Blog, Live Events March 26, 2021

Getting Back Out Into the Community – Cathy Wendland-Colby

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Hi, I’m Dr. Colby with Empowering Women in Chiropractic, and I’m super excited to talk to you this week about getting back out into your community. Listen, if you’re like me and you’ve built your practice by community involvement, this last year has been such a challenge because if you’re not out there interacting with people in your community, and you’re not out there meeting people, and you’re not out there going to networking events or business luncheons or lunch and learns, or after hours or doing screenings, then how are you staying engaged with your community? Number one, and number two, how is your community getting the information that they need so that they can make better choices when it comes to their health and their family’s health? So today let’s really dig in because as things are starting to open around the country, it’s time for you to start getting back out there so that you can have the positive impact on your community that you had been having for many, many years.

And maybe you were having a little bit of an impact, but not as much as you wanted for the last year doing the plan DEMEC, but now it’s time to get out there and wake people from the great reset and start getting them to a better understanding of where health comes from and what they can do to empower themselves and their family members to take charge of their health. So let’s think about this. What are some of the opportunities that are going on right now in your community? Well, of course it depends on what state you’re located in, because some States like down here in Florida, where I happen to be for the weekend, spending time with some Chiro, girlfriends, and really masterminding and working on some great life-changing altering empowering strategies and skills, things are open and it looks almost like business as usual in Atlanta where I practice, same thing, things are open and some of the events are starting to get scheduled.

They’re not happening yet, but they’re starting to get scheduled. But in New York where I also hold the license, not the same, not at all, a lot of the people that I know there are still afraid to leave their house. They’re still concerned. They’re still being brainwashed by the media. So what ever is going on in your community and in your state is obviously going to set the tone for what type of events are available for you to get out in the public. So let’s think about this in the past. What kind of community participation did you have or what kind of community participation did you want to be a part of? And now it’s time to start looking and creating new that you can use to really get yourself out there. So perhaps the big events that you used to participate in are no longer happening for me.

Those were humongous concerts where I was the MC and we had a booth and we were doing spinal screenings and scoliosis screenings. And sometimes we did nerve scans or posture analysis, or sometimes we did touch and tell. We did lots of different things at these huge concerts, where we had 8,000 to 15,000 people sometimes. And we had when your rock festivals and we had, um, spring flings, involved festivals, you get the idea, lots of different events going on in my community. And none of that has happened in a year, but it’s starting back up this summer. So we have to be prepared to attack it from a better angle. But what if you had some Friday night lives going on in your community, or you had networking groups that haven’t met in a long time, and they’re just starting to put the feelers out and see, are there people that want to get back involved?

So in that situation, you’ve really got to look around your community and find opportunities. Maybe they were easy before, but you need to find them now. So find the opportunities like a women’s business, get together. Even if it’s online, even if it’s a zoom call or a webinar or a Facebook group where people can get together and chat, find those opportunities in your community. Look through the local Facebook groups, look through the local Instagram accounts that are doing things in your community and find different ways through social media, where you can be social and then turn those eventually into personal face-to-face contacts. Then look at your local community magazine or newsletter or e-blast, or your local communities, Facebook pages, or Instagram pages to see what smaller events are going on and having you can participate in those. And maybe you might choose to start one up.

If there’s nothing going on, maybe you want to do a women wine and wellness event hosted at your office or hosted at one of the local restaurants that you want to help drive business back to, and then invite some other businesses owned by women that can come and participate and share with their clients and their customers so that you can get more women together in one space where you can give a talk about health healing and where health comes from. It’s a chiropractic talk, but you’re going to wrap it in a women wine and wellness package. Or you can go do a moms talk or because maybe in your community schools are just getting back into face-to-face or there’s people who are transitioning out of the digital learning and going into the face-to-face. So maybe you might want to do a moms group where you can talk about how to keep your family healthy as your kids transition back into.

Face-to-face see, there’s so many opportunities that you can don’t just wait, right? Don’t wait for them. Create them. Don’t wait for somebody else to open things up. Don’t wait for somebody else to say, Hey, let’s get the world spinning again. You’ll be the one to start the spin, start the spin. Start spinning that ball. Start spinning that globe. Start getting the world to spin and start getting your community to start functioning and moving and connecting and getting together and be the person that’s there to offer information. Listen, one of the things that I’ve always taught, the doctors that I have the privilege of teaching at the universities and that come into my office and that that train with me is that you don’t necessarily have to give people the answers you want to lead them to the questions. And as you lead them to the questions you lead them to the next best question.

And then when they’ve worked through that question, it’s going to naturally lead them to the next best question. It’s a sales tactic. And when you’re trying to sell somebody, this item up here, and maybe they came into your business, looking for this item down here, but you want to bring them to a greater understanding and a greater understanding and a greater understanding. Then you start to move them and shift them into how do I get you to transition from down here to way up here? Well, I need to bring you one level up. I can’t take you from here to here. It’s too much of a jump, but if I can bring you one level up, one level up, one level up, then we start to get people to think better. Thoughts, ask better questions, look for better information, seek out more opportunities and more information that’s going to help them.

So when you’re talking to people, if you’re giving a presentation or you’re hosting a women’s event, or if you’re participating in a women’s networking or entrepreneurial event, then you want to help raise questions for people. One of the things that I always do during the screening is I teach our interns and our students and our associate docs to never ask a yes or no question. It’s too simple because the gut reaction to somebody walking past you at an outdoor event, you say, no, thanks. And you know, cause you’ve done it too. But if you ask them a question that does not warrant a yes or no answer, it forces the brain to have to shift gears, stop and think for a minute. So rather than asking someone at a screening, do you want to get your spine checked or do you want to have your children check for scoliosis?

That’s too easy to say. No, thanks. And keep moving on. Shift it to become a when question, when was the last time you had your spine checked the brain of the listener shifts into a different gear. Because now they’re thinking, when was the last time I had my spine chat? Or when was the last time your children have been checked for scoliosis? How long has it been since your child has been checked for scoliosis that causes the brain to automatically look for that answer and in that split second where they don’t just automatically say, no, thanks. I’m good. When the brain goes into, how long has it been? There’s your opportunity to engage with the person? Because in that moment where the brain is thinking, how long has it been? You’d say, I can tell by your face, it’s been a really long time. Listen, we can get your daughter to check right here.

It only takes two minutes. It doesn’t hurt. It’s completely free. And you’re going to do it with me so that you can see exactly what I’m looking at so that you understand the markings and the, and the structural markings that I’m looking at to determine if your daughter’s posture is within normal limits or might need some further investigation. It’s that simple, but we complicate it. So instead of waiting for the screenings to open back up, instead of waiting for the businesses to open back up, instead of waiting for the concerts or whatever events you had in your community to open back up, start creating them, start reaching out to the other women, owned businesses or other small businesses that, you know, it might be physical therapists. It might be massage therapists. It might be personal trainers. It might be a functional neurologist. It might be somebody who does nutrition or somebody who does a natural supplements or one of the water purifying systems or natural makeup products, whatever it is that resonates with you and the target market that you’re looking to reach combined with those people, combined with the businesses of people who would like to use those services so that together you can reach more people and you can have a greater impact.

And when you do that, you start to create the opportunities that are going to expose you to more people and vice versa, expose more people to you so that those people can get an understanding of what it is that you do as a chiropractor and how chiropractic can benefit them, their body and their family’s bodies. So create those opportunities. And then when you create those opportunities, here’s the thing that you have to understand right now, more so than in any time period in our history, ours. Now I’m not talking about our parents and our grandparents. I’m talking about in our history. People are being bombarded with propaganda. The only other time period that comes this close that I can think of, or two, 2017, when they started trying to scare everybody in the United States that he Bola was coming. And that the measles was a problem in California.

And so therefore we needed to remove all the vaccine exemptions and back about 10 years ago, when they were scaring us that the H one N one was coming, remember the bird flu that was going to wipe us all out. And they were going to come to your house and knock on your door and force vaccinate you. That was the conversation in Atlanta. And at that point time, people were concerned. People were saying, but they weren’t ready to buy into it. And then came the anthrax threat and the conversation about measles and, and getting everybody across the country concerned about all of those dangerous non Baxter’s. You know, those rich white educated women who choose to not vaccinate was the, was the story coming out of the media. And that worked to an extent, but it wasn’t enough. And now we’ve had a year of people being basically brainwashed by the media about how incapable their bodies are about how inept their immune systems are about how weak we are as a, as a society and how we really need to stay protected.

Right? If the mask work, why the six feet, if the six feet works, why the mask, but the average person isn’t asking those questions because the average person is not getting their information from a doctor, a scientist or researcher or an immunologist. They’re getting it from the news media. They’re getting it from a reporter. Who’s reading the same script that the reporter on the other channel is reading. Who’s writing the same script that the other reporter, so people are seeing the same information. So of course, they’re going to believe, wow, if they’re saying it on this channel and this channel, this channel, it must be true. Now. Here’s what I want you to do. I don’t want you to go out there and tell people that’s all ridiculous. And that’s all BS. Look, you may believe that, but that’s not going to ingratiate you into your community.

That’s not going to connect you to people who are scared. What people who are scared need right now is they need options. They need a reason. They don’t need someone to completely debunk all the news that they’re hearing. They need someone to basically give them a new understanding of how their body functions. And so if you come at people with the, you know, we hate the media, we hate what they’re saying and everything was wrong. And I’m going to teach you. What’s right. That’s not going to work right now because the whole country, the whole world really is buying into this. What would work right now is having a very simple conversation about let’s talk about how your body functions. Let’s talk about how your immune system works. Let’s talk about the germ theory. Let’s talk about your body’s exposure and how your body adapts to whatever exposed to, and as you have those conversations, look, if I feed you junk food, what’s going to happen your body.

Versus if I feed you nutritious and delicious, healthy food, and it’s so easy to make that transition by helping people to understand, look, your body adapts to what it’s given. If we’re exposed to a little bit of dirt, Dustin dander, we learned to deal with it. But if we live in a bubble, like the boy in the bubble movie, way back when, if we live in a bubble, this slight is exposure to dust might be enough to kill us. And so what we want to do is we want to keep your body functioning at its best levels. We want to give you the tools and equip you with the ability to have your body function at its best level, by removing any interference to the nervous system so that your brain can communicate with your body and your body can communicate with your brain and your brain can send a signal to your body to handle everything that it’s exposed to, whether that’s junk food or dirty water or smoke in the air, or whether that’s additional exercise or a sedentary lifestyle.

We want to give your body the tools that it needs to be able to adapt to the environment. And that means when we’re exposed to bacteria and viruses and dirt and dust and icky germs, our bodies should know what to do because we have this beautiful immune system that’s built in that recognizes and attacks foreign invaders. And by giving them that type of a perspective, more of an empowering perspective that yes, your body is capable and yes, your body can do what it needs to do. And yes, your body is designed to survive. Let’s help it thrive. Now you’re empowering people with the tools that are going to help them live a better quality life. So as you start getting out in the community, as things start opening up, as you start going to your favorite restaurants that have been closed, make sure you’re bringing business cards or bringing some pens or bringing, you know, uh, if you’ve got any kind of flyers for any events that you’re doing in your office, if you’re scheduling any kind of health talks in your office or in a local gym, if you’re doing a women wine and wellness, and you’ve got some cards printed up that you can bring to some other businesses where your target audience shops.

Now you’re reaching people that you may not actually personally have bumped into, but because those people that you’re looking to reach, shop in the store, they’ll see your information. Now they can connect with you. So don’t wait for things to open back up and don’t wait for opportunities to start happening. And don’t wait for screenings to get scheduled six months from now, three months from now, nine months from now start creating opportunities in your office, in local businesses, in community centers, in the park, wherever it works for you, whatever your target is, who you want to reach, where they are already start creating those opportunities. I promise you, if you get a little bit creative, you will find that there are so many ways to connect with people right now, you can do it through social media. You can do it through videos. You can do it through e-blasts or text messages.

You could do it. One-on-one at the gym. You could do it in your local stores. You could do it in local restaurants. Look there, the opportunities are there. They may not be blasting and blaring and glaring, bright lights like they used to be, but they’re there. And if you haven’t known, which I’m sure you have, people are eager to get out and interact. And people are eager to go to events and people are eager to start mixing and mingling and meeting new people. So get out there and be that person that mixes and mingles and meets new people. Whether it’s a networking event that’s already set up or something you create, I promise you, the more you get outside of your office, the more you take your message out to the masses. And the more you start interacting with people that you’ve never known before and interacting with other businesses that have similar customers using different services, but that might align with your vision of a healthy lifestyle.

The more exposure you get and the more opportunities you have to actually influence and change a life. And isn’t that why we got into chiropractic in the first place to help people live a better, healthier, more vibrant life. So I know you can do it. I encourage you to get out there and do it. I want to thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Empowering Women in Chiropractic. And before I go, I would be remiss if I did not give a huge shout out to ChoiroSecure, because I personally just had to do my renewal this week. You know how your annual renewal comes up for your malpractice. And I don’t know if you’re like me where you kind of dread doing that paperwork every time, because you know, you’ve got to fill in all the check boxes and the bubbles and how many patients and blah, blah, blah, this time I had a QR code on my renewal.

And all I had to do was scan it with my phone, do a couple clicks and a little signature. And I was done with my renewal in probably three minutes or less. So I don’t know how they got that. So easy, so fast. So secure for me. It’s done. And so thankful. And I just want to say, this is the fastest renewal I’ve ever had. So awesome job to Chiroecure and awesome job to all of you. Ladies and gentlemen who have been watching us for several years here with the Empowering Women in Chiropractic show. Join us back next time. I know we’ve got great hosts lined up every week for you. And I look forward to seeing you again, next time, go out there and thrive in your practice and empower your community to live their best life. Take care. Everybody

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