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On August 5th I was squatting 305. First rep of three, coming up — pop, pop, pop. Then I finished the workout. Box jumps, wall balls, dumbbell snatches. Because I wasn't in that much pain yet.

Five days later the MRI showed disc extrusions at two levels with a motor deficit in my left quad.

This episode is not a recovery story. I'm not recovered. It's what a few weeks of being the patient instead of the doctor has shown me about our profession.

I talk about the morning I decided I couldn't attend Adventure Summit — the event I built — with one minute to spare before my ride pulled up. About picking my son up from camp two days after the injury and still not being able to shoot a basket with him. And about the attribution error I caught myself making, the one I'd have called out in a patient in four seconds.

In it: why pain is the loudest signal and the least reliable one. Why decompression reactions show up 12 to 48 hours later, not on the table. Why you test sensation before you apply heat, every time. And why the team you build years before you need it is the only reason a practice survives when one of you goes down.

This is Part One. I'll report back in a few months.

One ask: this week, ask a patient what they've stopped doing and who they've stopped doing it with.

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This one is a little different than what we normally do around here. I'm sitting down with Twisty from Chiropractic Results and Dr. Andrew from Phynyx Marketing, and we're wrapping up day two at C4C with Jen and Dan, so instead of a traditional episode we just hit record and shared the conversations that were happening in the hallways all weekend.

And honestly, the hallway conversations are where the real stuff comes out. We had three doctors standing in the same circle, one with $7,500 in overhead, one at $20,000, one at $150,000 a month, and all three of them were taking home about the same money and asking the same question of how do I scale this without breaking. That's the thing nobody posts about on Instagram.

We get into why burnout is worse than I've ever seen it right now, and why it usually isn't a money problem or a marketing problem but a leadership problem that shows up as one. We talk about the doctor who wanted to blame his sales process until Twisty mystery shopped his office on a Tuesday and nobody picked up the phone at 9, 1, or 4. We talk about why "sink or swim" hiring is a losing mentality and what it actually costs you when you stop developing people on day 14. We get into the word that starts with B that will cap your growth faster than anything, and why your team feeling busy at 50% utilization is a scheduling problem, not a capacity one. And Andrew and I go back and forth on why your case value can't live down at $1,400 and what has to be true if you're going to hold that line.

We also cover something I think a lot of docs miss, which is that the higher your ticket goes, the more your referrals can quietly drop off if you don't have real referral systems behind it, not just a gift card play you run once and forget about.

Fair warning, this one is unfiltered. We had fun with it.

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A room full of experienced practice owners all said their training was handled. Forty minutes later, they scored themselves a four out of ten. Nothing changed except one thing... they finally saw the standard. This episode is about why a standards gap is the most expensive problem in your practice, and the hardest one to see.

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Ask yourself a few questions. Who's the healthiest person you know? Who's the best with money? Who's the best parent? Answer with an actual name, not a concept.

If you came up empty, that's the episode.

I talk to practice owners all the time who want to double their revenue, or take home three hundred thousand a year, and when I ask who the highest earner in their circle is, there's this long pause. They've got the destination. They have zero footage of the road. And you can't strategy your way out of that, because it isn't information you're missing. It's exposure.

In this one I break down what I call the invisible ceiling: the limit your circle puts on you before you ever write a goal down. Why it shows up in your marriage and your health and your parenting just as much as your P&L. The three things that actually change when you get in proximity to someone a level above you. And why the person who freezes at a number that pays for itself four patients in isn't really having a money problem.

You can outwork your circle for a season. You can't outwork it forever. Eventually you hit the edge of what you've seen and you stop, and you spend twenty years calling it bad luck.

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Your numbers this month aren't a report card on this month. They're a report card on decisions you made about six months ago.

Which means your fourth quarter is already mostly decided, and you can't fix it by working harder in October.

In this episode I break down what I'm calling the six month lag. Why the small decisions that feel completely defensible in the moment are the ones that cost you, why nobody in your building will catch them including you, and the five places in a practice where the slide actually starts. Plus three questions you can run with your team in fifteen minutes to find out where you're leaking.

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You can have the strongest money mindset in the building and still watch your growth stall. Why? Because your practice doesn't rise to the level of your beliefs. It falls to the level of your team's.

In this episode, I'm sharing a lesson from carrying a 600 pound log through SEALFIT Hell Week. Six people, 100 pounds each. But the moment one person stops lifting, it's 120 on everyone else. And it never stops at one.

Your clinic works the same way. The CA who says "I know, it's a lot" while running the card. The unrequested discount. The team member who decides for the patient what she can afford. None of them are bad people. That's what makes it dangerous. Scarcity delivered with love still sounds like truth.

I also get honest about a situation I'm in right now with a team member who inherited a scarcity mindset long before she ever joined us, and the exact approach I'm using to coach it instead of judge it.

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Every practice owner knows the knock on the door. Your associate sits down and says "I've been here three years, I think it's time we talk about my pay." And most of us get this conversation wrong in one of two directions.

Some of you give the raise on the spot just to end the awkwardness, even though nothing about the results changed. Others are sitting on 50% margins telling yourself that a doctor making 125K is already "a lot," and then wondering why your best people keep leaving to open up across town.

In this episode I break down the compensation framework we use across all of our locations, where there are no ceilings on what a doctor can earn and every dollar is built around math and margins instead of tenure and feelings. I share a raise I gave early on that I never should have, a recent comp negotiation I walked a practice owner through, and the exact four pieces of a structure that kills the awkward raise conversation forever.

And if you're the associate listening, don't skip this one. There's a whole segment on how to walk into your owner's office and propose a deal instead of asking for a raise, and the honest audit you need to do before you ever knock on that door.

Pay for results, not for time served. And when the results show up, pay big.

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At the beginning of the year, it is easy to set goals, feel motivated, and imagine the person you want to become. But by the middle of the year, your habits, calendar, health, relationships, and business have started telling the truth.

In this episode, Dr. Austin Cohen breaks down the power of a Reflection Day — a simple mid-year reset designed to help you stop drifting and realign with what matters most.

Austin walks through the 4 Scoreboards of Reflection Day: health, relationships, business, and personal alignment. He also shares the green, yellow, red audit you can use to honestly evaluate where you are on track, where you are drifting, and where you need to make a decision now.

This episode is for high performers, business owners, leaders, parents, and anyone who wants the second half of the year to be more intentional than the first.

Because success can hide misalignment, busyness can hide truth, and clarity without action is still just a wish.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why July is the perfect time for an honest life audit
- How to use the 4 Scoreboards of Reflection Day
- Why your health has to support your goals
- How to identify where you are drifting
- What the green, yellow, red audit reveals
- How to choose one action that creates real alignment

The second half of the year belongs to the people willing to look honestly, realign quickly, and take action before drift becomes their default.

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Jesse Itzler did the math on his own life and it stopped me cold.

His oldest is about to be a junior. That's two summers left under the same roof. And when he breaks it down to weekends, to football games, to the number of times he'll realistically see his college friends again, the whole thing gets real fast.

We get into a lot in this one. How he went from running two miles to running 100. Why "remember tomorrow" came from a tattoo on a recovering alcoholic's arm. What he thinks separates the people who make money and stay miserable from the ones who make money and are actually happy. And why he won't take any amount of money to miss one of his kid's last eight football games.

If you're grinding right now and telling yourself you'll be present later, this is the conversation that'll make you rethink that.

Jesse's the guy behind Living With a SEAL, the founder of Marquis Jet and Zico, and one of the people who flipped a switch in my head years ago about what's actually possible for a normal human.

Press play. Then go look at your own calendar.

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A great product, a talented team, and massive potential are not enough. In this episode, Dr. Austin Cohen breaks down the leadership lesson behind companies like Lucid and how the same principle applies inside a chiropractic practice. If your team feels unclear, inconsistent, or dependent on you for every decision, the issue may not be talent. It may be leadership clarity. Austin explains why vision has to become standards, standards have to become systems, and systems have to become performance.

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