Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Langmaid: Hey, Smart Chiropractors, Dr. Jeff Langmaid here with my co-host, Dr. Jason Deitch, and today’s featured guest is somebody that we have personally been following online for a bit. Dr. Shawn Robinson, up in Atlanta, runs ChiroSkate on Instagram. You want to be sure to check that out, and we’re going to explore topics all around niche practices utilizing Instagram and online channels to really build your voice as a Chiro. Shawn, thanks for taking some time and chatting with us today.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: Yes. Thanks, guys, for having me on. It’s an honor.

Dr. Jeff Langmaid: Our pleasure. So I’m going to kick it off as a as a very poor skateboarder for a very long period of time. I love what you’ve done with a pretty niche community in terms of skateboarding, I guess. How did you start to think about this? Was this in school? Was this before you even went to school where the origins of ChiroSkate?

Dr. Shawn Robinson: Oh man. So the origins go back about 12 years ago, really? So I I’ve been skateboarding now for close to 20 years. Along that time, I’ve had a lot of injuries. A lot of things happen fall into the concrete. And over that time, that actually started to affect my body and I really didn’t even realize what was going on. So I remember taking it really far back to when I was about 14. I had hit my head on this little quarter pipe. I got caught at the bottom and actually like sideways Superman slammed. My head was out unconscious for about 10 15 seconds, 14 and 15 years old. You think nothing of it? Just keep going, go and live in your day. And so about what, two three months go by and I just keep noticing I’m having these weird headaches, migraines, kind of like just visual disturbances and trouble focusing on like this is this is different. You know, let me let me talk to parents about this and see what they think. So I told my mom and she’s like, Oh, you can have a brain bleed. Let’s all let’s go to the emergency room now. So we go there and they do all these scans and they’re like, Oh, no, your boy is perfectly healthy, perfectly fine. Nothing, really, that we see that’s causing a migraine is just going to have to learn to live with it.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: So I’m 14 and 15 years old like, OK, I got to learn to live with this. That’s 80 years to learn to live with this. All right. Maybe we’ll figure out something to learn, learn along the way. And so I was learning to live with it, and they would give me medications for pre medications proposed. Nothing really helped. And I actually was working at a shoe store and the doctor came. The doctor’s wife came in the day and I was selling her a pair of shoes like any other person coming in and she’s like, Oh, I really like you and I really like you too. She’s like, Oh, I think you should come work for me and my husband. He’s a Chiropractor down the road, and I think you would be a great fit. What’s Chiropractic? And she’s like, Oh, he’ll explain it all to you. Just just come on in. I’m. All right, Dr. Doc kind of sounds cooler than a shoe store job, all these guys talking about. So I go in and explains to me Chiropractic how the brain body has a connection and how essentially things like migraines, headaches and things like that can be helped with Chiropractic adjustments. And I’m like, Whoa, I got this going on. You can help me talk. And he’s like, Oh, sure, he’s like, You’re going to be working with us. Like, That’s something I can offer you.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: I’ll be able to adjust you free. Oh, this is a shoe in. All right. Let’s back me up, Martin. Can I start today? You know, so I start getting adjusted. And yeah, probably month goes by and I’m like, Man, God guy, I’ve not noticed any migraines, any headaches like this. You really think this Chiropractic stuff is? What else did he say? We’ll kind of go in a little bit more into my background with the fall and stuff, and he’s like, Well, if you got this shifted and we shifted it back and then you’re seeing that change of not having, it’s like. So I just kind of clicked for me and I was like, Oh, OK, yeah, this stuff is amazing. I want to go and learn how to do this because I’d already had a big interest in alternative care. My father, unfortunately, had passed away at 48 two drugs and surgery. He had hurt his back on the job and immediately went into the workman’s comp, oral surgery, pain meds, muscle relaxers. All of that had about eight back surgeries by the time he was 42 years old and all of them unsuccessful. And he was wound up taken into about 10 10 milligram methadone a day, which I believe they got so high high because of the half life on methadone and things like that that he just had to keep bumping up. Well, eventually, you know, the problems that come with opioids and things like that.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: And so it actually had caused some really chronic constipation for him, and a lot of the surgeries had actually caused him to be a little septic. And so he was having a lot of problems in pain. But since he was having having the pain pills to help society, he. He never noticed an issue until one day the pain just got so much greater than what the pain pills scandal he goes, the E.R. And they’re like, Oh yeah, Mr. Robinson, you have a lot of gangrene on your colon and we have to do emergency surgery to remove that gangrene or you’re going to die. And it’s like, OK, so they do the emergency surgery, take out the pieces of the sigmoid colon, things like that that they can and they don’t get it all. And so they stitch him back up and it’s still going crazy in his body and he throws a brain aneurysm. They induce him into a coma. And I remember going in there and he was a big Auburn Tigers fan. If you’re from Alabama, it’s not Democrat or Republican, it’s Auburn or Alabama. So he was a really big Auburn fan. And so I remember watching. Auburn scored the last touchdown against LSU as he took his final breath, and it was just really, really amazing to see that titans a little bit later.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: I’ll tell you how it comes in back in the play where my office is at now. But so that being said, I saw him take his last breath and he was just too young. Like, I just felt it just didn’t feel all right. I felt like he was denied life. And so there’s got to be something else out there. And this is before I even knew what Chiropractic was, so I started looking to physical therapy, right? And so I started shadowing all these pieces and they were like, Oh yeah, we’re going to get you great at skating and do all this. All that was all right, cool. I was hyped on it, you know, and started working with the Chiropractor and just started seeing the adjustments that they were able to do with the adjustments and then adding the physical therapy on top of the adjustments, how much more exponential the people are getting. Just better, myself included, I was like, Man, I like the beat stuff for the car thing that still is more for me. And so I had been going to Atlanta. Georgia has a lot of beautiful architecture in the city. Perfect for riding a skateboard. So small town Alabama doesn’t really facilitate getting rad tricks and things like that as much as going to a big city. And so we would go to Atlanta, Georgia, and skate all the streets and just hang out with all the cool kids here and just had a really good time.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: It just felt like a home away from home, really. And I come to find out there’s a Chiropractic school life university in Marietta, Georgia. All right. This is too good to be true. I felt like I’d gotten my Hogwarts letter. No, seriously. I was like, Wait, so I get to go to the school and I get to do what I get to do with my friends and skate. I was like, This is amazing. And to me, I just didn’t want to give up the skateboard. Everybody’s like, You’re going to be a Chiropractor and skateboard. Worried about your bag, worried about your Godin. I’m like, I want to be able to live my life. I want to live. And if that’s riding a skateboard, that’s what I’m going to do. And so I kept doing that, and I really started looking at all the local community guys who just weren’t getting any help. They would have these injuries have these falls and just quit skating, get addicted to drugs, get drinking whatever right. I was like, Man, this is just messed up. Like, there’s nobody else out here for these guys. Like, You know what? People might think it’s wack, but I don’t care. I’m going to go for it. I’m going to create this thing for skateboarders and to see how it goes.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: And so it being just a simple thought Chiropractic skateboarding chiro skate, put it together. That way, people see it and they automatically know, Oh, he’s a Chiropractor for skateboarders. It doesn’t take much thought, and that was my whole idea behind it. Just keep it simple, right? Even through school, when I was learning, they preached. Keep it simple. Keep it simple. So I’m like, All right, we’re going to keep it simple. And so that’s kind of how the Chiropractic name was born. And like I, it was really kind of nice because I didn’t have to worry about any domain names. Taking Instagram names like this is this is a brand new thing, you know, like. So this is really fun just being able to go on stuff and type in conversations like username. Not definitely now. So it just worked out. And so I got into what is at the what they call outpatient clinic with the life where you start to get to adjust the community and things like that. And a few younger guys had gotten word that I was taking care of skateboarders and things like that. And so he’s now pro and things like that, but was amateur at the time, started coming through and started getting a lot of good benefits and care, and he just started telling everyone. And so then this really kind of big OG legend in the skate community.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: Atlanta winds up coming through. And I wound up helping him. And that was probably one of the biggest things that I could have done because he told everyone like he went on to the top of the mountain shouting, like, I’m serious and I was in outpatient clinic and people walking to me, I. And graduated yet. I was like, Man, there is something here, my people are pretty much dying to get this, you know? And so I graduated and started working for a docter, Dr. Joe Hasbrouck, who was actually a physical therapist for about a decade before he became a Chiropractor, which was really cool because I’d already had that interest in that, too. So I was like, Doc, show me, teach me. I’m here to learn. And so he taught me a lot of really cool physical therapy, soft tissue, a lot of just different approaches to the body than just the pure lay down, get adjusted, get up, you know? And so I really appreciated that and knowing that. I wanted to go that route as well, knowing that more than just your blowback or neck can get injured skateboarding. I wanted to be able to work on rith shoulders, ankles, knees, all that stuff. And so I actually went through and got my certification to be able to do that as well. So that combined it with the spinal care. I thought, man, we got a shot of really helping these guys out as that progressed.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: The practice that I was renting out with Marietta kind of grew to the point where I felt comfortable enough to purchase or rent my own little office in downtown Atlanta just to be a little bit more convenient for people. Because I had people driving 45 minutes an hour from Decatur, Georgia to Marietta just to get an adjustment. I was like, I love that. Thank you. That means a lot, but I want to make this easier on you guys. And to downtown Atlanta. And this comes back to the Auburn Tigers story, so the street name that the clinic is actually home is Auburn Avenue. Oh, my very first clinic and I really kind of dedicated it to my dad. Each person that comes in the tape on the table, I really look at them like, this was my dad. What would I be doing today? And that really kind of just keeps me whole and keeps me present with each person that comes in there. And so it’s been a really great turnout, really, just at first practice. It’s good feeling, man, just booming. Like I said, it’s amazing even through a pandemic that people are still kind of searching out for these kinds of things. So it means a lot to have the community behind me with this and just the success, keep on rolling. So that’s pretty much the spirit of it, though, man.

Dr. Jason Deitch: Shawn, that is an amazing story. Sorry for your loss with your dad. Thank you for just being so an open book and sharing all of that. Yeah. I don’t mean to get to the I mean, that’s deep stuff. And yeah, yeah. So help us all understand. I mean, what an amazing story. I mean, you know, everything happens for a reason. You’ve been basically the right mindset, positive attitude, authentically yourself, wanting to be of service to others. I went to life university also, you know, give love, serve out of your abundance, you know, is in our educational DNA to help people understand what does it look like now? Do you exclusively work with skateboarders or? And the reason I’m asking Shawn is one of the things we want to bring out for people is is possibility. You know, most chiropractors, in my opinion, are sort of struggling to attract new patients every month because when you talk to them, all they’re ever really focused on is how do I get more new patients? And so, you know, a lot of them think you’ve got to change yourself in order to meet what the market supposedly wants. And I see, you know, already, you know where I’m going, so help people understand what’s possible. No, Chiropractor in their right mind would say, Yeah, I’m going to combine skateboarding with Chiropractic. We know one guy whose combined golf with Chiropractic, and he’s done amazingly well. Yeah, but but tell us the story about your practice and what chiropractors should know about what’s best.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: Absolutely. So for me, I don’t think that people should try to change themselves. I think more. Embrace yourself, embrace yourself where you are, you are. If you are a little quirky and you like little collectibles. Embrace that. Other people are going to see that, Oh, you got this to me. That stuff is cool, and I like seeing people embrace them. So I don’t feel like any doctor ever needs to change who they are unless they’re just not a good, nice person. You’re not a good, nice person, and you’re not listening to your clients change that. That’s the first thing. But as far as my people that I see now coming in, it started out pretty heavily. Only skateboarders, it was like 90 percent skateboarders. What that’s turned into is the skateboarders are now referring their moms, their sisters, their brothers, their other friends that are in the film industry here in Atlanta now. So now I see a lot of people in the film industry on Sundays. Actually, I have a days that I’m open twice a month on Sundays in office. Now, many Dodgers offices are doing that to me. I just see it as another day to help out people that are so busy with life they have no, literally no other day they’re working 12 hours a day, six days a week. Sunday is their off day and I wanted to be able to facilitate that for them. So now it’s kind of turned into about 60 40, about 60 percent skateboarders, 40 percent, whatever CrossFitters runners, BMX chairs, desk workers, people just going down on the beltline by the street and they’ll hear Kyra’s skate or see one of my little stickers plastered up a little bit of guerilla marketing that I kind of just did by accident that I didn’t even think about doing it just kind of happened.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: But yeah, so it just kind of happens. And then I wear the cameras walking down the bell and I got it. Yeah. So it just kind of meeting connections there. And yeah, like I said to me, it was just like, it’s really cool because I did get to combine both of my passions that I am very, very much in love with and bring success with that. But it was really cool because I actually graduated with another buddy, Dr. Justin Kirsten, and he’s kind of took in the same idea and done a little bit of it too, but he went down the weightlifting route. So he’s in that kind of big weightlifting niche kind of guy. So I’m seeing him being very successful and very well with it. So it’s the thing that kind of. It’s hyped up the morning that you actually really like to go do. And guess what, there’s probably other people that are interested in that, too. So if you can find that and say, Hey, this is what I know, this is my experience with this. I’ve thrown my back out playing golf. I know what you’re going through, you know, and I think that just makes it a little bit more relatable for people.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: For me, I skateboard. I’m just I’ve separated this shoulder. I’ve broken this wrist. I know it hurts. I feel it. And I know what a frustration it is to be able to get something to feel back to somewhat normal as well. And so I feel like having a little bit of that coming into the office does help out as far as that empathy and really kind of listening and saying, OK, we’re going to help out, you know, and not just, Oh, you’re another new patient. Oh, you’re another new. No. I didn’t like that to me. That’s why our health care system has gotten to the way it is because people became numbers. Yeah, I don’t like that. I when I worked with the Chiropractor back home in Alabama, we worked pretty exclusively with a management marketing company and they love the numbers. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great, but it’s like, OK, but what kind of interaction did you have with that person today? They never talked about that. To me, that’s that’s big, because guess what, that interaction you had with that person, they’re either going to go home and tell someone about you or they’re not. And I’m telling you the person that’s telling someone about you, they’re going to listen to that person before they listen to a hundred thousand dollar billboard. Any ad, whatever it doesn’t matter, they’re going to listen, that person all went to this guy.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: He actually listened. He actually cared for me and took care of me. What? I’m going there, you know now what I’ve had to do to because I did realize that I was going to be marketing to a How do I say this and a lesser, lesser tax bracket? How about that the lesser tax bracket population? Because most skateboarders. Don’t have the highest education level, they have a lot of them have been stigmatized into this, oh, you’re just a dish boy or just or whatever. And so some of them kind of do feel that sometimes and that is what they become to be. To me, I think, just go to your skateboarder, don’t let that stigma make you, oh, you’re just whatever. Because I dealt with that through high school. I mean, I had teachers giving me crap the whole time, you know, Oh, here’s the skateboard, you know nothing. An AP honor roll student, I’m like, I don’t get what you’re saying just because I do this. One thing doesn’t mean I’m like a hoodlum, you know, like, so I feel like that stigma sometimes plays into even people’s heads. But that being said, they do make less money, so I’m not charging the crazy charges for the office visits. I am cash only at the current moment. I just kind of found that that was best because a lot of the people that were coming in didn’t have insurance anyway, or their deductible was so high that they’re probably not going to meet it.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: Or if they do come in and they do have really good insurance, say we do need an x ray. So we do need an MRI, say we need a physical therapist co-management, say we need orthopedic co management. That’s where that insurance comes in, right? To me, the insurance just. Didn’t make a whole lot of sense out the gate right now, and so I kind of went back into this cache route and a lot of my professors even going through school like I did this for 40 years, and if I could do it one different, it would be I did cash on the other kind of sounds nice, you know? And so that’s where I’m at right now is the prices are very affordable for most of the people that are coming in. And I strive to do that. My main goal isn’t to be driving in a Lamborghini and things like that. I really do want to actually tell people. And as long as I’m taking care of, I got a roof on my head, I’m eating food. I’m able to go buy a pair of shoes if my heel blows out or I get a hole in the side from skating in it. I’m good, you know, so I feel like people pick up on that to like, OK, he actually is here to help me, not just rob me. Yeah. So and I think I think people pick up on that.

Dr. Jeff Langmaid: I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. Shawn, and one of the one of the questions I have for you is how you connect with people because I came across your Instagram account. Is that your primary platform? What are you using for platforms? How do you think about using it and making those connections? How are you thinking about ultimately content marketing in twenty two?

Dr. Shawn Robinson: Yeah, man. So that yeah, that just kind of came by accident, too. I didn’t even realize what I was doing when I started doing it. I was just like Instagram. Everybody is on it. It’s a free marketing tool. So even if you post something and it drops whatever, who cares, you know, know it’s funny because I saw I just came back from, I do a little trade with my dentist. We do a little bartering. So I was actually taking care of him and his staff right before this. And we were talking like, Man, yeah, I love that you have social media now. He’s like, back when I first started 20 years ago, I paid 20 grand to have mailers sent out to people. I was like, Yeah, like, I not ever probably going to do that, right? You know? So to me, there’s a big difference in that, right? Granted, he was a dentist, Chiropractor. But to me, dentistry and Chiropractic go hand in hand. The dentist really did a good job of teaching people prevention, and I feel like if we can kind of do that, we’ll be right up there too. So I thought that was really interesting as far as him 20 years ago, starting to dentistry. And I’m like, yeah, two years out now and Instagram has been a big help. I will say I’m just I’m not a big fan of social media. It does feel draining at times, and so I have real back on content production. I’ve started focusing more on website, my personal website and actually creating membership content there because I just feel like sometimes the Instagram stuff just gets so watered down.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: And it’s just, I don’t know, it just didn’t feel this didn’t feel the same as even I did four or five years ago. So I’ve started to kind of backing away from it. And I think it was remember that big crash that Instagram and Facebook had a few months ago when I went down for hours. I was like, Yeah, I don’t want to have to depend on Instagram for my whatever like they go down and then I’m my business just goes down because, no, I hated that feeling. So I was like, All right, I am about to generate my own website that works and functions how I want it to. So if Instagram goes down, who cares? Here’s my website now, right? So that’s what I’ve been trying to kind of focus more towards. But what’s cool with Instagram is it wants to keep someone’s eyes on that screen, right? So Instagram likes to promote these things in the algorithm, right? Skateboarding specifically. So I don’t know if you’ve ever no noticed, but if you post something health topic wise, what right? No one cares about it. It’s not that nobody cares about it. It’s Instagram suppressed it. To me, this is a a deeper thing than what we even have understanding of right now. So when I see the skateboarding stuff, engagement, boom, boom, now guess what? We trick Instagram. Say, Hey, skateboarding, health care. Now it goes up together right before it’s like, Oh, these little health things that skateboarding.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: Oh, now we’re able to have skateboarding, come in, bring and help with it. And so now people are looking at health care as a whole different thing. Being healthy is cool now, right? Me growing up, the warm up for the kids I met up with was a cigaret and a beef, you know, like literally 16, 17 year old kids. That was the warm up. Now kids are actually showing up to skate parks with bottles of water and doing stretches. If you want to did that 10 years ago, they would have kicked you out of the park. I know you’re not doing that here. You take that away. Now it’s actually acceptable, right? So I think that had a big, a big part in what I do now and then in the success of it too, because I would have started this 10, 20 years ago. I don’t know if it would have been. Cool thing to do. You know, so I’ve been trying to make it the cool thing to do. It’s like, yeah, it’s actually cool to feel good on your skateboard. It’s cool to go play with little Johnny when you get home from work, you know, like things that people aren’t always just, I guess, attracted to because it’s not sexy or whatever. You know, it’s like, let’s make it cool. So now people feel like, Oh, what I’m doing is actually part of this community, whatever it is. And so I’ve seen a big change with that as far as all that goes too.

Dr. Jason Deitch: Shawn, it sounds like you are continuing to follow the what do you call it, innate path of opportunity or just good fortune that tends to fall on people with the right attitude. And you know, you work hard and want to be of service to people. It sounds like I’d like to learn more about what you’re thinking in terms of your subscription, because oftentimes people will get their traffic from Instagram in whatever ways they have to. It’s not news that people don’t want to learn things, they want to be entertained. So skateboarding is a lot more entertaining than health thought for most, in most cases, most of the time. Exactly, yeah. But you got a lot of followers. I can see you got a lot of engagement. You’re doing a lot of great things and probably to your benefit that it’s not all Chiropractic Chiropractic Chiropractic, but people actually get to sort of see their passion in what you’re doing, and that endears them to want to follow you even more. If all you’re doing is selling me what you what you sell, then why would I follow you? So can you dig deeper into what you’re now transitioning into membership, site subscriptions, all that type of stuff?

Dr. Shawn Robinson: Yeah. So so I definitely wanted to start doing a membership style offers. And the reason why is because I wanted to keep my prices in the clinic low. And so I found that if people are paying this membership service, then it allows me to keep my prices low. I’m not having to worry about digging up eight new patients for the month, right? I have this subscription service, this money coming in because people are buying me, whether they’re coming in that month at all. Right there, OK, this is my retainer. It’s like their own little insurance payment, right? But not four hundred and five hundred dollars. So what I started out now is it’s ten dollars a month and you’re actually able to have videos of different exercises related to skateboarding a lot of times. And what I’ve been trying to branch out in more to as well is a little bit more of like even skate nutrition, because to me, if you’re at a desk job, you’re not going to need the same nutrition as if you’re out skateboarding for four or five hours, right? You’re going to need a lot more stuff. So I have tried to incorporate that a little bit. I have a buddy called the Daily Push on Instagram, and he actually does a lot of the personal training, nutrition, things like that, too. So I’m actually trying to get him incorporated with it too, so that he has a lot of good content pumping into the website as well.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: And that way, it’s not having to take me out of the office too much, either. But like I said, it really just comes down to it helps me out keeping my prices low for everybody else and being able to look out for that type of niche community goal really to see hopefully within the next five years is how LA Fitness gives you the little cards that you can beat in this scan in and go and do whatever. So my ultimate goal is I want to have a skateboard indoor skateboard warehouse and you get one of these little membership cards, carry skate on it and you can get to go to the warehouse and you get to go in the warehouse, skate so your heart’s content go gym in their little Chiropractic office to the side. To get all your little info in their car, you check in, go ahead and schedule your appointment or if you’re already on the books, whatever, right? That’s kind of what I want it to evolve into. So that’s why I started small just website membership now, but it’s going to be turning into more of an actual like, Oh, I get to go to this really cool skate park with a gym and a Chiropractor and Matt Loop. That’s my place. I’m a member there. That’s what I wanted to turn into.

Dr. Jeff Langmaid: I cannot wait to see it unfold. Shawn, are, you know, we’ve been talking a ton, Jason and I about recurring revenue. We like to call it having a Payday Practice. You are a fantastic example of putting that into action. And of course, on the social side as well, building a niche practice, understanding your market, being authentic to yourself, publishing content consistently and now going into memberships. Have you been looking inside of our computers? There’s a lot of what we’ve been discussing.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: I think it’s just like once it gets into that universe, man. It’s just that universal consciousness, you know, like, I think that’s what that’s what happens. I recently got to go out to. For the first time, the skateboard gate of 20 years never got to go to Los Angeles to skateboard. And in those four days that I skated out there, I came back and I was a thousand percent better skateboarder. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what’s in the water. It’s in the air, the energy. The whole iron sharpens iron, I don’t know, but I literally came back with this new just even mindset on me riding my skateboard. I just felt better. So so yeah, man, it’s great.

Dr. Jeff Langmaid: I love it. Well, we will keep abreast of the developments as you continue to build grow. We’d love to have you back in the future, especially as you really launch that membership site. Get that rocking throughout the year. Thank you so much for coming on today and anybody watching and listening Chiro Skate. Check it out, Shawn. Thanks, man. We appreciate it.

Dr. Shawn Robinson: Yes. Thank you guys so much.