Issue 7 - June 2003

How does your garden grow?
Harvey Schwartz takes the path less traveled to sow success
By Todd Stumpf

He started out in Philadelphia. Fifty states later, he’s winding down in Bellingham, Wash. Harvey Schwartz, DC went from Woodstock to western Washington and back, and in the process grew a half-million dollar practice.

Schwartz, whose travels have taken him to every state in the union, lived in tents, slept on the ground at Woodstock and has valued a well-balanced focus on life. In fact, he now spends his free time working in an organic garden and says life is all about maintaining some sort of haven. It’s one of the many lessons he preaches and one of the many things to which he believes his success can be attributed.

“If you look at my life, the big word is ‘sanctuary’,” Schwartz says. “My clinic, my garden, the groups I’m involved in. They are a respite from the craziness that is going on out in the world, especially right now.”

Getting away from the hustle and bustle is part of why he’s scaling his practice back. He only sees patients two days a week now and has geared down toward retirement. Keeping the hustle and bustle away is why he’s part of the “1,000 Amigos,” a group whose aim is to keep the Bellingham area from growing too rapidly.

Rest assured, though, Schwartz did plenty of hustling, and a little bustling, on the way to building his Bellingham practice up to a 1999 peak of 271 patient visits per week, before he sold in early 2000 to Dr. Brian Boyd, current owner of Southside Chiropractic. Schwartz still sees 95 patients each week and had nearly 100 new patients in 2002 – all of this while launching his own consult-ing business on the side.

The odyssey that has led him to this point is not exactly your typical “boy grows up, goes to school, becomes a chiropractor” story. Far from it. Schwartz began as a teacher on an Indian reservation. He decided teaching wasn’t right for him, but he didn’t know what was. So, he retreated to an island, pitched a teepee and decided to live in it until he figured things out.

One day, as he wandered about the countryside, he happened upon an office called the Chiropractic Life Center. He admitted to not even knowing at the time what chiropractic was and that curiosity got the better of him. He walked in to ask the resident chiropractor, who, by way of explanation, offered Schwartz a free treatment and told him a bit about chiropractic. Just like that, Schwartz “figured it out.” Six months later he was in chiropractic school.

“There’s nothing wrong with creating some space in your life, not jumping into something,” Schwartz says. “Take a break. Take a meaningless job, but have the intent of finding what you want to do with your life. That same idea comes through in a practice, if you have a vision of what you want to do with that practice.”

His philosophy
Schwartz has a four-fold philosophy that emphasizes the importance of the first two patient visits, patient management and education, the hiring of associates and maintaining staff.

Schwartz, who tries to exude a “burning desire to help the patient” in the first visit, said making your motivation clear initially is essential. “My motivation is clear,” he says. “Doctors whose real motivation is to make a boat payment might as well write it on their forehead.”

In the second visit, Schwartz offers patients a booklet, a treatment plan and includes custom-detailed exercises and lifestyle advice.

He also reviews X-rays during the second visit and the booklet lists specific findings. Each booklet is unique, with Schwartz making recommendations to patients based on X-ray findings. He has a list of 25 or so exercises – a typical patient will have eight to 10 suggested as therapy – and prescribes them as treatment. He includes in the booklet what the findings were, patients’ pathologies and advice. It essentially gives patients a take-home reference guide for their care. “A lot of them say this is the first time they’ve had explained to them what their problem is,” Schwartz said. “Actually giving them the exercises to do every day, rather than having them just go to the doctor and having him tell them something they just forget until the next time. They’re doing something every day to become involved. Recognition is very helpful in the learning process. You’re healing yourself. No one else is doing the healing.”

Schwartz doesn’t use a hard sell, choosing rather to explain the problem to the patient. Schwartz says a good explana-tion rather than a selling job makes the solution obvious. The booklets and the soft sell are part of patient management. Education, which Schwartz terms a “huge part of my practice,” is as simple as getting to the point. “You have to be very clear with patients, with what their problem is to begin with,” he says. “The initial exam that happens with patients, I consider that they’re checking me out as much as I’m checking them out.”

Schwartz attributes a good bit of his success to his ability to retain staff. Excluding Boyd and his wife Katrina, five of the six other members of the staff have been with Schwartz for at least six years.

“A lot of chiropractors can’t retain staff. They don’t know how to train staff; they don’t know how to keep them; and they don’t know how to deserve loyalty from them,” says Schwartz, who adds it’s just a matter of making staff members feel important and not simply replaceable cogs in a wheel. “I have three employees who average over 10 years with me. That’s a huge accomplishment in the profession and I think I have some things to share with people – how to do that.”

When it comes to hiring associates, Schwartz’ position is that they aren’t necessary, but they don’t hurt. He says the reasons for hiring an associate are simple: They allow you quality time off and they give you a built-in buyer for your practice. Boyd, who was Schwartz’ associate, fulfilled that role three years ago when he purchased the practice from Schwartz.

Schwartz recommends that if you are going to hire an associate to be upfront from the very beginning. “I have learned that the initial discussions with a prospective associate doctor are critical,” he says. “I explain to them how they will feel during the first few months in the practice and also how they will feel a year later. I also tell them what I’m looking for and how most hiring doctors feel in a year. The attitude of both parties is dramati-cally different after a year together. This is critical to get out in the open and prevents surprises later.” He was surprised “big-time” in 1989 when he sold his first practice, Alpine Chiropractic Center in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. He sold the 9-year-old clinic to another doctor and moved to Washington to take a year or two off. The transaction went awry, though he did overcome it.

“This was a nightmare scenario and a learning experience,” he says. “After 15 months off, I left my family and came back from Washington and picked up the pieces. It was like an amazing miracle. The entire staff – who had been my staff and had gone with a new doctor – decided to stay with me. They came back with me, even though I told them my intention was to sell the clinic again.”

Schwartz’ original Idaho practice was among the more prolific in his area. He essentially built this practice from the start for a second time; it was back up to 150 patient visits per week within six weeks.

It’s a success he attributed, for a long time, to his chiropractic technique. Now he believes differently. “I now think that it’s 49 percent technique and 51 percent caring,” Schwartz says. Schwartz learned a lot from the Idaho misadventure. “My new practice was smaller and quickly more efficient and more profitable,” he said. “I was fortunate enough to get out of debt and stay that way – even while building my dream house.”

The Idaho experience also taught him that the best way to sell a practice is for cash – which he did in 2000, when he began practicing part-time and ventured into consulting. His lightened load allows him to do the things he likes away from the office. Traveling has always been among them. His journeys have taken him literally everywhere in the country (Kentucky and Hawaii were the last states he visited – and he's a world-traveler, also), but none was as memorable as a certain weekend spent in Upstate New York in the Sixties.

“Woodstock, being there, you didn’t have any idea that this was anything the rest of the world even knew existed,” he recalls. “The music was great. Back then, being a city kid from Philly, it seemed really unusual. I had gone a long way.”

And he’s still going.

Todd Stumpf is a freelance writer from Akron, Ohio. He has written professionally for 14 years. He has been with Chiropractic Economics as a contributing editor for three years. In addition to working as a daily newspaper reporter and Internet editor, Stumpf has written for numerous trade publications. His writing has won more than 60 awards, including four Ohio writer of the year honors. He can be reached at TStumpf22@yahoo.com.