What’s up Kaizenovators, happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill. Today I’m coming to you from the beautiful National Harbor, south of Washington, DC, on the Potomac River, a really cool development. This place has grown incrementally. I’m sure they’ve had their challenges during covid, even post covid with all the things happening in the economy. Today’s topic of conversation is Incremental improvement.
Beautiful National Harbor
Slowly but surely, they just keep adding and growing to this really cool development. More restaurants, more shops, more commercial space, more residential space, it just continues to evolve and grow. It got me thinking a little bit about what’s going on in our practices here in the DC region around incremental growth and improvement.
12 months ago, Google, Apple, somebody changed their algorithm and it affected our digital marketing campaigns, and we struggled for a really long time trying to figure it out. Now, do we have it all? No. Have we made progress, incremental progress in figuring some of these things out, including things like SEO? the answer is yes, we have.
I often say that when you have challenges in your practices or your businesses, it’s either a people problem, a process problem, or a knowledge problem. knowing that, our processes were tight and our people are amazing, we just didn’t have the knowledge that we needed.
What do we do? We researched, we read, we watched videos, and we talked to many people, so-called experts, some of them experts, some of them not. We talked to these people to find out as much as we could to research, to learn in order to solve these issues. Slowly but surely incrementally we’ve made progress.
When dealing with challenges in your practice, I’m just going to encourage you to think about ways to incrementally grow, incrementally, learn research, apply, iterate, and if it works, great. If it doesn’t work, try again. Talk to more people and watch more videos. We live in the information age, and we are not in a shortage of knowledge.
Incremental improvement is what it’s all about. That’s this week’s two-minute drill, and I hope you guys have a great week.
Your questions and feedback are always welcome and appreciated!
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Book Talk: Top 5 Business Books Chiropractors Must Read
Over the last 5 months, Dr. Jay highlighted five of his favorite business books that helped him become a better leader. If you are a young doctor, a business owner, a leader, a manager, or a practice owner these 5 books are a must to read.
1- Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman
Dr. Jay is often asked what’s his favorite book and he always starts with Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman. Do you know that businesses lose between 20 and 70% of their customers within the first hundred days of interacting with them?
What Joey Coleman does in his book is lay out a particular strategy to help businesses of all kinds not only ensure they keep their customers for the first hundred days but that they keep their customers for life. He includes a very specific roadmap, a step-by-step guide, that provides business owners, CEOs, and employees with the knowledge, confidence, and self-control needed to deliver exactly what the customer needs WHEN they need it. You have to read Never Lose a Customer Again if you want to keep your customers for life and grow your business. It will change your life!
One of Dr. Jay’s favorite business books is Traction by Gino Wickman. Dr. Jay went to Detroit and took a coaching program with Geno and learned all about the Traction Model. This book helps businesses develop business infrastructure in order to run their business and create traction for growth. He talks about the six critical elements of driving infrastructure to attain the goals in order to grow your business to the newest heights possible. If you want to grow your business and build your infrastructure, check out Traction by Gino Wickman.
In this book, Ryan explores stoicism and talks about the lessons that we learn as we deal with obstacles. One of Dr. Jay’s favorite quotes from the book is from Marcus Aurelius, “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” That’s been a motto for Dr. Jay that gets him through some of life’s toughest challenges. If you want a great book, check it out.
Drive by Daniel H. Pink’s book was really influential in helping Dr. Jay understand how to work, grow, and develop with his team. Drive starts with an introduction to what motivates or drives humans to accomplish tasks. Daniel examines the three elements of true motivation in his book – autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is the desire to be self-directed. Mastery is the urge to get better at stuff. Finally, purpose, everybody needs a transcendental purpose, especially in their work.
If you just started a business, you are moving to a new leadership role, or are a business owner this is a good book to read as it provides you with good insights on how to manage people effectively and get your team to accomplish necessary goals.
In Hooked, Nir Eyal talks about what drives human behavior change, and he teaches that we have triggers in our lives that create actions. When we have variable rewards tied to those actions, we make an investment in doing more of the same actions. In other words, building better habits, and the intersection of digital human behavior changes and offline human behavior changes, are the same.
Two Minute Drill: Exploring Different Opportunities
What’s up Kaizenovators, happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill. Today I’m coming to you from beautiful Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. I just finished my last presentation on a two-and-a-half-week journey, traveling out west and speaking at Cal Chiro, Alaska Chiropractic Society, and the Washington State Chiropractic Association in Spokane, which I finished today. I decided I was going to go and do a little exploring. I’m going to take these trails, do a little hike, and check out the wilderness that is Coeur D’Alene.
Go Out Exploring
I got to thinking about exploring and what happened to me today. I had a phone call with our legal team for Kaizenovate, our technology company, and learned that there’s kind of a really cool thing that we’re now able to do that I didn’t know we were able to do.
I can’t really disclose right now, but I learned something that is going to help change the trajectory of our company. This all came about because I was exploring different opportunities through a lot of different people. I have done this throughout my career where I just set up meetings with people who may be able to help me or who I may be able to help.
I’ve set up lots and lots and lots of calls and zooms over the years. Most of them don’t pan out to anything but that one call that one zoom, that one connection, that one relationship that works can change the trajectory of your business and your life.
All I’m going to say is I encourage you to think about exploring different people, different businesses, different opportunities, and as many as you can within the resources of your time. Find ways to connect with people that may ultimately change your life. Don’t expect a huge return on investment in terms of the number of times that you do this, but it’s the quality of that one connection that can make a huge difference in your life.
Go out exploring Kaizenovators. That’s this week’s TMD. Talk to y’all next week.
Your questions and feedback are always welcome and appreciated!
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What’s up Kaizenovators, happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill. Today I’m coming to you from what looks like to be a little town in Bavaria, Germany, but I am not. I am here in Leavenworth, Washington. Which is a little town in the center of the state. This town was founded during the railroad boom and the homesteaders in the 1800s. When the depression hit, this town went into a deep economic spiral. Today’s topic of conversation is how to turn challenges into prosperity.
Differentiation Create Prosperity
When the depression hit, this town went into a deep economic spiral. It took about 60 years for the people who remain in this town to figure out that they need to do something and get this town more viable economically. What they did was they decided they were going to create a Bavarian town in the middle of the US, in the middle of the state of Washington. They privately funded and redecorated all of the buildings in this town with a Bavarian theme. Now, this is a serious travel destination for people to come and visit, especially during this time of year, which is Octoberfest.
What are the lessons to be learned?
The first lesson to be learned is that there is opportunity in every challenging time. They suffered through some tough times during the depression, and although it took several decades, they figured out how to make this town economically viable and prosperous.
Two, differentiate yourself. This is an incredible little place, there’s nothing in the US that I’ve ever seen that looks like this, It is so different and cool. I remember seeing it in a travel magazine and thinking, God, one day I’d love to visit here. Luckily enough, I had the opportunity to be in Washington this week to speak at the Washington State Chiropractic Association meeting, and I figured I might as well check it out because I’ve always wanted to come here.
Leavenworth, Washington, it’s all about finding opportunities and challenges and making sure that you learn how to differentiate your business and your brand to create prosperity.
That is this week’s Two Minute Drill. Hope you guys have a great week and I’ll talk to you next week.
Your questions and feedback are always welcome and appreciated!
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What’s up Kaizenovators, happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill. Today I come to you from Land’s End in Homer, Alaska. This place is both beautiful and also unforgiving. It made me think a little bit about how that’s kind of a metaphor for life. Life can be beautiful but life can also be a bit unforgiving. When dealing with life’s challenges, how do we also not let go of what’s beautiful around us? that’s what I have been thinking about this week.
Unforgiving beauty
I’ll give you guys an update on Hana. Thank God she had clean margins around the excision of her tumor. Last week, however; we did find out that she has the most aggressive form of cancer and therefore she is now getting chemotherapy.
How do I make sure that this unforgiving circumstance that came into our lives doesn’t adversely affect my ability to see beauty? I’m not talking about just the beauty here but I’m talking about all the beauty around me in my life the people that I work with, my friends, my family, my loved ones, and my other puppy deputy. Just remembering that I’ve got a lot of beauty around me.
How do I not just stick these feelings into a tiny little box? These feelings of despair, hopelessness, frustration, and curiosity, why is this even happening? Stick it in a tiny little box and just move on. However, my goal, and what I want to share with you guys today is I’m going to work hard on exploring these feelings.
I’m going to meditate, pray, journal, and all the combinations of the above to make sure that I figure out exactly how I’m feeling about this situation so that I can manage these emotions effectively and productively so that I can work and take action to support Hana’s recovery and just stay positive.
Going there with my feelings and appreciating the other elements of beauty around me in my life when unforgiving moments happen is this week’s Two Minute Drill message.
I hope you guys have a great week and I’ll talk to you all next week.
Your questions and feedback are always welcome and appreciated!
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What’s up Kaizenovators, happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill. Today, I’m coming to you from beautiful La Jolla, California at this amazing resort called Estancia. I’m here for the Cal Chiro conference. An amazing event with a fantastic crowd. I had a lot of fun speaking this weekend. Today’s topic of conversation is talent management.
Performance Review & Recruiting Strategy
I have had several conversations this weekend with owners of practices who have said, you know what, I’m having some staff issues and I don’t know what to do. In this one particular conversation that I had, this chiropractor had an office manager, a long-time office manager whose performance was starting to slip.
I said, First and foremost, you should sit down and have a meaningful, honest conversation with this employee, and talk to them about what you’re observing and how it’s impacting the business. Help me understand why this is going on. What can I do to support you better? What can I do to support your continued improvement here? If the decision comes to, this is no longer working for one of us, or both of us, then let’s decide to move on and support each other in that transition. You can support your person leaving and they can support you while you find the next best person for this role.
We should be having regular performance conversations with our direct reports, regular one-on-ones all the time. However, if that’s not happening and you’re having a performance issue, you’ve got to sit down and talk to that person.
That ties to the next point, that I shared with her, which is having a recruiting strategy. We have a part-time on-demand recruiter. I found her on LinkedIn, she is amazing. When we have open roles in our companies, we say, hey, Chrisy, find us this person and she does. We’ve got an amazing team thanks to her. She does a great job, but also, we have every single role in our companies posted on Hireology and Indeed all the time.
Now, you might think, Well, that’s crazy. What do your employees think? Well, guess what? The great performers don’t care. They’re happy about it because they want other great performers to join the company, and the only ones that are worried are going to be the ones that are not performing well. Luckily, we don’t have those folks. We have great performers.
I highly encourage you to post all of your positions for your company and have them open all the time so you have a constant pipeline of people that you can pull from in case someone just decides to jet unexpectedly.
Make sure you’re having regular performance conversations and make sure that you have recruiting strategies so that you can grow your team and your practice to the best of your ability and have a lot less stress doing it.
Happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill, and I’ll talk to you next week.
Your questions and feedback are always welcome and appreciated!
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What’s up Kaizenovators, happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill. Today’s topic of conversation is engagement with empathy. For so many years early and even kind of midway through my leadership journey, I would deal with really challenging and troubling times, and a dictator-like approach. And when things didn’t go well, I would even react with discipline, a disciplinary tone.
Don’t Be a Dictator
You probably know that approach does not work, so I will share it with you. Not only does it kill relationships with your team members, but it also kills the entire culture of the organization.
What I have learned through many failures, trials, tribulations, lots of reading, lots of learning, and lots of mentoring from some great coaches like Jeff Lecher, is that the most important thing I can do is engage with my team with empathy.
When you hire the right people, in the right seats, doing the right work in the right way, at the right time. When there are challenging times that are occurring, they are suffering just like you are. It is our role as leaders to engage with them with empathy.
How does that help? Well, first and foremost, it helps them understand where they are coming from, and what they are dealing with at that moment. Two, what that does, is build a stronger connection with you as a leader and help them feel safe. Three, all of that helps to provide a culture of problem-solving, the ability to not worry as much, and focus on solving the problems at hand.
Again, I highly recommend that when you are dealing with challenging times in your business or your practice, engage with your team with empathy, understand where they are coming from, connect with them, and then make sure that you focus on the solutions at hand and have as much fun as you can. That will also lighten the mood and help you engage your team in the most meaningful way possible.
That is this week’s Two Minute Drill. Have a great week.
Your questions and feedback are always welcome and appreciated!
Connect with us on Instagram or email us at [email protected]
What’s up Kaizenovators, happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill. Hannah, you may have seen her in a couple of other Two Minute Drills here at the vet in Arlington Virginia. About 10 days ago we found a soft tumor on her paw, a little bit fixed about the size of a candied-covered Almond. That brings today’s topic of conversation palpating your pets.
Check Your Pets Regularly
We took Hannah the next day to get her needle biopsy done and it came back positive for mast cell cancer. I did not even know that dogs could get skin cancer, but apparently, they can. Mast cell cancer is one of the most common types of skin cancer that dogs can get. When found early it is typically curable, but when found late it becomes much more challenging as with any other cancer.
One of the things that we have done with our dogs ever since they were puppies is constantly palpating them, feeling them, squeezing them, checking under the skin, the subcutaneous tissues, and their paws just regularly. Because of that, it made it much easier to find this tumor and have it addressed. Today, Hannah will have the two middle toes of her rear left paw removed. Hopefully, there will be clean margins and therefore it’s expected to be mostly curative if not completely curative. If there are no clean margins around the excision site, then more aggressive treatment is needed, either radiation or possibly leg amputation. This is pretty serious business.
Again, I am going to encourage all of you pet owners. I don’t care if you have got a dog, a cat, a turtle, or whatever you have, make sure that you are palpating them and checking them regularly because early detection can truly save their lives. I know you can send lots of love and wishes to this beautiful baby girl. I will keep you guys posted on her progress.
That is this week’s Two Minute Drill. Have a great week.
Your questions and feedback are always welcome and appreciated!
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What’s up Kaizenovators, happy Tuesday Two Minute Drill. Today’s topic of conversation is connection. I am here at Georgetown University to teach master’s students about complementary and alternative medicine. It is always a great time, these young minds are just ready to take on the world.
Strengthen Your Connection
Being on campus makes me think a lot about the connections that I built while I was in college, many years ago. In fact, I was really lucky because this past weekend I got to spend almost 48 hours with some of my closest friends from college, and the connection and being together was phenomenal. For me, the connection that I felt with these guys might have been as strong as I’ve ever experienced. I believe part of the reason is that I have a stronger connection to myself. I have a stronger understanding of what makes me tick and the areas where I want to learn how to improve and grow as a human being.
As I told you in one of my Two Minute Drills way back in October when my parents were diagnosed with COVID and I was going through a lot of stress, I was going to start exploring some mental health options and get some counseling, and I’ve done that. I’ve been doing it now for the past 10 months. It’s made a huge difference for me, understanding how my upbringing and my experiences growing up has shaped my thoughts and shaped my behaviors, and because of that, I’ve gained a greater understanding and connection to myself, I’m able to have a much greater connection to the people that are in my life. That has and is going to continue to make a big difference for me.
So I encourage you to strengthen your connection with yourself through counseling or otherwise so that you can continue to strengthen your connection with others because isn’t that what life is about?
that’s this week’s Two Minute Drill. Have a great week and see you all on Thursday for this month’s webinar around metrics.
If you haven’t reserved your spot for our upcoming webinar on September 15th at 1 P.M. EST – click here to RSVP.
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