 So you so you're in Auckland still? Yeah, and you went to NZCC. How long ago did you graduate? So I graduated in 2015. So it did my favourite degree. The first year is done outside of the university in New Zealand. So you have to do like a pre-media. So you do that at one of the other major universities. And then once you've finished that, then you can apply to go to the college itself and then you spend four years there. First two where you kind of your academic years and then your last two years are the more practical you're in the Carpathic Centre, actually adjusting people, dealing with patients kind of meant to be like real life practice, but it's not at all. Yeah, yeah. Now I remember reading something a while back about New Zealand and the I think it was the front desk software that they use. And I because I think it was somebody mentioning, oh, that this is what they got to use. And I it made me wonder, so when you're in clinic, how much do you do other than treating the patients? Are you doing any billing? Are you, you know, do you work the front desk at all? Do you? No, so as part of our training during second year, we have to spend a period of time, I think it's 15 hours on the front desk. So we actually have to learn how to do all the billing, you know, do that whole side of processing. So we understand the process of being a CA. But when we're actually an intern, that's handled by everybody else. Okay, but at some point you do get that that experience. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah, you absolutely do. And then part of it is because there's only when I was there, there were only three CAs to handle. You know, there was 12 interns on a shift. So if a patient was running late or they missed or canceled, you were the one who had to follow it up. They weren't going to follow up that patient and call them for you. So that was our responsibility. What would the CAs be doing? They're all front desk handling billing, booking the next appointment. All right. Okay, okay. And because everything was done in kind of 10 or 20 minute slots, every 10 or 20 minutes, they'd have 12 people come to the front desk and three people would have to process them all and then they would leave and then the next, you know, 12 people would turn up. Right. And so you'd have about 12 student interns on staff at any given time. Yeah. Yeah. In our year. And our year was quite small. So there was a change in the intake when we arrived with Australia and then also international laws studying in New Zealand. So our class dropped by about 30 people, which we just kind of went through a small year. The following year was a little bit smaller as well. So we were about 45, 40 students. Whereas now they're back up to their kind of 70 to 80, which is what suits them really well. So they'll end up having probably 20 people on a shift. Okay. So that's a little more in line with what my experience was, but we had no, almost no option to get involved on the front desk and of it on the billing, which from what I understand here, the billing is much more complicated because there's multiple different insurance panels and, you know, we're just conferences, personal injury and all these different things. And that was something that now that I'm in practice, I'm finding it's probably more important of an education in a lot of ways. Because I don't, still I've avoided insurance for a long time other than when I'm doing locomtenance work. I don't know how to do it. I don't even know how to get credentialed yet with the insurance panels. I've started going through that process, but it's so complicated. And I talked with my wife who's, you know, did medical school in New Zealand and it just makes things so nice when you have that you know, that socialized healthcare or the single payer I guess. Yeah, exactly. It makes it, in New Zealand it's very, very easy. Basically you have something called the ACC, which is the Accident Conversation Corporation. So if anyone has a trip or fall or anything and they have an injury, they're covered under ACC automatically. So that's a, it's kind of an insurance company, but it's run by the government. Sure. So everyone has it. So that makes things very, very easy because everything just goes through that. And then if anyone has personal insurance, we give them an invoice and they invoice the insurance company themselves. So we don't have to deal with any of that kind of drama at all, which is really nice. So in that case, would the patient pay upfront and then they would get reimbursed by insurance? Okay. And that's something that we would call a super bill where the patient does pay out of pocket, which is really appealing in a lot of ways because they can use their insurance. But as the doctor at the clinic, you don't have to mess with the insurance. Exactly. So that's kind of what I've been doing or leaning towards at least. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see with the recent election how things change. Sure. Yes. Yeah. I guess that does kind of throw things up in the air. Yeah, it does. But now then my wife and I talk about what would it be like if we moved down to New Zealand just to see how it goes. Have you been outside of New Zealand? I've been to a few different places, not really looking at anything carpet-wise, but I've been to Australia to look at things carpet-ically. But you know, like I've been on holidays to a few different destinations in the islands around here. I've been to Hawaii once, which I guess is the closest to America as I've been. I don't know if it really represents America, but that's the plan. Yeah, I mean, technically it's a part. So it is. It is the states. Now, Australia has, what's the word now? Reciprocity, where the license are recognized in both countries. Is that right? That's right. So when we graduate, I forget what the actual endorsement is. It's like JCA, whatever the organization is, but they recognize in terms of qualification, how educated are you, all the Australian colleges as well as ours. So as soon as I get registered, I'm recognized in New Zealand. I'm the same in Australia. The only thing is I have to pay to be part of the association over there. Got it, right. So did you ever look into going to school in Australia versus New Zealand? No, because we have something called study link, which is basically where we get all of our university fees paid for and our interest free as long as we stay at work in New Zealand. Wow. Do you mind talking about what the average cost of tuition is? Sure. So for NZCC grad, you're probably looking about $100,000, between $80,000 and $100,000. Okay. And the dollar right now is, I want to say, so that would be almost equivalent to $180,000? Am I kind of in the right area there? Yeah, it would be around $200. So it all kind of comes down to living expenses as well. So under that scheme, you can actually claim living expenses and get some money to help you pay for rent or food or whatever, which is what I did because I moved cities away from home. So that bumped my amount up a little bit because it wasn't just for my course fees. But that's pretty common. Right, right. I think that's what most students here do. But interest free is, that's a huge plus. Yep. Yeah, that's really good. So it just sits there. The interest does accrue, but as long as you stay and work in New Zealand, they write it off. Interesting. Okay. Sure. So that's what in the US would be a subsidized loan, although our subsidized loans where the interest doesn't accrue is only during school. So six months after you graduate, then and I don't remember whether it back accrues, like whether all that time in school, I don't think it does, but then it starts to accrue interest. And so the average chiropractic student in the US is graduating with somewhere around 200, maybe just under 200,000. But then by the time that interest accrues over the 10 to 20 year payoff period, it's going to get close to $500,000 in the end, which... Yeah, easy. That's a lot. That's a big commitment. And how does that compare to the average income for a chiropractor in New Zealand? Pretty reasonable. So as a graduate first year at, you probably expected to be earning around about $50,000. Maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less depending on if you are say more in a rural environment or a city and depending obviously on your patient numbers. And some of my colleagues have graduated and their practices have just skyrocketed. And now yeah, easily seeing over 100 patients a week and doing really, really well and financially that's just not an issue for them anymore. But then there's others who haven't got that opportunity, they're still kind of working through the process and it's a little bit slower and more difficult for them. So there's a massive spectrum of what's actually out there. And it kind of depends on what the primary car is hiring you to do. So most of us end up being an associate. Some of us have opened up our own practices and then obviously a few have gone back overseas. But yeah, so yeah, there's a big spectrum but that's kind of the average. Yeah, okay. So that's kind of on par. Depending on the region, I'm finding that regions are quite varied in some areas. I would say around where I'm at, on average, just kind of the standard new grad position is in between 30 to 40,000. Yeah, it's just kind of what I'm seeing. I mean that's by no means a large sample size. But yeah, so how long does it, do you have a term to pay off those loans? Is it a 10 year loan or is it just well with no interest or cruel, well like what's the point why don't you just. So the way that it works is as you earn money, you have to pay 12% of your earnings towards that loan. Oh, interesting. So it's a percentage of your earnings. Percentage of your earnings by law is part of your tax. How that comes through is they'll chase you for that. So what if you declare you have to put 12% towards that loan? And is that then on top of income tax and other federal taxes? Okay. That's on top of everything else. So in New Zealand it's a PAYE system so we pay probably depending on your pay scale it kind of goes up but it's between 15 and 30% tax and then you get the 12% on top of that. Okay, yeah, interesting we have a similar one but it's not as clear cut as that. So I like that it's just a flat percentage is so you know what it's going to be all the time. If you want to pay more, of course you can, but most people don't because it's interest free. Right. Yeah, interesting. Okay. Wow, that's very cool. So what led you to get into chiropractic? That's an excellent question. When most people ask me that I tend to say I think chiropractic found me more than I found it so I always knew that I wanted to get into health in some form or another. Both my parents are heavily in the health field and I knew that I wanted to help people and I was really interested in them and just didn't really know what avenue that was so originally I was going to become a GP and go down to Otago, New Zealand to study down there because I've got a really, really good reputable school. Yeah, that's where my wife went. Yeah, it's good. I've been there actually. I walked around campus for about an hour and then that was it. Yeah, that's a beautiful New Zealand city very much a university city when it's study time city population probably doubles and then when it's break, it's just the locals. But yeah, beautiful city but I talked to a few of my colleagues who went there or a few of my classmates who went there a year before me and they were just having a horrible time with the competition and everything getting really, really intense in that medical school environment. It's not really me. I wanted to be in a place not when necessarily things are all kind of happy and everything's going fine but without that kind of intense competition, it just sounded like I was having a bad time and I got a girlfriend as well so that inspired me to stay in Christchurch my hometown so I stayed there and I did a psychology degree and got to the end of that after three years and so our normal degrees are three years not four in New Zealand by the way as well so that was my normal bachelor's so after kind of getting to the end of that, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I just had no idea. I was kind of searching around for different options and then I figured who it is but one of my buddies mentioned chiropractic and I thought that's interesting. I was looking into all different types of modellas at that point and chatted with a couple of chiropractors found out that the New Zealand College was in New Zealand but my science degree didn't have enough science in it so I was potentially going to have to do another year of study which I didn't want to do so I looked at some summer school papers and I could actually do if I studied it through online learning through Australia I could actually do a full year med school in summer school which I wouldn't recommend anyone because that was ridiculously hard. It doesn't sound like a good idea. No it was not a good idea. There were many long long hours to try to get all the work done but I got through it which is lucky but it kind of it just worked. It's kind of like the universe aligned and I was like oh you want to do this? Well you can. Here's the papers that you can do and it all works and fits and can be substituted or paid for quite easily. Here's flights that fit in because I had to go to Australia to do some of the course. That means that you could go there and then come back and still start the year at New Zealand College in perfect time. It all just kind of worked so I guess I just kind of got caught up and being dragged in the right direction if you will. I'm starting to just observationally piece together these stories and it seems for those people who almost fall into chiropractic by accident which you're kind of in that position. They tend to be the ones that stick around for the longest period of time and do the most with their career whereas a lot of people who planned on doing it for a while and I'm in that boat. I'm hoping that my hypothesis does not come true with this one but they tend to have maybe shorter careers in it. I definitely see that first piece of it more often is that I've interviewed a couple people recently on the podcast who are really well known in the states and it wasn't like a family business or they didn't have other people in the family that were chiropractors they just someone said hey why don't you try this. They said sure why not. You just get caught up by the idea. I've never been adjusted before until six months after I started my course. After you started the course. I had no idea. I was so green getting in. That blew me away. I had a couple of classmates when I first started they were the same. They had never been adjusted. Wow. I don't know what to say because for me I first started chiropractor third grade. It was probably seven or eight something like that and I went fairly regularly and then didn't go quite as often until high school and then I started going every week until I was so familiar with it that I guess it just surprises me that someone who's not experienced what it is would just go right in and all in and dedicate themselves to it. So that's impressive in a lot of ways. Well thank you very much. I hope that your permission does come true and I do stay with this forever. Well for me it's I really have fallen in love with it. Without it being a prospect or an idea none of my family weekly see chiropractors what they do now. Before I started it just wasn't part of my spectrum or my reality at all but I do find it really interesting talking with people who have had that it's been part of their childhood. They've grown up with it. It's completely normalised and there's things that you guys do who've had chiropractic forever which is very different from what I would say the rest of the population or me for example who didn't grow up with it. I think it comes down to a couple of things it's definitely certainty. You've just experienced it. It's just part of you just get it. Whereas definitely there were a lot of doubts for me through a lot of different things just because different types of patients come through that you just go I just really don't think I can help you. I mean I've never experienced it before. I've never seen anyone who can benefit in this way whereas say for example my primary chiropractor who came black born he, his dad was a chiropractor, his brother's a chiropractor, there's 30 something chiropractors in the family it's one of those chiropractic families but he just assumes that yeah of course it'll work. Of course you get that kind of chiropractic lifestyle and less medications, whatever you want to talk about but they just tend to be more healthy and go get them and doing all these kind of big things internationally because that's normal. That just certainly wasn't my reality when I was younger. I'm curious what types of things led to you having doubt about whether chiropractic could help with that and then has that changed since then? Sure, so for example baby presenting with not nursing properly, really unsettled just having an awful early experience in life six weeks old, parents kind of come to you with this unhappy cradle baby who just isn't healthy I've never adjusted a baby before, you have like the models and kids class and you have a few like three four year olds who you do a little bit of active at it with but I've never experienced that. So it was things like that which is very confronting going I know the theory but I've never experienced this this is a conversation I've had with people and yes obviously coming from NCC you kind of get deep into the philosophy of chiropractic and how it works and yes I believe it works but I've never experienced it with my hands. So it's that kind of thing. So you're kind of doing this going hope but it works out really well. I mean chiropractic is incredibly safe and the baby turned out to be very very happy and healthy and a few adjustments later the parents were like you're the greatest which is nice for the ego but the reality is you're just doing what anyone would do right you just care and you just look after them but it's things like that. Because I had never had any experience of that when that comes into your office you just go I don't know or as I imagine for someone like yourself who's been as a kid, seen more kids, just had a part of your life that's normal. I think that up because in this you know I mentioned to you that I listened to your podcast with Brian LaDoux your last episode and you touched on this a little bit and that there's differences in the style of practice and the approach of practice between schools and this is part of the reason I started my podcast is that I wanted to explore that. I wanted to see what are students in Barcelona learning compared to students in Denmark which is a good example of very opposites and I think that's the case for me and so yeah I definitely grew up with that experience of chiropractic. My mom had hay fever and started to go to a chiropractor and I don't know how long it took but she's never complained of it since. My dad on the other hand has had chronic low back pain and still has chronic low back pain like there's nothing that's really helped him including three vertebral fusions despite going to a chiropractor quite regularly and now you know after going through chiropractic college I think I experienced a lot of that doubt still. I think when it comes to the case of an infant especially that young that's something I don't feel trained for and I don't feel very comfortable adjusting a kid who's for me personally the other day I think there's a four year old but even that's kind of reaching for me and so I'm curious to find out how you overcome that doubt and what changes it. You mentioned that you just went ahead and did the adjustment and the experience turned out well so is that enough for you to change your opinion of whether chiropractic works in those specific cases? Yeah I think it was never that I doubted chiropractic would work. I knew chiropractic would work I just doubted whether I could do it. I think that's where it certainly came from. Just because of an experience of my hands I haven't been a graduate for that long I've never seen a patient like that before so you can't help but doubt because it's not part of my reality it's not part of what I've ever experienced before and especially when you've got these two parents looking at you with pleading eyes saying help us we've been to everyone else and they haven't seem to work yet Interesting. I really don't know. It was more an anxiety on my personal part can I do the best for these people because I really really want to and I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that so that's where that doubt came from chiropractic would work or not. I knew that would be fine and if I didn't get results quickly then I'd refer them to another chiropractor who may be able to get better results for that kid but very fortunate for me I found the appropriate subluxations and adjusted them nicely so the way that we're taught so we do a six month kids chiropractic course. And that's included in your curriculum. And as well as that we have to see a certain number of under five year olds so that's part of our recognition and the same with older people as well so we have to see, we do a full six month chiropractic course and we have to see a certain number of 65 plus year olds so that's just part of the requirements we're graduating. Does that include specific adjusting technique for those populations? Yep. Okay. Because we definitely have a geriatrics course. I'm trying to remember now I think we have a pediatrics but there was no adjusting. You mentioned you have like adjusting dolls, maybe pediatric dolls to practice on. Never seen one. You can take specialized courses that's continuing education that a seminar you'd have to pay for but not in the curriculum and that's part of the reason I'm not comfortable with it as I've never Still haven't done it right? Until someone walks to you and goes, help me Right. That was one case that was extreme. I'd say I don't see too many kids. Kent does because he's done his postgraduate pediatric diploma which is whatever the three year course to become a specialist in it. He sees a lot more children than I do but I've definitely seen a few. Some of my patients have known someone or whatever and I've referred them in to see me and gotten good results which is great but I'd say I love kids but again it's just because it's not part of my reality I probably don't attract them that much. I wouldn't have a large child population. I'd just see probably two every couple of months or something. Okay. I'm still curious if it's okay to continue talking about this. You mentioned that by the time this child came to you, you were pretty confident in the abilities of chiropractic, maybe not yourself in particularly, but you'd only been in chiropractic school by then for no more than four years I'd imagine Maybe. This was six months after I'd graduated so this was half that So this was after you had graduated? So this was while I was in practice. Yeah, college I had nothing like that. I had a few four year olds, a couple of eight to ten year olds and for me adjusting that kind of sized person, I'll adjust them manually, I'll use activate, I'll use touch and hold whatever, it just depends on the kid. Because by that time, I mean the kids are super stretchy, I'm pretty comfortable adjusting them as long as it's safe and there's no contrast. They bounce back. Yeah, exactly. Like I've never had any kind of worry or fear with that because it's like these two brothers were coming to get checked because they were crazy and bouncing off walls and the mum was like maybe this would calm them down. And it did. Like as soon as I cleared Atlas with them they were way more chilled but before they'd come in they'd be tearing up the wedding room and we had a bit of open plan area so they'd be jumping between tables to get to the other side of the room and back and just mental, you know, that fall and smash and I'm like, I'm way more gentle than what they're doing to each other. Right, right, right. I'm pretty sure they'll be fine, yeah. Right. And I often wonder to myself, you know, as I'm thinking about doing an adjustment on child, and I'm confident that it's safe, but I wonder what it does to do because the force is decreased compared to an HVLA on an adult and if the kid is bouncing around off the walls how is that light force or pressure going to make a change when all of what they're doing throughout the day and falling and getting hurt and all of these things are what I would assume to be much higher forces. Yeah, I 100% agree. I think it's really interesting. I think that's a really interesting topic for me. What makes sense to me is it's about the intent and also if it actually works. So I'm a really results driven guy. I care about results. I care about results of my patients. So I have as many measures as I can handle to figure out is is my adjustment successful or not? So again, kind of jumping back to that doubt thing am I good enough? Am I going to be able to provide the best care for my patients? I have to have a lot of measures to say that yes I am. So that comes down to a lot of different things, you know is the body performing better? Is the posture performing better? Depending on, so to say, for a kid for example, then it's subjective reports from the parents, seeing what they're about, talking to the kid to see what changes that they notice themselves, and then looking at their general mood or exterior. So usually I find the kids that I'm checking are kind of in that kind of hyper state a lot. So I want to see that if I'm adjusting them, then I'm calmer. Yeah, I've lost you. Totally lost the connection called drop right there. Lost you. Zencaster should still be going. Okay. Yeah, even if you lose internet connection it'll keep recording. Okay, that's cool. So that should be still working there. So just give me one second. I'm just going to restart my recording on the scene. And you may need to switch the Skype input again. Sounds like it's Yeah. Very Skype. Cool. Your settings. No, apparently it's still. Is it? Okay. Apparently it's still on there. That one. All right. Sounds good. Just jump again. It's just about outcome issues for the patients. So how do they improve? Because if they do improve, great. I'm doing my job properly. But if they're not, then I'm missing something. I might not be the right practitioner for them. So do I refer? Do they need some kind of other concurrent care? Is there some kind of irritation in their diet? Something else that they need to look into doing? So yeah. Okay. So over that time from being someone who had no experience with chiropractic where was that point where you developed that confidence, developed that belief that chiropractic can work? That's a really good question. I think it happened when I was in my just before. So it's what we'd call like CP1 which is when we're just starting our internship. We can only see student patients. You've done all this training and all this academics for years and years and you've dedicated all this time and energy towards it. And you kind of have that kind of like is this the right thing? Am I in the right place? I'm not a good chiropractor or all that kind of stuff that happens when you're in that stage. I don't know. I'm trying to remember exactly what it was. But there was this pivotal moment. There was this pivotal moment. I guess I was going for a walk or there was something I was by myself. And just all of a sudden it's I think just things just kind of clicked for me. I went, ah, that's right. I'm here to do this. That's my path. And it's kind of at the time caught me off guard as a big, periodicious kind of dream that I definitely didn't want to achieve. And then walking and working towards. But yeah, it just became something that was bigger than me that I felt I was part of. Okay. Well, I guess this is me now. I'm not expected. But okay, that's fine. I'll follow it. It feels like the right thing. And I guess maybe that's what can come across from this. When the universe says go in that direction, you kind of just have to trust it sometimes, I think. And that's what it came down to. When, okay, yeah, this is it. I came to this pivotal moment of, is this the right thing, questioning yourself, questioning your decisions as an adult? You know, should I be doing all of this? And then it became, yeah, no, this is what I was born to do. And I better get damn good at it because I'm not the... And had you ever considered what would have happened if you never reached that pivotal point? Yeah, I would have stopped. Probably become a pilot or something else that... Yeah, it just wouldn't have been for me because I'll tell you what, being a chiropractor is hard work. It's hard work. There's a lot of responsibility to it. You're dealing with a lot of the time human suffering and pain and difficulties and to be able to do that every day and help people every day. That's a lot of responsibility on yourself. So yeah, there's easier jobs out there if that's what people are looking at. But I think if you really call to it, if you're really interested in it, if you really are passionate and excited about what it is that we do, the negative sides just diminish in respect to what you can actually achieve. And it's fun. Like I find chiropractors fun. That's the main thing that keeps me going. I love my patients. I love going and hanging out with them. They've become kind of part of the family now, right? Yeah, a lot of chiropractors just become close friends with their patients and see them regularly. Now, I almost spilled my exogenous key tones on my keyboard that would not have been good. I don't want to do that. Would you say you're running a higher volume practice? How many patients are you seeing per week? I wouldn't say a high volume. Currently I'm averaging about 50 patients a week or so. That's after a year of practice. There's various reasons for that. The biggest thing for me is my new patient generation and working in the area that I'm in getting more thrills, getting that community more involved in chiropractic and having them know what it is that we actually do. There's a couple of chiropractors in the area. The practice that I'm at has actually been there in the area for 64 years. So they get it, but it's just not really penetrated into the community very much. And because there's always been one chiro there, he hasn't really ever had to do any major marketing apart from a couple of screenings a year, putting something in newspaper every now and again, and that's always been enough for him. And he does run a high volume practice. But to add me as an associate, there wasn't a lot of overflow from the community coming in. So that's been definitely a big factor for me over the last year is working on that and getting things kind of moving. And they definitely started picking up at the end of last year. And even more so now. So we'll keep getting up and up. How big is the city that you're living in? Are you in Auckland? Or are you just right in the town? Right in the city? I live close to the city, but my practice is about 20 minutes drive south. If you're from the actual city centre, it's about 30 minutes drive south. So it's right on the southern border of the city. And it's actually a commuter's belt. So a lot of people are driving into the city for work and then coming back. But yeah, it's just one of those populations. I think there's 10,000 people in the Papakura area. But it's only a little bit further south of Manukau City, which is kind of a big hub for the South Auckland area. I wouldn't know what the equivalent would be in Portland, but if you can kind of imagine a suburb that's kind of on the outskirts of the city. Not the highest socioeconomic area, but definitely a lot of kind of farmland around. Okay, so it is a little more of a suburb and not as populated. This is something that I think about a lot now is what's the saturation of chiropractors in the area. And so in the city that I live in outside of Portland, the last check and I should double check that I'm correct about this. I may be misreading it, but there were about 400 chiropractors in a population of a few, maybe 100 to 200,000, I think. Wow, that's a lot. Yeah, yeah. And so you drive a couple of blocks and you pass a couple of chiropractors. I mean, there's no shortage of clinics. Yeah, that's interesting. We have 560 chiropractors in New Zealand. So if there's like 400 around your area, that's almost all of us. Right, right, right. The same number. Yeah, and so there's definitely the need to set yourself apart in some way to market. Not that there's a shortage of chiropractors by any means, but patients aren't utilizing them as much as we need them to as a profession. I mean, being that many chiropractors, but having an 8 to 10% utilization rate, meaning 8 to 10% of the population have ever gone to one, then there's an issue with getting patients in the door. Yeah, well, I find that a really interesting stat. I mean, I imagine America's maybe a little bit different, but definitely here in New Zealand if you look at all the patient files in a practice, there's thousands of patient files. There's thousands of people who have come through, but who account active patients in the practice. So when I look at that kind of stuff, I really want to understand, well, you know, you've had literally thousands of people come through your doors and say the last 5, 10 years and why, say we have this 8% whatever percentage saturation rate in the population, why are they the only ones who are still using it? Whereas if you look at reality, in your community, you've probably seen maybe in our community, I know, we've probably seen half the people there come through our practice over the last 15 years. But why is it that only 400 of them to 500 of them still come in regularly? So for me, that's really, I don't know why. I'd love to figure that out, because every individual, I guess, their story, they have their thing that they need, if they are in, say, back pain like your dad, they want to get out of it, and if the carburetor helps them with that and resolves that issue, maybe they then think that's all that carburetor was for and they stop. So I can understand that example because it's pretty basic, but I think there's other reasons for it, and I'd really love to figure out, you know, what is it, why is it that a lot of people have seen a chiropractor, not a lot of them continue to see the chiropractor? Right, they don't see it as an ongoing treatment. That's interesting, and again, that kind of comes to this concept of is chiropractic a wellness practice? Is it something that you do use for general health, or is it something that is utilized for specific issues? What's the environment like where you're practicing? If you asked the general public, just someone on the street, what is a chiropractor, what would they say? Because there's a lot of you around. There are, and I've been considering doing exactly that. You know, there's all these YouTube videos of going around and just talking to people on the street, asking them silly questions or legitimate questions. And I think it would be very interesting. I don't know that that's it's certainly not scientific, but I think it would definitely give some insight. If I were to guess, around here the most common reason is for auto accidents. And then beyond that, there certainly is a trend or an assumption that chiropractic is for back pain. Certainly throughout the United States, that is the case. It's the same here, except not auto accidents. They would come to us if their back hurts. They'll come and see us. That's basically it. Which seems insane to me. That was never my experience of chiropractic from the beginning. It's like I never experienced pain. As soon as I started getting checked, the changes that I noticed were all functional changes. Like my sleep started to get better. I felt that I could exercise for longer. Suddenly at the gym, I could lift heavier things. They were the measures that I got from chiropractic. I thought, that's what everyone notices. That's why everyone goes to the chiropractic. That's what I do. And then it was rudely awakened when I graduated and got into the real world and looked at the patients around it and looked at who utilizes chiropractic. And unfortunately, it's a very small demographic of people who are in pain. It's difficult because that's different for everybody. Again, I started going very regularly in high school and that was because I was studying voice. I was singing a lot. The voice teacher recommended going to a chiropractor. I noticed that I could sing more easily. There wasn't all of this tension for my breathing as well as for my voice, which now there is. Because I don't sing much anymore. And the thing that would always walk out of the office feeling was just that I could stand tall and then I could stand with good posture without having to force it. If you ask different people, it's always something different. You had better sleep. Some clinics, I know Brian Linu does this in his clinic up in Vancouver, they have their patients ride on a little white board and take a photo of what has improved. And you can certainly see trends, but how can you then generalize that? How can you say to the general public come in and you will get better sleep? Or come in and you will feel taller? So it makes it difficult to market that. But what we can say is that chiropractic in most cases can help with spinal pain. Yeah, exactly. But I think that comes down to if you look at the current paradigm of health, and this is part of my mission to help change this for the general public, to actually understand more about their body and how it works and how to get the most out of their life. So the current model of health is very it's dominated around there's something wrong with you. You have some condition, you have some weakness whether that's congenital or developed through your life and therefore you need some XYZ treatment for that. Which for me, I think works in a lot of cases unfortunately. But it's become very, very predominant. So most people go right well I have a bowel issue where I'm not digesting properly, what do I do about that? There's something wrong with me, do I then have to go for surgery or take medication to manage this? As opposed to going what's my environment that's causing this imbalance in my system where I cannot digest whatever, I mean say it's an old person they can't digest B12 anymore because they're living on tea and toast. Nutritionally they've just messed up their small intestine and they just can't absorb things properly anymore. If you're looking at that kind of case well that's an environmental factor but if they go through what would be the normal rats for that kind of person, the solution is you just get injected with B12. And that never takes care of the cause of the problem which in my mind just seems insane but that's what most people do. And I think chiropractic, we fall into the same paradigm because we get stuck in this idea of obviously why are you in this? You want to help people, you want to make people feel better, happier have a better quality of life so you give them what they want. And it tends to be what they're asking for is, hey doc can you fix me? Now I think that's what I see as part of the problem is that we go yes as opposed to going, as opposed to going why did you get here in the first place? I totally agree, I think especially in the national healthcare system here, while there isn't one but the general approach to healthcare, they like to frame it as preventive and so they're doing all these screening tests but that's not preventive at all that doesn't prevent anything, it's preemptive, it finds it earlier than you would have if you had waited for symptoms to come on. But oftentimes I wonder if we do something similar in chiropractic because the adjustment doesn't necessarily prevent anything it still is treating a symptom in a lot of cases, sometimes the results may not be the symptom that we're addressing. And so what is it that actually prevents things from happening? What prevents us from getting aches and pains or what prevents us from having nutritional deficiencies? That's a million dollar question, or trillion dollar question really. I would say, what kind of prevent things? I think you live your life and stuff happens to you. We treat people with symptoms I don't think we treat symptoms, so for me all the symptom is it's a sign from the body saying, hey there's something really wrong, you need to do something about this. What is pain? You go into pain and try and study pain and try and figure out what it is. It's just a nerve being irritated and it's just a signal to the brain to say there's something wrong here, do something about this. It's not like a physical thing, it's not a cell it's not a thing, it's a manifestation of a signal coming from your body. So where does that come from and how do people help with that? So I don't think it's that I'm treating the pain because I'm not, all I'm doing is I'm treating the body function better and then it's sorting itself out. Which is maybe a slightly carbidic philosophy way of just jumping around the question, so I wonder if I can answer that better. I don't know that there is an answer, I think it's simply what are we really doing because again you go back to the history of it and it's this phrase of addressing the symptom not the cause, or addressing the cause not the symptom. But again I would argue that even a subluxation is not always the cause because why is it there? Just curious, I'm trying to understand these things myself and I'm definitely more of a philosophical approach. Yeah, certainly and I mean for me I guess really lucky is obviously something that I'm interested in so I try and have this conversation as much as I can to try and figure it out and I certainly don't have answers and I keep the patience and things will open that kind of blow my mind or take me away and go, ah man I really thought this but that's just not true anymore or it doesn't seem to be true because it just either completely doesn't work with this patient or I've had a result which I just completely didn't expect so my preconceptions about what I can do as a chiropractor suddenly become wrong or different but I think what we can certainly say with a lot of certainty is chiropractic helps a lot of people and there's a lot of people out there who would benefit from our help who aren't getting it so I definitely think that's true and then actually figuring out what exactly it is that we're doing and why it seems to be getting all these different results with so many people like with me feeling like my general mood had improved and I could do things in my life that I wanted to do with Better Easier with you singing which I love that example as well so my background to impress my girlfriend she was heavily into dancing and singing so obviously I get into that too so I did a lot of musical theatre with my younger days and that's actually something that I found helped me as well like I could perform better because it was easier like I could do the choreography and the lyrics a lot easier and do things with Greater Easier when I started getting checked compared to years before when I wasn't so I kind of think that I've experienced and that's because it's my personal experience that's where it comes from but the reality of what actually happens when I find a subluxation and adjust it how does that then change that process even though I think the neurology is there there's the understanding of it but it's actually putting all the bits and pieces together and then being able to tell that to the general public so that they understand and they come in and get checked we'll get there one day well speaking of these conversations I'm curious what started the kairosation what led you to start a podcast kind of similar to why you started yours right it was looking out there and trying to figure out what is this character thing why is there this big discrepancy between what I was taught and what other people are taught and I guess also I mean this is personally for me I wanted to learn more I wanted to interact with my other colleagues and have conversations like this and be asked interesting questions that I don't necessarily have the answer for just people because when I got into practice so it's something that I've been thinking about for a long time but just never had just thought I'm not that great at it someone else will do it better just kind of put it to the side as a dream I think that every time should I do another episode well good on you for doing it because I think it's a really great resource that characters can kind of be a fly on the wall and listen to conversations like these and hopefully get something from it maybe they will have a great idea and email us and go come on dummy why didn't you think of this this is how it works I love when listeners do that so please if you have an idea send it to me I'm always looking for new people to interview or new topics to cover but to answer your question in a succinct way I did it because it wasn't out there and I wanted it because I wanted to be able to listen to conversations with characters, early graduates and people who have been out there for a long time because I felt quite isolated where I was all my friends had graduated and moved cities and countries so I wasn't surrounded by my friends and classmates anymore and I was just doing my thing wondering if everyone else was struggling like I was so I felt like that was worth sharing with other people so that's why I started it it was something that I wish that I had access to but it wasn't out there so I did it so do it yeah and that's what's so wonderful about today having the technology we do having the access with the internet I mean here we are talking friggin on other ends of the world and you can do whatever it is that you think of and that was something that I struggled with for a while in fact I remember early on probably the first year that I was in school and I kind of got involved with the social media for the school helping out with some of the it wasn't recruiters but it was the one or two people who had helped the new students and kind of guided them along for the first few terms and I remember going to them saying hey I have this idea we should interview people at other schools do you think we could do that and they're you know obviously oh that's yeah no and I went back a couple times and I realized after a while I was trying to get permission to do it and at some point I said screw it why do I need somebody's permission I'm just gonna do it you know I called a friend who was at a different school and then I got different people emailing me and wanting to talk about their school and it just it happens and I think a lot of us wonder we have that doubt about ourselves can I do this should I do this and sometimes it just takes trying it and then awesome things happen and so I've really enjoyed some of the episodes that you've done where you're interviewing the people that are just graduated or are one year into practice and what the heck how did you get through that like that first year you know and so those are really interesting stories to tell that's the biggest thing for me, yeah it was just do it yes the first few that you do I'm probably gonna suck I remember the first one that was with my buddies down in Taronga they just opened up their own practice and they hadn't expected to do that and you know it was just like right well let's grab a couple drinks, whack the microphone on, just so it happens I have no idea or anticipation of what it's gonna be but you know this is something that I really will try so just go do it and it worked and then ask another person they wanted to come on and just kind of just keep growing from there which is wonderful for me because I love this this is really fun for me and then you know now I'm talking with you who some of that I've been following for quite a while and you know I'd never thought that I'd get your podcast you know this than a year later here we are having a conversation I mean the access that the ability to do that kind of stuff I think is incredible I really do, yeah it's pretty awesome why did you decide to do this long form I mean you just sit down and you have a conversation rather than doing something very scripted or even planned out because I listen to a lot of Joe Rogan and that's what he does I was wondering I was going to say Joe Rogan or Tim Ferris that's my two most, yeah exactly, my two most listened to podcasts Joe Rogan and Tim Ferris I listen to that kind of stuff all the time as well as both others so all the chiropractic ones you know the chiroflatopist, yours obviously, wife by design and then the other ones that have kind of dropped like raw chiro and raw candy that kind of stuff I definitely have listened to them but they're all they're just in a different style, a different style that I knew wasn't me and something that I really wanted to have a conversation that was quite you know just very real like this is two people having a conversation this is natural flow you know we're not trying to sell anything we're not trying to spin anything this is two chiroprators meeting for the first time and just talking about their experiences and talking about their common interests and I think there's something really interesting about that there's something really powerful about that and if you look at Tim Ferris or you look at Joe Rogan that's their style as well they go we have X amount of time together let's just see what happens and if it's a really interesting conversation that's amazing that's great but if it's not then it's not and that's I think that's just life and for me I find that far more compelling so that's the way I wanted to do it. Yeah it's something I definitely am starting to lean towards that when I first started this of course my target is students who I know are busy and don't have time to spend and so I was really trying to cut them down short but over time you learn quite easily that the good stuff some of the things that we've talked about today doesn't come if it's question after question after question and so there's an interesting balance to strike and I think Tim Ferris's especially was a great proof of concept in that he did very little editing he did there was no script until the very end and those episodes go for up to three hours and Joe Rogan's are almost always three hours I think. Yeah they're always really long and I mean that's kind of what I grew up on and the podcast I listened to was The Chirophalanthropist because I wanted more chiropractic stuff I wanted stories so I started listening to that and it kind of grew from there but because his are short his are that kind of there you're commuting you want to get the maximum amount of information in a short period of time which is really beneficial for a lot of people and it's a great style obviously it's very successful it really works because you know I commute I drive I'll listen to 20 minutes of a three hour episode and then started again when I get back in the car and I pick up where it left off so you know I did that so I assumed other people would I mean maybe they do maybe they don't I don't know but yeah you just kind of give it a go. So how did you come across chiropractic philanthropist was the first one that you found was it recommended by somebody or did you go into iTunes I literally this is kind of part way through second year and it was super sorry third year my second year academically at the college it was just super intense at the time I think we had 18 exams that week and my mind was just getting blown with just way too much you know physiology anatomy chiro science you know all that kind of stuff and I just needed a break so I was like right I'm at work today I'm literally going to be putting boxes on pallets for the next two hours I want to I want something to listen to that's not just music because I needed my brain to keep going because it was so intense at the time so I just literally searched chiropractic podcasts his was the first one that popped up really downloaded his latest episode and just loved it I kind of remember who it was worth it was some observable guy but it was just great chiropractor is talking about chiropractic this is great this is what I was lacking and yeah just kind of everything happened from there yeah so I first found a spinal column radio before I started my podcast I had to think very soon after as well yeah yeah and he kind of does a blend where his are very long I think his longest was seven hours which never mind I didn't even try but very reduced as well yeah but at the time beautiful radio voice oh yeah he did great yeah and he contacted me after one of my first two episodes I think and we chatted for just a bit at the time his was pretty much the only one out there there maybe had been one or two others but since then it's really grown I think especially after the chiropractic philanthropist and he did some training on teaching other chiropractors how to do podcasts yeah and so those all became very popular too and so now I think we're kind of reaching that almost that tipping point to where it's becoming the norm yeah yeah well I think it's such a great way for people to be able to communicate because you can just put the information out there and I was recording another episode yesterday and what I was telling the guy afterwards it's like I mean because he was worried about I sounded dumb or whatever you kind of get concerned because you're just not used to it right I was like honestly the thing is you put it out there it's up there forever right or for as long as you keep the source there you don't know I'm about to say a BJ quote this wasn't expecting to be a pumber but it's like you don't know how far reaching anything you say or do today is going to reach future generations or muddle the quote up but it's that whole effect right you might put up something now but in two years time a recent grade or a new chiropractor might come across that episode and you might say something that they really need to hear and that's really hard to determine right now because you're just having a conversation but I think that's really important and I definitely got that from your podcast so over time you know I listened to it and hear other people's experiences and hear people talking about chiropractic and it had a profound effect on me which obviously has really helped me develop my certainty my ability to practice has definitely been helped because of this kind of media this kind of platform loving the new age do you have any plans to expand it to do videos or to do any other things like that yeah definitely yeah I'm very fortunate my girlfriend my partner we've been together a long time ten years she's kind of like a social media design type person so she does all my marketing stuff so it's timing wise for the two of us and then also I'm patient with it I really want to be successful I want it to be a really helpful platform that a lot of people can go to and get really excellent resources from and great stories from chiropractors so yes definitely want to create video definitely want to create more media definitely want to create more resources but I'm quite happy to sit on it and let it develop and grow naturally in itself yeah you can see if you go to my website there's a video tab it's got nothing on it I think I noticed that yeah I want to create that kind of content for me that's there to go that's something that I'm going to make happen and now is not quite the right time don't have the time resources I really am focusing that on my practice and building that growing that but you know in the future who knows well in the future once you start doing it and hopefully I will start doing some video other than just posting the podcast maybe we should collaborate and we should do kind of what we were talking about is finding out what do people think chiropractic is yeah I think it would be awesome do you follow many people on YouTube are you a fan of any channels oh yeah yeah I'm heavily into that kind of stuff I would definitely say that that's where yeah my passion lies like I think different chiropractors have different kind of expertise and passions outside of their chiropractic realm something that they can bring to the profession and for me something obviously not great at because I haven't spent a lot of time at but something I'm really passionate about is the marketing and communication of chiropractic how do you get it out there to people how was it perceived and that's something that I really want to be influential in changing have you come across Veritasium it's a science channel okay I'll send you a couple links because this is where I this is where I have the this ties into the idea of finding out what people think and what people understand about chiropractic and how chiropractic works and I think it's you didn't say it in these words but I think the issue is in the American Chiropractic Association is really struggling with this is what is the public perception of chiropractic and how do we improve that yeah and and I think there's some ways that we can do it with new media podcasts with YouTube videos and different things like that and my challenge is and maybe you know maybe I'm wrong maybe this is just that doubt creeping up but I don't feel that I'm very good in front of the camera I love being behind the camera and again I'm more I like the technical stuff the technical aspect of it so it'd be interesting to see what happens if we can find people who are you know love having those conversations and being in front of the camera and just getting out there in the real world and finding out what people think yeah I 100% agree I think they'll be really compelling very very interesting cool project yeah well I'll be following you for sure it'll be nice to do some collaboration in that way yeah certainly certainly would be well we've been going for about an hour now other than the crashing of Skype so yeah yeah this has been really fun conversation and learning about just chiropractic down under yeah it's been great catch up I mean yeah like I said before I've been following your podcast for a while now so it's a bit of a dream come true for me so well I appreciate it real real pleasure coming on well I think you're doing a great job I mean I first saw yours and I thought damn it now I've got competition so I've got to step up yeah so rather than who was it recently I was talking to is they called it co-operative competition we can work together well exactly and that's exactly why I wanted to do this together is just fighting against just work together and I think there's room for everybody I think that's what's so fun is different personalities different topics appeal to different people and there's plenty of plenty of audience to go around and I think that's one of the lessons that chiropractors need to learn as well at least here in the states because people are really fighting with each other to try to gain patients yeah and when you look at you know one street where there's four clinics on each corner but each one is specializing differently you know and there's but they're still trying to get patients from each other and I think if that collaboration or what was it... co-o predecessor schauen we do a lot to improve the profession in so many ways here online as well well thanks it was so fun to chat with you and next time we're down in New Zealand I'll let you know if we're when we're down there maybe we can get in touch to visit New Zealand Chiropractic College to actually get there in person so but with her being on the South Island, her family in the South Island, it'll have to be kind of a separate trip. Yeah, yeah, certainly. Yeah. Well, it's fun. Very welcome. Awesome. Well, thanks a lot. You enjoy your weekend. Thank you so much. Absolute pleasure. Really, really fun. Okay. Talk to you later. Take care.