:dropcap_open:D:dropcap_close:r. Patrick Gentempo is the CEO of Action Potential Holdings, Inc. and is arguably one of the best-known figures in the chiropractic profession today. He has acted as cofounder and chief executive of well-known entities within the profession. These include the Chiropractic Leadership Alliance (CLA), Creating Wellness Alliance (CWA), and Chiro Finishing School. CLA has brought critical technology to the profession, namely the Insight Subluxation Station which boasts over 9000 DCs who have bought the product on six continents. In addition, through CLA Dr. Gentempo (with Dr. Christopher Kent) designed the highly lauded boot camp training program, Total Solution. Nearly 7000 chiropractors have participated in the Total Solution program. Another very popular product that Dr. Gentempo co-developed with Dr. Kent is the On Purpose audio subscription service for the chiropractic profession. On Purpose has been producing monthly audio content for chiropractors since 1994 and has thousands of subscribers worldwide.
Last year in a surprise move, Dr. Gentempo sold all of his interest in CLA and a controlling interest in CWA. When asked why he did this his response was, “I had a growing sense, based on certain trends, that action is needed in a new way on a larger scale. Chiropractic and health care in general are changing rapidly leaving us with both challenges and opportunities that I feel compelled to address. Act 1 in my career was practice, which I loved and I succeeded at that. Act 2 in my career was CLA and its derivative initiatives and the impact of that has been fulfilling and significant. After some soul-searching, I decided it was time for Act 3 and in Act 3 I’m going to deliberately address some important issues in chiropractic and healthcare, not the least of which is chiropractic insurance dependency in the United States.”
In an interview with The American Chiropractor Magazine (TAC), Dr. Patrick Gentempo (PG) shares what life will be like after CLA (Chiropractic Leadership Alliance).
TAC: Can you tell our readers about how you view the current political landscape of the profession?
PG: I have significant concerns about the political landscape of our profession. I know this sounds trite, sort of like when someone starts a sentence saying, “in times like these”. There are always some sort of challenges, aren’t there? However, the challenges we face today are to a large degree qualitatively different than the challenges of the past. An example of this is the prescription drug issue in chiropractic. This is a deeply polarizing issue that addresses the very soul of the profession. I have yet to hear anyone make a moral argument for drugs in chiropractic, i.e. “there are not enough points of distribution for pharmaceuticals in the United States. People need expanded access to drugs and the chiropractic profession needs to fill that void.” I have been deep into this debate and there is no sound moral premise that justifies drugs being incorporated into chiropractic practice. So from there the debate moves toward practical issues. Somehow people think that if chiropractors were to obtain pharmaceutical rights, it would translate into them getting more patients and increasing market share. The fact is it would have the exact opposite effect. Any business expert will tell you that you don’t increase market share by professing your sameness. You increase the success of your business by differentiating yourself in the marketplace. The problem here is lack of clarity of purpose, no sense of identity, and the corollary to these: scarcity mentality. I am 100% certain that if chiropractors start prescribing medications the result will be a tragic demise of the profession. Ironically, I am observing that what many of the big, million dollar plus practices have in common are niche natural or ‘drugless’ solutions to particular challenges that chiropractic can measurably support. For example, I cofounded S.H.I.N.E., Special Help Integrating Neurological Experience, with famed psychiatrist and former Harvard Medical School faculty member, Dr. Ned Hallowell. Many consider Dr. Hallowell the number one expert in the world on ADHD. Many of his core premises are shared by traditional chiropractic principles and he knows first-hand that millions of people are seeking a non-drug approach to addressing ADHD. Strategically, this places the chiropractor in a position to provide a very needed in-demand service to people who don’t expect their insurance to pay for it. The profession needs to start ‘getting this’ and understand that being drugless is massive leverage in the marketplace, not a handicap.
Another major political issue is chiropractic education and the CCE. To address this in a meaningful way would require a comprehensive multipart article. But to summarize, the CCE’s behaviors and actions, in my opinion, are misguided and destructive to our profession. CCE enjoys a monopolistic stranglehold on chiropractic education which I believe a growing coalition in the field is finding to be intolerable. Anti-CCE sentiment is on the rise and its resultant polarity is palpable. The politics relative to this are pretty complicated and one has to dedicate a significant amount of time to understand the full nature of the CCE issue. I remain hopeful that the field will force positive change in this realm.
On the positive side of things I am observing some growing trends politically and publicly that make me very optimistic. I have been invited to speak to state associations around the US that have unified. Yes, unification is a trend on the state level! The atmosphere has been live and let live. I am in New Jersey and we had 6 different state associations consolidate into one. Michigan, Virginia and other states are also doing this and the results have been very positive. Chiropractors are politically being tolerant of diverse practice orientations, from lifetime wellness care to limited low back pain services. On the public arena, we have seen Dr. Mancini of Parker University on the Dr. Phil Show and The Doctors. Audiences of millions watching one of our best representatives tell them about chiropractic. As well, the Foundation for Chiropractic Progress has been getting us great exposure and celebrity endorsement. I am especially excited about the documentary Medical, Inc. I was interviewed extensively for it as well as many others and there is a real shot that this becomes a film that will be seen by the masses. In summary, as it always is in life and history, we have many challenges and many opportunities. I am a firm believer that we as a profession are poised for some major breakthroughs.
TAC: You mentioned in an October, 2006 interview with The American Chiropractor that your goal for the chiropractic profession is “World Domination of Healthcare in a Chiropractic Model”…is that still your goal?
PG: Ahhh yes. I remember that interview. And yes, this is still my goal. I should probably clarify my terms. When I say “healthcare”, what I mean is “well-care”. I am not talking about chiropractic dominating disease treatment and emergency care. The world is seriously recognizing that medicine is really emergency treatment and disease care. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. It is a very necessary service to our culture. But it is not healthcare. Hence, leadership in true lifestyle healthcare must emerge and chiropractic should rightly dominate the market space.
TAC: So, you will be continuing on with On Purpose, can you tell our readers in what way you will be growing in that direction?
PG: On Purpose is owned and operated by Dr. Christopher Kent. I do still appear on the program every month and I love it! I have to say that On Purpose is one of the best bargains in the whole profession. For $50 a month, a chiropractor gets a comprehensive review of the new and emerging scientific literature that supports chiropractic. A review of what’s going on politically within the profession. Also an interview with a chiropractic thought leader that can’t help but develop and grow your practice. Without exaggerating I would say it would take the average chiropractor at least 100 to 150 hours per month to try to process all this information and boil it down to what’s important. With On Purpose, for less than the cost of a single adjustment they get three hours of programming that is very entertaining and brings them all this information. Let me state that I have no financial interest in On Purpose. I’m simply sharing a best practice with my colleagues that would help them.
TAC: Any other new ventures you’ve been working on?
PG: After I sold CLA I formed a holding company called Action Potential Holdings, Inc. (APH). The purpose of this holding company was to help manage and develop the existing business interests I held when I formed it, incubate and deploy new product and service initiatives into the profession, and invest in ventures that are aligned with our core values. APH has a very ambitious agenda. One of the new businesses we have been working very hard on and are launching this fall is called Free Form (www.FreeFormchiro.com). The catalyzing statement for Free Form is: End insurance dependency in chiropractic. Period. We are very serious about this. Our guiding premise is that there is no future for chiropractic or individual chiropractors in insurance dependency. I am not saying that chiropractors will take zero insurance. What I am saying is that as a business strategy they need to be what we refer to as non-insurance dependent. We have identified a seven-step process to create non-insurance dependency. My partner in this venture is Dr. Troy Dukowitz and both of us have a lot of experience helping chiropractors transition from insurance dependency to non-insurance dependency. This is a big one. It will change the destiny of this profession. Needless to say, it is a very ambitious project but I have no doubt that we will succeed because the process works. There are other projects that I am working on but I am not ready to talk about them at this point.
TAC: How has Rick Sapio’s influence impacted some of the chiropractors you’ve worked with?
PG: Rick Sapio has been a godsend to this profession. He and I have been meeting in a weekly accountability group for over three years now. He has become an important business mentor to me. As fate would have it, he introduced me to game-changing business principles and I introduced him to chiropractic and health principles. Rick is an extremely successful businessperson. Because chiropractic had such a significant impact on his health and the health of his family, I was able to convince him to partner with me and come into this profession and teach chiropractors the foundational principles of business. One of the greatest weaknesses in this profession is lack of business skills and training. When I say business principles, I am not talking about practice procedures. Your practice procedures, i.e. consultation, report of findings, patient education, are all things that sit on top of the foundation which are your business principles. Rick and I cofounded and launched Chiro Finishing School a little over a year ago and we have already had several hundred chiropractors through the program and the results have way outpaced our expectations. Because the training is online, we were able to offer it to chiropractors throughout the world and I believe at this point we have chiropractors on four continents who are training in the program.
TAC: Is this method of business management something that chiropractors can grasp easily?
PG: For sure. Just like there are foundational principles of health, there are foundational principles of business. Chiropractors already know how to think in a principle-based manner. They just need to be taught these business principles and at that point it’s just add water. I have built a couple of multi-million dollar businesses from the ground up and operated them for many years. I felt I had a pretty good grasp on business and understood it. After meeting Rick Sapio, I recognized that I had a lot of blind spots. Nobody ever taught me these types of principles before. It is the opposite of complicated. As a matter fact three of the cardinal values of Chiro Finishing School are: simplicity, probability, and leverage.
TAC: Do you ever see yourself having a leadership role in CLA again?
PG: I still enthusiastically act in the capacity of a consultant for CLA. CLA’s new chairman, Dr. David Fletcher, is a very capable man with a solid vision. So I don’t see myself having a leadership role in CLA, but I always will love and support it.
TAC: Where will readers be able to catch up with you for the remainder of 2012, and 2013?
PG: I am still traveling the world and presenting on a pretty regular basis. This year I will be at several major venues in the United States and Canada. As well I will be speaking in Europe and Asia. I am doing a series of high impact programs with Dr. Brad Glowaki and you will see me on the main stage at Parker Seminars. I passionately invite your readers to join my mailing list by going to www.ActionPotentialHoldings.com. As well they can ‘like’ my Facebook fan page which is, ‘Align with Dr. Gentempo’. And of course there’s always Twitter. I routinely post things and write about topics that I find to be of significance for chiropractors. You won’t find me posting about going to the store or Starbucks or something like that. But when there is something important for chiropractors to know, whether it be a new practice strategy that is working or an inspirational quote, you can be sure that I will be sharing it with my audience.
TAC: Any final words for our readers?
PG: Yes. I have done a lot of reflecting about what it takes to create success in chiropractic. One conclusion I have drawn is that chiropractors underestimate what is possible for their practice and their community. The consequence of this is that many chiropractors are underperforming. In the quest to understand the meaning of life as a chiropractor, we must come to face some fundamental facts. These include that a living body is self-healing and self-regulating, that the nervous system is the master system and controller of that body, and that lifestyle stress disturbs the function of the nervous system and the ability for the body to regulate properly. Morally, the proper action available to the chiropractor is to take these facts and, through what could be considered heroic action, bring them to life in a robust way in an effort to heal and lead their community. There is no doubt that the chiropractor holds the ability to change the course of people’s lives for the better and in some cases even save people’s lives. When one is cognizant of such facts, underperformance is not an option. I hope your readers will reflect upon these thoughts and succeed on the highest possible levels in their practices. Chiropractic is the greatest profession in the world and we should never lose sight of that.
Be sure to contact Dr. Patrick Gentempo at Action Potential Holdings, Inc., by e-mail through his Executive Assistant, Lisa Marie Vasquez, [email protected], 201-345-3370. www.ActionPotentialHoldings.com
Also for more information about the products and services that Dr. Gentempo describes see below a list of companies and contact information for your easy reference.
Action Potential Holdings 201-345-3370, email: [email protected], www.ActionPotentialHoldings.com
Free Form at: www.freeformchiro.com
Chiro Business Finishing School: www.ChiroBusinessFinishingSchool.com, 214-954-0302; [email protected]
Chiropractic Leadership Alliance (CLA): [email protected] & Creating Wellness Alliance (CWA): [email protected], 800-285-2001
SHINE for Doctors: www.shinefordoctors.com; Email to: [email protected] 800-285-2001, ext. 118 or 973-998-8670, ext. 118
On Purpose Monthly Audio News Program: http://chiroonpurpose.com 800-892-6463, ext. 211, [email protected]