After 50 years, Larry Markson, DC, is still going strong.

By Stanford Erickson

Is chiropractic everything you thought it would be? Do you love being in practice? Are you “saving lives one spine at a time?” Are you pleased with yourself and your growth and evolution as a person?

Larry Markson, DC, has had a 50-year career helping chiropractors answer those highly personal questions in a positive way.

Those who have endured difficult times and learned from them tend to be wise. Those who continue to reinvent themselves tend to be successful. Markson possesses both qualities.

Most chiropractors are familiar with Markson as the founder of Markson Management Services and the creator of The Master’s Circle. Thousands of chiropractors have attended The Master’s Circle and received sage advice on practice improvement, while gaining valuable insights on becoming more useful to themselves, their families, their patients, and their communities.

But that was in the past. Markson sold his interest in The Master’s Circle six years ago and re-invented himself with two new businesses: The Cabin Experience and The Markson Connection. “The Cabin” (as it has come to be known) is an intimate, yet intense, interactive personal growth conclave designed to help up to 25 guests get in touch with their inner selves. Along the way, participants work on how to deal with the past, handle the present, and invent a future that works for their benefit.

In addition, along with his son, Rick Markson, DC, and Brett Axelrod, DC, he has now created another chiropractor-only company called The Markson Connection, which is a selectively hand-crafted “tribe” of synergistic chiropractors seeking to build practices and lives of significance.

Markson’s 50-year career in helping chiropractors, himself, and others, has many facets but a consistent theme is that life and life’s message involve being, doing, and having instead of having, doing, and being.

First you must learn to be — knowing and appreciating your authentic self. Who you are determines what you should be doing. Then you need to do what you are meant to do. Only then can you truly have — obtaining the emotional, physical, intellectual, and financial resources to which you are entitled.

From student to teacher

In his childhood, Markson suffered from chronic asthma. In the late 1940s, that meant frequent use of an oxygen tent. Additionally, he suffered from severe eczema on his hands, requiring him to wear gloves. The expenses related to his illnesses were difficult for a blue-collar family. After traditional medical treatment failed to solve Markson’s problems, a family friend suggested that he visit a local chiropractor. Improvement was immediate and soon he was free from the tent and gloves.

Markson had also found his career: He was going to be a chiropractor.

He attended Palmer College of Chiropractic, where his own chiropractor had obtained his degree. In 1961, he graduated as class valedictorian from the newly named Palmer College of Chiropractic (originally Palmer School of Chiropractic). B.J. Palmer had died that year and Markson’s class was designated the B.J. Palmer Memorial Graduation Class.

Like most newly graduated chiropractors, Markson struggled to develop a practice. Regardless of what he tried, his practice volume remained low and his finances remained tight. He recalls not deriving much enjoyment from his life during this period.

“At that time, I was in the blame game,” Markson says. “I blamed patients for not keeping their appointments or paying on time, my staff for not working hard enough, my family and friends for not being supportive enough, and, if I’d had a dog, I probably would have blamed it as well.”

His situation began to improve in 1969, when he attended his first Parker Seminar. Markson credits his years at Parker Seminars as the training that led him to seek the answer to an important question: Why do some people achieve long-lasting success and fulfillment when most others have to struggle?

“When I

started my practice, I wanted to have it all,” he says. “I soon began to understand that I needed to be a different person first and come to know my authentic self before I could expect any results in my quest for success.

“The creator of the universe not only imposed physical laws governing things like gravity, but also metaphysical laws such as the Law of Cause and Effect and the Law of Attraction,” Markson says. “The Law of Attraction contends that we attract into our lives that which becomes our dominant thoughts and feelings. For example, what we fear the most, we actually attract the most. Or, if we act with love and friendship, we attract love and friendship.”

Once he began controlling his thoughts and attitudes by using daily affirmations, goal setting, visualizations, and meditations, his dreams began to come true.

“I set weekly, monthly, and annual goals for my practice and my personal growth,” Markson says, “and at the end of each year I honestly evaluated what I had achieved and what I failed to achieve. Then I started all over again the next year until I became expert at the process.”

His practice took off. It grew to about 750 patient visits a week. His employees were encouraged to study with him and come to seminars, too. The end result was that his team became exceptional. “I was now being and doing and I was beginning to have.”

Then, in 1981, he fell and fragmented his elbow, which turned out to be a career-ending injury. He was no longer able to run the practice he had come to love.

Other chiropractors who had witnessed his practice’s meteoric growth started to ask Markson how he built such a large and successful practice and as he shared his secrets with them, their practices began to flourish too. Thus, Markson Management Services was born.

“I believed and taught that the top three ingredients of success are: decisiveness, confrontational tolerance, and massive action steps,” he says.

Soon he was traveling throughout the country giving seminars and meeting with individual chiropractors. In 1997, along with Dennis Perman, DC, and Bob Hoffman, DC, he co-founded The Master Circle. “I quickly grew to having 1,000 chiropractic members and regional seminars whose attendance averaged about 1,000 DCs and CAs each,” he says. The most successful conference he held was in 2006, with an attendance of 3,000.

Reinvented once again

After selling The Masters Circle, Markson abandoned his attempt to retire and he decided to re-invent himself again.

“As I became older, I began to understand more about setting a good example for others to follow. We started by working with employees and members and attempted to encourage them to end their stories and begin their new lives — ones filled with health, happiness, abundance, and prosperity,” Markson says. “No matter how successful you are, you can never reach your full potential in being, doing and having, without transforming yourself into a person who has learned to embrace your authentic self.”

In 2006, Markson created a new program called the “Cabin Experience.” Several times a year, he gathers a group of 25 men and women — many of whom are already considered successful — to a cabin on a lake in Montana for a weekend. For the next 60 hours the group members discover the roadblocks that are keeping them from experiencing all that life has to offer. These gatherings are usually filled to capacity.

“I guess that if asked what the participants in my programs walked away with, it would be “breaking free” (from themselves and the past that has limited them) and “personal freedom,” Markson says. “The freedom to soar in practice and life and to attract exactly what it is you want — the freedom to fall in love, make changes with ease, and the freedom to get rich mentally, emotionally and financially.”

It will not be surprising if, sooner rather than later, Markson finds a way to re-invent himself yet again.

Stanford Erickson is the editorial director of Chiropractic Economics. He can be reached at serickson@chiroeco.com.