Nick Fischer (00:00)
All right. Welcome chiropractors. Thanks for coming back. I’m really excited about today’s episode. Today we’ve got Dr. Noel Lloyd here from Five Star Management. Excellent group, consulting group that works with practices across the country and I’m super excited. Thanks for joining us today.
Noel Lloyd (00:18)
Hey, I’m thrilled to be here. hope you’re speaking to me.
Nick Fischer (00:23)
Yeah, absolutely. yeah, ⁓ I’ve been looking through a lot of your guys’s content and learning more about your guys’s group. And you guys are doing some awesome stuff in the space. But before we dive into some of that stuff, I’d love to just hear a little bit about your backstory, learn about you. How did you become a Chiropractor? What got you into this space? And tell us your story.
Noel Lloyd (00:25)
Okay.
Well, I was born in a little mill town north of Seattle called Everett, Washington. And we were having a family picnic at Legion Memorial Park. And I was hanging by my knees from the monkey bars and I yelled, look, dad. And I was about four or five years old and kids do stupid things. And I just let go. And I went straight down on top of my head like a dart and knocked myself out. My dad thought I was dead.
And I wasn’t. And so I ended up at the hospital. They checked me out because I was acting goofy and I did get a concussion and the doctor said I would be fine. Just I they were going to have to watch me. But I got sick and I stayed sick for about a year. And the family album, there are pictures of me at family events. I’m on a blanket on the couch sick. I’m at the park on a blanket.
sick. And ⁓ finally, a woman cornered my mother, you got to remember that this is about 1955, 54, 55. And not a lot was known about chiropractic. And she says, you got to take Noel to a chiropractor. So my parents decided that they would do that. And I got my first chiropractic adjustment.
And it was one of those miracle deals. I screamed like crazy. I didn’t like the process my mom reminds me. But by the time we got home, I was a different kid again. so when I was 11 and coming home, this is years later from a chiropractic visit, my dad said that I wasn’t too young to think about what I would like to do for a living.
And I remember thinking this, I am too, I’m 11. And ⁓ so my dad who never gave advice said, you you could be a chiropractor and you could help people. And by that time, everybody in my immediate family and my extended family had started up chiropractic care because of what chiropractic had done for Noel. So I decided to become a chiropractor. And… ⁓
I actually enrolled in Palmer Chiropractic College when I was 18. That was before you had to have an undergrad degree. And I was practicing when I was 22 years old. So that’s how I got into chiropractic.
Nick Fischer (03:17)
Wow, that’s amazing. Thank goodness you were okay from that fall. That sounds pretty traumatic, especially at age.
Noel Lloyd (03:22)
I was
a big kid and I had a big head and I had a big fall.
Nick Fischer (03:26)
I hear
a lot of stories from chiropractors and how they got in this space and there seems to be a common pattern where there was some type of medical issue and then chiropractic really saved them and turned their life around. so that inspired you to get into this space as well. Tell us a little bit about your chiropractic career and you’ve been leading the five-star management team for a while now.
Noel Lloyd (03:43)
Right.
Nick Fischer (03:52)
Tell us about that transition. What got you from running your practice into the management space and what did that all look like for you?
Noel Lloyd (04:00)
Well, I got up to a particular level in practice. And then I heard about practice management consultants. And I had no idea that there was such a thing or what they did. And I ended up at Parker seminars and Gibson seminars. And all of a sudden, I went from 100 to 200, from 200 to 300. And I grew this wonderful, amazing practice. And I started teaching. I started teaching it.
Parker and different places. And I just absolutely loved it. And so I decided that I would do my own program. And I picked the term five-star management. And I think that people probably came to me nine times out of 10 or maybe 19 times out of 20 because they needed new patients. And I was really, really good at producing new patients.
I opened up a clinic in Everett, Washington. The first month open, ⁓ 161 new patients. I we were just flooded with new patients. And so I started helping people and I got lots of different clients. But after you get a whole bunch of new patients, you need help. And so the transition, the transition at Five Star is that we started to
not only help people with new patients, but help people hiring chiropractors and developing chiropractors in what was called the win-win model. Now, I had this big fat practice, 500 plus patient visits a week, and I got in another accident. There seems to be a theme here. And I almost wrung my neck. I was in Sun Valley, Idaho.
And I had this terrible accident and, I started to experience loss of strength in my right arm and pain in my right arm. And so I literally, I literally had to quit practicing. So I had, I had to work on my own practice and bring associates in. And I, what I learned over a period of about four or five years was what I today call the win-win associate mob.
And what I was able to do is I was able to take one practice and 500 patient visits a week into five practices and 2000 patient visits a week. And I had these great relationships with my associates. And it was because of what, as I mentioned, later became the win-win associate model. And that’s what I helped.
chiropractors with today. Now, Tuesday of this week, which was just yesterday, I was on a Zoom and there was I think three, three dozen, 36, 38 doctors there. And in that group are a bunch of different doctors that have increased their practice volume by 300, 400, 500, one doctor, 700%. But not through their hands.
through associates developed in the wind.
And so today, one of the things that Five Star Management does, and I’ve been coaching doctors in Five Star for almost 40 years, is that we focus on the busy, successful chiropractor who needs help, who’d like more freedom, because you know, you know successful chiropractors, they have this great practice, but the dirty little secret is that this great practice also has them.
and then helping those doctors actually make more money. So what I do and what I love and the reason I’m still doing this at 76 is because it’s very, very satisfying work to help great chiropractors replicate their success in younger doctors and have these great long-term relationships.
Nick Fischer (08:12)
Yeah, that’s awesome. I mean, it sounds like you’ve really found a good system that works well for a lot of practices. I think you keep referring it to as this win-win system. What are you seeing as common challenges with these practices and how is the win-win system helping them kind of overcome those obstacles to get where they want to be in practicing in life?
Noel Lloyd (08:23)
Right.
Well, the people I end up working with, and I think there a lot of chiropractors in this category, they’re great chiropractors. They love chiropractic. They love their community. They love their practice. They love their team. But they don’t have a clue on how to develop associates. And they think what’s intuitive for them actually not only doesn’t work, but it just is, it’s a…
It’s a bad road to travel. And what I found out is that there are things that the successful chiropractor can learn about offering a win-win opportunity where somebody comes into the practice and everybody wins. So this is what I believe the busy successful chiropractor needs, is he or she needs help. If you’re not busy, you don’t need an associate.
So most of those busy, successful chiropractors are at capacity. And one guy said, and he’s got, had a great practice and he was making great money, but he also reminded me, he says, I’m on a fixed income. He says, because I can’t see more patients than I have right now. So my income is fixed. I said, okay, I get that. And then number two, those little people that run around their houses, they call them mommy or daddy or grandma or grandpa. They’re going to grow up like that.
And the freedom that they want in order to be able to create memories, to do trips, a two-week vacation, ⁓ very, very few chiropractors have the type of freedom that they’d like to have. And then the third thing is that that chiropractor also would like to make extra money. In fact, I think that’s one of the reasons why there some crazy get-rich-quick schemes that
busy, successful chiropractors adapt to try to boost their income. Now, go over here to the young prospective chiropractor. They want three things. They want to make great money. They’re in big debt and they need somebody to show them how to be successful in practice. Number two, they want training. In fact, if somebody doesn’t want training, that’s not a good hire.
In my interview process, I would say to somebody, what do you expect to learn from me? And I remember one guy said to me, says, I want to do exactly what you do. I said, well, what do you think that I do? He says, well, you’ve got these great practices, and you hire and you train associates. I think, hey, I can train you how to do that. Or if somebody says, I want to get up to 200, 250-plus patient visits a week, and I want to see lots of patients, and I want to help a lot of people, and have a lot of fun, and make great money.
I know how to train you how to do that. If I ask somebody what they plan to learn from me and they go, it’s probably that’s not going to be a real good hire. yeah, you’ve got to, in fact, here’s what I think that you’re looking for if you’re looking to hire an associate. You want somebody who’s driven, somebody who’s coachable, and somebody who’s likable. I remember, ⁓
Nick Fischer (11:36)
Gotta be hungry for it.
Noel Lloyd (11:55)
I was doing an interview for. I’ve hired and developed over 70 associates. And I wanted to make sure that all of my prospective associates had an opportunity to meet my top CAs and my other associates. And one of the biggest selling points for my associateship program and for my clients is that I would take this prospective associate as I
instruct my clients to do and just let them hang out in the break room with their existing associates. Because if you have a good program, your existing associates will sell the next prospective associate. So I want help. I want freedom. I want extra money. My prospective associate wants. They want to make good money. They want to be trained and they want a career opportunity. They want to be successful.
It’s a bad deal if you’ve spent all this time and effort and money getting your D.C. license and you end up out of practice. And there are too many young carpracters that do just because you didn’t know what to do. And so that marriage of needs, I need somebody who’s coachable. I need somebody who’s driven. I need somebody who’s likable. And I’m willing to train that person and give them an opportunity in a practice where they can
literally help as many people have as much fun and make as much money as they want while working for me. So that’s
That’s kind of in a nutshell what I do.
Nick Fischer (13:37)
Gotcha. That’s incredible. mean, so the win-win system is combining practices that are looking to grow and then the newcomers that are looking for some guidance and some coaching and some mentorship to get to those same levels and finding a really good and bridging that gap for those people to help more patients, to help more people.
Noel Lloyd (13:56)
So I interview not only my clients and do videos, but I also interview associates and I hear from my clients how great their associates are. So I’d say, do you mind if I interview them? So I was talking to this one young woman, her name was Rachel, and she had a great associateship with ⁓ Dr. Morris, Dr. Brian Misty Morris.
And ⁓ I said, you had an associateship before. What was it like? She said, it was terrible. It was just the worst. And I said, how do you find your current associateship? I love it. I said, well, you’re probably learning a whole bunch so that you’ll be able to take what you’re learning and go do your own practice. And she said, no, she says, I’m not going anywhere. And I said, and then I asked her, said, so why would you stay here? He said, it’s such a great environment.
I’ve got somebody who’s concerned about my success, somebody who asks me frequently, what do you need from me?
I said, so talk to me a little bit about that. She says, well, I’m in such a great environment. And that’s what I teach my doctors to provide. Most clinic owners who end up hiring associates do not provide the best experience. And they don’t because they just haven’t been trained to do that. You can be trained to set an atlas, read an x-ray. You eventually learn how to put together a team.
Training a chiropractor involves a whole different process. I mean, it’s not something that somebody can’t learn, but it just works differently. That’s why there are so many lousy associateships.
Nick Fischer (15:40)
Yeah, mean, management and leadership and building a culture is completely different than being a doctor.
Noel Lloyd (15:46)
Totally different, totally different.
Nick Fischer (15:49)
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m sure that seeing your doctors that you work with kind of progress to those next stages is super rewarding. ⁓ Being in your position in the management side of things and seeing all these doctors kind of get to that next level has got to be super.
Noel Lloyd (16:07)
It’s it literally is the reason I still do this today. Gratefully, I have made well and saved well and invested well and I don’t have to do the work. But I also don’t have any desire to golf. And what am I going to do? Garden. So I get a chance to work with docs who are really, really nice people. And we don’t accept all prospective clients at five star.
We have to be able to believe in who you are and what you want to do and the reason you want to do it. And then when we can help that person replicate their success, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, it’s not uncommon for somebody to have a hundred percent, 200%, 300%. I’ve got about eight or nine people that I’m coaching right now who have 500 % increases in their gross collected money.
and their gross net money as a result of bringing people into their practice. And there’s more than enough, there’s more than enough money for the associate to get a great paycheck. I mean, we’ve got, I believe the win-win associate program has the best paid associates in all of chiropractic. And it’s not because
They do that at the expense of the clinic owner, but they do that by building inside the practice. I mean, they learn how to produce new patients, how to produce referrals, external marketing, how to participate in social media. I mean, everybody’s working together as a co-op. And if you know that your clinic director is on your side, wants to see you win.
and has your best interest at heart. It’s amazing how motivated you are and how happy you are to be in a practice like
Nick Fischer (18:07)
Yeah, and that aligns a lot with what you were saying about finding associates that are going to be naturally driven because that’s going to help fit into the culture that they’re trying to create inside their practice as well.
Noel Lloyd (18:17)
My doctors tell me that, and we teach a lot about how to find the right associate. Now, how to be the right associateship is our number one focus. How to take the information that you have. We have a saying at Five Star, you have no right to expect anything that isn’t written down and taught. And so my…
Some of my docs have said, well, nobody ever wrote anything down for me and nobody ever taught me. I said, so? That’s what we want to do is make sure that we have a curriculum that not only you can follow, but your associate can follow. And so you become the right associateship first. And then how to find the right associateship. For instance, we do extensive training on interviewing and making sure you get the right person.
And frequently one of my doctors will pick through four, five, six, seven, eight different ⁓ prospects in order to find the person that’s perfectly matched to his or her temperament, perfectly matched to his or her practice and want to do the right things for the right reasons. And by the way, that’s the foundation for a good long-term relationship. And having somebody who’s on a mission, having somebody with a great
vision and somebody with the right goals that ⁓ for a leader is just that that’s what young associates are looking for in my experience.
Nick Fischer (19:58)
Yeah, I mean, I’m sure you’re working with a lot of practices that step into this win-win system and, know, they’ve never done this before. They’ve never hired associates before. So there’s probably a lot of things that they’re not even aware to ask or know. What’s like some good questions that they really should be asking when, they’re interested in going down this path for their practice, that they might not even know that they should be asking.
Noel Lloyd (20:13)
Right,
Well, one of the things that we do, we do this every Tuesday, we have this win-win Q &A Zoom. And I’m so grateful. I’ve got ⁓ very, very successful clients that have been with me well over 10 years, 10, 12, 13 years, that show up on this Zoom. And they just talk about their experience. And you see the new people, the lights going on. I never thought of that. ⁓
One thing I already mentioned, and that is that you need to take your procedures and organize them in a way that you can teach them because people learn by seeing, they learn by hearing, they learn by doing, but they also learn by reading. And so we help our doctors. We don’t tell them how to practice. For instance, if you’re an upper cervical doctor or full spine or you have a different practice band, your cash or your insurance.
What we help you do is package up your stuff. And then we teach about ⁓ simple mentoring templates, simple mentoring templates. Most doctors are a little bit intimidated by either mentoring or the associateship process and how do I meet with my associate? What do we train on? We teach them how to put together their curriculum.
in such a way that they can communicate it in logical manner. And I also teach my doctors how to get their prospective associates from the start, mean, literally from day one, into some type of marketing effort. The mistake that some doctors make is they get super, super busy. And they think, I’ve got too many patients to see, and I’ve got too many new patients. And they bring in an associate.
and they’ll split the referrals. Now, the reason I know this is a mistake is because I did it. And pretty soon, the wonderfulness of the clinic director is not translating into the practice and the referrals go down. And the associate may think, well, how come I’m not getting my number of patients? And they were never trained on how to market.
So we believe, we believe that one of the things that your associate needs to learn as soon as possible is how to do external marketing. And ⁓ I believe that we don’t want any chiropractic weaklings. My experience is the most successful chiropractors on the planet know how to produce new patients almost effortlessly. And that’s because they were either trained or they were natural.
And so I believe that we need to train associates to produce new patients.
Nick Fischer (23:23)
In your experience when you’re working with doctors that are trying to ramp up volume or bring on associates to help attract new patients into the practice, obviously referrals are always going to be like the best source of new. Do you have any other like great strategies that you’ve seen work well for practices to help, you know, bring in new patients for their associate doctors?
Noel Lloyd (23:35)
Huge. Yeah, huge.
Yes. So I believe that there are three areas that my top docs pull their new patients. Now a brand new associate is going to do a lot of external marketing. And what I mean by that is they’re going to be doing screenings, massage events, or talks. And we provide training for the associate to do screenings, massage events, or talks. So our clients can have their associate
trained by us and how to into the community. And then we train the doctor on how to interface with that and support that. But number two, social media. As soon as my doctors start to be able to produce their own new patients, I’m going to reward them with social media patients that the clinic produces and also involve them in social media. But they have to earn.
I’ve got to tell you this story. I’m talking to somebody who’s whispering and they have two associates. And I said, why are you whispering? He says, I’m afraid they’ll hear me. I said, who? He says, my associates. I said, OK, so what’s going on? He says, well, I gave them all their new patients. And what they accuse me of is giving them terrible new patients.
because they only hang in for three to five visits. He says, I know the patients I’ve given them. I could turn those patients into lifetime patients. He says, they just don’t realize the value of a new patient. That’s one of the reasons why our associates need to learn to produce new patients from external marketing. But once they do, once they understand the value of the patient and giving them new patients won’t hurt them.
Then we start to involve them in what we call house patients. And the house patients are drive-bys, signage, social media. And as soon as somebody understands the value of a new patient, how to keep a patient in a valued relationship, then we start to feed them as many patients as we can. And we help them with their ⁓ streamlining things like power hours and things like that.
And then number three is referrals. We start training on how to produce referrals from the very start. So it’s external marketing. As soon as you can produce new patients, we’re going to start to feed you. And of course, as soon as we start, we want to make sure that they not produce referrals. So a third from external, a third from social media, and a third from referrals.
Nick Fischer (26:36)
Yeah, which all three of those really kind of fall under this umbrella of building authority, driving awareness, pushing out education to really attract the right people.
Noel Lloyd (26:48)
Right, right. And then this win-win model starts to spread. So if my associate knows that I have his or her best interest at heart, and I’m taking a look at their statistics, and I’m taking a look at their marketing calendar, and I’m asking them what they need from me, and then I can take a look at their stats and say,
I want to sit in with you on your report of findings because I think you can have a little higher conversion. Or I want you to sit in with me on my report of findings. I want you to see how I handle a difficult case. so this whole, instead of having two practices under one roof and kind of like running like ships in the night, you know, where we barely interface. I mean, that’s, that’s a recipe in my view.
That’s a recipe in my view for a disappointing associateship.
Nick Fischer (27:48)
Yeah, so the win-win kind of solves that, know, it gets you guys all rowing the boat in the same direction, so to speak.
Noel Lloyd (27:54)
Right.
So here’s another feature of the win-win. There’s a young woman that I coach. I’ve been coaching her for almost 24 years through five maternity leaves.
Every year she does a record year. This year she’s on pace to do another record year. Every year she gets 12 weeks off. Last year she spent the entire month of October in Europe with her five kids and her husband. And she came back to what? A record oct-
October, record new patients, record visits, record collected money. Now, how did the team feel about that? So I not only asked her, but I also asked her lead associate. And she said they were as proud as they possibly could be because they set a record without me. They did it without the the top doc. And she said I was proud of them as well. And ⁓
So my doctors tell me that they not only increase the amount of ⁓ visits that they do, but they also increase the amount of time that they get off the free time in order to be able to enjoy their success. I had one doctor asked me one time, he was thinking about becoming a five star management client. And he said, I made great money. I’ve got a wonderful house, got a pool, got a hot tub. I have a summer camp.
And I’ve got great cars and my kids are in private school and I don’t have any time to enjoy even enjoy my pool or my summer cabin He said I just I work work work work work work work work and I said have you ever tried? you ever tried taking time off? He said oh, yeah, he says I learned I learned what happened when you know in the old associate model if you take time off the practice kind of
deflates like a souffle. But you can actually set records in your absence. And that’s something that people don’t believe until they see it or talk to people who have taught how to do that.
Nick Fischer (30:18)
Yeah, I mean, the proof’s in the pudding. Like, you gotta have good systems in place. You gotta have the right people in place and, ⁓ you know, achieve that level of freedom that I think everybody is kind of shooting for in their practice and their career goals.
Noel Lloyd (30:23)
Yes.
So
if you’ve got a great personality and you love the practice and you love chiropractic and you love your team and you love being there, what happens when you take that great personality to the beach?
Now, if you’ve got great systems that most any personality, provided that they’re driven, likable and coachable, what will happen is that your systems can continue systematizing. Will you take yourself to the beach or in Dr. Curie’s case, taking her five kids and husband to Norway and Scandinavia for the entire month of October?
And we’ve got other people who do that too. Other people say, well, you you could have one or two or three or four. Dr. Milo ⁓ in 2024, 12 weeks off and a record year. And this is a large practice, multiple associates and gobs of other people who do the same. So the three big things I think most successful chiropractors would like to have is I want help. I want fun and fun and freedom are synonyms.
And I want extra money. by the way, when you have multiple doctors and you increase your volume, your fixed costs as a percentage of overhead goes down. So there’s more than enough money for great associate paychecks to cover the overhead.
and then also for the clinic director to benefit as a result. I’ve got some doctors that hardly practice at all because the associate team does such a really good job and they make more money than they’ve ever made when they were the only person in the harness pulling the sled.
Nick Fischer (32:24)
incredible. I think every practice that you know would love to get to a level like that. They can own their own schedule and have the freedom that they want with practice and all the life balance. That’s an incredible achievement.
Noel Lloyd (32:31)
Yes.
And some people, I mean, there’s a whole process to that. I mean, you can screw this up pretty, pretty badly. You know, I’ve talked to people who’ve said, well, I hired an associate and then I had it out for a month. I said, how’d that work? Didn’t work too well. Came home to smoldering embers, right?
Nick Fischer (33:01)
Well, this has been incredible to learn about your guys’ group and the win-win system and kind of the methodology that you guys follow for helping practices achieve those type of goals. If someone was listening and wanted to learn more about this win-win system and kind of this path, if that’s the direction they want to go with practice, do you have any resources for them that they can check out? If they want to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to get connected?
Noel Lloyd (33:28)
The best way would be to go to my5star.com, M-Y-F-I-V-E-S-T-A-R.com. And I’ve got a deal where I’ve taken some chapters out of the Chiropractor’s Guide, which is my book that I wrote, 56 Proven Ways to Help More People, Have More Fun, Make More Money. And I include a section.
of chapters that I did on associates. So somebody can either schedule some type of what I call a fit call. And a fit call, it’s not a sales call, it’s just, hey, what do you want to do? Here’s what I do. Are we a good fit? So it’s a real low key conversation. Or, or and, they can sign up for some free chapters and take a
peek at what I think about associates. There’s some more depth than we were able to cover here.
Nick Fischer (34:33)
So all that is available right on your guys’s website. That’s my five star comm
Noel Lloyd (34:39)
MyFiveStar.com.
Nick Fischer (34:41)
Excellent. Well, this has been phenomenal. Thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Lloyd. ⁓ Super valuable information. The Win-Win system sounds incredible. Again, if you guys want to learn more about the Win-Win system or Dr. Lloyd’s Five Star Management Group, if you’re looking to hire associates, this definitely seems like something you should check out. Again, myfivestar.com. Dr. Lloyd, thank you so much again for coming and spending some time with us. I really appreciate it.
Noel Lloyd (34:46)
My pleasure.
Nick, thanks for having me. I appreciate it as well.
Nick Fischer (35:12)
Absolutely. Everybody you guys have a great rest of your week.
