You're listening to the big possible show with your host, Noah, Scott. It's time to break through the limits and achieve all you can imagine. All you can imagine. Welcome to this episode of the big possible. This is Noah Scott signing on with a very special guest. Today, today, we are going to welcome Dr. Chris Bowman to the show. He, Chris is a pediatric chiropractor and founder of Trailhead family chiropractic. He's an author and regenerative farmer in Southern California.
His mission is to educate and empower people to live their life in optimal. With of course purpose and with inextinguishable passion, uh, Chris, welcome to the show. Yeah. Thanks so much. No, it's, it's great to be here. I love to be around anything and anyone, um, that, that thing big, you know, so I love the name of your podcast and I'm excited to dive in. Absolutely. Yeah. So just, um, I mean, that's quite the bio, it's really exciting that, you know, you've got farming.
Dr. Things, chiropractic stuff. So tell me just a little bit about the people that are, that are in, you've got a book coming out. Um, just give it to people that are listening a little bit about, about who you are and just what you do in a nutshell. Sure. Yeah. Well, I've had the privilege really of, of knowing what I wanted to do all the way back in high school. Um, back then I wanted to be a sports chiropractor.
Well, prior to that, I wanted to be an NFL player and as Noah can see, I mean, I'm, I'm nowhere near a NFL. Uh, physical attributes. And so I started to figure out what I wanted to do after high school. Um, I like to physical therapy, but I didn't really have much experience, um, with physical therapy about seeing a chiropractor since I was seven or eight years old. And as part of our senior research project on a career, I interviewed my chiropractor and I was sold.
That's exactly what I wanted to do. Um, initially started out wanting to be a sports chiropractor. So if I couldn't play for the Raiders, then at least I could be on the field, you know, continue to help them play. Um, and, and that's the, that's the school that I chose. Every, every decision that I made. Was focused on helping me become a premier elite sports chiropractor right out of school. Um, and it wasn't until my, my second year in chiropractic school. So I ha I had a year left.
I was at a seminar in San Diego. And one of my now mentors was onstage, um, talking about what he was doing with the kids and chiropractic. And it wasn't really something that was new to me. Obviously, I'd been going to chiropractor as a kid. My sister had some great results as, as, um, as a pediatric patient. Um, but I wasn't really. Excited to do that until he said, I can't imagine how frightening it must be for kids to be locked out of a world.
They want to be a part of, and to this day, I still get goosebumps every time I say that, because he's referring to, um, whether it's kids that are suffering with neurodevelopmental challenges that are stuck on psychotropic medications that keep them, you know, flatline, they don't let them experience emotions or. Um, engage with the world or really understand what's going on around them or a little kid stuck on antibiotics over and over and over again. Cause their ear infections won't go away.
Um, and so on, you know, even babies on, on antidepressants and, um, you know, it's just, uh, the world is getting crazier and crazier and crazier and the answers are getting more and more farfetched until perio practic came into my life. And so that's when I went from kind of a zero or a hundred. I'm not an all or I'm all the way in. Um, and that's when I started. Um, all my training in pediatric chiropractic. When I finished school, I realized that I, I w I knew everything.
Adjusting kids and analyzing subluxations in kids, but I'd actually never held a newborn before. Um, and so that was kind of like my first big, like stepping into like, is this truly the purpose that God has for me? And maybe I'm four or five months into practice. A mom came to a seminar that I was teaching on neurodevelopmental disorders and she had three boys. Her second had, um, diagnosed with autism, but then her youngest was eight or nine months at the time. And, um, this baby.
I was not doing well, um, was on. Let's see, I don't remember probably for medication for constipation for colleague was about to have a surgery for torticollis was about to be put on the antidepressant, um, and w was on a failure to thrive pathway. And so here I am. Uh, four or five months into practice, all the confidence in the world, but not really much practical if you're not really sure how to handle a baby. Um, we did what we do in the office.
We do scans that measure the amount of stress and a kid's spine. I did a consultation with them. Um, it turns out he was, um, trying to be born. Vaginal has four different times of using the vacuum. So had four hematomas on their head, um, had gotten. They decided baby's not going down this way, did an emergency C-section. So pull the baby back up through the birth canal out the stomach.
Mom had bruises on her back from the amount of polling and, and, um, trauma that, that the baby had been through. And that's why the baby was so stressed out. Um, we did one adjustment, told the mom to come back the next day. And as the story goes, we're able to get off all medications. We're able to stop doing PT. And this kid is now living a relatively neuro-typical lifestyle. That he wouldn't have been able to live. Had he not been in my office?
And in, from that moment, I knew this message had to get out there. Cause there's there. This is one mom of hundreds of thousands that live around me that are experiencing very similar, have experienced similar birth processes. But if they didn't hear about chiropractic, you know, their kids were, are going to go down very different paths. Um, so that just kind of launched, you know, my, my passion for chiropractic for teaching.
Um, I rented space out of a chiropractic office for my first three years. I grew. Um, in probably two years, well, I won't get into the nitty-gritty of it, but I grew up two years double the average American chiropractic practice and opened my own practice, which is Trailhead family chiropractic now in which I have an associate. Um, and we're doing big things in our city. Um, and I, and I love what you.
Um, kind of a prompt and the calendar thing where you said, like, what's the future of your industry? And I like to think of Trailhead as I have the leading edge of what we're doing now. Chiropractors are going to be doing three or four years from now. We've going to cash office for three or four years because we saw where insurance with going and now.
Uh, officers around me are starting to turn into cash, but now we're switching from a paper visit to a membership model, which has made popular kind of like with the joint in those sorts of things. Um, um, so Chris, let's, I'm going to, before we get into the future top talk, I really want to, to zero back in, on, on the story, because there's so many valuable nuggets that I think I'd love to.
To bring your particular journey and allow the listeners to kind of relate to some of the themes that are happening here, because especially I'm looking at this theme of you having a clue early on, and then taking that, finding the courage to go forward with the training.
It w if you hadn't done that preparation to get, you know, the background, the education, the skills, if you didn't begin that journey towards finding this, when that opportunity arose, you might not have been ready to accept it as your life calling.
And I think that's something that's really interesting, you know, as we, as we talk about your story, And this, uh, so I mean, if you could maybe talk a little bit about what it feels like to prepare for something that you just have a clue, like, okay, this is, I think this is my purpose, but I'm not sure yet. And what it feels like to keep going, even though you still have a little bit.
Yeah, I think, um, you know, I think the quote that you're probably having in the back of your mind is successful. One is when opportunity meets preparation. Right? Um, obviously I had a lot of prep, um, time in school. It was kind of dedicated prep time, but I think a lot of times entrepreneurs that's the biggest thing that they fail at is the worst. We're such action execution oriented type people that we forget to lay a strong foundation. Um, and we get glued to, um, this is what. To happen.
And so you pursue with that with a narrow laser focus, exactly what you want to happen. And oftentimes I give you tunnel vision and you. Keep your eyes open to other opportunities that may be related to what you're, what you're pursuing. So for me, it kind of started with, I wanted to be a chiropractor. You know, that it's, it's, it's, it's a niche, but it's also very broad once he started getting into the chiropractic profession.
So every decision that I made was, is geared towards I'm going to chiropractic school. You know, like I'm going to learn all the sciences, I'm going to learn all this stuff. And so I think people that are maybe pursuing. Entrepreneurship or coaching or investing or, um, you want to make a job as a dog Walker you're in high school or something like that. I think it just takes some momentum and a general direction.
And as you get more experienced, as you read more, if you get around other people that are, you know, a level or two up. I think you learn how to start asking better questions. And I think that's the most important thing that people are paralyzed by in the beginning, it's like, okay, I want to start investing. And I want a big profile, like Warren buffet, you know? And it's like, uh, okay, where do I start? Like, I don't even know how to work a stock or how to transaction.
So just start walking and do a small transaction yourself and analyze every aspect of it. Look at what other people are investing into. And don't. You know, all in for broke right away until you get more experienced. So, you know, you can go all in with the, with the things that won't cost you much, you know? So I think go all in on the least risky decisions. And until you learn more, until you can keep putting, you know, you can go further down the road. Yeah. I love that.
And as, as you get further down the road, then you have a little bit more clarity into. Exactly what your role in this space would be. Yeah. Um, great. So now, now let's shift gears a little bit and talk about, talk about some of the future stuff that's going on. So, um, I also do want to make sure we have enough time to talk about the book because it's one, the title really released. Perspective, rewire your brain for success and abundance. I mean, come on.
That's exactly what the show is about here. It's like, it's such a perfect fit. So maybe let's, let's talk about that in terms of, um, what you're most excited about for the future. Yeah. I'm, I'm super excited about people making decisions. For themselves, you know, I think, uh, especially our generation of millennial generation, we're not going to work for the same company for 40 years on a job that we hate with the commute that we don't love and hopes of retirement that are going to be there.
What I really love about our generation is, is we're like, I will. Happy making less money. You know, I will make, I will work from home rather than make that commute two or three hours away for twice the money. Because my, my time, my worth is more than just what somebody else assigns it to, you know? Um, I think that's the future is people are looking for what's convenient for me rather than what can I do.
Um, I don't know how, instead of like putting all in and sacrificing everything spreading themselves thin it's more of like self care is going to be more important. And I think people are realizing that what the bombardment of stress is that self care is, is really, really important. Um, and so changing for kind of like going for, from my practice to the book, changing from. A paper visit to a membership model really puts accountability into their own hands.
And so instead of me losing out, when they cancel their visit, they play pay a flat fee to come in as much as they want. So it can be average out to five or 10 bucks a visit. And if they want to take advantage of that, it's better for me and for them because they get healthier. It takes me less time. And I'm not holding someone accountable, I can still guide their care. Um, and, and it's, it's cheap. I can, I can set prices that allow for whole families to come in.
That's another problem I was discovering is a mom would come in with a special needs kid or a special needs kid would only get so much better because the mom is constantly stressed out and so hurts just to go back on our kid and we'd go be in the circle of problems coming back over and over and over again. Um, and that model. Time for me, I could set certain adjusting times and that's what gave me the opportunity to start working on my book.
Um, I think the Lord just really put it on my heart to, um, offer something that's not just a, you offer a service and you get paid when you deliver that service, but create something that will be a legacy for my kids and something that I can leverage to continue to, um, really. Uh, I think principles of life that are being squished. And so perspective is it's kind of a three part book, but all, all combined into one, um, the, the title is perspective because I think that's what changed my life.
Um, you know, not going into the whole story. You can, you can read it in there, but in 2019, I nearly lost it all. I was down to $300 in my checking account, not able to pay payroll. I had to let go of most of my staff. Um, I was, my only option was I thought. Uh, big business loan to kind of carry me through the holidays and hopefully things will pick up in the new year.
You know what my life prompting, I closed my laptop before I hit submit on the business loan and just decided to trust that, you know, if I maintain the abundance in my mind, if I lost this kind of addiction to more patients, more money and just focused on taking care of people as I did in the beginning. That, that value that I'm putting out there would come directly back and in abundance, back to me. Um, and it helped me realize that abundance was already in me.
It's not something that you create. It's a perspective that you unlock, you know, when you stop living in a state of scarcity, hoarding everything to, you can start living in a state of abundance where how much value can I give to the world? I mean, it's impossible for it. And for people not want to jump on that vision and on your side. And so perspective starts with the premise of you cannot live in a state of abundance.
If you're not in a state of abundance internally from a health perspective, if your body is inflamed, if your body is stressed, your neurology is why wired to stay in a state of scarcity. And so we teach basically three basic principles, stress from some physical trauma, emotional trauma and chemical trauma. And so we go through all three of those and basically enable people to ask better questions. You know, what about EMS? What about toxins in my food? What it is about my posture.
And so that way they can see. Making changes that are going to be most meaningful in their life. And then once we've reached that the physiology, the neurology to live in a state of abundance and a state of ease, then we start to look at what a life with vision. Instead of just learning to go to work, get a paycheck, pay your bills, and hopefully have a retirement at the end of the day. But how can you start thinking bigger?
And once you start thinking bigger, you need to develop core values so that when you don't stray off and start developing or pursuing other people's passions. And then once you have that vision, now you can create a purpose. That's going to keep you going when it gets hard.
And so it's kind of just like one step along the way, kind of leading either people that want to be entrepreneurs or love their job, but just have kind of lost that passion or CEOs that, um, love what they do, but just aren't really living with that spark that they had when they first started the business. Really kind of find that and ask better questions or questions that they might not be asking themselves. That's going to reignite that passion. Wow. I've that?
Boom. That was just such an amazing, um, prompt, like just rolling off the tongue. They're just knowledge bomb after bomb after bomb. Fantastic. Yeah. Um, I can't wait to buy the book. It's it just sounds like there's a lot to, to, to unpack in that. Um, one of the things that I heard consistently was about this topic of asking better questions. Um, take a, take a minute and let's talk about decision-making frameworks.
What are you, what are the questions look like when you're facing a big decision when you're about to. Make something that maybe cross some frontier that you haven't explored yet, or you're about to do something that affects the future of your business. What are some of the, the questions that you use and decision-making frameworks that you, you found work really well for you? Yeah. Great question. I'll take a topic from my practice.
That's highly controversial, you know, even right now, um, COVID kind of brought it to light a little bit more, but having a practice focused on pregnancy and pediatrics, I don't just focus on let's make your spine aligned and help your nervous system live in a state of ease, even though that's enough. And that's more than what most doctors are doing for their patients. Um, I like to make or help, uh, Parents make good decisions for their kids and stepping into parenthood for the first time.
They're still malleable and moldable and an open to discussion rather than if you've been doing parenting for 15 or 20 years. And they're like, Nope, this is what's worked for me. Not mental. I always ask my parents let's have a birth plan. What do you want your birth to look like? What things do you want to do or not want to do? And inevitably vaccines come up right.
If you Google vaccines, do vaccines, work our vaccine say you're going to get a very curated answer from paid media, like Google Yahoo, and you know, those sorts of things. And so those aren't the right questions. If you're truly questioning, should I back the Nate, my kid or not? Should I do it now? Should I do it later? And so. You start to ask better questions. They're like, what are vaccines supposed to be doing? You know, what, who makes vaccines? And what's their, what's their motivation.
Um, are they, are they, have they been studied? What, what, what's the extent of, of their study? Who have they been studied by? And so once you start asking those sort of questions, you start to get more of a two-sided view. Education from your medical doctor, as far as vaccines are safe and effective, they prevent childhood disease. If this and this and this, but then also you let's start to look from the other side.
Oh, every single vaccine manufacturer has felony convictions and have paid billions of dollars in penalties. Oh, you start to look at why pharma, um, pediatricians might be, um, you know, having, uh, And the only answer is medications and vaccines because they get less than one semester of nutrition of education in school. Oh. And then you start to look at what put them to school. They got.
Sponsorships from Pfizer, Madonna, you know, you know, all these other Johnson and Johnson and, and those sorts of companies. So are vaccines inherently bad. That's not a right question to ask, because depending on who you ask, are you going to get different questions? If you're truly trying to get to the root cause of, should I inject my kid with the pharmaceutical? Is this going to help them or hurt them? Is this something that is aligned with the philosophy that I want to.
You know, uh, principles that I want to, um, and instill in, in my parenting, you know, then you start to ask different questions. Then it goes from an emotional decision to more of a educated decision. You know, our kids are created with an immune system. Augmenting that immune system. Is it because you don't trust it? Are you more scared of a side effect or are you more scared of treating a disease? Do you not know how to support a kid's immune system?
If you knew how to support the immune system naturally, would you want to do that? You know what I mean? And so there's so many different questions that you can start asking. I think it goes deeper than just searching for a answer and a sense of you want to fully understand that the scope that you're asking, what, what should a vaccine do? What, how does the immune system work and. Let's start there. You know what I mean?
And so if you have entrepreneurs that are, that are, um, maybe not asking entrepreneur or, uh, you know, vaccine questions, maybe like, so how do I, um, how do I make a decision for what I want to be? You know, uh, w how do I want to launch, you know, my business, it may not be that question. That's going to provide you the answer. Maybe you start asking, well, how much do you want. Who do you want to work with? How much overhead do you want to take on what's your vision for the future?
Is this something that you want always depend on you? Do you want to develop systems and then bring in other people? And so if you want to start a, like, we go back to the very beginning of a dog walking business, then that's going to start with you. It's low overhead. You can teach other people to do it. You can start to start, you know, to do other things.
However, um, what, what might be something, if you want to be a medical doctor or a chiropractor like myself, you that's largely going to be dependent on, on you, you know? And so then he start to talk about, if you want to make $2 million as a medical doctor, you're not going to do that. Just seeing patients, unless you're a surgeon or, you know, something like that. Then he started okay. And he started leveraging my education.
I need to start leveraging my patient base and maybe start selling supplements or, you know, so I, I think the edgy, the, the question framework that people can go to, if they like to get a clear cut answer, and often the answer lies in a bunch of different questions that gives you perspective from different angles. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. And it's really that just about. Don't settle for the surface level question, look for the root.
And it's almost like using that first principles, mental model. Like let's go back to the absolute beginning, remove all my preconceived understandings and then you're able to see it objectively. Yeah. So there were, there were a couple of times. A couple of decisions. I've, I've heard in the story here. One being, you making this decision to adjust your pricing model so that you could now leverage your time a little better.
The other was deciding to, um, create the book so that now you can leverage your expertise and while you're sleeping. Be able to, uh, impact many more people than, than you could just buy time for time's sake. Right. Right. That I think is another sort of, you know, there, there was a dish, a decision making process that happened for you to be able to come to that decision that, you know, what I need to do is I need to get a little bit more leverage. What does leverage really mean to you?
If you were to break it down for other people that they could, they could see. Okay. If I want to get more leverage in my life, how would I go about doing. Yeah, I, I think you have to become an actual. You know, education is never going to go away. That's the one industry that education will always be desired. And with the openness of the internet, I mean, you can educate anybody around the world. I mean, I, I think it comes down to.
W what can you do better than anyone that you know, and that you can continue to keep bettering at and the more you do it, the more valuable it will become. Um, I, I realized that the more I do adjustments, the more my body's going to be breaking down that the less time that I, that I have, that the more people that I see, the less time I'm going to have, and there was going to be a cap, you know, I, I can continue to hire more chiropractors, but that's.
That's a doable thing, but it's not leveraging what I've really invested most. And it was just my mind and my education. And so I, I think you, you have to start becoming an expert at something, going back to the dog walking thing. I mean, you can go into, you know, you know how to walk a dog in a hundred degrees. Well, you know how to walk a dog and snow, you know what boxers you need.
Do you know what golden retrievers need, you know, and that those niches people are going to read that, you know, like I'm thinking about buying a dog. Um, I want a dog that's low energy. That's going to hang out. That's going to be good with my kids. And so you can write an article. Everything that you know about golden retrievers versus boxers versus German shepherds, you know, and, and that's something that is going to sell because it fulfills a need that somebody wants.
It's a niche that not everybody's doing, and it's an expertise that you can leverage based on your experience. So you have to become an expert in with today's day and age. Mentors are widely available. YouTube can be your mentor. I mean, you can learn so many things from there. The leverage is mastery. You know, ultimately I think is what it comes down to. Fantastic.
Yeah, we, we're going to have to start working towards wrapping up and I selfishly want to ask so many more questions, but, um, we're gonna, I'm gonna, I'm going to choose two. So one is, is really about some practical tips that people can take, um, to tap into more courage because that's, uh, you know, again, listening to your story, that's something that there's a lot of faith that was tied with that, this decision to walk into the unknown and to try.
And so what are some things that you could suggest for the listeners to tap into that? Yeah, you, you can't step into something scary without a deep rooted purpose. That's going to ground you. If you're stepping into something scary just to make money, you're going to fail every single time. There has to be a reason why you're doing it, where if you don't do it, people are going to suffer. If people don't read my book and, and I have that knowledge. They're going to suffer.
They're never going to step out into entrepreneurship. That CEO is going to create a terrible work environment for their, um, you know, for their employees. That parent is always going to live life without purpose. Cause they feel worthless. Just, just being a mom or, you know, something like that. So you have to have a, why, a deep, grounded purpose. That's going to drive you through the hard times.
That's going to allow you to, um, pursue that, that vision and that purpose and, and whatever that, that, um, entrepreneurial idea or, or scary thing is, um, that that purpose has to have. Be there. And so I would invest most of your time figuring out like me. When I say that phrase, I get goosebumps every time when I don't want to wake up and go to work.
When, um, you know, we have staff problems when you have, you know, any, any problem that I can foresee, I will continue to love being a chiropractor because of that. Not because of the money, not because of the time, not because of, you know, what it brings me, but because if parents don't see me, kids like that little boy, his name's Jeremy and my book. Are are, are going to die and not be able to live a life in their optimal potential in their optimal health. Amazing.
Yeah. Well, let's go ahead and let's go ahead and close it out with just maybe one recommendation for a life-changing piece of content that you've read, maybe watched or. Sure. Yeah. I think it comes down to the title of my book. Abundance is in you, success is in you, it might just change, have a, have a, have a change of perspective, you know, almost like, uh, did you see big hero? Six is kind of an older cartoon.
I have young kids, so we watch them, but you know, he's like, just change your perspective. He looks upside down and he sees something that he didn't see before. And so you could be stuck on a problem. For weeks, months, years, decades. And it just get a different perspective and I promise you something good will come out of it. Ask a different question that you've been asking and something good will come out of it either you'll ditch it and realize you've been stuck on a problem.
That's never going to be solved for too long, or you'll solve it much quicker than you would just asking the same questions over and over and over. Fantastic. Dr. Chris, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Um, how do, how do the listeners stay in touch with you and how do they support you? Yeah. Great. Um, Instagram is the best, uh, my handle for my personal stuff.
And my book is at Dr. Chris Bowman, if you want more like health tips and things like that, you can follow my practice page at Trailhead Cairo. Uh, those are the two best ways right now. Um, I do have a website. I haven't released it yet cause we're doing a, a big giveaway com uh, probably we'll probably launch that next week. It's about $20,000 worth of value.
If you sign up to pre-order my book and includes a all inclusive health retreat out here in Southern California in the afternoon with me, uh, to dig into, you know, what your life problems are, whether business or marriage or, you know, whatever it is. Um, it's, I think it's like a four day. A thousand dollars towards travel, iPad, mini to record everything down, obviously signed copy of my book. Um, and so that website is going to go live here in the next week or so. Amazing. Awesome.
Well, thank you so much for, for being here. Thank you. That's it for this episode of the big possible show. This is Noah Scott signing out to let you know, I appreciate you for being here. Of course, if you enjoyed the episode and want to share some feedback, visit apple and drop. That review will help other people find the show. And it also gives me a signal that, Hey, people are out there listening with that.
May the rest of your day be filled with epic adventures and I'll see you right here for the next episode.