If Jerry Maguire were a chiropractor…
By Eugene Charles, DC

The most famous line from the movie Jerry Maguire is, undoubtedly, the mantra, “Show me the money.” It's a great line, but I don’t believe that it is the richest line in the movie.

For those of you not familiar with this Tom Cruise classic, Jerry Maguire is a slick sports agent who is “king of the living room” and can hustle athletes to get the highest price for his clients and therefore reap the rewards of their contracts for himself through his commissions.

One day, a hockey-playing client his fourth concussion. Maguire callously replies to the athlete’s worried son that his dad will be fine and will receive his bonus. The young boy responds from the heart with a few words, not appropriate in a G-rated article.

Touched by the boy’s sincerity (and profanity), Jerry has an epiphany later. He stays up all night and begins to write passionately, because he “has so much to say and no one to listen.”

He writes a mission statement for his profession, which begs his colleagues to choose quality above quantity. He expounds the virtues of “fewer clients and better service.” He stresses the importance of taking care of clients and enjoying the simple pleasures of the game and the business.

His radical ideas leave him ostracized from his friends and fiancé. By the end of the movie, however, he is on his way up — this time surrounded by fewer but much richer relationships.

So, if Jerry Maguire were a chiropractor, what would he do? I believe Dr. Maguire would suggest that the current chiropractic model is geared toward working as a chiropractic technician, not a chiropractic physician.

He would ask us to care for our patients the same as he would care for professional athletes. He would beg us not to focus only on patient visits, but on what we do and say during those visits.

He would ask us to aim at quality, not quantity. And he would ask us to become an integral part of our patients’ lives.

Dr. Maguire would impress upon us that being a doctor is like being an agent for our patients. We would care for our patients in sickness and in health and give them personal attention as we listen — really listen — to them.

Maguire would promise us that if we did these things and stressed quality over quantity, our patients would joyfully “show us the money.”

Eugene Charles, DC, DIBAK, www.charlesseminars.com, is the author of Precision Adjusting for the Master Chiropractor. He teaches and maintains a private practice in Manhattan. He can be contacted at dreugene@optonline.net.