In this episode of The Successful Chiro, Dr. Noel Lloyd sits down with Dr. Jeff Danielson from Team Doc to unpack one of the most overlooked but powerful growth strategies in chiropractic: sports event marketing. Dr. Jeff shares how Team Doc helps chiropractors partner with local sports teams to build instant credibility, attract new patients, and position themselves as the go-to provider in their community. From little league to college athletics, discover how hosting events, sponsoring teams, and showing up where athletes (and their families) already gather can transform your clinic’s marketing. If you’ve been relying solely on digital ads or word of mouth, this conversation will open your eyes to a whole new pipeline of new patients waiting in your local sports community.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
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Dr. Jeff Danielson: [00:00:00] I was able to give my message to 90 people in eight minutes.
And that's how you scale. That's how you go big. And that's how you get the people you want is by having a venue to be able to do that to many people at a time. And not that I don't do a spinal screening anymore, but this is the way that we can change, change the world.
Dr. Lloyd: Hey, this is Dr. Noel Lloyd, and this is a successful Chiro podcast. We are gonna do a chiropractic deep dive today with Dr.
Jeff Danielson. Jeff, good morning.
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Good morning. I know we're gonna have some fun today, so get your seatbelts on. We're gonna have some fun.
Dr. Lloyd: That's right. So, Jeff, why in the world are we talking? What is it that you have to share that other people wanna listen to?
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Fate would have it right, but I don't believe in just fate. I believe that God ordained our time together. So, thanks for your friendship and, I'm excited to share [00:01:00] information about, chiropractic and about business and entrepreneurship and making good business decisions. And, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I love business.
And then I love the product, the service of chiropractic, extraordinarily passionate about chiropractic, and when they combine, the sky's the limit. For me, my original story was I was at UCLA getting my degree in biology and I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. So I took a job as a nursing assistant in a trauma center, and I worked in the ICU of a, major hospital in St.
Paul, Minnesota, in the summer , and I literally did this. I was spying on the residents. I was there to talk to the resident medical doctors to see if that's what I wanted to do in my life. And so I started asking them, Hey, if you could do it all over again, would you do it again? And these are residents, so they've already been [00:02:00] through about six years of medical school and the whole deal.
Right. And about 50% of them said, no, I would not do it. I would warn you not to do it. Wow. And it was 50%. So I started talking to optometrists, dentists, chiropractors, podiatrists, you know, other professions. And I talked to three chiropractors. All three of 'em said this. I can't imagine doing anything other than being a chiropractor.
Dr. Lloyd: There's a testimony,
Dr. Jeff Danielson: three for three, and I was like, what is it about these chiropractors? You know? And I didn't know anything about chiropractic so then I started, studying about it and learning about it, and I'm like, well, it's kind of like orthopedics, you know, it's real similar. And I was like, this is a great idea.
I'd never been to a chiropractor and I've decided to be one.
Dr. Lloyd: So how old were you and when and where, and why did you get your first chiropractic [00:03:00] adjustment?
Dr. Jeff Danielson: My first chiropractic adjustment by was by one of those three chiropractors that I was interviewing to see if I wanted to be one.
And I, I didn't know what an adjustment was, he said, have you ever been adjusted?
And I'm like, no. What's that? And so he said, well, let me show you. Lay on this table. I laid on the table and he grabbed my neck and did stuff that I'd never seen or
Dr. Lloyd: heard.
Dr. Jeff Danielson: I was like, what the heck did you just do to me? That was my first adjustment. I had no idea what was coming. And it wasn't because I wanted to be a patient.
I just wanted to learn about chiropractic. So that was my first adjustment. But, you know, it was meant for me to be a chiropractor, period.
Dr. Lloyd: So you've been a chiropractor for how many decades now?
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Almost 31 years.
Dr. Lloyd: Yeah. We want every single chiropractor listening to this podcast to be helped. What do you think are the three biggest challenges that chiropractic and chiropractors face today?
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Well, [00:04:00] Noel you know, all the things that are really most important to learn to be a successful chiropractor.
You really don't learn in chiropractic school. It's just unfortunate, you learn the things in order to get the piece of paper that says you can now be a chiropractor. Right? But managing people is probably one of the hardest things. Currently I own three chiropractic practices and I've got one that's kind of my training center where I train chiropractors and then invest in them.
And I've got, 17 people on staff in this one clinic. So in this one clinic, I'm managing 17 people. That's a lot of people, you know, and with each person you add, you add some chaos, right? Because people are just messy and people are people, right. That's probably one of the biggest challenges, in, owning your own practice, which is why it's actually,
pretty cool , to be an associate. If you have a great situation being an associate's, great. 'cause you don't have to manage the people, you know, but, you on your own practice, you know, this, the associates and managing all [00:05:00] the people, but also new patient acquisition, where a new patient's gonna come from and figuring that out.
And that's one thing that most chiropractic students and young chiropractors, they have no idea where to find 'em or how to find them
Dr. Lloyd: Jeff, I think that there are more chiropractors who aren't chiropracticing today. Because of the challenge of not being able to produce new patients than any other reason, more chiropractic degrees, doing other work out of chiropractic business because they couldn't produce new patients.
Would you say that that's accurate?
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Yeah, absolutely. 100%. If I had 10, chiropractic students right now in front of me or on the call with us, and you ask them, how are you gonna get them? Nine and a half out of 10 are gonna say social media or right online. And it's extraordinarily difficult.
Let me just, hone in right here. It's extraordinarily difficult [00:06:00] to get the right new patient in your office right when you bring it online,
Dr. Lloyd: right.
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Because you're not who answers your stuff or who clicks and all that kind of stuff.
Dr. Lloyd: I believe that this is true, but I wanna know what you think is that if you can produce new patients, if you know how to market, if you know how to produce new patients, you can be successful virtually anywhere on the planet if you know how to produce new one, because chiropractic is that strong.
Yes. I mean, you get people in the office and they experience chiropractic if you as the chiropractor, understand chiropractic. Okay, so managing people. Yeah. Number one. Marketing number two. What do you think maybe might be a third challenge,
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Transition to retirement.
Dr. Lloyd: Right? Okay. Yeah.
Dr. Jeff Danielson: I mean. That's a challenge in and of itself, which , it's a mental, it's kind of like a mind mess because being a chiropractor is your identity, [00:07:00] you know, in a lot of ways. So it's hard to let go of it. It's hard to transition into not being a chiropractor.
And right now I can only envision that 'cause I still see patients. What's my life gonna be like when I'm not taking care of people anymore, when I'm just doing, team doc or some of the other things that I do. Right now I own eight restaurants as well, and so, I've got my fingers in a lot of different, entrepreneurial ventures.
So transitioning, nobody teaches you, how to transition. How do you sell your practice? How do you prepare it to sell? And I've bought and sold 11 clinics, and you've done, probably at least as many as that. And so you're very aware of, the people that you bought practices from, if you bought practices, you know, watching these people go through the anguish of a sale and figuring out how to transition.
It's also probably one of the hard things in practice.
Dr. Lloyd: So you said something that I did not know. And that is that you also own eight restaurants. Is that correct? Now, do you own them [00:08:00] outright or do you own them in partnerships? How do you own eight restaurants?
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Oh, definitely partnerships.
Now I have different numbers of partners in, the different restaurants.
So one restaurant, I only have two partners. Another restaurant, I have 13 partners.
Dr. Lloyd: Whoa.
Dr. Jeff Danielson: I also own a restaurant management company called Trellis Hospitality. And that management company manages all of those restaurants. I believe in paying it forward, and I've done that in the chiropractic practice where I have developed young chiropractors, taught them, mentored them, and then helped them by investing in them and buying practices.
And, giving them a pathway to ownership and whatnot. And we're doing the same thing in the restaurant industry.
Dr. Lloyd: So let's circle back to the.
Chiropractors and we're thinking about managing people, new patients and transition to retirement. [00:09:00] And so probably most people listening to us are gonna be interested in new patients.
And so let's do a deep dive on new patient marketing. So what are some of the things that you think that we should consider even before we do new patient marketing?
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Well, the number one thing to consider before you start, is to figure out the kind of person that you want to take care of.
Dr. Lloyd: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Probably when I was first starting on practice, I would've said, well, I wanna take care of anybody with a spine. Because I just had the gumption and I was, I couldn't wait to start. And I'm like, I'll help everybody. I don't care who they are, just need a spine.
You know? And that's true to a certain extent, right? But who do you really enjoy, you know, in practice? And what style of practice, do you really wanna have? Once you figure that out, then you can apply different types of marketing to find that person.
And we call that the avatar, right? Right. So [00:10:00] what is the avatar of the patient that you really want determining that is number one. Then figuring out where you're gonna find that person's number two.
Dr. Lloyd: So let's say a chiropractor figures out his or her avatar. What are some other considerations?
Dr. Jeff Danielson: So, what are you having these, young associates do?
What kind of marketing are you having them do? I grew my practice on spinal screenings. I started doing spinal screenings at the end of trimester one in chiropractic school. I took a job. I figured I might as well have a job in the chiropractic industry while I'm going to school.
I was the marketing guy for this clinic. In North Hollywood, California. It was, 20 minutes away from my chiropractic school, which was Cleveland Chiropractic in Los Angeles. I started doing spinal screenings then. And ironically, I grew my practice by doing probably 400,000 [00:11:00] spinal screenings,
however, I am not advocating that a young doctor do that today. However, it is one of your fishing poles. And I think we've even talked a little bit about having multiple lines in the water, right? And so we don't do many spinal screenings anymore in, in my clinic, but ironically next week. The Minnesota State Fair is the second largest state fair in the country.
Mm-hmm. Okay. And so we have a booth that we share with 17 other chiropractic clinics. And so in my office, I've got three doctors and, three interns. So the six of us are all gonna be participating at the state fair, and it's like 12 days long. And we have to cover, 10 shifts.
That's, ten four hour shifts. So it's 40 hours that we need to cover between the six of us. Part of why I am having my team do it is so that they can practice talking to humans.
Dr. Lloyd: Yes,
Dr. Jeff Danielson: [00:12:00] putting your hands, the humans on the public and getting interaction and having these conversations that are sometimes difficult.
Yeah. It's just, it's the run of the mill people that are at the state fairs and you gotta know how to talk to people and how you do your, chiropractic talk in like three minutes, you know? Yes. , And then offer a chance for people , to receive, a health pass and come in to one of the clinics and get care.
And historically our group will sell, we sell a health pass for like $20, right. We will sell over 400 of, starting next week. And then there's a ton more that will, filter in, from just our, having contacted them. So we still do spinal screenings, but not too many of 'em.
Dr. Lloyd: I mean, you are doing currently what I did in order to build, and you are right. What happens is that you get out there and you kind of figure, well, there's nothing to be afraid of, number one. Number two, I can have a ton of fun doing this.
Now, you [00:13:00] mentioned you don't do a bunch of spinal screenings like you used to do, but you've got this big thing coming up. What do you do? What's your day to day bread and butter that you would help a young doctor with who's working in your clinic right now?
Dr. Jeff Danielson: So I've been in practice for almost 31 years.
And for, 29 of those years, the number one source of new patients was referrals.
Dr. Lloyd: Yes.
Dr. Jeff Danielson: For 29 years. Every single year, the number one source of new people into my clinic. Referrals as it should be, because you should be talking with all the people that you see and getting lots of referrals because of your great service, your friendly staff, your awesome adjustments, the results, you get all of it.
Dr. Lloyd: Right.
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Last year, for the first time ever, we had more new patients come through the door through a program that I've been using for 12 years now called Team Doc. [00:14:00] And Team Doc is a program, and actually I do now offer it to other doctors. I teach doctors how to do what I'm doing. But, we go out and we find our avatar and our avatar, our kids families and athletes.
And so we sponsor teams. So last night, I was at, a, high school about five miles from my office. And we did, a sponsorship there and we walked out of there with about, I think we ended up with 42 new people on our schedule. So like going to a spinal screening, we signed people up and they left with a health pass and they're on our schedule with a specific time, 42, people.
And we were there for, let's see, we got there about six 15 and we left about 7 45. So it's an hour and a half. So we were there. That's great. An hour and a half. I did a talk that took, eight minutes [00:15:00] in.
Dr. Lloyd: Wonderful.
Dr. Jeff Danielson: And, yeah. So it has been the absolute number one thing that I have ever done in practice.
Even in some of these, I remember doing a, women's expo, spinal screening where I walked out of there with 52 new patients. I thought I won the lottery 50, plus new patients in one weekend, but I busted my butt all day, all evening Friday, all day Saturday, all day Sunday.
Never saw my family. And then you start practicing on Monday. I mean, it's a grind, right? To get that 51 new patients. And honestly, most spinal screeners aren't gonna produce that you're gonna walk away with eight to 18, you know. And so Team Doc has been amazing because we can do so many of 'em, so many sponsorships, and we can turn the faucet on when we want more new patients, and we can turn it off when we have too much.
And there are times, we've had multiple months over the years doing this where we've had over a hundred, new patients in a month, and we literally have to turn it off no [00:16:00] more. I tell my marketing director, stop and we gotta process all these people. So it's been, an amazing part of our practice.
Team doc has become rocket fuel for our practice. And when we need a little rocket fuel, we just schedule some sponsorships and we just get bunches of new people and it's the right kind of people. So for us, the families, the kids, the athletes, it's what we love to serve and so it's the perfect people.
Dr. Lloyd: So give me an idea of the types of teams. You mentioned that you were recently at a high school, but, I know that there are softball leagues. I know that there are, , rec leagues for all kinds of different sports. So where might you go? Give me your top four or five targets as far as teams are concerned?
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Yeah, Noel, that's a great question. And because everybody instantly thinks about the football team, yeah. So the football team get the name on the jersey, the basketball team, the [00:17:00] baseball team. Those, yes, we do those. But those are the worst ones. We have, to date the best, sponsorship we ever did was with a trap shooting team.
That's shooting clay pigeons. We have, I know we have trap shooting teams in Minnesota. It's a thing. We signed up 81 new patients at a trap shooting team. Holy cow.
Dr. Lloyd: And then, , that's a huge team.
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Yeah, it was huge. We sponsor chess teams. We sponsor, mountain biking teams, bass fishing teams. And a lot of chiropractors are like, what?
There's a team for that. There's teams that you're, you don't even know about. And two weeks ago, for the first time ever, we sponsored a bowling team. Ah, and it was the second year that they had the bowling team in existence. And I'm little about this because it's a failure, but then it's a win.
So my marketing person [00:18:00] put a ton of time. I bet you there were 20 emails back and forth between my marketing person, my key employee when it comes to team doc and the coach of the team. I mean back and forth. What time, when are you gonna do this? You know, it's all the hard work that goes into securing a sponsorship.
And then we actually got to the sponsorship, which was at a bowling alley. And he said there would be 13 athletes there and then 13 parents. So we do the talk in front of the parents and the kids. Okay. Now we can talk in a second about the other things like the adult teams and there's all kinds of other ways to use team doc.
But for when we're working with schools, we want the parents there 'cause they're the decision makers, and so when we got there, instead of 13 kids and 13 parents, there were three kids and three parents. And one of those parents was the coach. My marketing person was embarrassed.
She was, she was so upset that it turned out this way 'cause she had worked so hard on it. And I said, we're gonna turn lemons into the lemonade. We're gonna figure this out. I don't know what I'm gonna do yet, but we're gonna [00:19:00] figure it out. And I gave a little bit different talk to what I did. And then we signed up new patients.
There were six people in front of me. I walked out the door with five new patients on the books. Wow. One of those new patients was an employee of the bowling alley that just happened to be standing in the room. So we got four of the athletes and parents, and then we got one of the workers that was working there and we walked out and she was just shaking her head.
Now we've walked out with as many as 81 and we walked out to five. So it wasn't a home run. But I talked to her afterwards 'cause she was still upset that it wasn't as big as what we anticipated. I said, you know what? All it takes is one person to get on my schedule and come in and we change their life.
And so we will continue to do these types of things because more oftentimes than not, it's a victory and we're gonna change people. So it's okay if I only got five on the schedule, it's okay, you know? But we keep [00:20:00] doing 'em, because it's the number one source of new patients and it's easy and it's fast.
The talk that we do takes eight minutes, and it's not about , nerve control and muscles and ligaments. We're not like doing an anatomy class. It's fun. We engage the kids, we do a demonstration and everybody laughs. Everybody has fun. And we walk out with tons of new patients.
Dr. Lloyd: I think that's wonderful.
By the way, I know that I've had great events, where we have, either screened a whole bunch of people or met a whole bunch of people and we get a whole bunch of people. And then we have some events where it's not as stellar. But we always go because we know it's our consistency that makes a difference.
So if somebody were interested in Team Doc and they wanted to find out more, Jeffrey, what would they do?
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Well, the easiest way is probably just to [00:21:00] email me. My email address is jeff@spinesavers.com. That's Jeff. @ spine savers.com. So that's probably the easiest way. You can also go to our website, so my big fish enterprises.com.
So my company is called Big Fish Enterprises, so my big fish enterprises.com. There's a spot on there, there's a little tab that talks about Team Doc and you can get some information there, but if you reach out to me, I can send you videos, and information testimonials, et cetera that talk about it. So if you're looking to grow , a auto accident or work comp or Medicare practice, team doc is not for you.
If you're interested in families, kids. And, athletes, this is the perfect way. And for an owner, if you're wondering what can I give these young associates to do, it's the perfect thing for you to say, this is the program, I'm gonna pay for it. Okay? [00:22:00] And you're gonna utilize it. This is the vehicle that you're gonna get all these new patients through.
And it's a perfect way to do that. And it's consistent year round. So yeah, we work with schools at certain times of the year, but then other times of the year we do adult teams. So we go and we sponsor adult softball teams and co-ed teams, kickball teams, wiffle ball teams. I mean, we've sponsored bunches of 'em.
And it's not expensive, by the way, so it's not like you're giving a thousand dollars to these teams. You might be giving them as little as a hundred bucks.
Dr. Lloyd: So, I'm taking a look at our time and, I think that you and I have more conversations to have, but this one focusing on what I believe is one of the most important things for chiropractors today is to have a tool that they feel good about, where that they can get out into the community and tell the chiropractic story, or at least give people an opportunity to meet the chiropractor and to figure out how.
[00:23:00] Chiropractic can benefit 'em. And then, have a program that's proven to produce new patients. So I'm gonna thank you for your time. This is the Successful Chiro brought to you by Five Star Management, and we are at myfivestar.com. Jeffrey, thank you so much. I super, super appreciate it and I think you and I are gonna talk again.
Dr. Jeff Danielson: Yeah. And if I can give you a closing statement, I would say when we're passionate about changing people's lives, we need to find the best venue to be able to do that. That touches the most people. As many people at once as you can possibly do. And for many years, for me, that was doing spinal screenings where I was putting my hands on people and I was talking into their ears.
I was doing a two minute massage and, spinal screening and one person at a time. I was influencing people. And I did it hundreds of thousands of times. [00:24:00] And with team doc and the program, like I did last night, I was in a packed room. It was 85 degrees because they didn't have the air conditioning on in the school because they don't turn it on until school starts.
And so we're packed into this room. There were about 90 people in the room, parents and kids, and I had 90 people listening to me, I had eight minutes to do it. And I shared with them hope and passion and life and vitality and prevention of injuries. And I was able to give my message to 90 people in eight minutes.
And that's how you scale. That's how you go big. And that's how you get the people you want is by having a venue to be able to do that to many people at a time. And not that I don't do a spinal screening anymore, 'cause we do a few a year, but this is the way that we can change, change the world.
Dr. Lloyd: Thanks Jeff.
Super appreciate it.