Thomas S. Brodar,, DC, LCP
Welcome to Dynamic Chiropractic Practice Insights "My Best Idea" column. An extension of our "Solutions" feature, this column provides a forum for an exceptional practitioner to share some of the secrets to their success.
Success is hard to define and to measure. If you are using the typical measuring tool of success as money, then I'm not one of the most successful doctors in our profession. Money is only a yardstick of service provided. Living in a small, rural community with only 18,000 people in the entire county, my drawing pool is limited. I do not think there is a number one thing that has led to my success as a practicing doctor of chiropractic for the last 33 years. There was no "home run" that I hit and then from there success followed. It was a lot of "up-to-bats" and "getting on base" that led to my success.
Starting chiropractic college after having served in the military was a major step in the right direction. Using the GI Bill to go through chiropractic college helped keep my college loan/debt under control. Keeping a debt burden under control is a major step in the right direction. There is a time when school is over, the loans come due and life needs to keep moving forward. Debt control was a big factor in my future success. Having had the wonderful opportunity to spend three years in a "fellowship"/associate position with an established doctor of chiropractic was another major step in the right direction of a successful experience for me. Learning the protocols of operating a chiropractic office, handling patients, case management and processing insurance claims was a wonderful post-formal chiropractic educational advancement. Being married to a wonderful, understanding and contributing wife was a God sent blessing for me. Having stayed married to her for all of these years of evolution and maturing has been keystone to my level of success. Living and practicing in the "outback" of Indiana has been a major factor of my level of success. Staying in one practice location for decades and serving a hardworking farming community, while offering a service that is needed and highly regarded has helped in my level of success. Over the decades, helping one generation of patients with their needs and health care, and then to be there for their children has been so insightful into seeing their family development.
If just money was a practical milestone to my success, then it would be easy to count, sort and subdivide, but it is not all about money. While at Palmer College, when you left the old clinic building, above the exit stairs was an old saying, "Exit to serve." It did not say exit to earn lots of money. It did not say exit to become rich and famous - it simply read "Exit to serve." One of the most practical milestones of my rural limited success has been to serve. The service that I have needed to provide over the last three decades has required me to have my own 1,800 sq ft clinic. The service that I provide has given me the opportunity to have a comfortable, modest 3,200 sq ft home on a little over three acres of land. My home is about 5-7 minutes from my office, and there are no traffic jams going to work. There are not even any stop lights! One of the major milestones on my road to success has been to help other life forms to materialize within the bonds of marriage. Providing perinatal care to a young family that wants to have a baby is a remarkable practice experience. The first time I came home all excited and told my wife that I had helped another lady get pregnant - she looked very serious, told me to sit down and we needed to talk! She soon found out I had reduced a lumbar subluxation in a young lady, helped to restore the normal flow of her energy cycle and then her and her husband conceived the child they had wanted and hoped for.
The down side to this happened to me a few years back when a female patient of mine for the past 20 years, asked if I would help pay for her child's college expenses. I was shocked because at the time I was putting my own kids through college. She must have seen my dazed expression and came to my rescue. She informed me that the pregnancy I had helped her attain some 18 years ago, had graduated from high school and was going on to his first year of college. How did 18 years fly by that fast? What a marvelous professional milestone for me to have attained. I have been so blessed by staying in one practice location and being able to witness the life styles, family developments, tragedies and deaths of a community I have served. Having had the opportunity to serve the people of my community that has offered me the chance to raise and educate my family has been a tremendous mile stone in my personal development. To witness the practical application of what I was taught and accepted by those that had gone before me, at an early point of my developmental life has been a testimonial experience of the milestones that can be reached. Having seen the amount of high school graduates from this small farming rural community that have gone on to become doctors of chiropractic has been very exciting to see and to witness. The cycle continues and my milestone is the realization that I'm just a small piece of the large pattern that is at play.
The best advice I can offer is total practice community immersion. I'm so deeply immersed into my community through service that I have become part of the fabric of that community. Develop an area around your office that will engulf about 6,000 homes/people. Make this your "farm." This is the area that you want to live in, work in and be know in. No matter how large your town is, make your part of it small and yours. Become an asset to those around you and serve them well. Become part of the fabric of your community.
