The Nathan Bridger Podcast

Your hour is not worth five hundred and sixty dollars. And the number you think it's worth is the number you used to justify your last hire.

Three errors stacked on top of each other, what a casual CA actually costs once you stop double-counting the loading, and the number that position has to generate before it has a job rather than a desk.

Then the part nobody says out loud. The equation that made hiring obvious had three conditions underneath it, and all three have moved. Including the one where you buy back time and then don't work it.

Twice I got this wrong. Once with staff, once with an agency. Both times it looked like it was working because somebody else was absorbing the cost off the books.

Everything mentioned, the back catalogue and the free tools: thelaunchmentoring.com/podcast

The lean model is needed. People just aren't ready to hear it yet. In this episode we unpack why — the sunk cost trap, the stages of change the profession is moving through, and what the early warning signs look like if you're starting to suspect your model isn't working the way it used to.

We cover:

- Why the maths of a lean solo practice works but owners can't see it through their own sunk costs

- The stages of change the profession is sitting in right now, and our prediction for when it tips

- The October restructure of the Health and Support Services Act and what it means for practices running employees

- Why associates watching this happen are the ones closest to pulling the ripcord

- What auditing your time, energy and money actually reveals versus what you think it will

- Why margin is the number — not revenue, not volume, not team size

- What you'll see coaching groups do when the shift finally arrives

- Where Nathan goes from here and where Angus goes from here

—

About Angus Haack

Helping stuck associates and new practice owners find their way of doing things, making bank and having fun while doing it.

Instagram: instagram.com/angus.haack

DM him DAY1 to get started

—

Everything mentioned, the back catalogue and the free tools: thelaunchmentoring.com/podcast

We pulled apart a few pieces of chiro advice going round this week. The $49 offer guy who runs a $49 offer. The whiteboard maths that takes an associate from 30 to 40 PVA with a red marker. The post about why niching is lazy that then describes a niche.

Then we un-rip all of it. How to get over the fear of posting, why imposter syndrome is a good sign, why the haters were never going to book anyway, and the CORE Equation for working out who you're actually talking to.

For the chiro who wants to post but keeps talking themselves out of it.

Everything mentioned, the back catalogue and the free tools: thelaunchmentoring.com/podcast

Naval Ravikant put it best. If you have to sell, the marketing was bad. If you have to market, the product was bad.

Twelve adjustments over six weeks isn't a product stack. It's one product pulled into pieces and read back as a list. That's why the marketing runs dry, that's why the ROF feels like a sweat session, and that's why nobody wants to niche.

What a real product stack looks like, why the fit-out is part of it, and why sales is just inviting the right person to work with you.

Everything mentioned, the back catalogue and the free tools: thelaunchmentoring.com/podcast

Everyone quoted the dropout stat for a couple of years. Nobody could ever find where the number came from.

Most of the time it isn't the profession. It's an overcorrection, a model that was never yours, and an identity welded to being a chiropractor instead of to the person who solves the problem.

We cover:

- Coachability as the single best predictor of whether someone makes it

- The barrier to entry, and what happens when people arrive with no concept of what the job actually is

- Why getting smashed with philosophy makes people overcorrect, and why the overcorrection is the risk

- Defining your product before you define yourself

- Why "you're a quack" stops landing once you know which problem you solve

- Staying very good in your lane and referring out the rest

- The three places people go on the way out, and why they don't come back

- Goals versus protocols, and why rejecting a goal is not rejecting chiropractic

- Why 12 to 24 months learning what you don't want is worth the time

For the associate who almost quit and couldn't work out why.

Everything mentioned, the back catalogue and the free tools: thelaunchmentoring.com/podcast

Everyone thinks hiring an associate means stepping back and earning passively. It does not. Angus, Nathan and Aaron go through what associates actually cost financially, emotionally and operationally, and why most owners get blindsided by the realities.

Why do chiropractors stall at the same numbers year after year? Nathan and Angus make the case that it is almost never the script, the system or the hours available.

They cover why communication matters more than technical skill, why rejecting one model usually sends practitioners overcorrecting into one that suits them no better, and why most plateaus break when the practitioner works on themselves rather than on the process. Along the way: choosing a demographic worth building around, how many patient relationships a person can realistically hold, and why a new number needs weeks of stability before you can trust it.

In this episode:

00:00 Communication beats the adjustment

02:42 The associate who cannot fill a book

05:02 Who should never have graduated

08:43 What a ceiling actually is

12:57 The non-playable chiropractor

19:39 Overcorrecting into under-servicing

28:09 Building a name without tearing others down

35:18 Capacity, relationships and Dunbar's number

48:12 Consolidate before you take a holiday

Everything mentioned, the back catalogue and the free tools: thelaunchmentoring.com/podcast

Good owners and bad associates, or bad owners and good associates?

Old school and new school techniques for running lean marketing in your practice.

Your practice does not have a tech problem. It has a subscription problem. What you actually need, what you are probably paying for that you do not, and the three questions to work it out.