I know will work for you. So that's what I've been doing. Went from New Plymouth. My husband David became a Christian, finally, and that was 25-ish years ago. And we went to Auckland so I could go to Bible College. That was really hard because I didn't understand how expensive it was to live in Auckland and how much your home takes away all of your disposable income. And so setting up a practice in Auckland, Lionel Blackbourne set me up with David Backhouse. And we had a great time working together. And I saw David a couple of weeks ago at Lyceum time. We have had a wonderful relationship. And so I worked there for quite some time. And then I was mandated out of practice and couldn't afford the mortgage any longer. Sold the house at the height of the market and bought a house online here in Te Koru, just out of New Plymouth. And a year later was allowed to practice again. And here I have set up out in the country and I'm starting quite a nice little practice, thank you.

Matt 5:00

Beautiful.

Price vs Value: Communicating the Worth of Care and What Long-Term Patients Reveal Over Time

Matt 5:01

I think something you touched on there, which was really, really important, is the difference between price and value. And so for a lot of our new grads that are going out, they equate making chiropractic cheaper with making it for people to want to pay. But the common thing is people don't pay if they don't see value. How do you convey value to a new client in a way that takes that price aspect off the table?

Margaret 5:25

That's a really good question. So on their first day, on their first examination, I never adjust them. Had somebody asked me yesterday to be adjusted on the first examination, I never adjust unless they're a baby, yeah? Never adjust them. Because what I want to do on the first day is explain about chiropractic, do a thorough examination, and then say to them, this is the situation, I think we need some x-rays taken. Whatever I think, if I need x-rays taken. Most people have had enough crashes to warrant at least having a look at their spine. And so I send them off to GMC. Paula takes the x-rays for me in New Plymouth, and then the people come back to me. If they come back to me with their x-rays, well, they don't come back to me with their x-rays, they're digital now. Yeah. If they come back to me and they go through their x-rays with me, I spend nearly an hour explaining to them what it should be like, how it should work, and what theirs is like, what's good about their bodies, what's not working properly, what's something that I can possibly help with. And then I say to them, so would you like me to adjust you? I never presume that they want to be adjusted, even though they're sitting in my office. And they usually say something like, Yes, you know, which is their body's expression that they don't want to stay subluxated any longer. Yes, please, let's do this. So then I explain what an adjustment is, and then I lie them down, I do their adjustment, and it's not you know that stuff about being present. This is not a casual adjustment. This is their first adjustment, perhaps for their whole life, since they were a baby, since they were a child who fell out of a tree. This is the first adjustment. It is special. And so make that time special, and then they pay me their $57 and they go off out the door. $57 is dead middle for New Zealand. So I'm not trying to be too high, not trying to be too low, I'm just pretty average. Then the next day they come in and I examine them to see how they have been going 24 hours after their first adjustment. You know, are they stuck again? You know all this stuff. Are they stuck again? Are they moving? Are they moving gorgeously? Are they partially moving? Blah, blah, blah. And so what we do is I say, this is what we need to do for you. Now, you've seen your x-rays. How long do you think it took you to get like that? And they usually wax quite lyrical about the years and the decades. And I say, Well, it might not surprise you to hear me say that I don't see people for less than a year because I don't see changes properly within a shorter period of time. So if I don't see changes in less than a year, why would I see you for less than a year? And then this is the most important thing I say. So is it important enough to you to be bothered spending a year on? And usually they just go, Yes. If you don't ask them, you're never going to find it out.

Matt 8:28

Totally.

Margaret 8:29

Is it important enough for you to spend a year on? It might be. What how much does it cost? If cost wasn't a problem, if getting here wasn't a problem, I repeat the question, is it important enough for you to be spending a year on? And they will either say yes or no. If they say no, that's it. You're going to be referring them to another chiropractor. Which I've done on a handful of occasions. But mostly they say, yes, I want to do this. And then I go through what it costs per visit and what it costs if I give them discounts, which means don't pay me every visit. Because if they pay you every single visit, every time they come, they go, Oh, it's another $57. But if they decide at the beginning of the year that they want to pay me fortnightly, or they want to pay me three times, then I work through how we make sure they'll get their money back if they want to stop. I always err on the side of the patient. There's no administration fee with me. $57 per visit is the maximum they would ever pay.

Matt 9:37

Right.

Margaret 9:38

And so if they decide to stop care halfway through the year, but what happens is they make a decision in their head to go ahead and to get healthy. I can't tell you the number of times they also give up smoking or give up drinking, or they come back to me in two weeks and say, I've lost five kilos. And I go, fabulous. And really what that's about is they have made a decision to be healthy. Yay!

Matt 10:05

Yay. That's what we want. When you have practice members and they've been with you, and obviously you've been in practice for 37 years, how many things have you seen where people have been with you nearly that whole time? Like patients that have seen you for 20 years plus, and what sort of changes have you noticed during those times?

Margaret 10:24

So I was only in New Plymouth for 12 years, and I did an overlap of two years commuting to New Plymouth by car, which was really dangerous. And then I was in Auckland for that two years plus twenty one, I think. Twenty-three years total in Auckland. I had people on my last day in Plymouth who had been with me since the first week of practice. I don't like to say I'm proud of stuff, but I'm actually really proud of that. And I had people in my last day in Auckland who had been with me 23 years. That's a beautiful thing. You've seen their children, you've seen their mother, you've seen their grandchildren. That's quite nice. And what changes? They live healthy lives. The changes are not so much a thing. I remember Reggie Gold saying once, and I was brought up as a fan of Reggie, because he was in my father's class and I listened to his tapes all the time. And one of the things that Reggie said, it's not the changes that you see that are the wonderful things with chiropractic necessarily. It's what doesn't develop. That's the measure of health. And when you're on a journey with people for 23, 15, 10, 7 years, they know they're living healthy lives. They look at their sisters and their brothers and they see that they're not developing all of this terrible stuff. They're not on all of the other medication and stuff that their family is on. And I think it's not so much what changes do I see over 23 years, but how they stay, how they maintain their health. That's beautiful to me.

Matt 12:00

Awesome.

Staying Fresh After Nearly Four Decades in Practice

Matt 12:01

Beautiful. One thing I would say is for a lot of our clients or students, former grads that have come through, chiropractic is a lifetime commitment. Once you graduate, you're a chiropractor for life, regardless of what happens, you're always part of the family. How do you keep chiropractic fresh and exciting over the long term? Because for me, I've chosen to more develop and go into the education side, and that it's always fresh for me. Every single year, new students coming in and telling them the same story. People go, How do you do that? I'm like, because the story is amazing and everyone needs to know it. But from a chiropractic perspective, you're in practice, you're basically doing the same thing. What is it that keeps that fresh for you after all these years?

Margaret 12:43

Well, let me start with something slightly different. When I'd been in practice only a couple of years, well, actually a year or so, I got really sick of the sound of my own voice. And I hated hearing myself say big deep breath in and all the way out. Like just jarred my brain to hear myself saying the same thing. And then I sat down, had one talk to myself. And I thought, why do you say that, Margaret? And you say it because it helps them to have the best adjustment possible. So if it helps them to have the best adjustment possible, and I like that, then just knuckle down and say the right words that are the best things to say. So one of my friends who is still in chiropractic, so I won't name him, said, I'm sick of saying the same things. I think I'm going to leave chiropractic. And I said, Well, I've been over this, and what we need to understand is what is the end point of it, and how beautiful is that to us. So yeah, we worked on that together. That end point, that seeing what happens. When you get a new client in, I had a lady this morning who's 87. She can barely walk, and she falls over all of the time. She's been under care for eight weeks now. There's not a long period of time. But she's just stopped falling over. Where else is she gonna get that? Like tell me.

Matt 14:14

Nowhere. No, that's fantastic.

Margaret 14:17

Stunning. And yesterday, I adjusted an 11-day-old baby, was born at home. They couldn't find the bottom of the car seat, they didn't know how to get to me, they're way out in the country. So I did a home visit and to check this little baby. Her parents have never been to a chiropractor. They just had heard it was good. Fabulous. That's it. That's that people talking about chiropractic say, we need more chiropractors so that more people talk about chiropractic. So I checked her and I adjusted her neck and I adjusted her. She's brought it home, you know, beautiful birth, easy. And I adjusted her sacroiliac joint on the right and C1 on the right. And her mother picked her up and she said, Oh, she feels all soft. I just about cried. There's a beautiful feels all soft, not all tight and grabbed. She cried. I need to cry, but you know, I've seen it a few times. That's fresh. No matter whether they're old or they're new. People say to me things like, Haven't we got too many chiropractors already? And I think, how many people in this country have got a spine?

Matt 15:21

Exactly.

Why New Zealand Needs More Chiropractors

Margaret 15:22

And how is it possible for me to look after all of those? It's not. We need more chiropractors.

Matt 15:28

A hundred percent.

Margaret 15:29

How many chiropractors who can see that beauty of the long-term care, not just that an adjustment equals X dollars. Because an adjustment does equal X dollars. But another thing that Reggie used to say, which has impacted me deeply, is your clients cannot pay you enough for the value of an adjustment. There's no way they can actually afford. You've just got to settle on some kind of exchange.

Matt 16:01

Yeah, bare exchange, definitely. A lot of chiros that we talk to undervalue their service. If you think of this as a pain relief and that's the sum total of everything, then definitely you know, why not use Panadol? But that's not what chiropractic is or was ever designed to be. So if you actually understand the principles. Now one thing that I think you've really talked about a lot, you've mentioned Reggie a lot, and you mentioned that you'd just been to Lyceum and you'd gone through and caught up with some old colleagues. How much do you see going to seminars, listening to audiobooks, listening to podcasts, and reading books in chiropractic on philosophy is important to you? Oh, this has been a big part of my life. When I was little, my father was a chiropractor, my grandfather had been a chiropractor, and my father, as you know, went to college with Reggie Gold, and he had a big reel-to-reel tape recorder, and I apologise for those people who have heard me tell this story before. But my father liked to listen to the tapes that Reggie would send out across the world for people to listen to. But he didn't like to be limited, he didn't like to sit still. So we'd have the the tape player going, and it would be up really, really loud. And there was no place in the house that you could go to be away from Reggie's voice. So we heard that kind of stuff all of the time. And my parents always, always went to the NZCA seminars, and my mother would go because my father was a terrible writer, even though he was the chiropractor. She was the head chiropractor. He was the person who did the adjusting. She was the one who had the philosophy. She was the one who really seemed to understand it. And that's funny because she wasn't the daughter of a chiropractor, you know, she was a daughter of a farmer. And so mum and dad would go to all these seminars and I would go and look after the other children because I was the eldest. And then they'd tell us what they'd heard. And it was really exciting to feel their enjoyment of what they'd heard and the new exciting things. They always treated us a bit like adults, spoke to us. They answered the question that we asked. And so I was brought up in that situation. And when we started in practice, I just loved to go along to the seminars and find out stuff. I think constant education, constant reading is really, really useful. It's undervalued. It helps you. It doesn't just help you maintain your practice, it helps you be a better version of yourself, which of course I want to be. Yeah, if you're a better version of yourself, then you show up as a better version for your practice members, right?

Margaret 18:37

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 18:38

Yeah. That's key. So I would say one thing that we have is some of our graduates, some of our alumni are out, maybe they've been out five to ten years. They're in that sort of cruise mode. They've maybe built a practice and they're happy with it, then life has taken over. How do we bring things back and bring that energy back to practice so that something they could do on a Monday of next week that would just reignite the fire? Obviously, if they had Lyceum, great, go to Lyceum if that's around or a conference. What is something they could do personally that would bring back some of that fire and maybe look at growing their practice some more?

Margaret 19:12

The way

Reigniting the Fire: Advice for Alumni in Cruise Mode

Margaret 19:13

I do this, I don't know if it's any good, but I sit at my window and I look out. When I was in Auckland, it was easy. There were people everywhere. And I look out at the people and I would think, do I care about you? Do I really care about you? It's a bit harder here, it's rural. They all go past it 100k. But I walk down the street and I remember walking down in Hamilton streets years and years ago with my sister Wendy, and there was an older woman who had a spinal fracture, obviously she was all hunched over, and she could hardly walk. And my sister said to me, Oh, that woman really needs chiropractic care. And I was so frustrated because I thought, look at all the people around here. They all need chiropractic care. She's actually got a fracture in her spine, it's almost too late. She may need chiropractic care, but home needs chiropractic care. Every single other person there, do you care about them? And so what I do, if I find myself getting blase, I sit down and say, Well, Margaret, do you care? How much do you care? And I kind of feel that if I care about their lives, which are full of falls and crashes and being told that they're useless and being hit and being sexually abused and falling off their bikes and driving their cars into the ditch and that sort of stuff. Do I care that I know something that could help them enormously, maybe save their marriage, maybe help them to be a better learner, maybe help them to speak for the first time. Do I care about that? And that's what I do.

Matt 20:55

Awesome.

Margaret 20:56

I'm not saying that's a great thing because sometimes it makes you a bit sad with yourself. And then as soon as I care, I know what I need to do. Dave Russell used to go and give them a card. I've only done that a few times, but if you just give them a card, it's just giving them a card. But if you care behind whatever you do or say, whatever your action is, if your compassion is there, then they will feel it.

Matt 21:23

Yeah. That's it. It's about staying conscious, I think, is the key thing. And if you're consciously passionate about chiropractic, it only helps to get as many people under care as you possibly can. That's the thing I always talk to students, they're like, well, you know, I'm maxed out, I've got this number of visits. I'm seeing 60 a week. I can't possibly see any more. And I'm like, if you needed to fit a family in, if you needed to see one of your family members and there was, you know, four people that needed to be adjusted, could they fit? Oh, yeah, I'd make time for them. Then you can make time for another five, and you could make time for another 10, you could make time for another 20. There's always enough time, it's the way you structure things. So in terms of practice flow, you're obviously solo practitioner now in your own practice. Have you worked with associates? Have you worked with colleagues? Obviously, you worked with Dr Backhouse.

Margaret 22:09

I

Practice Flow, Associates and Working Solo

Margaret 22:10

worked with David Backhouse. We had completely separate practices and we worked in different rooms. We would overlap the same time, but we worked in different rooms until I went to open plan practice. And then I turned that the whole of our practice waiting room was mine because that was where all the tables were. And he had his room. So we worked on different days.

Matt 22:35

Okay.

Margaret 22:36

He had a much kind of a an open practice type of feel with families. All the families would come and they'd all go into the room together. I had an associate once in New Plymouth for a short period of time. I'm not that person. I just said to him, we had it all tied up legally, and I just took the contract and I ripped it up in front of him and I said, practice wherever you like. Off you go. We're different. We're so different. He was very mechanistic, and it took him like 10, 15 minutes to see a regular visit. Whereas I take ages at the beginning, ages. I see the person after three hours of talking to them, I've only done two adjustments. Then after that, I take a very short period of time with them, but we check in with exams and stuff like that. And so, yeah, I don't really do I'm not the associate type. I'm sorry.

Matt 23:33

No, that's okay. I mean, every practice is different, and it's all a matter of finding out which best suits you. And one thing I would say is there are practices that are five or six associates, but there's also very successful practices that are solo practitioners. And as long as you are able to give what you feel is a service to humanity and to the best of your ability, I don't see there's any difference between those two groups. Because if we had lots of people who are solo practitioners seeing good volume, then we'd have less of a problem in this country with some of our health crises. So you don't have to apologise for not having associates. Again, some people don't want to be managers as well, like they want to focus on the chiropractic side.

Margaret 24:12

I like to do things my own way. This is the thing that I want to talk to you about. What I like to do when I have CA's, I don't have any CA's at the moment. At the moment, I have fewer than 100 people a week at the moment, just slot people in every five minutes. It's so there's enough car parks. There are only three car parks here. So what I would do with my CA's to start with, I would make sure, one, that they were my clients, that had been my clients, or two, that they thoroughly understood chiropractic. And then we would talk to start with about when our job would be done. And we would go and sit in the hospital car park over at North Shore Hospital, and I would say, You see all these cars here? What are they doing here? And when this car park is empty, then our job is done. I'm not trying to say that medicine doesn't have a place, it has a huge place, but that most people are looking for health and visiting people who are sick. And the hospital car park is a really good place to get the CA's heads around it. And then I would say, when you work with me, I clean the toilets and I bring the cups of tea. And you help me bring my love to the people of the city. Your job is to bring love to these people. And if I'm really, really busy, you're allowed to get me a cup of tea. But apart from that, it's my job. And I guess that I really think that attitude of serving my CA's so that they can serve me in a way that serves the community. I think that's a big part of my style of practice.

The Best Advice She Ever Received & a Monday Morning Tip to Keep Care Fresh

Matt 25:49

And there's a humility to that as well, which I think sometimes in chiropractic we can bring our ego to the equation. We realise it's actually not about us, it's about innate, it's about the nervous system and how that's functioning. But are you making the cups of tea for those people listening? If you're the principal chiropractor and you're not bringing your CA's a cup of tea or a snack, doing the toilets, then you need to be in there doing that stuff. What's the best piece of advice you've been given by a colleague or a mentor in your chiropractic life that you can remember?

Margaret 26:17

Oh, easy, Les Whitehead. I had just graduated on the Wednesday night and had the baby, my last baby, on Thursday morning at five o'clock. And I really wanted to go to my graduation function. You know, not the graduation, the function, the bit of the knees up afterwards. And my husband, David, said, You cannot go because you will dance. And I said, I promise I won't dance. I promise I won't dance. And so I was there on the Friday night. So I had the baby on the Thursday morning. I was there on the Friday, and Les Whitehead had come to speak to us. He was a keynote speaker at our weekend thing. And he was gone for three quarters of an hour. And I thought, Oh, I really want to hear Les. I've been adjusted by him. He recommended me to college, a whole lot of other stuff. So I went to hear him and he stood up on the stage, and I know a lot of the students who have been through have heard me saying this. And he said, Love your patients. And then he sat down. And people were sort of going, What the hang? He's here for three quarters of an hour. He's over from New Zealand to speak to us, and this is it. Love your patients. And he stood up again. He said, Love your patients. And he sat down. And then we went, What's happening? He said, Do you need me to say it again? Of course he didn't say it again. And that was it. That was it. We had three quarters of an hour off kind of what are we talking about? It was so impactful. But I always thought that that was the patients that you have in your office. But it was about oh only about five years ago I realised that's not the only people, some of them are your patients who aren't your patients yet. And you've got to love them.

Matt 28:09

Yeah.

Margaret 28:10

Well, I choose to love them. You don't got to. And that's the most impactful thing that has ever been said to me by another chiropractor.

Matt 28:18

And a true chiropractic legend. Obviously, we have a lot of these legends of chiropractic that aren't with us anymore. For anybody who's out there who gets a chance to listen to a Reggie Gold or Les Whitehead or a Brett Ireland or a number of different things on YouTube. And if you Google these names, you will see some of the amazing speeches and seminars that they've given. It's major. I can see how much that that's affected you, though. Thank you. Last thing, Margaret, when we're talking to some of our graduates who maybe want something that they can do on, say, a Monday morning, what is something that you do with all your patients that you found has been really impactful for really conveying the message of chiropractic or something you do in your technique that is something special that really helps them? Is it something you can share with us to use on Monday morning? This person could go into practice and say, Oh yeah, I'm going to try that today.

Margaret 29:11

Everybody knows this. I like to do a little tiny tick, which for me is a tiny encouragement towards chiropractic. And that's been easy over the years, especially when we've talked on hard bone on soft nerve. I would say the power's on, you know, that's a lovely thing. But since the research that Heidi and team have done, I've had to work myself because now I get what she's talking about, how important this is. Let me just step back a little bit. When my father was alive, he used to be really amazed at chiropractic and angry at it at the same time. Because he would say things like, Where is the nerve for depression? Show me where the nerve for depression is. Because when they're just people and they stop being depressed, I want to know what I've done. And Heidi's work has allowed us to understand that. Thank you, Heidi. Awesome, gorgeous woman. So now instead of saying like powers on and say, Well, your body's talking to your brain, and your brain's talking to your body, your brain's in better order now that you leave here. That kind of thing. I also like to hug them. I know that's not for everybody. And one thing for my children, the children in the practice, I remember going to the doctor , when I was nine or something, and then I went again when I was like 14. And the same toys were in the office and the same ripped books, exactly the same. And I thought, this is not okay. This should be a fun place for a child to come. So I have built up 12 sort of sets of toys. I mean, there's a doll's house, there's a garage, there's a spaceship, there's a disco thing where they turn the turntable around, there's pirate ships, and every month I change the toy. The toy is amazing. I could never afford those toys for my children. But I get this wonderful toy, a kitchen, a shop, an office, a snail full of balls that they can dive into, that kind of thing. So children come on the first day of the new month that they're in the go, what's the toy? What's the toy? And they've been talking in the car about what the toy could be. And I think keep it fresh for the kids too. That's a real important thing on keeping it fresh for the patients. They love it that their children don't want to go home. I love that.

Matt 31:46

Great. Margaret, I really appreciate you. Thank you so much for sharing with us today. Any final words that you have for the alumni?

Margaret 31:55

Love your patients. Perfect. Thank you so much, Margaret, and thanks for being on the podcast.

Matt 32:01

You're welcome. See ya. Bye-bye.