Introducing Dr Vismai Schonfelder

Matt 0:00

Welcome to Adjusting the Mic Podcast. As always, it's me, Dr Matt Sherson, and today I'm joined by Vismai Schonfelder, amazing chiropractor extraordinaire, inventor, author, practice manager, everything that you want to talk to today. So, Vismai, welcome to the podcast.

Vismai 0:16

Thanks for having me, Matthew.

Matt 0:17

For those that don't know you, can you tell us a little bit about your journey from when you got out of chiropractic school into practice and what you're doing

From Amsterdam to Singapore: Building a High-Retention Practice

Matt 0:24

now?

Vismai 0:24

Yeah, so my chiropractic journey started at RMIT in Melbourne. Then I met my wife in the last year of school. So she's Dutch, so we had all our practice time, the first 15 years of my career was in Amsterdam. So we had a practice in a small village just north of Amsterdam, where we had five chiropractors working at the time and four CAs. And in that time, I needed one new person for every two to two and a half thousand returning visits. So I saw two or three, three or four new people per year. And I got to that point after about eight years. So it wasn't an overnight thing, but it certainly also didn't mean I was there for 30 years, and that's how it naturally built. It was really consciously constructing this extremely high retention formula. After that, we sold the practice in 2013. We traveled for five years, homeschooled the kids, but I just really missed chiropractic. So six, eight years ago now we started the practice in Singapore. So I fly up and back every week from Bali to Singapore. I love chiropractic so much that I just don't want to sit next to the pool on Bali and relax or something. I got completely bored from all that. So I'm really happy to be back with a bit of mild stress and building a community around me and you know just the daily challenges that go with running a practice.

Matt 1:39

Fantastic.

The Retention Vortex: Turning Coaching Into a System

Matt 1:40

Now you mentioned before that you do some coaching calls as well. How much does that make up a part of your business? So you've got obviously the chiropractic side, but also the coaching side.

Vismai 1:48

Yeah, so I've been speaking on stages for probably 20 years now, and it wasn't until COVID when I got locked in Singapore that I actually formalised the teaching into an online programme. And I've put my what we call a chiropractic retention vortex, and it's basically a six-month rinse and repeat client touch point that really nurtures clients on the way and really helps two things, really. It helps engagement and it helps keeping people's attention, which is a very difficult thing these days to compete with those apps and screens. And oh my god, everybody getting pulled in all sorts of directions. I will say with my coaching work, to set up that retention vortex is not an overnight thing, you know, to win the trust and loyalty of your community. It's way beyond just a social media ad. There's a lot more to it than that. So it does take a good six to twelve months to set up, and then it takes another good six to twelve months to really train your team in how to use the tools that we set up. That's the coaching programme. It's on a platform called School, it's called My Chiropractic Sweet Spot, and it's kind of like an annual thing, and we do some live seminars as well as some in-house trainings, and there's just some small short films for the CA school as well as the chiropractic school. But however, I'm in practice, you know. I think I have a slight addiction to the privilege that we have of seeing people. Sounds funny, I've been a chiropractor for nearly 30 years now, but I really genuinely still really love that. And I as much as I love the coaching, I still really prefer the moment. I also believe that if you know you get quite disconnected quickly if you're not in practice. Like I said before, just the challenges of the daily grind of running a practice, of training staff, of chasing after clients, of you know, how to deal with people that don't keep their schedules and, you know, all sorts of these challenges. So I find that if I'm not in practice, I'll quite quickly get disconnected. And I can even get a bit too idealistic almost. I've been guilty of that before. I've had a two-year holiday and I got invited to speak on this seminar, and I look back at the recording and I think, what an idiot, just completely disconnected from the reality of running a practice and like talking all these idealisms from a stage with zero context. So that's been my journey with chiropractic. My work's not a silver bullet, like there's definitely a formula to it, but there's two things. You have to love chiropractic genuinely, and you have to have a genuine love for people, actually. So if for the listeners here, actually, if you're listening to this and you're not connected with your colleagues, just get around one another. Like this weekend we had the Lyceum Congress, and you know, I can't wait to get back in practice tomorrow. I don't know how it works or why it works, but we get in this energetic field together. So if you're one of the people listening to this and you haven't been around your alumni group for a little while, or you haven't attended a technique seminar or a practice building seminar or done some sort of extra training with colleagues in a room, my invitation is there. Just you don't need to go at this alone. Actually, it's far more enjoyable, especially if you are in practice alone. You know, if you're just a single chiropractor in the thing, it's great to get around your colleagues.

Matt 4:51

Yeah.

Why Rhythm Is Everything in Practice

Matt 4:52

And that's the thing about starting that fire inside, right? Sometimes you find someone who's really passionate, really excited about what they do, and you get alongside them and all of a sudden it's infectious. You pick up on that energy and want to go with it. One thing I would ask is if we're talking about generating a really sustainable chiropractic business, what's some tips that you could give someone, something very simple, to say if they're not doing this, something they should start doing.

Vismai 5:16

Okay, so the biggest thing is getting a rhythm to get your clients onto. I can't stress the word rhythm enough, you know. If people are having the same adjustment times each month or each week, that really helps. You know, if you're bringing out a newsletter on a certain time, that really helps. If you're having like a book of the month for your practice, that really helps. So we've got in the vortex, we've just got these rhythms that actually take on a life and momentum of their own. So I'm away from my practice now for four weeks. We've just had a wedding in Greece, a wedding in Amsterdam, we've had a locum there, the practice goes really well. The newsletter comes out, the clients get reactivated from the strategies that we've got in place. So without a rhythm beyond people's adjusting rhythm, it's really difficult to build a high retention office. And I find having a high retention office gives a hell of a lot of peace in your life. That's one thing. So there's a couple of things, you know, it gives me peace in my life on the business front. I'm the major breadwinner for our family. I take responsibility for that. So that gives me a lot of financial rest for my mind, which then means I can actually move on to caring for people, knowing that that's taken care of, right? Mind you, that's a byproduct of taking care of people. So there's a real grapple between what comes first, I guess. And the second thing is just training your staff to really learn how to bring this rhythm in. The staff will also really value the rhythm. They like to know what comes next. It's one of the big questions that needs to be answered for a high retention office. What is our next newsletter topic on? What is our next talk on, community health class talk on? What is our next theme that we're dealing with? When is our next community challenge? When are we getting our community together in real life in one room for a glass of wine or a beer or a Christmas party or a practice birth? When are we doing all this? The clients really like to know that. So does the staff.

Matt 7:01

So, yeah, having a practice system you see is vital. I know a lot of chiros fall into that, we'd call them a peacock type personality, high energy, maybe a bit distracted, they don't have those systems in place. How would you encourage someone like that to go? You need to really look at the systems that you have. Maybe you need to have a practice manual or what to say. What would you say to those people? Oh, it's too hard for me. I'm, you know, I'm too ADHD.

Vismai 7:27

Yeah, ADHD, or, you know, this is another common thing I saw at the weekend. There's still a lot of young chiropractors that got a young family. So that's not ADHD, but that's just on, you know, it's a really intense time of life, right? You're building your practice, you're building your family, you're building your relationship. And so what I would suggest is getting a really simple hotel around the corner from home and locking yourself in a hotel room that's got no emotional connection to you, and just really look at your practice. Just to have a look at what actually is go through like a typical client. They walk in the front door. What happens to that client over the next six months? Break down your journey. I've made it really simple by setting up our journey and you can replicate that. But actually, even beyond that, before you even get in touch with my work, is to have a good look at what's happening with a client over the space of six months. And if the clients are not even getting to the six months, at least identifying that, you will start to see, okay, that's where things are changed, that's where things are dropping off, that's where we can do it stronger. You know, most chiropractic officers are great on the front end, pretty average on the back end. I'd say most people that start my coaching work have a PVA of between 20 and 30. You know, I'd say 50% or more would have that. Some people would have less than that, but that's kind of like the the most. But it's still kind of a form of practice hell for me. You know, it's one new person every 20 or 30 visits, you know. Gosh, it's like as much as I love new people, it never I never get to this rest, you know. And if I want to not rest and keep growing the business, I can just add associates or I can compress more into more people in an hour, or I can work more hours, whatever however you want to play on those different strings we've got to pull on. So yeah, rhythm's kind of everything. So lock yourself in a hotel room. It's a just a very neutral space.

Matt 9:09

Yeah. Do a deep dive on what's actually happening.

Vismai 9:11

Yeah, and your wife or your partner might think, you know, it's really selfish to go away. But how I suggest you sell it to them is this tell them that you're doing it for the future of the family. You're doing it for your future time so that you can actually set up a life for yourself. One thing I realise talking to a lot of chiropractors, we have this kind of mission in this life to lead this kind of life of freedom and choice and health and abundance and vitality and love and you know, and that for me that's all available. But the sad reality is when I speak with a lot of colleagues my age, they they're still in the daily grind and trying to make it work, and you know, things aren't as abundant as they could be. But the ones that attended the seminars, the ones that kept training, the ones that kept learning, I was sitting next to Mark Possel's the other day in the down the front there, and I said, Oh, you know, what's going on? Because I noticed he was on his iPhone the whole time making notes from all the speakers. And I'm like, You're still really learning the whole time, aren't you? You know, so and he's probably one of the most successful chiropractors I know, and he's still just learning all the time. So for me, it's just like uh like that.

Matt 10:12

Yeah,

The Welcome Booklet: Changing Why Patients Stay

Matt 10:13

continuous learning and continuous growth. So for a chiropractor who's maybe been around for 10 years, they're doing their thing, they're getting maybe five to ten new patients a month coming through, but they're never breaking through that cap that's in their practice. You've said go to the hotel and look at the systems that you've got. Do you believe there's a couple of things that chiros are doing that are capping them at that level?

Vismai 10:35

Yeah, I think there was someone was talking about this bait and switch technique when people come into the care. So if you don't have a really solid onboarding welcome booklet that's really well thought about, and I'm not talking about informing people about chiropractic, there's enough information out there. But if you're not altering the reason why people come into you in the first 28 days, they're gonna leave because chiropractic is so good, they'll get the result, what they want it to come in for. So they, you know, fix my headache, headache gone, they leave. It's very obvious they want to get home to their family at the end of a busy day, like all of us. So we've got to really drastically change the reason why they come in. I do that through my welcome booklet tool. There's certain habit trackers I've got in there to form engagement, and basically that creates an intrinsic motivation to change. It needs to make sense for people. So they will make a decision to buy a package or to step into care based on emotion, so they'll be motivated because they're tired or they've got this pain, but they'll make a decision to become a long-term buyer from us, not somebody who's sold to, but somebody who buys from. It's a very different psychology. And you've got four weeks to alter that, but they will only do that if you can really change the reason why they're coming. So the public perception of chiropractic is we've just got this big bridge that needs to be gapped. You know, this on one hand, someone wants their neck cracked, preferably once, preferably for half price, and never come back again. That's extreme. But on the other extreme, we're standing here saying come to chiropractic twice a week forever. And that's also extreme. So where do we fit in that spectrum? But people won't buy from you long term if trust is not developed quickly, but also if the reason why they're coming to you is not changed quickly. No one comes into my practice wanting to be there for life ever. 99.9% of clients presenting to me still, even though my PVA is extremely high, they've still got a headache or a jaw pain or a back pain and they'll use the word fix. Can you fix this? You know, it's very concrete, it's very pragmatic. So that's the magic I kind of unweave in my welcome booklet tool. It's just super skillfully put together, actually.

Matt 12:44

So it's a matter of taking them for where they're at and helping them to make that journey across the bridge to hopefully where we're at or to where they feel they need to be in that path.

Vismai 12:54

Sure, yeah. But what I want to say, actually, Matthew, it's a really important point, is I don't do this cognitively. I'm not here to explain to you about chiropractic. This is a big problem in our profession. We think because we've explained the path to wellness, people get it cognitively. I don't use the path to wellness pictures for the first 12 months just because I find it just way too premature in the whole process of them understanding chiropractic. So I prefer to get them to do corrective care rather than to use the word corrective care. So I've got my ways of doing that, and then I have a habit tracker that ensure that they do that. I also like in the first 20 days of care, I gamify getting three referrals from every new client that comes to me. Of course, we don't hit it all the time, but the fact that we've got it as a goal and a gamification, me and my CA, we often achieve that. And we do that also from the welcome booklet. So we've got our ways of wrapping in referral generation, wrapping that into the report of findings. So I'm still focused on the client sitting in front of me, but I'm wrapping into how they can get their family and friends at home to identify if they're subluxated or they need chiropractic. And then we get them to doing certain habits that they put on their fridge at home, and the whole family starts to be involved in the process. It's a wonderful pragmatic tool that just involves people beyond the person sitting in front of us.

Matt 14:11

That whole idea

Referrals Without the Fear: Community Over Cold Asks

Matt 14:12

of bringing in that idea of referrals to a practice member, the biggest thing that I say to students coming through when they are trying to get referrals in the Chiropractic Centre here is they have this fear of asking. What would you say? If someone had a fear of asking for referrals or even suggesting that referrals were important, what would you say to

Vismai 14:31

Welcome to the real world. The practice is not going to grow itself, you know. But if you do have a fear of asking for referrals, I certainly did have, I really did, so if you've got that fear, what I would suggest to you is having a welcome booklet tool that helps people that are sitting at home identify what they kind of have. And then the big thing you want to get coming up inside of the family or friend member is, you know, can chiropractic help with? And then you've got to be able to really navigate that. And if you're scared of asking for referral and someone says, Oh, I've been trying to get my brother to come, or you've got to drop everything at that moment. And then you've got to ask two questions. I call it stretching the moment. This is for people who don't want to ask for referrals. So the what I want you to ask is two things. How long has he had it for and how did it start? That's all you have to ask. So you the this is Stephen Covey's form of communication. First seek to understand and then have the courage to be understood. So if you ask a person how long have they had it, how did it start? They'll say something about their husband or wife, you know, how long's Barry not been sleeping well? Oh, I think three years ago, and how did it start? Oh, it started when he got laid off work, or it started after a car accident, it started when he got divorced, or blah, blah, blah. And then you'll say, okay, well, we can talk about this and maybe we can make an appointment, something loose like that. What I do, I use tools. So I've got these newsletters. I'll say, look, take this home to Barry, get him to have a read of it. If it makes sense, you're back here Tuesday at five. If it makes sense, we can make an appointment for it. Most people don't know their partner's schedule immediately, so I I've sort of gone past the idea of trying to get an appointment immediately. But then tracking comes into play. So as a new grad that's scared to ask for referrals, you've got to track it. Just bring up the conversation directly or indirectly. For the ones that are more confident to ask for referrals, just let them know you'd love to help them. You'd love to help their family or friends. You can use prompts. I don't use that, you know, where they hand out gift cards or things like that. But what I do, twice a year we have community challenges in the practice. Typically we did a juice cleanse, but now we do an intermittent fasting cleanse. And this is a great way of making the step lower for people who are thinking of coming. So you've always got a handful of practice members that says, I've been trying to get my husband here for two years. So what we do on the back of those community challenges, we have a free open day. We do this twice a year, you know, and this is where we get our balloon of new clients. So the people that are in the challenge, we have a WhatsApp group right now. After six years, we've got about 150 people in that group. They're really valuable clients. They make 80% of our income, that group. And then we say, okay, after the challenge, we've got a thing on Saturday, and that's when a lot of them send those people. So I don't ask individually for referrals, but I just offer, hey, maybe this is a nice time for Bill to finally come. It's free. You know, we'll we'll check him out that day. So we do that twice a year, and that's where we get our biggest balloon of referrals, and they're quality referrals too. They're very different than a screening day from social media.

Matt 17:25

Yeah, it's one of those things where your clients that you have in your practice, they want to be interacting or living or having people that are already under chiropractic care with them because they see the difference, they see the benefit of a subluxation-free nervous system. And so if you've got a husband that's complaining all the time about his headache or whatever, they have the incentive to get that person out of the care because they can see the benefits that they've had. So I always say that the interns, please, it's actually in their best interest to refer to you to make the nervous system function better for that person. Something that we see a lot at the moment with social media is this whole appearance of quality or appearance of service or appearance of an amazing practice. And then the practice member comes in and maybe experiences something different. How much do you see a practice that I suppose has the right soul or the right culture to encourage people to stay? How much is that a big thing for you?

Vismai 18:19

It's everything. It really is. You have to set every touch point up in that three-dimensional real I I call them real-world offerings and virtual offerings. You have to invite people into a natural space. So for us, that's it's very simple. It's just a wooden floor. Like don't have a synthetic floor if you're offering natural health care. We use Thule tables just because they look so natural. Okay, they're more expensive, you can get different versions, but they just look really natural. The drop piece sounds really natural too. The music, the touch points, the humanistic eye contact, the magazines you have in your waiting room. No old man, old travel brochures laying around, you know. Subscribe to a nice magazine and get a new one every six weeks. We have a lending library with really curated books. The whole thing, you know, when someone touches the welcome booklet, it's got a very subliminal message of we care, we're organised, we're natural. These are all super subliminal messages, but acute people that, you know, come to chiropractic forever, you know, they're more often performance people. They just want all stuff to be right. You walk into any one of their houses, and I swear, years before most of my clients even discovered me, I could have eaten almost anything in their bathrooms because it was all natural. They just that's how they live. So if I link the adjustment to that value and I invite them into that natural environment, there's a big chance the same reason that they buy natural toothpaste, they'll buy natural chiropractic. It's the values are a really important part of it, you know. I do that with table talk, I do that with how we invite them into a physical environment too.

Matt 19:50

Awesome. So do you find that those clients naturally gravitate because of the clients that you have there? Or do you feel like if a practice is putting out that vibe of a natural healing environment, they will attract that? I know a lot of chiros are like, oh, I'll just take anybody in. How much does patient fit to your practice make a difference?

Vismai 20:09

Well, birds of a feather flock together. You know, I've got a whole chapter of that in my CA school. And quite frankly, if I really like a client, this isn't just me being natural, I think all of us have the same. If you naturally really like someone, you kind of naturally really probably like their kids and naturally like their neighbours or you know, this birds of a flock will flock together. So if I really like somebody, I'll do anything I can to get their friends and family and just to make my life peaceful. And of course they get adjusted, so life's good. But you do have to link the adjustment. You do have to link with what they're coming in to pay you for with that value. It's not so I'll pull the blocks out, I'm an SOT guy. So I pull the blocks out underneath them and I'll say that's one of the most natural things you can do for your body. Or if somebody's talking about how clever their body is, or that they're burning their candle on both ends, or I've got a flu, but it's my own stupid fault because of this and that, you know, if they're talking about the intelligence of the body like that, I'll say of them just as I adjust them, this is just really helping the natural cleverness of your body. You know, if somebody talks about their life in a very reductionistic way, I know that they're probably not going to stick around forever. But if somebody talks about understanding the just life generally in a whole, then I link holism to the adjustment. That we look at your body in a very holistic way. So those four words, um what's his name from Canada in 1981? He wrote a book called Chiropractic Textbook, and he said there's four fundamental discussions that we all have with our body. We either think it's clever or not, we either think it's part of nature or not, we either think it's whole or not, so reductionistic, and we've either got a friendly relationship with our body or we're into authoritarianism. And those four things basically how we set up the practice. It's probably beyond the scope of this podcast today, but there's a lot to unpack there. That all comes down back down to my table talk and the environment where I invite them into.

Matt 21:52

Yeah. And about congruence, I suppose, between communicating exactly what you're trying to convey in an office environment. That's perfect. For our, I suppose, longstanding chiropractors who've maybe been out many years and are coasting along, doing okay, doing the minimum. You talked about peaceful practice just before and bringing peace. What would you say to someone who maybe is just going in, punching in, doing their day, leaving, new patients are trickling in as they would do. How would you inspire that person to maybe go, hey, there's more that you could be doing?

Vismai 22:24

I wish Barry was here right now. We went for dinner at Barry's place. What's Barry's last name?

Matt 22:28

Barry Rushton.

Vismai 22:29

Barry Rushton, greatest MC. Oh my gosh. So we went for his house for dinner last night, and he's probably one of those chiropractors, right? But he was so humble in his approach. He's like, Oh, let's get let's get your workshop here. I really want to learn that stuff. Because he goes, you know, I just thought about all these great people that I've had in practice and I haven't seen them in ages. He said, I've just got all these leaky buckets, and I've I don't have to fix them because my practice is good and I'm fine and blah, blah, blah. He said, But I actually just want to. And I think being around each other together and just chewing the fat with your colleagues makes you want to do that. So the first thing is just getting together. Get together and then pick some things that you want to get into together. Even if you've got courses you want to do, find a buddy and do it together. Just makes life wide. Don't do it just for the points for your rego boy. Like it's just such a low vibrational way of going through this life together.

Matt 23:18

Yeah, it's like you know, passing a test just to get the 70%.

Vismai 23:21

Yeah.

Matt 23:22

Yeah. There's more to it than that, particularly if it's chiropractic, right?

Vismai 23:25

There is. And I get it. Or like I'm, you know, I've been in practice 30 years now, so I've had my times where I coast and I've had my times where I was really hungry and driven. Um, and yeah, I don't know. I just I guess I in Singapore I've got a lot of male clients above the age of 75 that are still working. I don't care what career they're in. Banking, working for Amazon, whatever. But the guys that are still working, their minds are on. They're well groomed, they're curious, they're they're they're doing well in all levels. Sure, they have their challenges like all of us, but they're just on. Then there's other people that are just not contributing, got no purpose. They just lose their mojo. They just kind of die early, you know.

Matt 24:02

It's like, yeah, if you're trying to retire at 65, what are you retiring from? The benefit we have as chiropractors is we have this ability to stay on. We have longevity.

Vismai 24:11

It's a privilege.

ChiroRing: Adding More Hard Data to the Adjustment

Vismai 24:12

It really is.

Matt 24:13

Amazing. So I would say for some other things that you've done, obviously you mentioned this at the Lyceum, is developing this ring for chiropractic. That's pretty exciting.

Vismai 24:22

Yes, we've developed ChiroRing. So that came out of, it was born out of hope and frustration at the same time. About four years ago, my first client, Victoria, she came in and she said, My ring told me I need to come to you because my heart rate's too high. And I said, What? She goes, Yeah, last time I was here, I tracked, I tagged my chiropractic adjustment. This started four years ago, and by then there was probably 10% of my clients were wearing wearables in the form of Apple Watch, WHOOP bands, Auro rings, ultra-human rings, whatever. So I started measuring. I've measured 1,400 adjustments and drawn my own conclusions from that. So there's two things. For the individual carer, the power of personal health metrics to make your human experience better, or to elevate that human experience is unparalleled. I wish BJ Palmer was alive. He would be onto this like uh, you know, that's the health entrepreneur in him, right? But then you've got for the practice, the problem was for the profession, we had no access to that data. And here we go again. So this was the frustrating part. I'm like, here we go, us chiropractors. All the famous chiropractors, they stopped calling themselves a chiropractor. You look at any world famous chiropractor right now, and they don't have name chiropractor on the front of any of their books. And I was just like, here we go again. Now WHOOP Band is gonna have access to all chiropractic data, and our profession won't. So I was just thought, you know what, I'm just going to step up here. So my wife and I, Jyoti, we've been developing it now for four years, especially the last 12 months, and we've just the first thousand rings arrive in Singapore this week, actually. So it's it's really fresh off the bat. But the data coming through with what chiropractic can do and measure also surprises me. I've heard for 30 years anecdotally that people sleep better, but now I know that the average person getting an adjustment, and it doesn't matter if they get after one adjustment or 30 adjustments, the average deep sleep cycle increases between 9 and 15% for that evening. And that's when the brain cleans itself. And I'm just like, oh my gosh, there's so many implications on this that I'm sure in five years from now, AI or our leading researchers here at the New Zealand College, they're going to just have access to this data and they'll start to extrapolate all these different things. Already now I get referrals on steroids from the people that have measured their adjustments because they're just go and see Vismai for your deep sleep, go and see Vismai to improve your HRV. I'm like, wow, no one's ever referred me to that. So I think in five years from now, I don't know what chiropractic is going to become, but it's a bold new future. That's what the the theme of this event was this weekend. So I'd really call on everybody to go to chiroring.com, grab hold of a ring, start tracking your adjustments. You walk, you have your adjustment, you press play, and it will show what's happening with your heart, mind sync, your HRV, your heart rate. Uh you'll see that in real time. And you sleep that night, and then we'll track that over the short term, the long term, and we'll just pull the data and we'll be able to just present facts with what's happening with chiropractic.

Matt 27:17

That's it. And again, it's moving it away from that symptom focus to where we've always seen it or we've always believed in. And now we have evidence and data to track that.

Vismai 27:26

Yeah, I think also, I think the early adopters are going to be more the people that come in for performance, whether it's elite business people, elite sports people, mothers that just want to be do a really good job as a mum, just elite people in their fields, and then slowly over time, because it's that we're tracking the trend, slowly over time, I think that the next wave of users will be more about this is what chiropractor can do for you beyond the the misconception that the public's got of us at the moment, actually. I find we're positioned really inaccurately in the marketplace. You know, I was flying over here from Melbourne and I saw all these nervous system books, vagus nerve resets. None of it's written by chiropractors. And then the chiropractors that I know that are famous, their books are in those things, but it's not written by it's not it's got no recognition of chiropractic. But all the terminology, you open up the front cover, it's all chiropractic language. And I just find that so disappointing. I get it too, you know, because I even had really esteemed colleagues tell me you should call it another name. Don't call it chiro ring, because not everyone likes chiropractors, you'll probably reach a broader audience. And I'm like, what? Yeah, okay, so what's the point of all this? You know, I'm so proud to be a damn chiropractor, and I have been my whole life, and so we said, you know what, we're going to really call this chiro ring for that profession and for that reason. You know, we we got tempted with the name Neuroring because maybe people don't like chiropractic. Well, how about we use chiro ring and then people actually get turned into really liking and looking at our profession in a very different way that they currently do.

Matt 29:00

Yeah, it is one of those chiropractic inferiority complexes that is so invasive. And even for those people that have experienced miracles in their practice, there still seems to be this disconnect between what the potential actually is. Part of obviously the Center for Chiropractic Research is actually expanding that, is saying, hey, we've got research investigating these different components, and I just see it as so valuable. Stay research focused, look at what's out there, but also take a moment to reflect on your own practice and see the miracles that have happened. That you're part of the process. Maybe it's the whole take no credit, take no blame type of idea, but I do feel for most people that we see, chiros need to take a little bit of credit for starting the process. We put the adjustment in. We like to always end with a few little questions, just some pick your brain a little bit. One of the things we ask is you've been a practice 30 years plus. What was the best piece of advice you were given by another chiropractor? Is there anything you can think about or recall?

Vismai 29:59

Bring on the leading

Change, a Near-Death Story and a Monday Morning Ritual

Vismai 30:00

edge of innovation. Change. Don't be scared to just start a new ship and change. Just embrace change in your life, you know? So we're going really top-heavy on AI now. With our front desk operating system. It's gone from having this app or having a CA that does things into this ChiroMate idea. So it's called you can go to chiromate.ai if you're interested to have a look at it. But definitely we're moving in that as a profession. So change is everything. I think we're on the I think it's a human utopia and a chiropractic utopia is just around the corner. But we've got to go with it, we've got to push the envelope as a profession. So change, that's probably the biggest one for me.

Matt 30:36

Change and adapt, definitely.

Vismai 30:38

Yeah. Change, adapt, innovate.

Matt 30:40

Now, is there a patient or an event or a client or something that you often reflect on which changed your thought process in chiropractic? Was there something where you went, I've given an adjustment today, and all of a sudden it's something I reflect back on? We've had some people come and talk about adjusting animals or adjusting a baby and having an amazing change in that baby where they didn't have the confidence. Is there any particular client story or client thing that you're happy to share?

Vismai 31:08

Yeah, there's probably two things that come to mind. One would be a mentor. So a favourite mentor of mine is Marc Hudson from Chiro Europe. I attended his seminars for 20 years and he just um he just gave me the permission to be a real chiropractor. And I'm forever grateful with that, you know. Sometimes he was really confrontational with me, but he out of his heart, you know, he really helped me stay on course and on track. And from an adjustment point of view, it was actually the birth of our first daughter. I'd never attended a birth before, it's my first one. And Jyoti she had expanded on one side six centimetres, but on the other side, it was just wasn't opening. So we were just stuck there. It was ten hours in, and in Holland they say, you've got to go to the hospital after ten and a half hours if the baby's not coming, you have to go. So I thought, oh, I hadn't adjusted her during the thing because I was a bit scared to, to be honest. I didn't know if I should or if she should be category two or what we do. So I decided to adjust her, and then she um I put her on the blocks, and honestly, within about six seconds, she did this projectile vomit against the wall, and then she let out the biggest lion sound ever, and then um Dali was born, you know. But actually, she went into well, they caught they referred to this as an orgasmic birth, but at a certain point she dilated on both sides, and it's like everyone stepped back from her. She just gave off this message of just leave me alone. And then the midwife said, It's time to push, and she said, No way, baby, this is my time. And she was just in this uh blissful orgasmic birth, and that came like and then the the midwife looks at me and she goes, What did you do? I really didn't know, you know. Uh so that was a story that just made me realise the power. And one last story is coming out of a coma. So I died in 1996, and I collapsed on a beach in Ghana. I woke up 10 days later in intensive care in quarantine in um London, had 18 months of rehab learning how to walk and talk. But anyway, coming out of it once I got out of hospital, I lived above the chiropractic office and I get adjusted every day, and the adjustments put me into a state of bliss repeatedly, and I just never I didn't know what that was. It really put me back in that near-death experience, not as visual as the going down the light tunnel and all this, but it gave me the same sort of flavour, and I was like, what is this? So those adjustments changed the flavour that I look through with all my clients that really set up this idea of like, shit, we are this universal intelligence thing is real. Connecting to a source that we're in is real when the interference is taken away. So I hadn't eaten for six months and I hadn't moved for months, and so I was just very clean. On top of all that, I'm getting adjusted every day. So it was just, and then on that was just after my near-death experience. So it was like I was just very close to the source anyway, and those adjustments push me back into that. So it's kept my curiosity up. That's one of my hopes with Chiro Ring is that we see what it's doing for human consciousness, you know, beyond like meditation, mindfulness, those techniques prepare us, but really, really touching base and connecting with universal intelligence. I hope that chiropractic heads towards that way with research as well as client results.

Matt 34:20

Fantastic. Now, one last thing, speaking to the audience out there, what is one thing you would tell a chiropractor on Monday morning to go out and do if they're not doing it now?

Vismai 34:32

Okay, so before every shift, I like to do this thing called heart-mind coherence. So I believe that a big part of our day is the energetics that we carry throughout the day. Of course, you need to give good adjustments. I'm talking, I'm assuming that you take your serious thing of your craft that you give a good adjustment, but get yourself into a state. So I just use this sort of music and breathing, and I always do that for about three minutes before I start every shift. I just get myself into a heart-mind sync state, which I can measure, and that just allows me to be way clearer in my mind to work with people. So please do that. It sounds all fluffy, I know, and it sounds a little bit pseudoscience-y, but it really helps me connecting with people throughout my day. I touch people more consciously, I'm there more consciously. Pat and Aaron from Syntropy Chiropractic Training, they've got this technique, they've got this t-shirt on the front, it says drop in. You can't drop in to a client if you're not in a good state. If you're still busy with your shopping list in your mind and you've you've had a fight with your wife that morning, or you know, you your kids getting bullied at school, or what, you know, all the things that we have to deal with on a daily basis. This for me is like a portal, a gate that I can go through and just step up my professional behaviour and my professional conduct and leave all my private troubles, which we've all got. I can somehow that exercise for me is like a gate to go through and it makes me take my work really seriously, still have fun. But you know, people are paying a lot of money to come in each day. I've got to be there. I've got to be professional.

Matt 36:02

Awesome. Vismai, thanks very much for joining us today. That is fantastic.

Vismai 36:06

Yes, my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Matthew. It's been great.