UAC Chiropractic (00:28.717)

I've always called you J Mac. don't know why Jonathan McAleese is a good friend. We've been in UAC together a long time Jonathan. I've been in accountability groups together and Jonathan you always have a great perspective on things. I met you through your work at Fortis, know doing reoccurring payments is how I always thought of that merchant account stuff. You're now on to your next act with a group called P3 doing Wellness Clinics will touch on but

Jonathan McAlees(00:29.092)

and

Dr. Brian Capra (00:33.989)

Cool.

Jonathan McAlees(00:46.988)

Yeah.

Dr. Allen Miner (00:58.121)

Also, P3 does work with membership models. I think, you know, of your many levels of genius, you have an intimate insight into, you know, just because you have to see the data of many thousands of clinics for many years, you know, what makes that work? What's the pitfalls of reoccurring revenue? What are the benefits of it? So I want to take the time to go there with you. So welcome in, doctors.

It's not dr. J. I always come to you your brother and your dad. I love it Yeah

Jonathan McAlees(01:27.819)

No, I'm one of the few non-doctors in the family.

Dr. Brian Capra (01:31.688)

But he's from a big family of chiropractors. He's more chiropractor than some chiropractor.

Jonathan McAlees(01:36.057)

Yeah, both sides of the family. I'm the black sheep that did go to college.

Dr. Brian Capra (01:40.23)

Yeah.

Dr. Allen Miner (01:40.429)

It's funny you've had so much work though for your dad being a Cairo and your brother and everybody else in your family.

Jonathan McAlees(01:47.726)

Yeah, my grandfather's brother was a founding member of life and I still didn't make my way there.

UAC Chiropractic (01:53.324)

Probably saved a lot of money in scar tissue maybe by going here. So talk to us about membership model. Let's start with what are you doing now? Because it's not a chiropractic clinic, but it's in the wellness space, but it's still related to this membership model that chiropractors use.

Dr. Brian Capra (01:58.472)

We did a lot for the profession, though, I can tell you that.

Jonathan McAlees(02:12.899)

Yeah, so P3 Recovery was a franchise started out of Australia. There's four magnesium infused pools. it's an ice, a cold, a warm and a hot bath. They can fit about 12 people in it. Traditional and infrared saunas, red light beds, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, IV, light compression, breathwork meditation. So it's kind of like this recovery for the body. So we've got

12 facilities open in Australia. We'll probably have close to 20 by the end of the year. We've sold a total of 30. We're in New Zealand. And now we're opening our first US location in Encinitas, California. And we'll start franchising Q4 of this year in the US. you know, prepare, prevent, prevent and perform. So it's tell the athletes, everyday people kind of.

Dr. Brian Capra (02:56.636)

What's the three?

Jonathan McAlees(03:05.892)

work on the body. It's almost like going to a spa, but something you can do every day. And the whole model is really based around recurring membership. So it makes it, you know, affordable. It makes it easy to get to a lot of places today are charging, you know, you'll, you'll pay 70 bucks to go sit in a sauna and you'll pay less than that for a week of unlimited services in our facility. So it's much more affordable. We're a much bigger facility. Our facilities tend to be around 5,000 square feet.

and but it allows for a lot of people to be in the facility and so everyday person can come into a P3 and experience it without paying you know 70 bucks just to go sit in a sauna for 45 minutes or you know a few hundred bucks to go to a nice spa and get a massage.

Dr. Brian Capra (03:54.088)

I'm so curious. I don't know if we want to go down the rabbit hole, like it's the the baths are those they're not 12 person like hot tubs that you're just jumping in with other people or are they? Okay.

Jonathan McAlees(04:05.922)

Yeah, yeah, they are. They're self-cleaning. It's really cool. They self-regulate like all the equipment keeps it nice and clean. But it's very community driven. So people actually like it. We get a lot of sports teams that come in and use the facility because it's really contrast therapy. You really feel a difference. Like if you jump in a cold plunge and then go sit in a sauna, which I both of those in my home, it'll take you about 40 minutes to warm up from the cold plunge at like 40 degrees. You go from a 40 degree, you know, cold plunge

Dr. Brian Capra (04:12.22)

Okay.

Jonathan McAlees(04:35.265)

to 102 degree basically hot bath, like you will warm up in less than a minute. And so it's really interesting the difference in the contrast therapy there and there's a lot of science behind it and things like that that I am not the best person to speak to.

UAC Chiropractic (04:50.727)

Let's talk about the on the membership there. You know, in a chiro clinic, a lot of times it's a two day process, a one day process, a three day process. You're taking an exam, preparing findings, presenting those, presenting some kind of a care plan. How's that? I'd like you to speak into the model you're in now with this, because I'm guessing it's a lot more simple. It's probably a menu of services people pick.

But then talk about, you know, what are some of the best practices on the membership side of things and reoccurring revenue?

Jonathan McAlees(05:24.148)

Yeah, so we focus on memberships. The majority, 75 % plus of the revenue comes in through the membership model. About 25 % comes through one-time visitors and we get a ton of those, but it's not really our focus. The focus is the membership because it allows us to have a set number of people that we take care of and they come in on a regular basis, use the facility. It also allows us to keep the cost down, right? Because it's an efficiency.

standpoint like we can have a lot more people coming in and out of the facility. We're not having to explain to them how to use the modalities, where to go, what to utilize, how to use it. And so really everyone wins because we get to keep our costs down so we don't charge as much and they get much more, you know, affordable version of P3. And so I would say when you look at a chiropractic office, you know, the most successful offices that we saw were doing care plans and membership.

And even one of the things we constantly talked about was don't even do one year care plans, right? Do lifetime care plans. Like why would you, why would you set a patient up and then have to talk to them about money again a year later? Yeah, like why do a renewal? Like, so think about our business. Like someone signed up for a membership. We never talk about money with them ever again, right? Unless they're wanting to cancel, unless they don't show up and you know, we do no show calls.

Dr. Brian Capra (06:31.248)

Renew it, yeah.

Jonathan McAlees(06:46.284)

We have some AI that we're testing to make those calls that's really good as well. So we're kind of mixing humans and AI to work on some of that for us. like we check on someone if they're not coming to our facility.

Dr. Brian Capra (06:55.82)

Yeah. I remember when you started with Fortis and of course your brother and your brother was a customer really young. We all were much younger at the time. But I remember your brother's practice and just freaking crushing it once he transitioned from that one model year care plans into. Yeah, this is just forever. So just do that. And I remember

UAC Chiropractic (07:22.346)

you

Dr. Brian Capra (07:24.892)

just astronomical numbers in his practice. I'm curious, and especially with your experience and our experience together, technology, we know recurring revenue has a valuation of multiple, And now you're going into it, you're transitioning into a healthcare space more or less, right? How does that change and more similar to an actual chiropractic practice with a recurring revenue than

Jonathan McAlees(07:28.117)

Yeah.

Jonathan McAlees(07:39.926)

Yep.

Jonathan McAlees(07:46.763)

Yep.

Dr. Brian Capra (07:53.478)

your other business was. how does that multiple change? How much more valuable is it even in just that type of business, the specific one you're in, had you been charging, you know, per visit or packages or something like that, as opposed to just a recurring model when it comes to a valuation for a business like that, what's the difference? How big of a difference is it?

Jonathan McAlees(08:17.269)

know that anyone would be interested in us if we weren't doing procurring. Right. So from a long term valuation standpoint, would gosh, I don't know that a buyer would come in and look at us one day if we were charging one off visits because it's revenue that you have no guarantee of. And so it is, you know, we are a franchise model. So there's value there. Right. Because we are getting like from a

Topco standpoint, we're getting a percentage of the revenue from each location. But if the locations weren't doing that guaranteed consistent revenue, that would be tough. it's already a struggle for franchisees don't love doing sales, right? They're not as adept to it. Now, once the locations are open, like when we do pre-sales, we really help them with that because it's something new for a lot of people, right? You might be able to run a business, but selling something.

is new, so we really assist with that. We teach them the membership models. We teach them why that's important. And then as you're talking to customers too, everything is a membership. So you can do kind of like our foundation, which is like the pools, the saunas, the light compression, the breath work stuff. But then we have memberships for the hyperbaric machines, memberships for the red light machines. And so you get people just used to using them on a regular cadence. And once people get used to it, they're feeling better. It's just,

UAC Chiropractic (09:26.664)

.

UAC Chiropractic (09:39.602)

Thank

Jonathan McAlees(09:45.694)

It's really, it's eerily similar to running a chiropractic office, right? Like you get people better, they feel better. Now it's like you have to keep them coming in because they have to keep doing what got them better, right? And that comes down to that.

Dr. Brian Capra (09:57.512)

So once I go in there, you want me to keep coming forever. That's what I've heard about you people.

Jonathan McAlees(10:02.144)

Hey, I'm 40 years old. was adjusted coming out of the womb when my dad grabbed me and I still get adjusted today. So.

Dr. Brian Capra (10:14.141)

Yeah.

UAC Chiropractic (10:14.931)

Darvin, how do you apply that, you know, for all your years inside chiropractic clinics, what were a couple of the things you saw on the top performing clinics? You you got to see under the hood of a wide range of clinics. So when you looked at the ones who always on the top end of collections, what are some of the insights you have from that, from that?

Jonathan McAlees(10:39.008)

That's a great question. know, some portion of that is personality driven, right? You had really good personalities in the clinic, whether that be the owner or the person they had hired in, right? So we always saw that personality difference. They were very systematic. They had an approach and they a process to everything. This wasn't, you know, we're gonna do it this way this day. They had systems.

scripts, procedures, and they follow them, right? Again, similar to like a franchise model that we're building, like we put these systems in place. There's a reason why a lot of the coaching groups like TRP work so well, right? Because they give you all of the systems that you need. There's a reason why ClinicMind works so well in an office, right? They have all the processes built in there. We're not relying on, we always said like front desk Becky to figure out what...

to do there, we wanted to put those systems in place. That's probably really the biggest thing is, and they didn't deviate from systems. And so no matter who was at the front desk or who was managing the office, you could have that turnover and it wasn't catastrophic to the clinic.

UAC Chiropractic (11:54.501)

Yeah, that's insightful. How about you touched on something there? I think when we started doing reoccurring in our clinics, it was such a neat concept, but then pretty quick, the reality was, wow, people don't come and that can get weird pretty quick if we keep billing them. credit cards decline or expire. And I heard you allude to that, like you're using AI to engage people.

Jonathan McAlees(12:22.449)

Mm-hmm.

UAC Chiropractic (12:24.089)

I think for me and my road, was something I just, I don't know, I think I was maybe sold just blindly. Wow, that's really smart to bill their credit card every month. And I didn't realize, well, there's a whole other side to that business. know, cause people won't let you bill them forever. It's not a gym. And then the unfortunate thing is early on, we're like, yeah, you've been billing me for five months. Can I get a refund or you owe me this many visits? And because we have state boards.

Dr. Brian Capra (12:36.872)

Yeah.

Jonathan McAlees(12:37.703)

Yeah.

UAC Chiropractic (12:49.51)

It's not a gym membership where you can say, sorry, it's our money. You've got to, it took us some, we had to work through that early on. So any insights there?

Jonathan McAlees(12:50.911)

you

Dr. Brian Capra (12:52.134)

Yeah, yeah.

Jonathan McAlees(13:00.357)

Yeah, I mean, it's it's this double edged sword and it's tougher for the chiropractic profession than I would say any other industry that we deal with. Because to your point, a gym, a P3, you're continuing to bill. It's it's we're not, you know, a lot of those places will say we're not actively monitoring your attendance. So it's your responsibility to check your credit card statement and know and we would, you know, we would get calls from offices.

and they'd be like, well, we were billing a patient for 18 months. And I would say to them, like, there is some responsibility on the patient to be like, hey, it was hitting your credit card statement. if you're seeing 500 patients a week, 300 patients, you're gonna check every single one to make sure they're coming in and that, you know, the billing stopped and all of that. there is that, you know, responsibility of the card holder. However, it's a little different because reputational damage and things like that that you have to be careful of.

UAC Chiropractic (13:56.678)

else.

Jonathan McAlees(13:58.034)

take that same approach at P3, like we don't wanna just bill people to bill people. So we are active if someone doesn't show up within a week, we are calling them. So we are calling them to try and figure out why are they not coming in because automatically to us, it's a retention case at that point. So we are thinking this customer may be leaving, do we need to retain them? And we'll work at it, it's a text, the phone call.

UAC Chiropractic (14:13.594)

Yeah.

Dr. Brian Capra (14:21.51)

Yeah.

Jonathan McAlees(14:22.109)

email, all of those kinds of things. So I think you have to have those processes in place to figure out because then we can do some sort of reactivation with them. Is it a cost? Is it they can't come in enough? Maybe they're on the wrong package, right? Or maybe they want to buy, you know, a 10 pack visit, right? Something like that. And there's, there's a different model that we can still accommodate them that suits them or maybe they travel a lot, right? So

For us, they can go visit another P3 facility in that other city, but in the chiropractic world, maybe it's just a matter of having some other model that fits them. Now, the billing will often, it runs now and things are getting better. There's card account updater where you can actually go get the patient's new card. So you can pay like a buck. And basically if their card expires or they have fraud, which happens regularly, it goes right out to Visa, MasterCard, Amex and Discover and they'll give us the new card number in a platter.

UAC Chiropractic (14:58.009)

That's good.

UAC Chiropractic (15:17.457)

nice.

Jonathan McAlees(15:18.418)

So it pulls all that in, like it's really easy. It's getting much more automated as it goes, but you still have to keep that customer satisfied.

Dr. Brian Capra (15:25.296)

Yeah, I think chiropractic is tricky. I means you have to be more intentional about your real churn slash retention rates because, you know, it wasn't, it's not just, it is not a gym membership. There is a lot more responsibility on us as healthcare providers than there is a gym, right? We got to make sure that if they, if they've stopped coming in, there should be a process in place to be reaching out to them, like ethically.

Jonathan McAlees(15:35.761)

Yeah.

Dr. Brian Capra (15:55.004)

it.

UAC Chiropractic (15:56.631)

You know, you had a nugget there, Jonathan, that I think a lot of chiropractors miss because they think, OK, get them on a plan. They're not coming. They stop the plan. It's like, well, what if you could offer something else like a package? OK, maybe you're not wanting to do our corrective care plan, but, know, maybe we can pivot you to a 10 visit card and we can apply this payment to those visits. And, you know, I think a lot of chiropractors might miss.

Jonathan McAlees(16:08.829)

Thank

Dr. Brian Capra (16:10.504)

I'll tell you.

UAC Chiropractic (16:22.99)

They kind of get in their system and sometimes there's maybe a middle ground solution. That was interesting to hear you touch on.

Jonathan McAlees(16:30.928)

Yeah, I mean, for us, we want to meet the customer where they are, right? And what their availability is. So you get everyone from like, we have football athletes down in Australia, football, not like American football and not soccer, a different football that they have. Well, it's even another it's like a mixture of rugby and football. It's mayhem. They're like tapping with notepads and you can

Dr. Brian Capra (16:45.104)

All good. It's another one.

I never heard of it.

Jonathan McAlees(16:53.979)

like flip people over, but we have some of these great athletes that come in and they're coming in four or five times a week, right? Because it's all about, you know, they've got games and they're recovery and they're running miles in a game and things like that. Down to just, you'll go in there and you'll meet elderly people who are coming in there because their body just feels a little bit better, right? To people who just want to show up on a, you know, ad hoc per visit basis. And so we really, we try not to...

overwhelm, like have an overwhelming menu of products, but we don't display all of our menu of products, right? So we only display what we want them to see when we're doing a retention call. Now we can verbalize that with them because it's not really something we don't really want someone to buy just like a 10 pack, but it is available for those customers who it's really, you know, the only option for.

UAC Chiropractic (17:23.172)

Thank you.

UAC Chiropractic (17:41.656)

Yeah.

UAC Chiropractic (17:47.787)

Yeah, yeah, cool. Well, Jonathan, last question. UAC, why have you been in it? What's been the benefit to you being in the group?

Jonathan McAlees(17:52.368)

Yeah.

Jonathan McAlees(17:57.777)

Yeah, mean, UAC is just a different level of chiropractic thinkers, right? And so I think, you know, a lot of chiropractic is filled with a lot of practitioners, but they never get out there and talk to other entrepreneurs and think outside the box of what they can do in their practice, how they can maybe still use their chiropractic degree, but being something adjacent, like it's, and there's no judgment in the group. It's very,

pro chiropractic, but pro just whatever that person's trying to do. So everyone's so helpful. Everyone's so nice. There's no judgment. A lot of chiropractic, especially back in the day, I've been going to FCA and DE since I was like a little kid. And a lot of time there was this like infighting and judgment and it's gotta be pure principled this and that. And while I'm a very like principled in my chiropractic thought, you can still do something adjacent and still be helping the profession. I was adjacent to the profession for.

13 years, but still consider myself pretty principled. We were just helping, helping chiropractic, helping people and kind of doing it today. So if you haven't been to a UAC event, like I would just go meet the people. And I think you'll really see the difference. It's a really welcoming group of chiropractors, which is refreshing, think compared to what had been happening for a long time in the profession.

UAC Chiropractic (19:20.89)

Awesome. Well, 11, appreciate you, Jonathan. Thanks for coming on and sharing with us today, brother.

Jonathan McAlees(19:23.417)

Yeah. Love you. Good to see you guys. Thanks.

Dr. Brian Capra (19:24.04)

Hey, brother. Good to see you, Good luck with the new venture.

UAC Chiropractic (19:27.779)

Great work guys. We'll see ya. Bye.

Good job, guys. I got to record the intro recap, so hop off. Thanks, Jonathan. We appreciate you, See you guys. See you, Brian. Thanks, guys.

Jonathan McAlees(19:38.159)

Awesome, thanks, have a good one, bye.

UAC Chiropractic (19:45.101)

Dene is one of my favorite people in chiropractic who's not a chiropractor, but he's long time UAC member, Jonathan McAleese. You might know him through Fortis. He was really key in helping to build and scale Fortis in the chiropractic industry. He's now moved on from that job to his next venture with P3, but he gets into the conversation around the membership model of chiropractic. What works, how you maximize it, the benefits of it. This is a great conversation if you are not running a membership model to consider.

the pros and the cons. Today's sponsor, I want to give a shout out to first and foremost is the Remarkable Practice TRP. These shows are made possible by our success partners. You'll notice there's a different sponsor for each podcast that we do. The Remarkable Practice, I think their niche is in helping chiropractors to become the CEO of their own business. They have four seasons, launch, scale, build, and exit. It's the CEO part that I'm going to speak to a little bit.

because I think a lot of the people in UAC have figured out how to become the CEO of their business. So they're able to work on the business, not in the business. It takes a lot of systems, a lot of KPIs. You can't just jump in and get away with that. It takes a lot of work and intention. And if you have an interest in turning your business into something that isn't your job, but it's truly your business, I'd say investigate TRP, the remarkable practice, Google them and reach out to them and say that you

You heard about them here on the UAC podcast. Let's jump in and get started.