Join Dr. Noel Lloyd in a powerful, personal conversation with chiropractic legend Dr. Larry Markson — a man who has coached over 30,000 practices and transformed the lives, belief systems, and bottom lines of chiropractors around the world. In this episode, Dr. Markson shares his remarkable journey from: - A childhood asthma patient saved by chiropractic, - To a failed early-stage chiropractor seeing only 70 visits/week, - To a record-breaking 100 visits/day, - And ultimately becoming the founder of Markson Management, The Master Circle, and the iconic Cabin Experience. You’ll hear stories of BJ Palmer, Parker Seminars, belief-system breakthroughs, affirmations, visualization, and the mindset strategies that still shape the profession today. This is one of the richest historical and motivational conversations ever recorded on chiropractic leadership, purpose, and personal transformation.
Hi, this is Dr. Noel Lloyd for Five Star Management, and I have a treat for me today, and I believe a treat for you guys today. One of my, um, heroes in the profession has been Dr. Larry Markson. And Larry. Good morning. How are you? Good morning to you. Good afternoon where I am. So I wanna read just a little bit.
So, I can't imagine anybody not knowing of you about you and having respect for you, but there are young chiropractors out there that may not know. Dr. Larry Markson has been a personal empowerment, practice success and prosperity coach for over 30,000 professional offices for the past 45 years.
Wow. What a resume. You've devoted your life to professionally. Helping doctors and their key assistants transform their inner being, their inner dialogue, their concepts, their visions, their actions and feelings. Until they're able to create the practice of their dreams, live their best life, and can imagine.
That they can imagine one of happiness, prosperity, fulfillment, and significance. That's a tall order, Larry. And currently, although now slowing down, you still coach. So I think you still coach because you like this stuff. Am I right? Um, no, you're wrong.
I don't like it. I, I, I love it. Oh, I love, you know, to take, to take a patient and see that patient get out of excruciating pain and go back to their lives and their families and athletics, that's a good feeling.
To see a chiropractor that's failing as I did for so many years before I decide to change my mind and become successful and do everything that I needed to do. So the point is. Do. I love it. The transformation process is difficult, but for those that didn't become outstandingly successful, financially prosperous, had better families, knew how to train their children under them to be positive and to do affirmations and whatever we taught 'em to do, that's, that's juice for me.
I
love that. Amen. I mean, um, people talk about, I'm 76 , uh, people say, why do you still do this work? And gratefully, by God's grace, I don't have to work, but I can't imagine not being involved in this work. And we're gonna, we're gonna talk about that today. Now, I wanna magically go back your first introduction to chiropractic.
Uh, how did you first learn about chiropractic and what was your first chiropractic experience? Well,
I was an asthmatic till age seven. At age seven, so I'm going way, way back. And we went everywhere and everything. And medical doctors would've nothing else until a friend of my mother said, why don't you go see a chiropractor?
And she responded by the standard whack. No, they couldn't understand it. Nobody knew what a chiropractor was in those days. We were called quacks. Were not even licensed. I come from New York, no license. Right. So we went to see this chiropractor, bottom line, um, because I tell stories about him all along.
His name was Dr. Benjamin Herson in Brooklyn, New York. Right where Ebos Field was. Ebos Field was the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Right. And on the year I was seven, that was the year that Jackie Robinson, who was a Brooklyn Dodger. Broke the color line in baseball, and his office was three times away.
Bottom line, to make this short, because it's a a tape, so he said the human being Larry has asthma, right? So we don't label. He has di difficulty breathing, so we don't label something. If you do what I ask you to do and don't think what I ask you not to do, and you stay at it and you change your mind and you change what you're eating and you change, you come here three times a week.
Until I tell you your son's going to get results. And so I did three times a week. My parents, who could, ill afford it, you know, it was $2 an adjustment then, right? Wow. Right. $2 an adjustment and, and he was six foot three or four. And I'm this little puny, skinny, 7-year-old kid. And we went three times a week and then year by year.
Right In a couple years, no more asthma back to doing what I love to do. Watch kids play baseball so I can now play it, watch them run the track. Now I could run. So I grew up knowing that, what do you want to be a fireman, a baseball player? I knew I was gonna be a chiropractor from the age 10, let's say on, so I graduated.
I graduated from high school, I went right to Palmer. And why Palmer? Because that's where my chiropractor was from.
Right? Right. And so you, um, and you enrolled at Palmer, and we were talking just a little bit before we started the recording. Um, you had a very special teacher at Palmer School of Chiropractic.
Who was that teacher?
Um, let's see if I can remember back. I think he didn't have a name other than BJ Palmer. Bartlet. Joshua Palmer was my teacher, especially philosophy class. Which is what changed my life because he would take the whole, the entire, let's say freshman. Uh, class, put him in a room at nine o'clock and lock the door and say it's for an hour, but he locked the door, but his hours was one hour or two hours or three hours, however long and you weren't allowed to leave.
And he, he was regaling you. Things that I didn't even understand, I could not comprehend, uh, the intelligence of the human body, how it works, why we want to free the nervous system to do its thing and let the body adapt and blah, blah, blah, blah. All those things. So the opposite from what was taught, let's say, in the non-traditional chiropractic schools, uh, Western states, so, or national, and I'm not knocking schools, but different than Life College or Palmer College, philosophically different.
But I was based in that. So I grew up and, uh, you know, coming to wanting to be a chiropractor. So I did and then came graduation, right? And I somehow I became valedictorian because, not because of me, but the girl next to me had a wonderful handwriting, right? And I liked to look over, if you know what I mean.
So anyhow, I was, and just weeks before, or two months before I graduated. BJ saw that I was graduating and he decided to die. Oh. So I didn't graduate. I didn't. He died in 1961. The year I graduated. I had to wait 25 days 'cause I wasn't 21 years old to get a diploma. So I got my diploma right? BJ was gone and there it was.
So I came back to New York to, it was with all the fire in the gusto. I couldn't, I said, I'm gonna open a, an office. The first patient gets cured, more and more will come. Glad not the story. I came back and for seven years I could not make a living. My maximum if I count. My mother and father who drove me to work and picked me up from work was 70 people a week.
Wow. Count. So it's not a lot of patients. And then a friend of mine now deceased, but my best friend said the magic words to me, Larry, you're too smart for this. Okay? You know the anatomy and physiology, but you don't know how to be successful. Come with me and be my guest. The magic words, meaning I didn't have to pay for it, right?
Put me on the plane and flew me to Texas with him to a Parker seminar. In Fort Worth, Texas, maybe 300 people in the audience. And I said, front row center, and this is the impactful moment for me. Jim Parker came out this little marble mouth Texan and said, God doesn't sponsor failures. You were born to be successful, happy, and, and prosperous.
You were born that way. And if you are not that way, it's you that's stopping it. Wow. What a shock that is. I didn't hear that. My, my father was barely making a living. A small electrician like that. And I'm remember I was only 18 years old. I didn't know. So now he says, I was born to be successful.
That's not what I was experiencing till from graduating 21 to 29. Those years were failure years and then had two children, and they were learning of my frustration by being in my environment. That's how it goes. We learned what our environment tells us. So I went to this Parker seminar and I was seeing 70 people a week and one year.
In a small I'm talking about a small office, maybe three or 400 square foot, a reception and one other room and one table. Right. And it wasn't even, it didn't go up and down. It didn't turn over, you know, a bench. Right, right. A year later the office was seeing 100 people a day. Wow. With the same two, with the same two cas that had been blaming all these years for the cause of my failure.
One in the morning and one in the afternoon. Same staff, same location, same city, same telephone number, different person at the helm. So I devoted then my life helping people. So when I went to the New York, uh, chiropractic association meetings and the brown bagger, meaning if you went to a Parker Seminar you called it brown bagger,
'cause the, yeah, the briefcase. Briefcase was brown. So I took the that Brown case, and at these meetings people said to me, how did you do it? How'd you do it? And I started to just casually tell them before I know it, someone said, why don't you do a seminar for us? So it was 40 or 50 people and the next year it was 200 people.
And all of a sudden, so I backed into a new career. So you were the miracle
patient. You were the miracle patient, yes. For Jimmy Parker. Yes. And um, and then, um, and it's basically, it's called the hero's story. I mean, you were from not making it disappointed. A failure in your own eyes
ready to leave the profession Correct.
Ready to leave the profession to, all of a sudden the, the switch was flick. Now, you, you talked about what Jimmy Parker said, but what changed in you? What actually happened?
My belief system changed. It's all about your belief system. So, uh, what we believe becomes true for us, whether it is not true or not, but what we believe.
So he, I started to believe that I was going up and down in the elevator with someone in the guy saying, gee, I see, uh, a hundred people a day. I see 200 people. I just bought an auto automobile. I just have two clinics. I was hearing this right, and it was just. Outta my realm or concept to believe, but as I started to believe it, 'cause so many people were doing it in front of me.
Right, and, and so I had evidence that it was being done. Then I said, why don't they start to do, do it? So I started to change my belief systems and right then and there I started to do affirmations. Talking to yourself is not crazy. So that's why my book from 2008. Talking to yourself is not crazy, and I still to this day, do affirmations, positive statements.
I build myself up. I'm not 85 years old. I build myself up in strong and noble thought before the rest of the world tells me what I cannot do. So I do affirmations every morning. Now with experience over the years of practice, I added. Goal setting to that and to that. So now I have not, oh, I wanna get bigger and have a bigger practice, but specific ideas and concepts and action steps that I was willing to take, and then meditations to slow the chatter of my left brain and make it more right
brain. Meditation calms you. Then the, the music, you could hear it better. You could feel it better. So I started to meditating, not like Guru Maharishi, but do my kind of meditation. I used Brain Tap to, you know, an instrument to, uh, hearing aids in a program. And then, uh, the most important was visualizations.
I start to visualize myself standing at home plate and the pitch comes and I swing and boom, I watch it go over the fence. I stand in my office and I open the door and there's people in my reception room, not waiting room, reception room waiting for my service. So the point is my, I changed my belief system and that, why did I do it?
Because the step backward was failure or divorce, or it was negative behind me or no money. So don't ask me, Noel exactly what it was. But this time period that I'm telling you about now, um, you know, I'm 21 now, I'm 30. And I'm being successful and I was able to buy a little home for my family, you know, that type of thing.
And then all of a sudden, more and more doctors called to get involved and I found that the ones who are doing that, we what we were teaching. So you have this every day in your, with your clients, the people that do what you say to say in their style. Within their religion or their belief systems or their school that they graduate from.
The ones that do the things that count always succeed. And if there's a yes stumbling block and they fall right on their face, they get up, they dust themselves off, and they start again, the others quit. So, so I, I saw it.
Larry, I, uh, I too went straight from high school to Palmer College because it was before you needed to have a right undergrad degree.
I, too was struggling in practice and there was a young guy who's who passed on. In fact, he died of a heart condition, way too young. His name was, uh, Jimmy Dawson, uh, practicing chiropractor. A guy I went to high school with when I was a sophomore. He was a senior and he had become a chiropractor before me.
And he said, let me pay your way to Parker Seminars. And I said, well, I I, you don't have to do that. You, you don't have to do that. So, but I went. I remember when the Parker seminars, they would have these big banquets and the men would come in in their tuxedos. I could afford one of those tuxedo t-shirts that had the tuxedo and I, I was there in, uh, black jeans and my black tuxedo t-shirt and I was watching all these other people and seeing the greats.
So. And you're right. When you show up and you see, I mean, other people are doing this. I mean, you chose to change your belief system. Now you mentioned something about doing a seminar. You backed into another career, Markson management, hugely successful. You had a New York base, a Boston base, a Florida base, maybe a Philly base too.
Am I correct on that? Right. Oh, you have a good memory. Well, I remember, I remember having the, uh, privilege and the opportunity of speaking for you guys. Um, and, and then, uh, going to all those different bases, so. Yeah, so
that's this book. During those days, Markson manager, but under it says the philosophy business, acu strategies and taxes and, needed tactics needed for superior professional.
That's shows you how left brain it was. I thought it was Hispanic. Well, and I'm still teaching it to people. But it was not mechanical. What made the big transformation that you are talking about now is from Markson management to the master circle. Right. And how did I get, get them? How did I get that? I was watching golf 'cause I'm a, golfer, lover. And I'm watching it and it was the Masters. So I said I would do that. So I start that started off the masters. Then the real masters saw me wearing a. A hat on a, an airplane that said masters. And they said You can't do that. So I had to ask the word. So I added circle. The master circle. Circle, meaning what goes around comes around.
What you put out, you get back. You put out the right thoughts, the right concepts, the right actions, the right love, the right studies, watch your weight, do the blah, blah, do everything right. That's what you'll get back. And so slowly I started to copy and mimic and plagiarize the attitudes and actions that people more successful than I would and copy it.
By the way, it was everyone that was more successful than I was at that time.
So now the master circuit was hugely successful, and I know that you guys played to, um, literally hundreds and hundreds of people in your big rooms. Uh, so Markson Management Master Circle. Your smaller groups that you did, I think you called it a log cabin experience.
Am I correct?
Well, the cabin experience, that was later on, just 25 people at a time locked up with me in Montana on a lake. No cell phones, no communication with the outside world, nothing. You walk in that place for 72 hours we're together and then we did our thing. So that was just personal help. Nothing to do with practice.
So all the different things that you've done, there's gotta be a common theme. What Larry loved, you loved it, and I, I know that you made a ton of money, um, grateful you made a ton of money, but what did you love about it that allowed you to, after the money was all made, continue to do it and enjoy it?
It's an easy answer and a difficult one. I love seeing a sick person getting well. Yeah, I love seeing a struggling chiropractor, right? Or a death in a family, throw them off left, or a divorce or a negative health of a child. Things that put us off the rail. I love. To watch them change their mind, change their belief, change their actions, get back on the train, and then become the opposite of what they were, which is successful, healthy, and happy and prosperous.
So now I'm just, I'm thinking out loud here. I'm imagining that your seven years after, uh, after graduating or your nine years after graduating and the misery that you went through made the transformation so beautiful and so sweet that that's one of the things that you wanted to help other people with.
And it probably goes back. To, um, how, you know, how important it is because you can imagine your clients who are fathers or mothers, um, husbands, wives, um, and doing what, what they would love to do well and having such a rough time with it. So I'm, I'm imagining that that's, that's exactly what you're talking about, is that sweetness of being able to see them succeed.
Am I right?
Well, I'll ask you, do you do the same thing with your own clients? Are you right?
Yes.
So the answer is if we can help people, terrific. And I'm not saying I had a magic wand, and I don't think, not everybody makes the transformation, but they have the freedom to. They have the freedom. They're not slave to, to poverty anymore or to negative thinking or the, the past that someone passed on, God forbid, or, you know, they're not a captive to the past.
They're, they're energized toward a more successful future. It
takes that we speak. I was speaking to a small group of my clients, my Galaxy level clients, and I told 'em one of the reasons I love you guys is because you've taken what I've taught you and you have been so successful with it. You validate what I'm teaching and um, and, and I recruit you based on the fact that I really like your goals and I like the people that you are.
So, you love to see the people that you love, uh, do well and succeed well. So, I'm still going back to the fact that you killed bj that, so I was, I was at Palmer College. I, I matriculated in 67. And you graduated in 62. Am I right? 60. 61, so, oh, that's right. That was the, and that was also the year that BJ died.
Right. So now, now let's, let's just take a look. You're, you're taking a look back from 85. If you were to take a look back, is there, what would you have changed? Is there anything that has come up to mind? I would've done this different, I wish I had done this a little bit better. Or what? You don't have the
time.
And I don't have the list of things. But isn't that always the case? I should have, could would've. So instead of saying one, one client said to me, will you stop complaining? I said, what do you mean? You said, well, I should have done this and I should have done that. You've already done what you did. So start here and they're giving me my stuff right back.
So I stopped complaining. Listen,
and, and if you, and if you had, excuse me, if you hadn't gone through that nine years. Of misery that wouldn't have wound then your spring wouldn't have been wound in the same way, and you would've been on a different journey. And when you sat in that front row, you may not have even gone to Parker because you were quote unquote good enough, right?
I was failing and I had no money. It was Parker. I was looking for the golden pill that wasn't gonna appear, right? 'cause I was desperate. Desperate. I was desperate. I remember those days vividly, and even Jim Parker. I said, what is this little guy speaking with a Texas draw? Right? What is he talking about?
Head stuff, success, money, prosperity. What is it? I didn't because I never heard it. It never came. It never came into our world. We lived in a walk, fourth story walkup apartment and when kids go to uh, camp in the summer now my camp was the fire escape outside my window. Me being tethered to the bars, I didn't fall off.
By the way, the first time I heard you speak was at the California Gold Rush at the Bonaventure Hotel. Oh my
God.
I mean, that was a million years ago. That was my first Parker. That was the first time I heard you speak. Um, I heard you speak, uh, another time at the Fountain Blue in Miami. Miami. And, uh, I would, I would hear you speak and one time, I, this has been so impactful to me in my career as a consultant.
I have to share it with you. Uh, I was speaking on your program and we were in Long Island. I was in the audience and you were doing the opening hour. I do an opening hour. Um, and you said, I don't care what you get out of this seminar. I care what this seminar gets outta you. And I remember, uh, there've been times when I've seen things or heard things and the truth washes over me.
Then it washes over me again and it seeps in and it seeps in and it seeps in. And I don't open every seminar the same way, but I open it that way at times. And I always give you credit because, uh, because you deserve it. And I really, really appreciated that. That really spoke to me. Um,
we had a good
time.
So now, um, let's say. Well, let's say that somebody's listening and they think these two old guys may have something, may have something for me. What would you say to. Somebody, um, who's just getting out. They're just getting in practice. Maybe they're finding out that things aren't as easy as they hoped they would be.
Um, something that you would say to them that they could think back at listening to you, and because of you in your comments and your remarks, they would be super, super grateful for a wonderful year in chiropractic courtesy of Larry Markson. What would you tell him?
Get a coach.
Get a coach
first thing, someone from the outside that's interest is not only making money from you, but interesting in helping you grow your garden.
Yes. Get rid of what doesn't belong and plant what? Get an outside person. Uh, every singers have coaches. Famous singers have singing coaches. Right, right, right. Athletes all have coaches. Football teams have 38 coaches. One for every three people. Right, right, right. 'cause they can identify the mistake and then point you in a better direction for the next time.
And it's, it's that four and a half that always, but at the end result, you come out a better person.
You know, I tell my clients that it's my job to stand at the corner and tell you what's around the corner to tell you what's possible. It's, it's my job to, uh, understand what my client's strengths are.
Understanding, uh, what their weaknesses are so I can support them, but always pointing to this next possibility and encouraging them and doing that. That's what I, that's what I think, that I do as a coach. Um, so taking a look back, I know that I've already asked you what you've enjoyed the most about it.
Um. And the different things that we would do, but I think that the different things are the mistakes that I have made. All of those cons, all of those became things that I worked to overcome so that I could become the person that I am. What would a cherry on this Sunday be, Larry? What, what would we say to somebody, about the journey that we're on as chiropractors that we could wrap this podcast up with?
I would say that I grew up in a world where we were called quacks and all the MDs, there was about five or six buildings on the street. They were all different kinds of MDs, and when I came in, no one would speak to me. No one. I was a, I wasn't a, and then as my success came and I was still in that building, right?
They, they saw all the lineups and I was taking all the parking spots, my, my patients and blah, blah, blah. And one by one they all became patients on this good chiropractic. So, so I say hang out with people that are happy, successful. Prosperous. Right, but not, not just because they have that, and find out from them what their journey was.
Because you're gonna get a niblet, and it's not a lightning bolt. That changed. I had plenty of failures and I, I think you would say you experienced the same thing. Yes, but the successes game. So then when I get the awards, like I just spoke to Brian McCauley, who's President of Life University now. Right.
And I'm going down to see him visit him. He was president of Parker. When I was there and he gave me the inaugural inductee to the Parker Hall of Fame, you know, so he sent me the video last, last week, and I'm looking at, and I said to myself, how did I get there? And then you look back through the years, I do it one step at a time, some times two.
And when sometimes you come to a puddle, you jump over the thing. You don't stop. So that's what I, it seems, mine's look back. How did I, my iq, my wife's IQ is like a gazillionaire. She's sitting in front of TV and watch, you know, all these game programs and has every answer of jeopardy. I'm still reading the box of the question.
I'm not that person, that person that worked my butt off because I decided that failure didn't taste good.
Amen. Amen. Well, Larry, thank you so much. I'm listening to what we've, what what you've said, and our conversation today through my client's ears and what I know about prospect. Prospects. Um, and what I know about chiropractors in general, and this has been gold, thank you so much for taking the time for me.
I do appreciate it. God love you man.
So God love you too. And, and all your clients, they're very lucky to have you.
That's why I tell 'em all the time. Have a great, we'll see you, Larry. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.