A second-generation chiropractor whose passion is enhancing and protecting the chiropractic profession. He is CEO of the ChiroLaw law firm and Conway Consulting Group. His law practice consists primarily of health law and government relations with a strong focus on Medicare. He is also a partner in ChiroArmor LLC a chiropractic compliance company. Dr. Conway is the co-founder and executive director of the chiropractic society of Wisconsin, a dynamic growing state association that is changing the dynamics of the chiropractic profession in Wisconsin.

Dr. Conway through his work with Dr. Michael Jacklitch, CMS and the Chief Medical Directors from the Medicare Contractors changed the entire Medicare landscape reducing the previous error ratio from the high 90% to the low 20% through the development of a universal national agreement for chiropractic documentation procedures that specifically outlines the required documentation necessary to demonstrate medical necessity of chiropractic care. He provided instruction of these changes to tens of thousands of chiropractors as well as MAC claims reviewers to fully understand what documentation should be in the chiropractic records submitted for review of services.

Having served as a regulator with the Wisconsin Chiropractic Examining board for nearly a decade he fully understands the responsibilities of each state board in protecting the public and maintaining the reputation of the chiropractic profession.

Dr. Conway served on the NBCE Board of Directors for 8 years and is a current Board member of F4CP.

When in full time chiropractic practice his focus included chiropractic occupational health. Obtaining his diplomate in occupational health he assisted many local and national companies with chiropractic ergonomic programs. He was one of the first chiropractors to speak at the national safety congress and has had over 6000 industrial representatives attend his injury prevention programs.

TRANSCRIPT

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  You've made the Chiro Hustle. Sit back and learn from the greatest influencers in the profession on the world's number one Chiropractic podcast. Before we dive into this powerful episode, please remember to subscribe to our channels and give us a 5-star rating on iTunes and to continue hustling. This episode is sponsored by Transact Card, Align Life, NeuroInfinity, Imaging Services, Chiro Health USA, Chiro Moguls, Pure Chiro Notes, Titronics, Sherman College of Chiropractic, New Patients in a Box, Life Chiropractic College West, Pro Hockey Chiros, Pro Baseball Chiros, and the IFCO. Let’s hustle!

LUKE MILLETT (PRODUCER):  Hey guys, welcome to episode 526 of the Chiro Hustle Podcast. I'm your producer, Luke Millett, and here's your host, James Chester.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  So today we had the opportunity of interviewing Dr. Stephen Conway. If you want to hear the story about how to fix problems in chiropractic, stay tuned. Welcome back. This is another episode of the Chiro Hustle Podcast, episode 526. We're five and a half years into this illustrious program, and I know that there's a lot of takeaways today. So get out your pen and paper, sharpen it up, and start making some notes because we're going to get ready to hustle here over here at Chiro Hustle. Check us out over Chiro Hustle.com. It's where you can go get all of our interviews that we've ever done, and just really appreciate everybody for supporting this show and what we do. And today we have Stephen Conway, D.C. Esquire, attorney dude, also chiropractic dude. We're going to talk about some things he's done for the Medicare part of chiropractic and hopefully subdue some people's fear around that topic. And if this guy finds a problem, he fixes it, which I absolutely love up there in Wisconsin, and he's got the CSW. We'll talk a lot more about that. But before we get into his story and how he interweaves his genius into chiropractic, I want to let everyone know the big why. Why do we do what we do over here at Chiro Hustle? Well, first things first is the First Amendment, freedom of speech. We've never censored anyone on this platform. And I think that that's super valuable. We believe in truth. We also believe in supporting medical freedom and family health freedom. So anybody's topics that they want to discuss on our show, we make sure they have a platform to be heard, acknowledged, and seen. After that, we do protect BJ Palmer's Sacred Trust. If you do not know what that means, go to your favorite search engine right now. And we'll pause this interview and go and search for BJ Palmer's Last Words, BJ Palmer Sacred Trust. I guarantee you're going to learn more about chiropractic than you previously did just by knowing that we have to guard this and protect it. And then we also support subluxation based chiropractic. It's almost a misnomer that I have to acknowledge this, but we have to retool people's perception for philosophical purposes, knowing that we're not going to lose our way, and that we're not going to change our language, or our lexicon, or the things that make chiropractic unique and non-obvious, and the parts that make chiropractic special. And lastly, but not least, we also believe in in-intelligence and universal intelligence that when a man or woman in the physical gets adjusted, it connects them to man or woman in the spiritual. And with that being said, Dr. Stephen Conway, welcome to our show.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  Thank you. Let's play.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yeah. I am over like emphasis pumped over here just because we really met each other about two years ago at a Parker Stemmonar just in passing. And we were just reminiscing on like what you've been doing up there in Wisconsin and what I've been doing over here with this podcast and how we really intercede with each other really well.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  We really have different pathways going for the single, though.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yeah. You were telling me offline on our pre-interview chat about your second generation chiropractor. Your dad went to college down in Logan. You were down there. So that's really about your wife, too. So if you just like share your story, like how you got into chiropractic, that whole journey and reintroduce yourself to the world.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  That sounds good. So I'm very fortunate that I grew up in chiropractic. A lot of people, you don't know what the time is a kid, right? But then when you realize really the difference in how I grew up and grew up natural, and my father actually had a very secure job at General Motors in Jamesville, Wisconsin. He had a great job, good income, everything ready to go. And then my uncle became a chiropractor. And that was the beginning of the whole chiropractic connection. My father saw what was happening, loved it, got good results. So he personally got good results. And he basically uprooted our whole family. So I went to Logan twice. So we went down when I was a kid. I think it was five and my little brother was with me. And so we went through the process. My dad came out and it was at the time in the 60s when everything was still the quack where being attacked. And he was just a kind, really kind chiropractor that went back to a small town in Wisconsin and just worked his heart out for his patients and built this amazing practice. It inspired me that this is what I wanted to do. I'm one of four children and I'm the only chiropractor. But I went down to Logan. I took different colleges, but Logan felt right for me. And my wife actually, we dissected Leroy together. So it's a real love story. When you meet someone, when you're dissecting partner and true love, we've been married for 40 years and got out. We actually built a very big practice in Jamesville. So very patient orientated. We were seeing a thousand people a week in our clinic. It was just the two of us did extremely well. Love what we were doing. We became very involved politically at the time is when we were trying to get insurance equality. So it kind of gave me the political bog back then with then Tommy Thompson, who was governor of state and then became secretary of health. I unfortunately hurt my wrist. And it's one of those things where I just tried to do everything I could and just was not going to keep going. So not being a disabled type guy, I decided to go back to law school to see if I could help my profession in the legal profession. So in 94, I was able to get into the top trial law school in the nation. It's called Stetson. It's a little tiny school in St. Petersburg, Florida. So I was one of, I think there's 4,000 applicants for 60 slots and I snuck my way in, graduated and then have been able to use my two skills with the attorney and the chiropractic passion to help the profession. So it's kind of my quick story of how I got started.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yeah, I love these stories because it gives you a chance to reintroduce yourself to your friends, families, colleagues, past patients. And it gives you a chance to actually, people make stories about who the heck we are all the time. No. Until we remind them who we are.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  Exactly. You forget sometimes too, you're living in the present right now and facing all the different challenges. And you sometimes, I remember you sent me some things to look at. I looked back and I looked back and I thought, yeah, why did I start? What was it? It was always been a passion for me. And again, I'm very fortunate that my father went into it because I don't know if I would have found it otherwise. You never know how you would have found these careers that define your whole life.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yeah, you know, it's interesting you bring up like present time consciousness and like where we are right now. I went back and I was listening to one of the shows I really liked by a guy named Andy Fursella and he's the guy that started this program that I do called 75 Hard. And I was listening to them have conversations back in 2015. And I was listening to them have conversations back in 2018. And just how free people's like tone and their voice was. I feel like we're super tense now. We have a lot of like built up like there's a force inside of us that like we don't feel so free and relaxed. Our hair isn't just down and flowing right now. We have a lot of like pressure and noise around us.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  I agree. There's a little bit more noise and but again every generation has something. Yeah. Like when I came out, that's right when the team eliminated was happening. 83 was when I graduated. That's when the AMA was trying to destroy our profession. And so we're trying to fight for insurance equality. We're trying to fight for all these different things. So I think time you always tend to forget some of those higher pressures and all the different things with it. But the one thing was nice back then was there weren't HMOs. And so patients came to you based on your skills, your communication, your caringness and your ability to treat them and really care for them, not based on if I'm in a plan or not. And that was the one benefit I remember coming out even though we didn't have insurance equality, we still built these massive clinics based on caring for patients. And we also had to educate our patients, which I think is the difference. Now they're just kind of like funneled to you through different mechanisms. Back then, because we're always being attacked and patients came in, I don't want to say scared, but they're pretty, pretty nervous about coming to see a chiropractor because all the things they heard. We really, really had to work hard to educate them on what we did, what was happening. Because we did that, we created lifelong patients that loved us. I mean, there was a difference that they loved us. And I noticed I do a lot of work in the state capital now. And I can say for a fact that chiropractic patients will fight for their chiropractor. For the medical patients, they're not going to pick up the phone for the medical doctor to help them with an issue, but a chiropractic patient, because we care and we love, I know they will come to our health.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Well, even like back in the early history of the profession, when they were jailing chiropractors for practicing without a medical license, there's many stories of where the patients would come in to man the release of the chiropractor. And they would like, they would pick it outside the, you know, the judges chambers until they would release the chiropractors.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  Exactly. It's that connection we have as chiropractors. And I hope you never lose that. And I, and again, I was on the NBC border director, so I got to go to the colleges for eight years. And I can see there was a time after a minute, there was a lot of people getting in based on money. You know, they saw there was a good economic aspect of being a chiropractor. And they're the ones I think that have trouble with everything because it's money based, not patient based or purpose based. I'm really seeing over the last six or so years, people getting in realized the agent was there, all the money, all this stuff, it's not there. They're getting because they want to help people. And I really see that as the generation coming out now and working is really going to help our future because again, we have that really that connection with a patient and we care about them. And that's going to help us survive any attacks that's coming in, because again, our patients will be there as part of our team, which most healthcare providers don't have. It's just a transaction for most people for us. It's actually a passion and it's a family.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yeah, I think that that's one of the things that sets chiropractic apart from every other care model out there is people actually, they get acknowledged. We get a proper exam. They get hands on care. They're not just another number. They're not just another chart. They're not just another symptom. They're not just in because they're trying to get over some type of entrenched illness. They're actually coming to a chiropractor and for lack of a better like phraseology, they're looking for wellness.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  Yeah, they want help. They want to have someone who cares for them. Yeah. Chiropractors, we connect really quickly. Because there is a trust there and that's what we're actually trying to help them. It's just not a number. If you look at a lot of the hospital systems, you have administrators above all these MDs and stop telling them what to do. It's a number. You have to say 16 per hour or whatever it may be. In chiropractic, it's just the doctor there. It's the doctor and their staff. Their staff care as much as the doctor does. We have staff in chiropractic.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  And chiropractors really value a person's time. If you go to a regular big box medical center, when are you going to be seen?

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  Yes, if you are going to see.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  And that's just did is when in chiropract you show up, there's a procedure. Well, and systems. There's a plan.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  Because we used to see a lot of people and people used to say, you know, you can't get good quality care and that time period, I'm like, well, maybe you can't, but it doesn't mean I can't. And so we can, time isn't equal quality, really what it is, is that still set that you have and the communication you have with that patient really sets the tone and the ability for you to help that patient.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  And it's not time based. And there's a couple of things. I've learned the whole system, man. Like people come in and they want help. Yes. And then you're going to say, okay, this is what I found. There's so much concern. There is. This is how I can help you. Two things stop people from taking care, time or money. And you have to fight those objections. And then you say, okay, great. Now we've fixed this and we fixed this. Now let's start. Exactly. So it's a very easy system. And people actually appreciate that when you talk to them on that level and they don't get some crazy insurance bill through the mail. Like for like, I mean, I tell people all the time, like you can invest in your health now or pay for sickness later. And if you think that a chiropractor is going to dupe you on like a 90 day care plan, try to go to the emergency room and take an ambulance. That's going to cost you. You're saving. They're there.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  So you're 100% correct. And that's where that trust factor comes in very quickly with chiropractors is they can feel it in our heart. And so the time and the money that you're talking about, those obstacles become less and less because we show the value to them. And so the value becomes a higher focus point than actual the money. And then must see really how truly little they're spending compared to everything else and the value they're getting for their health. It isn't really a sale. It's nothing to it. It's really education.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yeah, it's all patient centered. It is.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  It has to be. In order to don't, and you can see it, I mean, we're not a perfect profession. It wasn't don't. They'll do their things, but usually patients find out, you know, then they have to resort to, I don't know, the bent pens or whatever how they use to get people and right. But most chiropractors, because of what they do, it's referral based. And that's the strongest base. Our practice was a wellness practice. We had patients that patients that just wanted to be there. They felt better. They realized coming to us kept them better. And so they asked to say, how can I do this? It wasn't that we were telling them to do. They said, how can I maintain this? How can I do it? And that's how we built our practice. Yeah.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  And I think that that's the honest way to take care of people.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  It felt good to us. We went home every night, happy to see it.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yeah. I know. Well, I know from both your backgrounds now, because we've had a little bit of a chance to warm these Matthew phones up. Chiropractic background, attorney background. And then there's this fun word out there called Medicare. Talk about how you took your two skill sets and helped with that organization.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  It actually started with a single phone call. And I still remember, you know, those, you remember where you were when those things happened. So it was a phone call from the ACA. And they basically said, Steve, we see a tsunami of audits coming down on our profession. Our air ratio is at 90%. We have not figured out a solution. We see it coming. There's only very few chiropractor attorneys in the United States. Can you at least look at this problem, see if you could help us? And I'm like, in my head thinking, I don't like Medicare at all. Right? It wasn't my practice. And I like, but I thought I have to help my profession. So I thought, I'm just going to try and find the quickest solution I could to this, because I always look to see if I can find a solution. And I remember looking at it and I thought, okay, most chiropractors, they get a letter of audit. They don't know what to do. And so I created an audit defense task force where basically if you get a certain letter, then here's a response you can do. Kind of AB, right? Real simple. And I put it all together. I got different attorneys to help them. I put it on a website and I thought, I am good. I'm out of this assignment, right? And I can go do something I would rather do. And then I got the letter. And it's one of those letters you never forget. So what happened was 800 chiropractors got a letter from just called a Z-PEC, but it's basically, it's like, it's a group that's looking for fraud and abuse. So 800 chiropractors got a letter. And this letter basically said, paraphrasing, but not quite much. We've been watching you. We think you've been billing for these, all these things as active care, but they should have been maintenance. And we want you to go back and look at these 20 patients we just sent to you. We don't want your records. But if you feel these should have been maintenance rather than active treatment, here's how to turn yourself in for criminal prosecution. And when you see that at the very end, every chiropractor who got that letter thought, am I done, right? Can you imagine how scary it was to have that come in? So the state of Iowa, it was Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and…

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  You've made the Chiro Hustle. Sit back and learn from the greatest influencers in the profession on the world's number one Chiropractic podcast. Before we dive into this powerful episode, please remember to subscribe to our channels and give us a 5-star rating on iTunes and to continue hustling. This episode is sponsored by Transact Card, Align Life, NeuroInfinity, Imaging Services, Chiro Health USA, Chiro Moguls, Pure Chiro Notes, Titronics, Sherman College of Chiropractic, New Patients in a Box, Life Chiropractic College West, Pro Hockey Chiros, Pro Baseball Chiros, and the IFCO. Let’s hustle!

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  We've watched out for the states that received it. Iowa put up a webinar. I've never done a webinar in my life. We're not now. It's easy for me to talk back and forth on the computer. I've never done it before, except for this is my first time. So I'll come on the screen. I'm trying to do a webinar. I'm talking to my computer, and I had 800 chiropractors on the other end of my computer wondering if they're going to jail. And I'm like, okay, my little letter, you do this, that my little program I figured out was not going to help here, right? I realized very quickly, this is a very serious problem. And so I was able to work with them, and all those 800, only two actually had to go through any process. I found a solution for them. But right after that happened was 2000 chiropractors were audited in the Carolinas in Virginia. So I'm like, okay, wow, this is the tsunamis here. I can't back out. And so I was appointed with Dr. Jacklist to chair the Medicare Committee. And so what we did is we made an agreement, the person who actually had been sharing it was a wonderful person, but he died of a heart attack. So they were looking for some else to come in. We said, we would come in if we could do it our way. And the other person did fine. I mean, they were really working hard for chiropractic, everything, but we wanted to go a different way. So they really had no choice to agree to that. Dr. Michael Jacklist on North Dakota. And I do this. So what we did is we actually went and met with all the, they're called max. So this is, you know, CMS is the top thing in Medicare. They assign out to all these Medicare contractors. So this would be NGS, Meridian, Kahaba. They all have names, but every state has one of them that they submit their Medicare forms to and they're billing. So we picked out one that happened to me in Madison and I had to end with, and we met with them. And through that meeting of going in just a different way, communicating differently, communicating like how I did in my practice, right, differently than just antagonistic, we went in and we were able to start solving problems immediately that had never been solved before. And through that process, we started meeting with all of the different max, the chief medical director. So we always met with the senior vice president or the chief medical director of those organizations. And I can give an example like we went down to Palmetto. The entire state, United States was being denied if you had a Palmetto railroad Medicare claim. And so we actually flew down to Georgia, met with their top people, listened to why they were denying the claims, showed them an alternative, why their decisions wasn't correct in a very flat way. And that night they changed your screen. And that next day, every car parked in the United States was getting paid 100% off of one visit. So seeing that we were making progress on each individual claim or each individual company, what we did is we then went to, met with CMS and we had all of them come into Washington, D.C., which has never happened before, historic, really, for any profession. We brought all the chief medical directors into Washington, D.C., we met with them, we explained what was going on, because I knew it wasn't just chiropractors. That was the problem here. I knew there were things on their other side that was going on. And so we basically met with them for three years back and forth and we're negotiating really what I consider universal solution. And so after they agreed to it, they asked Mike and I to go and train all their reviewers. So we agreed to this is what chiropractors need to do. And then we went and Mike and I trained all their reviewers. So we had that in ready to go. And then we made a promise to the profession. And Mike and I went out and I've easily had 50,000 chiropractors come by program. That's probably when you saw me, I was probably teaching at Parker on that day there. So Parker's put me in the big room. Florida, FCA, had me down for three years straight at all of their things. I've been to as many state associations as I can. But in teaching the chiropractors a very simple way to do this and we made it extremely simple. Knowing the other end was ready for it. Our air ratio dropped from the 90s for the first time in decades down into the 30s. And then we got into the 20s. And what that means is all the audits that were happening and all these people are trying to scare chiropractors that they're going to be audited and all these jumpsuits and all the other stuff that's going to come at you doesn't exist anymore. We removed all the screens. They were a lot of coverage to think I could only have 12 visits or 20 visits. That's all gone. Everything has just been removed that was a barrier and an attack on our profession is gone. So now a chiropractor is treated the same as medical doctor. They're treated the same way and they should have zero fear of being audited by Medicare. The only way they can audit now is they're really truly an outlier. And it takes a lot to be an outlier. So I kind of wanted to get that was Michael today because there's so many experts out there that are still trying to scare people, scare chiropractors that they have all these other guys are out there scaring people that they're going to be out of compliance and they're going to go to jail, which is just not true. It's just not true anymore. So I really want to take that whole fear thing and just drop it down to where it should be.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  For example, I think that it's super valuable. And because of that momentum, you went and started doing, you opened another pathway in Wisconsin.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  Well, there was another thing with that thing. Going back just one more thing with the Medicare thing. Once we hit, the reason we couldn't get Medicare parity, they're going for that right now where chiropracts you get paid the same as medical doctors by Medicare. The reason they wouldn't do it is because we were only given three codes, right? There's only three codes they pay for. And we were actually having an aeration of 90%, where everyone else is around 15%. So like you're kind of goofing up three codes, 90% of the time, how can we ever give you more codes? Does that make sense why they wouldn't? So as soon as we hit that first 30, the first one we ever got back was Palmetto. I remember being on a stage with Palmetto where North Carolina was lecturing with the Chief Medical Director and I to the State Association. And she pointed out she goes, this is when Steve came to our office and you guys were at 90%, you're now at 20%. And she showed the graph right there. And I'm like, oh, awesome. I said, can I have that? She goes, sure. So I took that and we gave it over and they actually took it over to send her to Grassley in national to help us because then we could say we're not at 90% anymore. We're actually at 20. And then I got CalHava at 20. Then NGS came down into 20. You're radiant. We got an Iranian at 30. So all of them started sending us data that were no longer on the radar, were no longer going to be audited. We're there. So then nationally, our national associations could now say the barrier is gone. We're the same as everybody else. We should get full payment for everything we do. So that was kind of that full impetus to get rid of the discrimination against us was based on that air ratio, which this one guy from North Dakota, me, worked our heart out to get. So it doesn't take a whole bunch of people, right? It just takes a few people like you. I mean, look what you're doing by yourself, right? You're changing the world using your skill sets in this podcast world. It only takes a few people to make a difference.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yeah, you know, it's interesting you say that when I meet people in public and airplanes and airports at restaurants, you know, my biggest, like, I guess significance in my culture is Joe Rogan. Yeah. And I always ask people, I'm like, Hey, do you guys know who Joe Rogan is? And they say, Yeah. And I go, Well, I'm that guy for chiropractic. Yeah. We have a very unique opportunity here within the podcast world with chiropractic. And I saw where there was a soft spot in the market. And we just went and took it. And we're going as fast as we can doing as much as we can for the profession with it. But that little bit of acknowledgement for us, it just, it shows that we are making an impact. And when I when I mentioned it to people, Dr. Steven, they respect chiropractic more that they have a podcast that promotes their profession.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  It's true. And it's, it's in the way you do it too, because you're, you're using it to benefit the profession. And that's, you'll see a lot of people use it to benefit themselves. Like everything I've done, I really did not benefit. I lost, right? I was away from home all those weekends. I for basically 10 years, I was lecturing somewhere in the United States. My wife knew me, but it was rough, but she's a chiropractor. So she understood the purpose and the passion. But once we got all the air ratio down, I only go certain places now, because I don't, I don't have to. I didn't do it for any personal game. And that's like same for you. This isn't a personal game thing. You're actually in our pre-conferencing, I could feel in you that you're doing this to help our profession, which is, is really respectful and I really appreciate it.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Well, I feel, Dr. Steven, like we're in different deployments.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  Yeah, we're skill sets. We have different skill sets that we're going for the same target, same goal, right? We're talking offline. You will not find me on any social media. It's just not me. And so, but I admire people that use that skill set because it is the next generation up. The younger generation, this is where they get their information. This is where everything's happening. So you're right on that positive track to make that difference.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  I just didn't joke, you know, you said that you had about 800 people show up to a webinar. Yes. When they had it. Yeah. If you guys ever want to have a webinar and have 800 people show up to it, audits and people.

None:  Yeah.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  The hard part, you know, and I didn't even know how to do a webinar, right? Also in these questions to come outside, I'm like, what is that? You know, I never took one. I'm like, and I'm like, and I'm like, and I'm like, well, I go to jail. Oh, God. You know, I started learning. And the stuff on there, I could just see because I'm just a fear. Yeah, I think I'm not here. I can help them. I was already on the next step of, all right, we got to do this. I got to do that. I'm working with this. You know, I said, basically come back tonight, give me a chance to figure this out. And we did. They came back that night and we figured it out. But when I started seeing over there the fear, and I'm like, oh, okay, that's what I saw how this was impacting their lives. And same thing at the FDA or Parker, you know, there'll be a thousand people. They're not excited about Medicare, right? This is not like, oh, I can hardly wait for it. I even start my programs. Like I knew you couldn't sleep last night for Medicare, right? And they all like, not really, but we kind of want there's a fear base. And I want to remove that fear in my program is called just show me what to do. I take the fear out. And that's that was a nice part at the end. People go, this is all I have to do is that this is exactly need to do. I figured the solution. Mike Jacklist and I did it. Just do this. And we made it super simple to do. And that's what that's what changed everything because they could actually apply and do it, not just some theory. There's an application that they could do. And they actually did. I found that with chiropractors, they really do care, right? They want to know. So that's what I call it. Just show me, just show me what they do and I'll do it. And so that was the exciting part there. And thank for let me share that because again, I don't really get that out. And I still see some people that do this compliance stuff that tried scare people. But it really hurts me because there's no need for it. There's really no need. You can educate people that you don't have to scare them.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  So I know we don't have a whole lot of time left on our episode today, but I kind of want to go lightning around with you so we can answer some of the core questions.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  I'm ready to hit it.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Where's the profession headed? Where do you see it going in the next decade, two decades?

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  We're going to dominate. In my world, we're going to dominate. We just have to have people believe it because it's so set up for us to dominate right now. The pandemic opened up the entire world for us because people realized really what the other professions had to give and our professions, everything gives. So I think we dominate.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yes. And you know, when I meet people out, I told you I did like hundreds of screenings. And when I meet people, they're like, well, I don't believe in chiropractic. And you know, I say to them, well, you know what a belief system is? Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Yeah. I say chiropractic is a healing art. Yeah. I was like, you don't have to believe in it for it to work.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  No, and some of your best, some of my best patients came in with their arms cross like I don't believe you know, like, oh, this is going to be great. I knew, I knew once they got the magic, right, that they would just be my best patients and

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  they always were once they get the big idea. All else follows.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  And they get the results. We know we're going to dominate. That's, that's where we're going.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Who are some of your heroes who has positioned you to become the man you are today?

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  Obviously, my father and my parents were big. My wife is truly amazing. Loose Bartelli. So I don't know if you know Loose Bartelli or not. He, he's actually been one of my heroes and because I watched when I was young chiropractor in 1983, I saw him fighting back for my profession and he was out there. He was on the big stage being attacked, the Wilkes trust, all those different things. And I've watched him and we've become friends. I can email him all these different things, all the things I want to do. They had a real, real amazing tribute to him. I drove to Pittsburgh just to be there. So he's truly one of those chiropractors that was out there. And if you're going to be out there, like I had a couple of people say, you, you have some enemies. I'm like, yeah, if you're going to be doing anything and going big, not everyone's going to love you, right? But his passion and what he did for our profession and that that should be his attorney that was always helping him. I could say I know what the obstacles are, but I need to get to the solution. So I, we're similar in that I don't focus on obstacles. I focus on the solutions. The obstacles are just kind of my way and I just make them on my way. So he's one of the people that touched me very early in my profession and it can continue to be someone I truly look up to.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yeah, that's, that's really powerful. You know, I hear stories of reverence towards people that have had influence on each other. And I love it when people mention their parents.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't be here. My mom's 91. I was with her last night.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  So I mean, she's, she's everything. And I also love it when people recognize their stay for another. So that's really cool.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  Yeah. I'm very lucky. My wife is very, she's just amazing chiropractor and she, she and I are a team.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  So I, I do like to close out our with some type, like a miracle store for people who are walking.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  And I'm thinking, I don't know if I have the miracle. I mean, where I helped a chiropractor, I can give my wife had one. A miracle chiropractic story. Yeah. Yeah. So my wife had one and it's actually in a journal. So she had this young girl that came in her eyes had this amazing rare condition that the only surgeon that could help her was in California and this is in Wisconsin. And so they had everything monitored with her eyes. I mean, in the local people on the issues, just about ready to go out and have her surgery to save her eyes. And she fell in the snow on the ice. And so my wife started treating her with chiropractic and amazingly, cause they're monitoring. I mean, this is a before and after, right? They're monitoring everything with her eyes and all of a sudden they kept asking the parents like, what's going on? And the parents like, what do you mean? They're like, well, everything's getting better. We're going to slow. We're going to postpone the surgery. Everything is changing in this young girl. And the parents were like, well, we're taking the chiropractor and they're like, well, not that, isn't it? You know, they couldn't even accept that. But that was it. And the parents saw it. And so like, we don't know what you're doing, Dr. Cindy, but can you keep doing this? And so my wife kept treating. She was one of the first pediatric chiropractors. So she's really, really good with children. And she just kept doing her magic with a young child to the point where they actually canceled this surgery. They did not have to go to California. Her eyes became perfect. I mean, she came in for a fall, but she changed this little girl's life. And so that, and again, she put it in a journal and stuff like that, but that's one of those miracle things that who knows what happened, that little girl, she went and went out. If the surgery would have worked, she could be able to apply whatever it is. So here's someone through chiropractic now has a normal life and her eyes were normal. So that was kind of, I think, a very miracle story within our practice. One I remember.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  I mean, I need school philosophy, the power that made the body, hills the body. The body is nothing extra in it, just something interference. When you clear up the interference, it nourges a lot of neurological pattern. The body is a self-regulating organism. The lights get turned on like people's lives change. I think that when you take the obstruction off of that C1, C2 area, the upper cervical stuff that chiropractors do and adjust that power source at the brainstem, it changes people's lives. And it changes their optics. It changes everything.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  Yeah. I mean, we all have just so many different things that we've helped people, headaches for 30 years and they're gone. I had one lady who have seen, I don't know, 60 chiropractors. Her spine looked like bamboo. One adjustment, she was pain free. You're like, great. You know, so it's amazing that different levels of people you can help. But again, it's rare when we don't help someone, but we work our heart out to make sure we do everything we can for every patient walks in our flight. That's the power chiropractor.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Well, many of these people have never been touched. Right. Until they see a chiropractor. They've never been touched by a doctor. So I think that that's compelling for like the profession is I have a friend of mine, Peter Morgan, that's done like 115 mission trips down to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And down there, they called them the touch healers.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  No, yeah, because also in your end and everything's changing. Yeah, you touch in a heel. Yeah. We just have to have that next generation have the passion purpose and I see it coming out of them because they didn't win it. They win it not for money. They win in for passion purpose. So I see our profession do an extremely, extremely well. We just have to help them financially make sure that they can survive that part, which I always tell them, they always, I said, you don't have a debt. You invested in a career. You know, I have all this debt. I go, no, you don't. They have an investment. Yeah. I said, no, you invested in a career. You got a career. I said, yeah, you don't invest in a house, right? Right. So you, well, sometimes you do and you get money back, but it's really invested in a career. So you just got to change that mindset, get them going and I think we're just going to

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  do great. Well, Dr. Stephen, is there anything I didn't ask you that you'd like to share with our audience before we call it an evening?

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  No, I don't think so. It's been a funny evening for me. I didn't know what to expect. I can. It has been thoroughly enjoyable for me. So thank you.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yeah, well, if people want to get in touch with you, where can we send them to?

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  My social media. So the easiest place to find me if they do need help on things is Kyrolaw at AOL.com. I'm still old school with AOL. Or the chiropractic society of Wisconsin, it's an amazing chiropractic group in Wisconsin. I'm the executive director there. That's the best place to find me. And then they can see all the wonderful stuff. Maybe you can get some of our team on and we can talk about what we're doing up here on that. And we can also find out how to find me.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Cool. Well, I really appreciate your time. Thank you for sharing a little bit about yourself and how you've gone to protect the sacred trust and protect the future of this profession and supporting it with your time, talent and treasure.

DR STEVEN CONWAY DC JD (GUEST):  Thank you so much for this time.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yeah. So I'm going to close up by telling everyone out there, you're just one story way. Keep hustling. I'll see you guys in the next episode. Bye for now, Doc. Bye. Thanks for listening to Kyrol Hustle. Don't forget to subscribe and check back next week to continue hustling.

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