Why does running your chiropractic practice sometimes feel harder than it should — even when you know what to do? In this Chiropractic Deep Dive, we break down a powerful internal strategy session led by Dr. Noel Lloyd, focused on two critical drivers of practice growth: commitment and energy. If you’ve been feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated by a lack of momentum, this episode delivers a clear mental framework to help you make better decisions, take consistent action, and enjoy the process again. You’ll learn how negative thought patterns drain energy, why waiting to “feel motivated” keeps doctors stuck, and how to replace stress and comparison with intentional action, gratitude, and clarity. This episode is packed with practical mindset shifts chiropractors can apply immediately — without adding more to their plate.
Success in chiropractic isn’t about luck, personality, or talent — it’s about intentional thinking, consistent action, and refusing to quit when things get uncomfortable.
If you’re feeling the pressure of growth — or realizing your systems and team aren’t ready for the commitment you want to bring — book a free strategy call with Dr. George Birnbach: https://myfivestar.com/work-with-us/
This episode was generated using AI voices, based directly on real teachings, coaching calls, and frameworks from Dr. Noel Lloyd and Five Star Management.
Welcome back to the Chiropractic Deep Dives, a special segment of the Successful Chiro Podcast. Our mission is, well, it's always the same, to take these really complex sources, in this case, an intense internal strategy call, and just deliver immediate, actionable insights straight to you. This Deep Dive is brought to you by Five Star Management.
You know, as a chiropractic consulting company, we believe that the systems you use are really only as good as the energy you bring to them. That's so true. So today we're sharing some vital knowledge. It's distilled directly from a session led by Dr. Noel Lloyd, and it's focused entirely on two things, two pillars, commitment, and energy. And that is such a core challenge right now for so many chiros, isn't it? I mean, you look around, you see others who seem to be thriving, but you feel that, uh, that frustrating lack of consistent energy, right? You know the things you should be doing, but you just keep putting them off. Dr. Lloyd was talking about that exact energy drain.
He was and his mission for that call. And you know, our mission for you in this deep dive was so clear. It was to install the mental framework, you need to consistently make better decisions, take massive action, and just stay the course to get to those new heights. Exactly. And when you do that, the outcome is well, it's predictable.
You get more excitement, more consistency, more joy, more growth. And this is the big one. More fun. Dr. Lloyd always says, fun isn't a bonus. Fun is job one. I love that. So where do we start? Let's start with the diagnosis. How do you even know if you're suffering from this commitment deficit or an energy drain?
Dr. Lloyd detailed the symptoms and there are things people often mistake for just, you know, burnout. Okay? Like what? Well, tasks that should be routines suddenly look daunting. Or you look at your big goals, say doubling your practice in two years, and the journey just looks too hard. Too far away. Too far away.
The simplest way to put it is that everything just feels like too much work. And that feeling too much work, that's where the whole negative cycle starts. It is. And Dr. Lloyd's foundational premise, which is so key here, is that we are intentional beings. We're not instinctual like an animal. Exactly. A deer runs from a threat on instinct.
We as humans. Have this unique capacity to actually choose our internal dialogue and energetic, committed people. They weren't born that way. They've just learned a specific kind of self conversation. So it's a language, a language you can learn. You can absolutely learn it, but it requires being intentional.
But hold on, just choosing the thought isn't enough. Is it? Because I know plenty of people who think positive thoughts, but they don't actually move the needle. That's a critical distinction. And Dr. Lloyd was very clear on this. Positive thought must translate into positive action, right? He said, if what you think makes no difference in what you do, it makes no difference what you think the action is, what creates the momentum.
You have to act your way into the right feeling, not wait for the right feeling to show up before you act. You can't wait. Yeah, you'll be waiting forever. Okay? So to build that energy we have to what? Clear the field first. You have to clear the field. We have to identify and, uh, really eliminate the mental enemies, the bad thoughts that are hurting us every single day.
One of the participants, um, had a really interesting, almost philosophical take on this. He said it starts with assessing what is. Right, the reality, the reality. Maybe it's a slow Monday morning. Mm. Then you unconsciously decide that it should be something different, a busy Monday. And it's that gap that dichotomy between is and should.
That's where the frustration comes from. That's the leak. It's a huge leak. And the classic version of this is just the comparison trap. You know, looking at other big practices and feeling like you're not enough. Yeah. Wishing you were hitting, you know, Dr. numbers or making Dr. money, and that's the point that was made on the call.
You're comparing your messy middle journey to someone else's highlight reel to their destination. You don't see the 10 years of work that went into it. A failure, the investment, all of it. The freedom comes when you just let go of that comparison. It really is the thief of joy. Okay, so that's external frustration.
What about the internal stuff like self-doubt? That's another huge one. Another participant pointing this out. It's that internal conversation like, that's too many people for us to handle, or That marketing plan is gonna be too hard. And if your team starts thinking that way. It is over. You'll subconsciously cap your own growth.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy before you even start, this connects directly to what I thought was one of the most powerful insights of the whole session. It was about purging specific kinds of questions. The three forbidden questions. Yes. Yes. Dr. Lloyd's stress this. You have to ban any question that starts with the words when, why, or who.
Give me an example, why does that office have more visits? Or who's gonna step up around here? Or my favorite, when is the economy gonna get better? And the reason those are so toxic is they shift control. Yeah. They put it completely outside of your hands. 100%. They invite blame, complaint and delay. Yeah.
They are commitment killers because they paralyze you while you wait for an answer, you'll probably never get. What about the fear of of success? That sounds counterintuitive. It does, but it's very real. A participant talked about his practice jumping from like 368 visits to 425 in a week. Wow. And his first thought wasn't excitement.
It was, there's no way this can last. The fear of losing control. Exactly the fear that the systems will fail or the team will get overwhelmed. Another participant confessed to that exact anxiety that if they grow too fast, their current patients will drop off. That's a super relatable fear, though. It is.
And Dr. Lloyd shared this great analogy from his dad about thunderstorms. When you hear the thunder, it means you're still alive after the lightning. The storm is scary, but you're still here. You can handle it. You have to ground yourself. In your own capability tying this all together, is that that pressure trap, that thought of, how am I gonna do all of this?
Yes. Juggling home work, new initiatives that thought just sucks the energy right out of the room. So if those are the bad thoughts, what about bad actions? The obstacles we put on our own way, let's run through them. It starts with the smallest betrayal of your day. Hitting the snooze button. Hitting the snooze button.
It's a literal, immediate opt out of discipline, choosing comfort over momentum, and right there with it is procrastination. Just putting off the hard stuff. Yeah. Choosing the easy thing over the difficult thing. A great example given was spending two hours on social media posts because it feels productive.
Instead of doing the hard work of say, staff management or looking at your stats. Exactly. You choose the comfortable activity over the growth driving activity and finally the shiny new object syndrome. Oh, yeah. Chasing some new fad before you've even mastered the fundamentals. You got it. Okay, so that's the problem.
Let's get to the solution. The best thoughts, the best actions. The first one is foundational clarity of vision. If your commitment and energy are low, it's usually because your vision isn't clear or you're not engaged with it. It's that analogy, right? It's hard to remember. Your job is to drain the swamp when you're up to your tail in alligators, that's the one you have to pull back.
Remember the goal and re-engage with your why. But that big picture can still feel overwhelming. It can. So the antidote is to focus on the micro step. The mantra shared was. I can't do it all, but I can do the next thing. I love that. And there was a specific method for that, wasn't there? Super simple.
After a big training, you might have a thousand ideas, write them all down, but then just pick the top three to tackle immediately. Keep a physical pad on your desk. Focus on one thing at a time. Let's go back to that personal accountability idea. If we ban why, who and when? What's the question we should be asking?
The only legitimate question is, what do I need to do to get what I want? That puts you right back in the driver's seat. Instantly asking, what's wrong with me is useless. It bleeds energy asking What do I need to do? Points you directly toward a solution. And then there's chunking the challenge. That idea of one day at a time.
Yeah. One participant brought up the old aphorism. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. You don't have to solve the whole thing today. Just take the first bite that leads perfectly into the next one, which I think is a huge mind shift for doctors thinking who not how? This is the highest form of leverage.
Instead of asking how I get something done, like building a new website, ask who knows how to do it better than I do and delegate it to them. That's a tough one for a lot of high achievers. It is, but it's essential if you spend five hours trying to fix something a pro could do in 30 minutes. You've just wasted five hours of your high value time thinking who frees you up to do what only you can do?
Okay, here's the one that I think should be taped to every chiropractor's mirror the idea of differentiating between pressure and stress. This is an absolute game changer. The rule is this, if time and money will fix the problem, it's just pressure. It's just a cost of doing business. It shouldn't be allowed to cause deep emotional stress, right?
If time and money won't fix it, maybe a deep relationship issue or a health problem that is true stress, and that requires a totally different kind of thinking. Like Dr. Lloyd quotes his father, if you can fix it with money, it's not a problem. We have to stop confusing logistical pressure with real existential stress.
Knowing the difference saves so much energy. So we've talked about actions and thoughts. Mm-hmm. What about cultivating a certain state? Like gratitude. Gratitude is a foundational energy source. A participant talked about starting each day with intentional gratitude. The reason we get overwhelmed is we lump all our frustrations together.
We treat a late report like it's a life or death situation. Exactly. When you engage gratitude, you put the small stuff in its proper place, it gives you perspective, and that leads to a healthier outlook, right. Thankful for yesterday. Grateful for today, hopeful for tomorrow. Beautifully put. It keeps you balanced, but it has to be an active choice, and there was a great actionable step for this.
Meditating on gratitude on the drive-in to the clinic. Yes. Turn off the radio. Rehearse the good things your team has done. Focus on patient wins. Walk in the door as a leader, focused on celebration, not a boss looking for what's wrong. And this focus on the positive is why FSM is so big on tracking wins.
It is. Your true competitor isn't the doctor down the street. It's who you were yesterday. And a participant gave a great example. He was celebrating having a hundred pie day patients this year versus 80 last year. Yes. He wasn't comparing his 100 to someone else's 600. That's the coaching principle.
Compare yourself to yourself. An associate hitting 10 patients in a day for the first time is a massive win. You have to celebrate that growth. To wrap this all up, I wanna leave everyone with Dr. Lloyd's story about persistence. Ah, it's a powerful one. He shared how he took over clinic, had to fire the entire staff, and suddenly he's back to being a solo practitioner.
Working seven to seven, running the whole clinic alone. And then he was tempted to quit to just sell it for parts, but he refused to surrender. He made that committed choice to rebuild it one day, one system at a time, and he did. He built it back up and he sold it a huge profit. That refusal to give up that commitment, it built his reputation with himself.
The lesson is so clear. Success is not about luck or personality. It's about intentional choice and persistence. You have to choose the actions and thoughts that serve your goals. So what does this all mean for you listening right now? It means adopting that intentional language, asking what do I need to do?
And taking responsibility and stop comparing your chapter one to someone else's Chapter 20. Exactly. And if you're feeling that pressure, that fear of growth, or you realize you need help with the thinking who, not how part. Because your systems aren't ready for the growth, your new commitment is about to generate.
We want to help you for personalized guidance on building the team and systems to handle that energy. We really encourage you to book a free call with Dr. George Birnbach. He can help you map out those critical next steps. The link for that is right in the show notes. And of course, subscribe for more tips and deep dives dedicated to your success. Thank you so much for joining us for this chiropractic deep dive. We'll see you next time.