If There’s to be Revolution… Let it Begin Here!

It’s 2020. Nothing this year makes sense…. So what better time to innovate, create, and improve the world we’re living in? 

As the clock was ticking the final seconds in 2019, I resolved that 2020 was going to be the year of ‘YES’ for me and my wife. We got married and promptly moved to Florida in 2015. Since then, we have been in fast forward. New jobs. New ‘hoods. New surroundings. New people. New EVERYTHING. 

New is good… but when you lack familiarity with surroundings you lose time that you would not spend putting out feelers and simply absorbing your new surrounds. 

So, naturally, 2015 came and went; then 2016 quickly blurred into 2019 in a whir of working 70-80 hour weeks, wife starting a job that requires her to fly 4000+ miles per month, losing a fur baby, losing a parent to heart disease… Life happened quickly and we never slowed down to truly enjoy Florida, each other,  or to even ask, “what’s next?” after moving. In reality, as I write this, I cannot believe it is 2020. 

Looking and thinking rearward, one of the things I’d commonly promise myself is that I would find a way to serve more people, work less, and enjoy life more. 

I wrote down my big plans on a college-ruled sheet of paper as ‘The Big Hairy Idea’ as to what I thought was an incredibly robust and near-impossible list of business goals. It read as follows (and my progress in parentheses): 

• Average 100 patients per day in clinic (check)
• Open multiple clinics (6 years in and I haven’t owned my own practice… but I’ve managed ALL clinical operations in seven clinics at a time, so I’ll give myself quarter credit)
• Learn a new language (Puedo hablar español fluida y con acento Puertorriqueño, porque yo lo aprendía en Kissimmee… so check)
• Create and operate a business that allows me to be married to my WIFE, not my company (we are here…. that’s why I’m typing this out)
• Pay off student loans in 5 years (I’m already a year overdue and nowhere near finished… another reason I’m sharing my wins and losses with you online)
• Retire by 40 (LOL!)

I wrote those goals down at 26 years of age. I’m 33 as I share this in the inaugural blog post on my personal site and while I have struck a few of these off my list, you can see the ACTUAL big, hairy goals are still very alive on this list. They slap me in the face, but that’s what goals are supposed to do. If you don’t come up short on a few, they weren’t big enough to begin with. 

5, 4, 3, 2, 1…..

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Welcome to 2020. 

Insert your favorite expletive here; I know I did. 

We thought the helicopter crash that caused the untimely and tragic passing of Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and several other passengers was the worst thing that could happen in 2020. Boy, did we all miss that one. 

In the year I was supposed to be saying ‘YES!’ to more travel, more outdoors, less commitment to after hour commitments and 200 mile round trip commutes, COVID-19 happened. While I still count myself very fortunate to be where I am in the hellscape of 2020, it certainly bagged a lot of goals of mine for a solid 6 months. 

Around mid-June, I had a moment of clarity observing the world around me while running socially-distanced and sanitary errands…..

The world will never be the same. 

Most of the time when people say that they mean ‘AHHHH! We’re going to have to wear masks FOREVERMORE and NEVER get to hug grandparents or shake hands with strangers again!’

I don’t think that the world has changed like that. What I DO see happening, though, is the world being plunged into the world of virtual, mobile, and on-demand services at warp speed!

I’m a chiropractor. By the nature of my work, I need to be in the same physical location as my patients to be effective. When COVID quarantines started, the quantity of patients I saw daily dropped over 70%. I went from seeing patients five days per week…. to only three. 

When I was naive and thought COVID would pass quickly, I used the recurring four day weekends to simply relax, catch up on Netflix, and search stores for  toilet paper and cleaning supplies.

For those of you reading this in the future…. it was impossible to find even ONE roll of TP for months. Shelves were completely empty for a few weeks from panic buying. The day of clarity in mid-June lit a fire inside that brought me back to my Big, Hairy Ideas. 

So how can I continue to serve over 100 people per day, own multiple practices, and enjoy my marriage and life in Florida? By taking a few steps: 

• Create online resources for people around the world to address pain
• Provide the opportunity to patients to be treated where they are (home, office, vacation… wherever)
• Continue speaking Spanish, pick up a couple more.. I’m an aspiring Polyglot
• Realize I don’t want to retire at 40, but rather have momentum in life that provides comfort and freedom I couldn’t fathom in my 20’s

This blog post isn’t meant to be anything more than a mind dump for me. I promise my future content will be more educational and useful in your life. I hope that me putting this out into the interwebs it will force me to be liable to all who may stumble upon my words. I hope that what I share will improve lives everywhere. The one thing I understand fully after performing tens of thousands of procedures and treatments is this: Pain isn’t a unique thing. It’s something we ALL have in common. I intend for the words, material, and suggestions you’ll find on this site to be the common key to getting you all to understand your pain and dysfunction better.