Get A Coach Or Mentor

Get A Coach Or Mentor

Dr. Kelly Henry
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/10/2021

Get a coach and or mentor. You probably think it is self-serving saying getting a coach. It may be a little self-serving, but it's also speaking from experience because I have benefited tremendously through the years from having tremendous coaches but, also have had some mentors. If you not in a place where you can hire a coach look up people in your industry, look up people who are doing what you are doing, look at people who are successful at what you are trying to do, and just contact them.

The Inventive Journey

Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.

ai generated transcription

get a coach and or mentor you know i i probably think it's self-serving saying getting a coach but i it may be a little self-serving but it's also i'm speaking from experience because i have been efficient tremendously through the years by having uh tremendous coaches but also had some mentors if you're if you're not in a place where you can hire a coach you know look up people in your industry look up people that are doing what you're doing look at people that have uh there are successful at what you're trying to do and just contact them [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups into seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo of miller i p law where helps startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com we're always here to help now today we have another great guest on the podcast uh kelly henry and uh first of all it's an easy name i usually always slaughter dave so i'm glad to see i get a softball today with an easier name that i can pronounce so thank you again for that kelly but it's a quick introduction to kelly um so he played baseball in high school until he uh heard it or had his arm hurt um went to a chiropractor to see if it would make it feel better and uh and and helped to alleviate some of the pain from the injury but also kind of piqued his interest in that career for a bit later on suzy went off to college when did that for a period of time i think dropped out worked in manual labor for a year decided to then go to chiropractor school and then afterwards moved to phoenix hung out as an own shingle didn't know how hard it was to run a business or what or what was all entailed eventually moved to new mexico bought a practice found out about uh client or customer service is really the key to a lot of the industry did that for over 20 years sold the practice and now it's kind of moved into a bit of a coaching role to focus on customer service or service i think primarily for um chiropractors but maybe rotter with customer service and that and i'll let you talk a little bit about that but with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast kelly hey thanks devin i appreciate the opportunity absolutely so i just gave kind of the quick high level 30 second overview of a much longer journey but take us back a little bit in time to high school and kind of how things all got started for you well like you mentioned i i played baseball like a lot of a lot of teenage boys do and uh i was a pitcher couldn't throw the ball more in just a few times my arm just felt like it was about to fall off so went the medical route just couldn't ever get anything figured out my mom had been a long time chiropractic patient decided hey let's go check you know let's go to the chiropractor i can't can't hurt anything and uh lo and behold i had some issues in my neck with the nerves coming out of my neck going to my arm got that cleared up and i said hey this is this is kind of neat maybe uh maybe i should look into this career and uh we also had a a friend of the family that lived in a in a different community but he was a chiropractor and we were around him no fairly frequently but he had all the toys the house on the lake the boat the smuggle bills all the all the fun stuff and uh i looked at him and said hey this guy's making some pretty decent cash maybe uh maybe this chiropractic thing you know could be pretty financially uh beneficial as well so that was probably more of my motivation than the the fact that my arm was was healed initially but uh uh that that ultimately is what started my journey into the chiropractic world so now so you kind of have that initial experience in high school and you say you know first you you go to a chiropractor it feels better you also see they have a good career lifestyle and they can have you know some of the nicer things in life and be able to afford a good lifestyle and that's they said okay all of that you know kind of works to interest you or pique your interest or a bit now you went to college i think you said for about a year or so and then you dropped out so how did that go as far as your experience with college and then deciding to not to pursue it at least from that angle for a period of time yeah i went to college and again like a lot of males that go to college and get away from home they don't make the best decisions and it's not that i failed out but i did pretty poorly and uh i just decided you know i don't know if this college thing is for me and so i i ended up dropping out and broke my mom's heart got a job doing manual labor i did that for about nine months and this is in colorado so i was digging ditches and mowing lawns and then when uh the weather came in i was shoveling snow and raking leaves and just stuff like that and i quickly realized that i didn't want to do that the rest of my life and so i decided to uh jump back into college as i did that though my dad sat me down said hey listen uh you know i was paying for that first year uh completely i'm not doing that anymore uh you're gonna have some blood in the game in this and so he said i'll pay for books you pay for tuition and so that also uh got me real focused hey uh this is my money and maybe i should pay more attention and start getting some better grades and from that point on i i really did so uh finished up my college career my undergrad career and then uh moved into uh graduate school or chiropractic school and got my doctorate uh later on so one question just to dive into that so when i get manual labor i mean and i was talking with somebody else that they were you know different completely different journey but they were talking about how they wanted to be an artist i think they went to nyu or one of the or good art schools like i think i could be slaughtering which school was i can't remember they're talking about oh i always thought i'd be or saw myself as kind of being the starving artist and i would just serve tables for kind of the rest of my life and then like then i graduated and started serving tables like serving tables is hard it's a lot of lifting and work and working for tips and everything else i'm like and i decided i didn't want to do that anymore so i went did something else and so it's kind of the same thing well i went to manual labor and i said well that's not quite what i had to envision let's go back and do something else but as you go back into college was it with the idea now i am going to be a chiropractor and that's kind of what you set your sights on or kind of how did you after you did manual labor and decide to go back to school how did you decide where you wanted to go well actually i didn't go back in that second go-around with the focus on being a chiropractor i i was kind of undecided maybe you know do something in the business realm i wasn't really sure so i was just taking general studies um and then finally i just decided after looking at career paths and whatnot that you know what i do want to be a chiropractor that really intrigues me um that's what i want to focus on so it took me about another oh probably another year before i finally decided to you know what let's uh let's note down and and get serious about being a chiropractor so so now you narrow it down and you go through school you know you get the degree or you have to get the undergraduate and then you go off and even do more schooling and you finally make your way all through schooling you probably have some student loans or dead or otherwise accumulated and you come out and i think you said you initially went to phoenix after you graduated is that right i did so i was married had our first child at that point once i graduated chiropractic school i'm from colorado my wife's from new mexico but we wanted to live in phoenix so we packed everything up packed the family up headed to phoenix didn't know a soul didn't have any family there didn't have any acquaintances friends anything uh just a dream and an idea that hey that's where we want to live and we want to make millions there so get out to phoenix and uh found a an office to work in i was a it was a clinic that had several chiropractors but we all had our own businesses so it was nice in the sense that i could learn from the other chiropractors and it kept overhead low but i still had to build my own business and and bring in my own patients and i uh i failed pretty miserably at that um i went in very naive i like to say i didn't know enough to know what i didn't know about starting a business about attracting patients and doing those type of things so it was it was tough we were there for not quite a year but it was a difficult time in the sense of not making money not creating wealth not getting patients in but it was invaluable in the experience that i gained from some of the mentors some of the chiropractors that i worked with to really get they really gave me a foundation to move forward and be much more successful once i i moved on from phoenix so so now you did that for a period of time in phoenix and you know and that's a i think with a lot of businesses you get into oh it's not that hard i've seen other people do it or i'll figure it out and there's a lot that goes into business you don't think about everything from marketing and sales and payroll and hiring and firing and doing you know customer service doing the actual work and making it following up and scheduling and all those things and until you get into it you know you don't realize that everything that oftentimes goes into it so i think that you know that realization is one that often hits people and then you either you fail and you bounce back or you have to figure it out or you pivot navigate so you did that for a period of time and then you said okay i learned a lot i had some great mentors now what made you decide to get out and try and go or go buy a practice in new mexico as opposed to continuing to try and uh to make the current current one work um we were just in a you know kind of a low spot there in phoenix uh just you know just struggling to get by you know we laugh about it now but literally we were scraping you know a few dollars together on sunday after church is to go to taco bell and order off their dollar menu at the times it was that bad so um the there was a chiropractor that i'd met uh and and actually followed for a day uh as we were transitioning and moving to phoenix and in the new mexico area and he just called me out of the blue and said hey i'm retiring would you like to buy me out and move back to to or move to new mexico um and at that point our lives were like yeah you know that that sounds great that area is where my wife's family was from where my wife grew up there's friends and family in that area so it looked very attractive but you know i suffering through what i did in phoenix and but learning from that and really getting a foundation from those chiropractic mentors that i had in phoenix really gave me the ability to move forward and be able to have the confidence in buying that practice and be able to sustain and build it up now one question because uh i haven't i've done i've come into businesses later on but i haven't just kind of bought a practice picked it up and taken it over you know as you did that was it a different feel to it was it you know kind of more already established and so you already had some of the systems in place and was improving on it did that make it easier kind of what was a bit of that hey we're going to go do a new start and pick up somebody else's practice how did that go um i i basically just had made the decision to just leave things as is it was an established practice the the the chiropractor had been in in business for 30 plus years uh so he was well known in the compute community he did things a certain way and so i decided you know why you know why change it why uh why try to change something that's not broken um come to find out that was a mistake i i should have should have changed things and done things a little differently and ultimately i did several years down the road that created a way better business for me um but again i didn't know enough to not to to know that and to do that initially and so i just left things as is and it ultimately handicapped me from growing that business because the systems and systems in place weren't there or they weren't effective enough for me to grow and build that practice up i did have income i did have patients you know i had a decent lifestyle but also i had goals and dreams that i wanted to achieve and the way i was running things didn't allow me to move forward and grow that practice to the extent i really wanted to and want to grow to the extent i wanted to and and knew in my mind that i i could no and that definitely makes sense and that's kind of interesting in the sense that hey you know to some degree why why you know don't if it's not broke don't fix it so to speak but at the same time if you get complaints and say oh this is how it's been done and just kind of continue along the business isn't going to change or evolve or become better and so you know that one it definitely makes sense now along that as you're saying okay for a period of time we're just going to let it kind of continue to go long as it's already been doing for a period of time and that resonates when did you kind of make that shift or transition because i think you started focusing more on customer service and how to make it a better client experience and go through that kind of what triggered that and kind of how did you make that realization or start down that road well i did and that customer service aspect i i jumped into that early on when i when we moved to the community in in new mexico the community was a small community a lot of established businesses not a lot of competition and so these businesses you know really didn't have to treat you all that well and you still had to work with them and i that just bugged me so i just made a decision you know what my office my clinics are gonna be different you know and i didn't do it from the standpoint of this is gonna help me grow them it's just i did it from the standpoint of we're going to be different than these other businesses and treat our patients better so i used that early on but i just didn't have the proper systems in place um to grow like i mentioned earlier so i you know i was just struggling along and i you know i'm trying to achieve these goals and nothing's happening and i'm i'm throwing stuff at the wall trying to get things to grow and change and just couldn't ever just couldn't ever get anything started and and this went on for about four years and uh finally one of my buddy chiropractic buddies that uh uh we'd gone through school and graduated together his practice was taken off and so i was like well you know what are you doing he says well i hired a consulting firm and i have a coach now i mean and they're awesome you should really try them out so i contacted them and and got a hold of them and uh liked what they what they had to offer and so hooked in with them and they immediately helped me start help me start to develop sit or not develop use their system because it was proven and they had a great track record put the system in place do it this way trust the process and see what happens and lo and behold that's what that's what i needed and practice took off took off and i never looked back so you did that and now i did was it just a one-time iteration let's figure it out and how to make a better customer service or was it kind of if you're like me and i'm really into it a bit you're always looking you know once you do it it's not an ongoing hey we figured out what the customer journey is and now we're done but it's always looking for ways to improve that make him you know used whether it's technology or just you know how you do things and how you approach things and always kind of look to improve that or make it better was that kind of the case for you or kind of as you're figuring out that 20 years or so of practice um how did that how did things evolve for you yeah like you said it would it did evolve and it was always always looking at how can we improve how can we be better how can we we serve the patients better one of my and actually i learned this philosophy from that that first consulting firm i hired was you're either green and growing or ripe and rotting so i didn't want to be ripe and rotting i needed to be green and growing and continue to to improve um never-ending and continuous improvement uh and so i you know i really tried to place that you know into every piece of the business not just customer service but that was a huge piece and it you know it was making a better experience for the cu the patient or the customer for for those listening but it was also making it a better place for my employees you know is you know how can we we'd be better in the community as a whole you know how can we take technology and work things better how can we you know we're changing some of this how we do things in the office how can we how can we always keep focus on the patient and make this better for them so there was you know different challenges and then when i expanded and moved in to a new or another clinic or started another clinic and hiring associate doctors again there was always new pieces that we had to work through and evolve through but always keeping that core concept of you know the patients first let's focus on them and make sure we're valuing them and making them feel important each and every time we're interacting with them no and i think that you know and what's interesting focusing customer service because another industry that is horrible for customer service is the legal industry i mean they're just there is very little thought i mean most the time we take in giving example industry average once you reach out to an attorney no matter what is text email your potential client your current client anything industry averages three to five days before they even respond back to you meaning if you leave a message you give them a call you shoot them an email a text whatever you can do it on monday and you may not hear back until friday or monday or the following week quick which is horrible and so it's interesting and yet it's how people kind of as i said the industry is stagnant it's what they're always used to and it leaves for a lot of opportunity but it's it's in the other thing that's interesting is you don't know what good cut you don't it's eat it's hard to make good customers so in a sense people know when they have bad customer they usually if you have good customer experience they don't really think about i mean it's a good experience and they like it and they're coming back but they don't really think oh that was great customer service but if you have bad customer service boy do they remember and it really sticks out so it's interesting just to make a good customer service it's so a lot of times it's taken for granted or people don't think about it until they get the opposite so now as you kind of go along your journey and you continue to iterate figure that out make it better do it in different locations and everything else and you grow the practice then you come towards i think it was the end of the 20 years what made you decide to transition kind of sell the practice get out and kind of go more to the coaching mentoring route what was kind of the motivation there how did that how what uh made that arise you bet before i answer that i want to touch on a point you just made as far as the bad customer service and you know a lot of that goes on you know as humans we tend to focus on the negative and so that's why it's so important you know and me working with my clients or just customer service in general for the listeners to keep in mind the the customer's not going to remember the 100 great experiences they have they're going to remember that one bad and when you have that bad they lose confidence and it creates a wandering eye so you have to be so careful you have to be so consistent that each and every interaction is is is good uh is above average and really keep them focused on that great customer service so i appreciate you bringing that point because no all men all men one statement the one time that they will remember good customer service is if they had a bad customer service from the previous people they work with and they come to you and they're like man you guys do great this is so much better then they'll sometimes remember most of the time they'll take it for granted and that was just kind of one addendum to what i said so so now going to the question of kind of transitioning to or selling the practice kind of what made you decide to make that decision kind of how did you do it and how is that transition absolutely as i mentioned i bought out a chiropractor there in new mexico well about uh six seven years later i bought out another retiring chiropractor in that same community both these chiropractors had been in business for 30 plus years and unfortunately for them um they'd basically gone past their prime they didn't have much left as far as patient volume um you know equipment everything they had was old and and uh really not much value so it was good for me buying them out because i was really buying them out on pennies of the dollar but you know them going into their retirement years you know they were not uh you know they were really not benefiting from all those years of service that they had provided the community so i made a mental note that i wasn't going to be like that if if i got the desire to go ahead and retire and move out of practice i was going to do it at my pinnacle or at a high spot as opposed to letting things die down to the end of my career and then just basically giving things away so in 2017 it really felt like you know hey it's it's time to to move on it's time to transition you you've done phenomenal you've got a great product to sell so it's time to time to move um i've had coaches for years like i just mentioned 20 2003 first time i hired a coach for my business i've had several business coaches i've had personal coaches i've had coaches for different aspects of my life and and obviously i've seen the impact on that and then the customer service realm of my chiropractic clinics again i've seen how impactful that is and how that just incredibly incredibly benefit of my business and help it grow to extraordinary heights so when i retired i knew i wanted to coach because how impactful that can be and then i knew the customer service side of things how impactful that can be on a business so that's why i mesh the two together and and have moved forward with helping not just chiropractors really any service based business really any small business the principles i teach and coach and and work with businesses on help help any small business for the most part uh move forward to grow and expand their business and and help them profit much much more than they would otherwise no they and that definitely makes sense and so now you've transitioned and you know kind of moving to that coaching mentoring building a business around that has that been easier harder different than building the chiropractor business was it you know finding teaching people how to have good customer service doing all that was it been more of a passion project or was it hey this is even better than chiropractic or kind of how is that all gone um i love being a chiropractor and and working with patients so i do miss that aspect of just that constant interaction so um so i i miss that um you know not having somebody to to you know be in front of just you know every few minutes type of thing but um i love what i'm doing now too and just seeing the impact it's making in these uh in my clients businesses um it's so important it's so valuable you know i've had multiple doctors i've had a lot of employees and particularly associate doctors i worked with i always consider myself mentoring and coaching them because several of them left and then started their own practices and did some things along those lines so you know i always felt like a coach in that aspect so this transition into coaching and working with clients it wasn't a big leap because i always felt like you know for several years at the end of my practice i was i was coaching and helping chiropractors anyways now i'm just moving into chiropractors and other business owners and helping them and coaching them in that regard so it's the biggest transition is just not being in front of people and moving around all day it's being stuck in front of a computer or on the phone um more often than not no definitely makes sense so well that kind of brings us up to where you're at today so now with that we'll kind of transition a bit too i always ask two questions at the end of the podcast so we'll jump to those now so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it well we always you know we just discussed the you know the utter failure failure in phoenix so that that's that's one of the biggest uh well let me touch on another one the other one was hiring a wrong associate doctor um i went against my gut i went against my normal procedure for hiring i went outside that and didn't i saw the red flags and ignored that and i went outside with my spouse what she said and so i have no one to blame but myself on that situation um and that that was that came back to uh bite me uh pretty hard to the point of you know we had some legal wrangling uh at the end of at the end of things unfortunately but you know i i live by the philosophy of you know live and learn so just take that as a lesson learned and move forward more intelligently i can use that experience to help my clients make better decisions as well but that's one that uh i've kicked myself uh several times for because i i went against uh what i knew what was right and and still made the wrong decision no and i think that uh definitely makes sense you know hiring is always interesting when you get into hiring you get you learn more as you do more hiring in the sense that it always looks easier when you're not doing the hype oh i can read people i know what they're going to do and then i always even beyond that you know reading people and thinking you'll be a good hire you know at least for me and i'm speaking out of my er you know my experiences i always thought hey everybody's going to work as hard as i am and everybody's going to have the same work ethic they're going to get in they're going to want to build it they want to get it done and everything else and then you get in there and some people are that way and some people are not and so kind of all of that is always hiring is always hard to do it and it can be one where it can be a great asset the company or can be a great anchor that you're having to fix and learn from so i definitely get that one on that mistake and learning from it absolutely second second question i always ask which is um if you're now talking to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business what'd be the one piece of advice you'd give them get a coach and or mentor you know i i probably think it's self-serving saying getting a coach but i it may be a little self-serving but it's also i'm speaking from experience because i have been efficient tremendously through the years by having uh tremendous coaches um but also had some mentors if you're if you're not in a place where you can hire a coach you know look up people in your industry look up people that are doing what you're doing look at people that have uh there are successful at what you're trying to do and just contact them say hey i'm trying to do this too i see your success i admire your success can you take 15 minutes and just let me pick your brain and just ask a few questions um just to just to get a little more information on how i can better uh move forward and be more successful and more more times than not that person is going to say you bet you know they're going to be honored that you're even contacting them and admire them for their success and they're going to they're going to talk talk to you and move forward but having that mentorship having those coaches they see things differently they see things outside of the emotions outside of being in the middle of it they see things from experience standpoint what i tell my clients is you know i'm i'm going to help you save a lot of money save a lot of frustration and save a lot of time and moving forward with your success so that's generally what you get with a coach or having a great mentor helping you move forward no and i i definitely agree and what you know whether it's a coach a mentor someone that you look up to someone that has experience you know taking the time to really learn what they've done how they've done it what you know learn from their experience learn from the things that you can do better and sometimes you know learn from what they wish they'd done better what they what they could have done better and the things that they always look back and say i wish i'd done this or what if this and that type thing i think are all very positive things that can help you to grow your business make it more successful and also avoid some of the pitfalls so well as people now as we wrap up the podcast if people want to find out more they want to reach out because they want to be a client or a customer of your coaching service they want to be an investor they want to be an employee they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out or find out more best way easiest way is just go to my website dr kellyhenry.com dr kellyhenry.com that's where you can find out about me my services uh my book um all the vital information about me my book is define deliver customer service uh define and deliver exceptional customer service excuse me there you can find that also on amazon i call it a success manual that of customer service it's not full of fluff it's just straightforward ideas actions and principles that a business can take implement and start improving upon their business creating growth and profits and that's that's what it it's all about so again dr kellyhenry.com also on that webpage is a free download my five top actions any business can implement in their business to immediately improve their level of customer service and improve the perception of their customer service so again you can find that on my website as well dr kellyhenry.com awesome well i definitely encourage everybody to check out your book check out the website learn how to do better customer service i think that on across basically every industry it's something that's always needed if you can do it well more often than not it sets you above the competition because most of the time people don't put the focus or heir to uh craft as well as they should have so thank you again for coming on the podcast it's been a fun it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell and you'd like to be a guest on the podcast just go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the podcast we're always uh happy to share your stories a couple more things as listeners one make sure to click subscribe and you're podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so new people can find out about the podcast as well last but not least if you ever need help with your patents train marks or anything else with your business just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us at chat thank you again kelly it's been fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey is even better than the last you