IAM2161 – CEO Helps Chiropractors Be More Successful in their Business Practice

In this episode, we have Dr. Daniel Bai, CEO of Close for Chiro.

Dr. Daniel discusses the importance of addressing the root cause of problems in chiropractic care and extends this philosophy into business practices.

He explains his journey to becoming an accidental CEO, emphasizing the value of failures and challenges as learning opportunities.

Dr. Daniel also provides insights into effective sales strategies, the importance of systems, and the human element in business.

He shares his philosophy on being a CEO as a leader of people, the critical role of communication, and the importance of understanding your team’s perspectives.

He concludes with practical advice for business owners and entrepreneurs on staying focused on process, system, and attitude to ensure sustainable success.

Website: www.closeforchiro.com

IG: real_closeforchiro

Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE. 

I AM CEO Handbook Volume 3 is HERE and it's FREE. Get your copy here: http://cbnation.co/iamceo3. Get the 100+ things that you can learn from 1600 business podcasts we recorded. Hear Gresh's story, learn the 16 business pillars from the podcast, find out about CBNation Architects and why you might be one and so much more. Did we mention it was FREE? Download it today!

Transcription:

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Daniel Bai Teaser 00:00

Our industry chiropractic is, I don't care what anyone says, is the best healthcare product in the world philosophically because we need to make sure that we get to the bottom of the problem. Okay. I figure out a way to get this things, these things corrected for a lifetime.

Intro 00:11

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:40

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. And I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Dr. Daniel Bay. Dr. Daniel, excited to have you on the show.

Daniel Bai 00:48

Hey, great to have. Great to be here today, Gresh. Thank you. I think we're going to have a great conversation.

Gresham Harkless 00:53

Yes, absolutely. Dr. Daniel, Dr. Dan is doing so many phenomenal things. So super excited to, to read a little bit more about him, but of course jump into the phenomenal. Conversation. And Dr. Dan is CEO of Close for Chiro, a provocative and enterprising business consulting company from an unlikely industry chiropractic.

He is an author, speaker, and thought leader on the subjects of sales and marketing in the modern world, and has changed the antiquated notions. Most have about. The subject. And one of the things that I absolutely loved about Dr. Dan is that he still has his practice. And I was listening to one of the interviews, very much.

So to also stay plugged in on the industry and all the changes, I think he said, it's his side hustle. So hopefully we'll get the opportunity to dive in a little bit deeper of how that came to be. But one of the things that really stuck with me is one of the quotes he says. He says, sales is the quickest way between a problem and a solution.

And I think so many times we don't look at sales in that way. So. Dr. Dan, excited to have you on the show. You're ready to speak to the I AM CEO community.

Daniel Bai 01:51

Absolutely. Let's do it. Thanks for having me.

[restrict paid=”true”]

Gresham Harkless 01:52

Absolutely. Let's get it started then. So to kick everything off, let's rewind the clock here a little bit more on how you got started when I call your CEO story.

Daniel Bai 01:59

All right. So I don't know if this, anyone could relate to this probably. So, there is nothing more. That gets someone to where they are today than utter failure and utter challenge and utter I just want to quit everything because early in my career as a young practitioner I just could not understand why, if I know what I'm doing and I'm very skilled and I could help people why they were saying no.

And that contradiction was overwhelming for me on an emotional level. And for those of you are Listening out there that may be going through the same thing. I just want to let you know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Hey, for those of you have been through it, I know y'all are shaking your head and saying, yeah, I understand.

I've been there but I don't wish my challenges upon anyone. And hopefully through this interview we can save you from a lot of the challenges and the frustrations and the struggles. And you could learn from it without actually having to go through it yourselves. So that's my. My story in a nutshell, but there's a lot more to it, obviously, but hopefully we can get into that.

Gresham Harkless 03:04

Yeah, I would definitely, love to, hear more about that because I think I feel like there's such a. Misconception around the journey of entrepreneurship and business and what that looks like. And even around that word that you said, failure. And I almost feel like when we hear the word failure, we stop at failure because there's nothing to go from failure.

But I feel like there might be, and I don't know if you've had that experience, a lot that you can learn from those experiences as well.

Daniel Bai 03:27

Yeah. And now that I'm 23 years in now, almost 20, 24, and I really look back to this and I was looking forward to this particular interview because a lot of the interviews I give is all about nuts and bolts, right?

And how to do something and how to acquire a skill and troubleshooting or what have you. But when I think about the title of your podcast, I am CEO. It's yeah. I'm an accidental CEO, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs are that way. And it brings it back to one of the greatest books I've ever read early in my career.

That's the accidental salesperson by Chris light. And if you just plug in accidental salesperson with accidental CEO or accidental, whatever, I think it all relates. But one of the things I learned early on Is that I was way too connected to the outcomes of what I was doing. How many sales closed? How many people quit on me?

Where my revenue was all the metrics. And one of the things I wish someone told me back in the day, Gresh is like, Hey dude, like statistics is historical, and I heard that in conceptually, I understood that concept like, okay, statistics are. Historical..

So, as a CEO, you're not really thinking on a daily basis about revenue or close rates or retention or what have you. What you should be thinking about, and again, I wish someone told me this before, what you should be thinking about is how is your approach and how are your systems and how is your attitude, and that is what you have control over.

It's not just about revenue. It's about how you interact with the human element, your human talent, which again, is another element of, of being a CEO that I didn't understand fully. I'm still learning, I think I still suck at that on the human element, but I'm learning quickly. And if we don't change our focus from approach systems and attitude.

Then, it's not sustainable. I really don't think it's sustainable.

Gresham Harkless 05:23

Yeah I appreciate you so much in drilling down on that.

So I wanted to drill down a little bit more here, a little bit more on how you're working with and serving the clients. Can you take us through a little bit more on what impact you're making, how you're making people be able to be present in those three parts as well, too?

Daniel Bai 05:38

Sure. So, an unlikely industry.

I'm in the chiropractic industry. And what we do specifically is teach our docs worldwide how to get every new patient or new prospect or lead, whatever you want to call him. And to get them to accept best recommendations more often than not.

Our industry chiropractic is, I don't care what anyone says, is the best healthcare product in the world philosophically because we need to make sure that we get to the bottom of the problem. Okay. I figure out a way to get this things, these things corrected for a lifetime. So that is a good deed, right?

So what we do is we show docs on how to skillfully ask appropriate questions and a process and a system and an attitude so that they can get higher yeses and higher buy ins so that they can get the job done for their patients. That's what we've done. And so anyway, what we do is we teach our docs and we're only for the chiropractic industry.

Gresham Harkless 06:33

Yeah, I appreciate you so much. And sharing that and what you're doing and the impact because I think, obviously in that industry, as you said so well, but in so many industries, what I hear more than anything else is that we're, if this is part of the secret sauce, the thing you feel sets you apart and makes you unique, but , it's we're not dialed into that human part, , the people part, not being aware of that, not Being able to, it's like the elephant in the room.

You're not even paying attention to it.

Daniel Bai 06:57

No doubt. And we have a saying, it's that closing and selling, it's not something that you do. It's something that you do for people, and that's an incredibly important distinction because sales just has a really bad rap and we fight it every single day here. Although it's getting better.

Sales is actually an academic term. Study is what people major in at Wharton School of Business, they call it different things like I don't know behavioral economics It's sales. So that bottom line is, is that you've got to be so well trained in what you do. Especially on the sales process that it opens up the bandwidth to have perspective that you normally don't have.

Gresham Harkless 07:41

Yeah, that's huge to be able to do that.

So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or even a habit that you have. What's something you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient.

Daniel Bai 07:41

Is structured, systematized, procedural process of staying in communication with your team. That's huge. And boy, I wish I learned this a long time ago. Nobody works by themselves. Let me repeat that. Nobody works by themselves. Nobody does anything by themselves. So on the human element, I'm still getting way better at this because I feel like, Oh, I should close this big, big deal.

And I've had that pitted against meeting with my executive assistant for 15 minutes a week. Come on. Like before I'd be like, I choose to close the deal. Now I choose to spend time with my EA. I chose to choose to spend time with my sales team. I choose to spend time with my VP of operations, and so constant and never ending communication in today's day and age.

People constantly need to see their leader penetrating the grassroots level as consistently as possible. They don't want to see a CEO on a throne like that's old school. That's like the monarchy. That's why the monarchy doesn't work anymore, right? It's now a democracy. It depends on who you ask, right?

But that is how civilization has flourished for the past hundred years. Same in your businesses, constant engaging, constant recruiting, and watch this constant telling them what they did great, telling them where they could improve and telling them where, they really are, are sucking, so as long as you're approach that with objectivity, with a, again, a proper process, a system and an attitude. You're golden. That's a huge hack. I wish I did it 20 years ago, man. Oh my god. Imagine that if that happened.

Gresham Harkless 09:27

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that, especially the process system attitude that, the consistency of that.

So let me ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget, a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. You might've already touched on this. It might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you happen to a time machine, what might you tell your young business?

Daniel Bai 09:43

I would tell them STFU. Everyone should know what that stands for. Yeah. STFU. It's a very tongue in cheek way of saying let your people speak. If you're doing most of the talking, you're not really being of service. Everyone in this world, I don't care what country you are. You could be in the Madagascar indigenous population.

what's universally held to be a fact is that everyone loves to be listened to. And no one likes to be talked to. And today's marketplace, man, it is so more true now than ever before. And so STFU, ask a skilled open ended question and then STFU. Let them tell you what they truly want, need and desire, and let that agitate a little bit.

Because if you come to the surface with your solution too quickly, you haven't given time for the other person to really come to terms with their true want, need, or desire. That takes time. They don't come to you saying, I want this. I know I need it. Wouldn't that be great as business owners, right?

But they don't do that. How do we get them to that point? As STFU ask very short, skilled, open-ended questions. Let them share with you, and it does take patience. And it takes a lot of constraint. Another term we have is there's power through constraint. And if you're not skilled though, what you'll actually do is the opposite and you'll word vomit.

That would be the rookie way to do it. But if you're skilled and you understand this concept, STFU, ask a question, STFU, ask a question, STFU over time, they're telling you, okay, how do I get started? Like, how much is it? Okay. When do you open? Oh, okay, I can do this or let me move some money around so I can pay you.

That's when you start hearing those things. When they. literally are able to divulge to you their deepest and darkest. And the only way that happens is STFU.

Gresham Harkless 11:40

Yeah, that makes so much sense. So when I ask you now, my absolute favorite question, the definition, what it means to be a CEO, our goal is to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show. So Dr. Dan, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Daniel Bai 11:50

Oh, you're a leader of people that's what it is. It's, you're not running a business.

You're not selling widgets you're not counting the beans. Okay. That's all part of a business and we need all those things. But as CEO, you are. A leader of your people. And there's a lot of different ways to do that. But again, I, I told you one of my biggest hacks is stay in constant communication. The other part of a CEO, in my perspective, again, I'm still learning. I'm still, I still think I'm not the best at it. I have my moments obviously, but other times like, crap, the other thing is It really helps if you can do what you want your people to do better than they think you do it.

So oftentimes for, for example, in our business, we're, we're online a lot. So there's a lot of online stuff like pixels and web stuff and coding and our CRM, we use I forget confusions off. I don't know if you guys are familiar. Click funnels and whatever. We run ads. We got a lot of stuff happening.

And so Some of my people would be like you wouldn't understand because it's like this with the, I'll try me and he'll go the, the pixel tracking, since we changed our website, it's okay, is the, is the pixel, is it a Google analytic or is it a Facebook pixel silence? And so when that happens, it, it elevates your level of authority and respect that, hey, dude, like I'm not an accident.

Okay. Like I'm not. I know what's up. I may not know exactly how to do it the way you do it. Cause that's why you're here. Cause I hired you cause your expertise. But I know enough to be dangerous and I know enough to have a conversation with you, and so that takes work. That means you've got to study like you got to, Oh my gosh, Gresh, you know how many YouTube videos that I have logged learning about things that may come up in the future?

For example, like on our sales funnel, we use go high level, which is like the newest, greatest thing for now. Who knows what's going to be next year. And I wanted to learn about like the automation and go high level, and. So I spent literally, I think six hours and two days logging YouTube videos on the backend of GoHighLevel just so I can have a proper conversation with with someone on our team on how to, how to optimize something.

You know what I mean? And so when that happens on a consistent basis, it's crazy. And another thing is my wife is my CFO. Okay, man, that's a lot of good stuff. Not a lot of good, a lot of bad stuff. But when, when she talked to me about accounting, that is the furthest thing from my expertise, accounting, she's a, she was a controller by trade, a CPA.

And then she was a controller for, big, heavy-hitting companies. And so she'll talk to me about this and that, and I'll go to school. I'm like, okay, what is this term? What is that term taxes? Holy cow. I really don't want to do this, but I just got to familiarize myself about it. Instead of asking them to teach me, I'm going to go to school on their behalf.

And I'm going to have a good conversation. Okay. And then of course she blows me out of the water. So it's adding new terms. I'm like, okay, I tap out. I tap out. I tap out. Okay. I tap out. But at least I tried, and your team will know when you try to understand their perspective. And by the way, that's a sales concept.

Because sales is the biggest, is the closest way to from a problem and a solution. So if I can get into their perspective and if I were me, if I was them and I was trying to get a job done, I would, I would seriously love it if my CEO like understood my trials and tribulations, even though I can't fix it, or even though they, he can't fix it or she can't fix it.

I would really like it if a CEO understood. What I'm going through, huge.

Gresham Harkless 15:29

Yeah. I love that. Thanks for drilling down on that. Dr. Dan, truly appreciate that definition of perspective. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So I wanted to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get hold of you.

But about all the awesome things in your team are working on.

Daniel Bai 15:46

Thank you Gresh. If you want to get in touch with me, yeah. Website is www.closeforchiro.com. And that's not clothes like you wear for the Egypt Cairo. It's close, closeforchiro.com. I'm also on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn. I'm everywhere. You can Google me. If you reach out to me, just let me know that you heard me on this podcast and then we can start a conversation.

Gresham Harkless 16:08

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much, Dr. Dan. And in order to make it, to make it even easier, we'll have the links and information to show notes as well, too.

And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Daniel Bai 16:16

Awesome, Gresh. Thanks for having me.

Outro 16:18

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast, powered by CB Nation in Blue 16 media. Tune in next time and visit us iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Check out the latest and greatest apps, books, and habits to level up your business at ceohacks.co.

This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

[/restrict]