IAM495- Chiropractor Passionate About Communicating Health in an Easy Way

Our guest today has been building an amazing chiropractic practice largely using social media and influencer marketing. The better part of the story for the entrepreneur is how he followed what everyone told him he needed to do to be a successful business owner and he ended up with one foot in the grave. He was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Graves disease from the hustle and grind. He then chose to redefine the rules and craft a business that works for his lifestyle.

Please join me in welcoming, from Austin, Texas…A Chiropractor, Speaker, and self-proclaimed coffee snob-Dr. Matt Delgado.

• CEO Hack: Having fun
• CEO Nugget: Be patient with the process
• CEO Defined: Being a part of the community

Website: http://lifespringchiro.com/

Instagram @drmattdelgado

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Dr. Matt Delgado of Lifespring Chiropractic. Dr. Matt, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Dr. Matt Delgado 0:39

Thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless 0:40

No problem. Super excited to have you on and our guest today has been building an amazing chiropractic practice largely using social media and influencer marketing. The better part of the story for the entrepreneur is how he followed what everyone told him he needed to do to be a successful business owner and he ended up with one foot in the grave. He was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Graves disease from the hustle and grind. He then chose to redefine the rules and craft a business that works for his lifestyle. Please join me in welcoming, from Austin, Texas, a Chiropractor, Speaker, and self-proclaimed coffee snob-Dr. Matt Delgado. It's great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Dr. Matt Delgado 1:14

I'm ready.

Gresham Harkless 1:15

Let's do it. I wanted to kick everything off. I know I touched on a little bit. But I want to hear a little bit more about your CEO story. What led you to get started with your business?

Dr. Matt Delgado 1:22

Yeah, so I guess maybe a better just rewind quickly was even how I got into chiropractic was through changing my own life. I had headaches at 15 years old, chronic headaches, and I went to a chiropractor. Immediately that was the first time in about a year I found this relief of pressure in my head. So that's what kind of led me to chiropractic in the first place. I think most chiropractors, I don't have a percentage, but I think most are self-employed or start their own business at some point. Again, for me to answer your question, mine came sooner than expected. I was an associate in an office in a really big practice in Nebraska of all places for about three or four months. I was working 75 hours a week, that hustle and grind. It didn't feel right to me.

I noticed that everyone in that office just just wasn't happy, just didn't feel happy. That's the first time for me, it just kind of clicked that something's not right. This isn't the right way of doing it. Everyone's kind of using the same systems and doing it the same way and it just didn't feel right. So I fast forward about six months later and leave all the details out here. But that's when I opened my own practice here in Austin, Texas, and came to a small little curtain, doff room sharing space with someone with very humble beginnings compared to what it is today and what you see behind us.

Gresham Harkless 2:51

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. I was really, hard to hear about sorry to hear about the headaches and everything that you had to go through. But sounds like that planted a seed for what led you to where you are today. I don't know, definitely correct me if I'm wrong. I've always heard that the spine and chiropractic, I guess medicine which adjusts that and focuses on that helps out with so many different things. A lot of times we may not realize how important that is so you talking about your headache and realizing that being able to go to a chiropractor helped out a lot of people don't realize a lot of those illnesses can be secured by that, or help at least?

Dr. Matt Delgado 3:22

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I had no idea. So I'll start with that. When I was 15, I had no idea what chiropractic was and it was interesting even because I was going to a health match in high school, which is like a pre-med high school, even though you're learning all about different types of healthcare and medicine. You get your feet wet really early on. They didn't talk about chiropractic once, and I had no idea what it was.

But after trying ibuprofen for about a year with no results, I figured, hey, I got to do something different. I found my way to this chiropractor's office, which would be my uncle's. Absolutely, it changed my life. We're, for the people out there who maybe don't know chiropractic works with the nervous system. So your brain and your spinal cord, literally control everything, including our pain response. So that's how it helped me.

Gresham Harkless 4:12

Nice. Well, I definitely happy then, of course, you found a way to help yourself. But it sounds like you found a way to help so many other people too, because it's kind of sounds like I see like kind of parallels between that story and also your your business journey as well to where you kind of said that you have to find a better way. Instead of just kind of letting things happen, you decided to find that better way for one it was being and being able to use a chiropractor for the other was like how exactly you focus on your business and create that value-based business around what you wanted to do.

Dr. Matt Delgado 4:39

Yeah, absolutely. That was a huge part of the journey and part of the story for sure.

Gresham Harkless 4:45

Awesome. So people that come into your office in Austin, Texas, could you take us through exactly what you do with clients, how you serve them some of the things that they can find there?

Dr. Matt Delgado 4:53

Yeah, so I think the first thing that brings almost anybody through the door is pain, right? That's what drives it. us as humans, and that's what we associate chiropractic with. That's what I did at least before I knew everything else around it. So anything from back pain, neck pain, hip pain, foot and ankle, shoulder, headaches, pain. But pain is just a symptom or a sign that there's some level of dysfunction in the body. So it's our job to really discover where that's coming from. We look at the body mechanically, because we know structure determines function. So we look at things like posture, and motion, and listen to someone's health history to figure out some of the things that are playing into why they're even experiencing pain.

Once we find that, we start to address their spine, and we start with the spine as chiropractors because it houses the most important things in the body, our brain, and our spinal cord. So when we have any slight misalignment or mechanical alteration in our spine, one of the things that can come about is pain. Or we can have other things happen to lose function because our spines control everything from our digestion to our immune system, our mood, our energy levels, and our sleep. So commonly, after we see pain resolved for someone, those are some other things that we'll see improve with people as well.

Gresham Harkless 6:16

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. Because I've been to outside of the Washington, DC area, but I've been to a chiropractor here and he was really, Pivotal in talking about how important chiropractic was. So that's where I got my education, what little education I have, and then also just hearing how it affects like literally so many parts of your overall health and how a lot of times when you have that person that knows that information, just as you've been able to kind of talk to you kind of get not just one thing that can help you but kind of a holistic approach to sounds like to your health goals.

Dr. Matt Delgado 6:48

Yeah. We use a team aggression here and it's not just chiropractic. I mean, all we do in here is chiropractic. But through my own health struggles, which you can't mention briefly in the intro, there was a whole team approach, chiropractic was a foundation for my healing. However, I found help from functional medicine doctors and massage therapists through acupuncture. So we use a whole team of referrals and that sense, and it's a great community here in Austin and there's many great practitioners. So we utilize everything. We really, truly believe that it takes a team of people and there's maybe a good or a better approach for certain people, for each individual.

Gresham Harkless 7:31

Yeah, I appreciate that and especially how it sounds like awareness about like, those different aspects of changing for the individual, so that when they do have some type of pain, it's not just automatically go to take this pill or do there are so many different aspects to it in the fact that you can go to one person you guys know, have that expertise yourself, but also have a wealth of individuals and referral partners, you can kind of speak on and lean on, it definitely helps out so much. It's like helping everybody to be their healthiest self, I guess you could say.

Dr. Matt Delgado 7:59

Yes, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 8:01

Nice. I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce and you might have already touched on this. But do you feel like having that health network to have that philosophy is what kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Dr. Matt Delgado 8:11
Yeah, I do. I think it was through my whole health journey. My whole health struggle is what makes Yeah, but here's what shaped that uniqueness. Because at 26 years old, and I say it's an opportunity now, back then, when I was living it, I wouldn't think of it as an opportunity. But I had the opportunity to live through a really challenging time where my just to paint a picture of it with what Graves disease is autoimmune thyroid disease, and our thyroid controls, it goes hand in controlling a lot in our body, almost everything from metabolism, our immune system, our sleep or energy levels, it just works in regulating a lot of the processes that happen in our body. So when your thyroids are off, you see, a lot of things get thrown off.

One of the symptoms I showed at that time I was experiencing was major fatigue. My hair was falling out in chunks. I remember calling my mom and crying wow, what the hell is going on here? It took me a solid year and a half to change my lifestyle drastically and this was 26 or 27 years old. I gave up things like drinking, which might not sound like much but at that time, that's all I knew is like five or six years like when you go out for a happy hour, right? But But I couldn't and I chose not to. Same with sugar, I gave it up immediately any sugar other than fruit. Even then I've minimized that and with those habits in place for a year and a half.

I sent the autoimmune disease fully into remission, which the medical community at large, not all of them, would want to treat with something like a radioactive drug to kill off the thyroid or just remove it completely. So there was no need for that. But I'd say that having lived through that, yes, absolutely. It shaped the way I practice now and my thoughts on health. I wrote a whole wall here in my office right around the corner from where I'm sitting now. All about these things, we believe statements, and it is like, we believe the human body's a living miracle and we believe, and ability to defy the impossible to heal from anything, but that we just need consistency and commitment and from a team, all the things we're mentioning.

Gresham Harkless 10:17

That makes so much sense. So you think that it was being around I think you said your uncle at that young age that allowed you to kind of think that way. Because a lot of times when people go through illnesses or even frustrations in life it's a lot, sometimes easier said than done to, to think about a different way to do if somebody says, Hey, we have to take out your thyroid, or hey, take this injection or this pill, whatever that might be. A lot of people sometimes feel like that's the only way to do it. Do you think that that maybe laid that foundation to where you were able to say, hey, maybe that's not the only way? Let me try this. Let me try that.

Dr. Matt Delgado 10:44

I think it was the philosophy of chiropractic. So being in chiropractic school, opened the doors to me, and I grew up on the West Coast. Very health-conscious, probably the most health-conscious place in the country, if you had to pick one, I'd say the West Coast is up there for sure. Just more of that holistic approach and believing in the body to be able to perform at its best or heal from anything. But in chiropractic school. For me. That's what solidified that and being around a community of people that really believed wholeheartedly in that.

I remember my first quarter going into chiropractic school, I got a cold and I took Nyquil. One of my roommates chewed me out for taking Nyquil. I thought, like, what the hell was wrong with this girl? Like, why is he screaming at me for taking Nyquil? She's like, your body's spark, you can heal, you don't need to do that and drugs. I don't go to that extreme ever but I found that kind of balance in the middle. There's a time and a place for everything, including medicine or drugs. I'm not against it by any means. But I just found my own way and my own path.

Gresham Harkless 10:44

I appreciate that tremendously. 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 an app, a book, or a habit that you have. But what makes you more effective and efficient?

Dr. Matt Delgado 11:59

Yeah, it's two words, you're ready. Have fun. So I think that's something again when I rewind back to where I said, I was working 75 hours a week, and the job wasn't great. I noticed they weren't happy. They weren't having fun. The money was rolling in and they were making more money. They were, I wasn't at the time, more than what they could ever spend the money on. But they weren't having fun, and they weren't enjoying life. So when I rewrote this way of doing it for myself, at least, it always included fun, whether it's here in the office, or whether it's outside traveling, doing something to have fun.

Gresham Harkless 12:37

I definitely appreciate that hack. Now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Or if you can happen to a time machine what would you tell your younger business self?

Dr. Matt Delgado 12:47

Again, I got two words, be patient. So I think when we're all starting, we have this idea of how different our life is going to be in the future. How much better once we hit a certain goal or make X amount of money? But to tell you the truth, my life is no different than it was when I first started. I mean, there's different dollar amounts. Yeah, but I have less time, which kind of sucks. But the process, I think, be more process-oriented. As long as you keep in that process there and have fun with them, what I said before then just be patient, right? Because they say that overnight success was built and three to five years. I think that's so true. Just keeping the process there and was there long enough, you're gonna see the results.

Gresham Harkless 13:31

Awesome. So now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So Dr. Matt, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Dr. Matt Delgado 13:42

To me, it means being a leader in the community. So I think community is what we're founded on here at Lifespring, chiropractic. It's not just with your employees, or whoever you have on your team, but I think it's really in the community. I have other friends and maybe just, I have a tonne of friends in the health and wellness industry, whether it's owning IV bars, IV drip companies, or other medical doctors, or dentists, or gyms, you name it. I think the ones that are doing the best or the ones that are part of the community like you can't fake it.

You're either out in the community and you're really supporting your community or you're not, I think it's important in any business or as any leader to be a part of your community. I have friends who are just trying to figure it out with all these things online as far as marketing goes, or whatever the case may be right, I was looking for that secret hidden gem, when you get back to the basics, and really the foundation of everything. Pretty simple. As long as those simple truths are there, and I think this is one of them be a leader in your community. I think you'd be a great boss, CEO business owner when you want to call it.

Gresham Harkless 14:45

Nice. Well, Dr. Matt, I appreciate that. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know and then of course how best they can get in contact with you and get a hold of you, so your Instagram and all the awesome things you guys are working on.

Dr. Matt Delgado 14:59

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's one thing that I think I'll leave you with that I saw, I met with my mentor here in Austin last night. To me, it was so cool finding mentorship. One of the things that she left me with her last night, the last thing that he had said, and it's still ringing in my ear today is to be remarkable. You got to be different and you're doing the same things as everyone else, you're not gonna, I can be there. We just actually put graphics up on our Windows. If you connect with us on Instagram. I think we already are, you'll see it, as they're huge pictures of us with word bubbles, and we can interchange the words saying thanks.

So we can say funny things or just have fun with it again. So @drmattdelgado, @ d r m a t t d e l g a d o. We're on Instagram. We're on YouTube also. Yeah, and the goal behind these is to demystify chiropractic as a profession and let people see what we're doing. Allowing for things you want to see full adjustments to kind of what we do with the Office. On YouTube we are Lifespring Chiro, L i f e S p r i n g C h i r o. So check us out. Connect with us. DMS message us. We're open books, we're real humans, we talk to people, there are no robots on there and so they'll come to find us.

Gresham Harkless 16:12

Awesome. We will have the links and information as well in the show notes so that you can just click through and follow up and see all the awesome things you guys are doing and working on but again, appreciate you, appreciate your time and I hope you have a phenomenal rest today.

Outro 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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