Random Thoughts

Wow..it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted here on the ChiropracticPR.com blog. I’ve had many people email or call asking if everything is alright and where the new blog posts have been.

I apologize for the absence but we’ve just been slammed with work. Honestly the last couple of months has seen a huge influx of work that we’ve been struggling to stay on top of! We also had some issues with our hosting provider and our server lately and it took us a few days to iron all of that out.

Not to mention it’s the Holiday shopping season…and the orders are coming in fast and furious over at ChiropracticArt.com. For those of you who may not be aware, I also run ChiropracticArt.com and I do nearly all of our hand painted Chiropractic paintings. Needless to say our cool Chiropractic art and affordable prices make for a high volume of orders at peak shopping times.

That’s right! The Holiday shopping season is upon us. Wow did the summer ever fly by this year. With the holiday shopping season in mind I decided to start a new blog series: Chiropractic Gift Recommendations. Many of you have purchased nearly our full catalog of Chiropractic art and often ask for other Chiropractic gift ideas. I decided to try a new type of blog post where I recommend some great ideas for that special Chiropractor in your life. Whether you are shopping for yourself, a colleague, or someone else we have some great ideas in the works.

Many of these will be great Chiropractic specific gifts, and some will not. I don’t want this to be limited to Chiropractic practice tools or products ONLY so I’ll do my best to balance things out. Basically if it is a great gift idea and would be useful or interesting to the average Chiropractor then I’ll write up a blog post about it. It should even be useful for all of us Chiropractors because it will give us some gift ideas for online shopping. After all we simply don’t have a ton of time to get out and shop!

Hopefully this will be beneficial to all and can be an ongoing project to look forward to each year.

I’ll be putting up the very first post in this series shortly so stay tuned. Along the way if you have some great Chiropractic gift ideas or products or websites you’d like to see us blog about in the series contact me and let me know!

-Dr. James

Hello everyone! We have been insanely busy here at ChiropracticPR.com and over at ChiropracticArt.com.

The past couple of weeks we’ve been busy catching up on a backlog of our custom spinal decompression marketing kits, designing Chiropractic yellow page ads, and writing and submitting several Chiropractic internet marketing articles for our Chiropractic clients.

In between we’ve also found time to release some new Chiropractic art and gift products both at ChiropracticArt.com and in our Zazzle store.

Perhaps our favorite new product is our set of 3 Framed Chiropractic cervical X-ray prints shown below.

This incredibly popular design of ours is a set of colorful variations of a standard lateral cervical x-ray print. This design has been available in a smaller frame and on a variety of posters and coffeemugs in our Zazzle store. Many customers have requested a slightly larger and economical framed print version and this is our answer!

Each 8.5″ x 11″ print is done with the highest quality ink on high quality name brand gloss photo paper.  It is then mounted under glass in a sturdy gloss black frame measuring approximately 9″ wide x 11.5″ tall.  Each frame can be wall mounted or display free standing using the pull out stand on the back.

They are currently priced at $38.99 for the 3 print set. Check them out over at ChiropracticArt.com.

We’ve also recently designed some new chiropractic posters and coffee mugs over at our Chiropractic_4Health store. Check those out in the photos below.

As always thanks for reading and feel free to let us know if there is a Chiropractic design or Chiropractic artwork idea you’d like to see brought to life. We just might be able to make it happen!

We’ve had a lot of requests for more of our unique Chiropractic gifts, ties, posters, and other Chiropractic products on Zazzle.

We’ve heard your demands and we are in the process of working on some new designs in our “free time”. I use the term “free time” loosely since our free time seems to amount to about 12 minutes at 3:00 am before we collapse from sheer and utter exhaustion. Well….I can’t speak for everyone but that’s my “free time”!

Have something in mind for a great Chiropractic message on a product but don’t have the time or know how to pull it off. Post your thoughts or comments in the comment section below or email us and we might be able to bring your idea to life!

Anyway sit tight and stay tuned for some great new Chiropractic products. Here is just one of many new products to come. Our new “Chiropractic is specific” coffee mug! You can choose which color and type of mug you want this design on and preview it before you buy. Very cool!

The other night I sent a tweet on Twitter inviting ChiropracticPR followers to read our new article on Ezinearticles.com. Unfortunately, in my rush  I mistyped it “ezinearticels.com.” Granted, it’s not a huge mistake but it still doesn’t look so great coming from a site that offers Chiropractic article writing and other content creation services.

Although a minor typo is really nothing to lose sleep over, I still take it seriously. Whether or not we like it: our blog posts, facebook updates, tweets, and other contributions on the internet are all a direct reflection of us. This got me thinking about another very serious problem present in the world of social media and social networking: mixing personal life and business life.

Your accountant will tell you to not mix personal accounts and business accounts.  The same advice could, and often SHOULD, be applied to the world of Chiropractic social media and internet marketing.

Many younger Doctors tend to mix their personal and professional life together on sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Although this doesn’t have to be a bad thing, it often is. I network and interact with hundreds to thousands of Chiropractors and other professionals on a daily basis via the internet. I am often shocked to see some of the posts I come across from professional accounts Doctors use to promote their practices and services.

Very frequently I come across inappropriate jokes, sexual innuendos, nasty remarks, bragging about the crazy party last night, openly bashing the medical professionals and . . . well . . . you get the idea.  Now I’m no prude, but we all need to remember how public most of our internet and social media use actually is.  The majority of the time everyone can see what we post and what others post about us.

We are all human. As Doctors of Chiropractic we may say, or sometimes do, things in our personal life we would never dream of saying or doing within our practice. Most of us would  never dream of standing in the crowded reception area of our Chiropractic practice while using foul language or trading raunchy jokes with our buddies. Yet many of us do this very same thing on a daily basis on social media sites. Ethics and common sense should apply to the virtual world just as they would to real life.

The bottom line is there is a time and place for everything. We all need to realize when we post something online we are representing our professional identity and the Chiropractic profession as a whole. We should never jeopardize our professional reputation by posting questionable content online.

Mixing a little personal life in with your professional identity on the internet is not always a bad thing. Letting patients know a little about your family life and outside hobbies is a great way to establish trust and credibility. For instance, posting pictures of your children or the family pet, or a little information about that recent weekend family vacation are all perfectly acceptable and beneficial posts. The key is to spend a moment before you post and ask yourself what crosses the line.

Perhaps the most perplexing part of this whole dilemma for me is how easy it is to prevent the posting of unflattering content in the first place.  If you wouldn’t want to stand up in a crowded theater, or in church on Sunday, and say it…don’t post it online! The easiest thing to do is use a little common sense and discretion. Like Thumper was always told, “If you can’t say something nice . . . don’t say nothing at all!”

The second easiest way to prevent things is to create separate social media accounts for your professional and personal lives.  Keep your personal accounts private and only let your known friends and acquaintances read and follow your posts and updates.

One of the most wonderful aspects of social media and the internet is it let’s our personality show through. Things don’t always have to be stuffy and boring, but when we are representing ourselves in a professional capacity, we need to maintain a certain degree of professionalism. After all, would you kiss your mother with that mouth?

Myths and falsehoods still surround the Chiropractic profession like a dark cloud.  How many times have you heard something negative and totally off base about Chiropractic care? How much time do you spend in your practice fighting myths and uneducated inaccuracies regarding our wonderful profession?

Battling long held negative public opinions of Chiropractic can suck the energy and life out of any Chiropractic practice.  Although the perception and acceptance of Chiropractic has improved dramatically over the last 50 years , we still have a long way to go. Just last week a new patient was astonished to learn that Chiropractic education consists of more than “a six or 8 week program”!

I wanted to make this post more of an open discussion rather than a simple blog post.  We’re working on a new Chiropractic DVD and PowerPoint over at ChiropracticArt.com and our sister site ClinicallySignificantProductions.com.

Ok, that’s not entirely true. Basically we are reworking the VERY first PowerPoint presentation and DVD we ever made: the “Top 10 Chiropractic Myths”. This one has been in our archives for a few years now and it’s time to rework it and get it back out there to help you educate the public and clear up many common fallacies and misconceptions that cloud our profession.

Some of the common myths we plan to address are:

1. You have to go FOREVER.

2. Chiropractors are uneducated “quacks”

3.  Chiropractors only “twist”, “snap”, “crack” and “pop” your back and neck.

4.  Chiropractic is only for back pain

5.  Chiropractic can hurt your neck or will cause a stroke.

6.  Chiropractic is expensive.

7.  Chiropractors don’t believe in medicine

8.  Chiropractors are dishonest, unethical etc. “I know a guy who knew this guy who knows a Chiropractor who….”

9.  You MUST have X-rays

10.  Chiropractic is just for the old, the injured, etc.

11. ????? You TELL US!

These are just some of the common myths surrounding Chiropractic care. What other common misconceptions do you fight on a daily basis? What would you like to add? We want to make sure we represent the Chiropractic majority here so give us your thoughts and we might just include it in our next DVD and PowerPoint. If you REALLY do a good job and we use your idea we’ll even  send a complementary copy of the presentation when it’s completed.

No worries! There is no sign up necessary and we don’t post  your email address, so help us clear up common Chiropractic myths and leave your comments below.

What do you think? Leave your thoughts, ideas, and contributions in the comment section below!

Lately I’ve come to realize with our busy professional and personal lives we spend many days “just going through the motions.” With errands, tasks, and daily responsibilities we often spend our entire day just getting things done.

Yesterday I spent the entire day driving around with my son running errands and getting things done. I had to do some household shopping, make a trip to the library, do some shopping for my Chiropractic practice and a ton of other errands. Although it did allow me time to have some great conversations with my son, we still spent a lot of time rushing from spot to spot in order to get things on our list done.

At the end of the day we had time to watch a movie together, but all of the rushing around still left a hollow feeling. Any time spent together as a family is better than no time, but I still felt like the day was wasted getting minor things done. In the long run, these things we had to devote an entire day to don’t really matter all that much.

I reflected on this a lot this morning and I actually talked with my eight year old son about doing more to make each day special. It’s an idea I’ve tried to live by in the past, but it’s nothing I’ve openly discussed. It’s also something we can easily lose sight of.

The very same thing easily and often occurs within the confines of a chiropractic practice. We spend so much time focusing on procedures, and getting patients treated efficiently we often get lost running the through the motions. At the end of the day we may have met all of our deadlines and goals but what have accomplished beyond that? What have we done to improve ourselves, benefit our family, and support our community?

I’m not implying that daily errands and treating Chiropractic patients aren’t important and beneficial…but these are also our jobs. We should ask ourselves what we can do above and beyond these daily tasks to make each and every day special and meaningful.

Raising a young son as a single father I am beginning to realize just how short life really is. We need to seize the opportunity to make each and every day special and meaningful. Dedicating even 10 or 15 minutes out of each and every day to do something special for family, friends and community doesn’t seem all that difficult. It’s certainly a small price to pay to make the world a better place!