Your Practice Has a Culture — The Question is Whether You Built It

Eighteen months of low-level friction. Slipping standards. That constant background sense that something wasn’t quite right.

If that’s ever been your practice, you already know — it’s exhausting. And it’s almost never solved with more training, more check-ins, or more conversations.

Because the real problem isn’t your team. It’s what you haven’t defined.

Every chiropractic practice has a culture. The only question is whether you built it… or whether it built itself while you were busy adjusting.

The Hidden Cost of an Undefined Culture

Undefined cultures don’t stay neutral. They get filled in by whatever gets tolerated, celebrated, and ignored. And in a busy chiropractic practice, that drift shows up everywhere — in how patients are greeted, in how the schedule runs, in how your team treats each other when you’re in the adjusting room.

This episode names the cost of leaving culture to chance — and what it’s quietly doing to your retention, your reputation, and your sanity.

Introducing The Chiropractic Culture Code™

The Chiropractic Culture Code™ is a three-part framework for chiropractors who want a team that runs on standards, not personalities. Inside this episode I unpack the three parts by name — Define It, Hire Through It, Live It Publicly — and walk through the petri-dish thinking that ties them together.

If you’ve ever felt like the culture in your practice is happening to you instead of being led by you, this framework is the reset.

Why Culture Is the Hidden Driver of Chiropractic Practice Growth

Chiropractic practice growth doesn’t stall because the marketing isn’t working. It stalls because the experience inside the practice doesn’t match what the marketing promised.

When your culture is defined and lived, every patient feels it the moment they walk in. When it isn’t, no amount of advertising can paper over the cracks.

Where Chiropractic Marketing Meets Team Culture

Your chiropractic marketing is a promise. Your culture is whether that promise is kept. In this episode I show you why the strongest chiropractic marketing in the world can’t outrun a team that doesn’t share your standards — and what to do about it before your next hire.

What You’ll Take Away From This Episode

• Why your team has already defined your culture for you — and how to take it back
• The petri dish principle: how the conditions you set decide what grows
• The number of values to land on (and why more is worse)
• How to turn a value into a behaviour your team can actually act on
• The interview question that revealed a future star team member in one answer
• How to bring your existing team into the conversation without it feeling like an accusation
• Why what you tolerate — even once — becomes the standard

Frequently Asked Questions

What if I already have a team and don’t plan to hire?

Defining your culture isn’t an accusation — it’s an invitation. Most team members lean in when standards become visible because it tells them exactly what good looks like. The episode walks you through how to open that conversation.

How many values should a chiropractic practice have?

Three to five. If everything is a value, nothing is. The episode explains why a tight set of named, non-negotiable values outperforms a long list of nice words every time.

What’s the link between culture and chiropractic marketing?

Culture is the experience your chiropractic marketing is selling. When the two are aligned, growth compounds. When they’re not, you spend money attracting patients your culture can’t keep.

Episode Transcript

Introduction

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening folks. Welcome to another episode of the Marketing Your Practice Podcast — the podcast where I have the pleasure of simplifying the marketing and the mindset so you the chiropractor can increase your income, your impact and your enjoyment in practice too.

The Eighteen-Month Story

I want to start today with a story. A few years back, we had a team member join our practice. And for most of the time she was with us, something felt off. Not dramatically off. Not in a way that was easy to point to.

She was a good person. She worked hard enough. She showed up. But the energy wasn’t quite right. Standards would slip when I wasn’t watching. There was friction — subtle, low-level, but constant.

And I kept asking myself… is this a people problem? A training problem? A me problem? I tried more training. More check-ins. More conversations. And slowly — over about eighteen months — it became clear that none of that was going to fix it.

Because the real problem wasn’t her. It was me. Specifically — it was what I hadn’t done before she ever walked through the door. I hadn’t defined what our culture actually was. I hadn’t named the values that mattered to us. And because of that, I had no way of knowing whether she was the right fit.

The Reframe — You Already Have a Culture

Here’s the thing about culture that most chiropractors don’t realise. You already have one. Every practice does.

The question isn’t whether your practice has a culture. The question is — did you build it, or did it build itself? Because if you haven’t deliberately defined your culture, your team has defined it for you. And they’ve defined it based on what gets tolerated, what gets celebrated, and what gets ignored.

Not the values poster on the wall. Not the mission statement on the website. What actually happens when you’re not in the room.

The Petri Dish

Think about a petri dish for a moment. Two petri dishes. Same bacteria. Different conditions inside each one. In one, the conditions are right. The bacteria multiplies. It thrives. In the other, the conditions aren’t right. Nothing grows. Or the wrong things do.

Culture works exactly the same way. The conditions you create in your practice — the standards, the behaviours, the things you’re willing to accept — those conditions determine what grows.

Get the conditions right, and the right things thrive. Leave them undefined, and you don’t get nothing. You get whatever was already in the air. A great culture doesn’t happen by accident. It’s designed.

Part One — Define It

Most practices have values. Almost none have named them. There’s a critical difference between values that live in your head and values that are written down, spoken out loud, and used as a filter.

Values only become culture when they’re tested — when you have to choose between what’s convenient and what you actually stand for. So the first question to ask yourself is this. What do you refuse to compromise on?

Aim for three to five values. No more than that. Because if everything is a value, nothing is. You can’t have nine important things. When you get to ten, what you actually have is a list of nice words. Not a culture.

A Value Without a Behaviour Is Just a Word

A family-focused nervous system practice might land on warmth, education, and consistency. A musculoskeletal or sports-focused practice might land on excellence, accountability, and energy. Neither is right or wrong. Values aren’t universal. They’re personal.

But a value without a behaviour attached to it is just a word. “Warmth” means nothing until you say what warmth actually looks like in your practice. In a family practice, warmth might mean every child who walks in — especially a nervous one — is greeted by name before they reach the front desk. That’s warmth. Not as a feeling. As a behaviour.

Excellence in a sports-focused practice might mean every patient leaves knowing exactly what they’re working on and why. Not a rushed adjustment and out the door. A clear, confident explanation of what changed today and what we’re building towards. That’s excellence. Not as a concept. As a standard.

Finding Your Values

A simple way to find yours. Think about the best team member you’ve ever had. Not the most qualified — the best. The one who made the practice feel right when they were in it. What did they actually do that made them great? Those specific behaviours are probably your values in action.

Flip it the other way. Think about the team friction that’s cost you the most over the years. The situations that drained the most energy. The moments where something felt fundamentally wrong. What was missing in those moments? That absence is a value too.

Part Two — Hire Through It

This is where the story comes back. When we hired this team member, we were under pressure. We needed someone. She was the best of the candidates in front of us. And the things that made her a questionable fit were visible even then.

But we didn’t have a filter. We had a gut feeling. We had “she’ll be right.” We didn’t have our values written down as a set of questions to run every candidate through.

Your culture is set at hiring. Not at training. You can train skills. You cannot train values. And when you hire someone who isn’t a culture fit — even a great person, even a hard worker — you are setting yourself up for exactly the kind of slow, grinding friction I experienced for eighteen months.

What About the Team You Already Have?

I know what some of you are thinking. “Angus, that’s great. But I already have a team. I’m not about to hire anyone. What do I do with the people who are already there?”

Clarifying your values is not an accusation. It’s an invitation. When you sit down with your team and say, “Here’s what this practice stands for. Here’s what we’re building. Here’s what matters to us” — most people will lean in. Most people want clarity. They want to know what good looks like.

Bring your team together. Share your values. Explain what each one looks like in action. Ask them what they think. Let them add to it. For most of your team members, naming the culture will be a relief. It gives them something to aim for.

And if a team member can’t or won’t align with the values you’ve named, you’ll know quickly. Because when values are visible, misalignment becomes visible too. That’s not a crisis. That’s information. And acting on that information — with clarity, with care, and without letting it drag on for eighteen months — that’s leadership.

The Above and Beyond Story

Once your values are defined, turning them into interview questions is straightforward. The key is to ask for evidence, not opinions. Anyone can say “I’m honest” or “I’m a team player.” But when you ask for a real story, you learn something a résumé will never tell you.

One of our values is going above and beyond. So in our interviews, we ask: “Can you give me an example of a time you went above and beyond for a customer?”

I remember interviewing a young woman. Seventeen years old. She’d been working at a supermarket. And she told us about a customer who came in one day looking for a specific cake mix. They didn’t have it in stock. But as the customer was explaining that, she mentioned why she needed it. It was the cake mix her mother used to make. Her mother had just passed away. And she wanted to make it one more time — in her memory.

Most people at that point would say, “I’m sorry, we don’t have it in stock.” Completely reasonable. But this young woman asked for the customer’s phone number. On her lunch break — unpaid, off the clock — she rang around other stores until she found one that had it. And then she called the customer back.

In that moment, we knew. You can’t coach that answer. You can’t fake that story. Either you did it, or you didn’t. That’s the power of asking for evidence instead of opinions.

Part Three — Live It Publicly

Culture isn’t what you say. It’s what you do. And as the chiropractor — the leader of the practice — your behaviour is the culture. What you celebrate becomes what the team aims for. What you tolerate, even once, becomes what’s acceptable. What you ignore becomes invisible.

This is where most chiropractors get stuck. Because it’s easy to write values down. It’s harder to actually use them — out loud, in the moment, in front of your team.

Naming Behaviour

When you see a value being lived, name it. Don’t just say “great job today.” That’s nice but it doesn’t build culture. Connect the behaviour to the value.

If warmth is one of your values, and you watch your CA kneel down to talk to a nervous five-year-old at eye level before their first adjustment, you stop. You pull her aside later and you say, “What you did with that little girl this morning — that’s exactly what warmth looks like in this practice. That’s who we are. Thank you.”

Now she knows. Not just that she did something good. But why it mattered. And she’ll do it again.

Holding the Standard

If accountability is a value and a team member comes to you and says, “I dropped the ball on that recall — I should have followed up sooner” — don’t brush past it. “I appreciate you owning that. That’s accountability. That’s exactly the standard I want us to hold ourselves to.” You’ve just made it safer to be honest. And safer to be honest means fewer problems get hidden.

And when a value is being violated, address it the same way. Not harshly. Not as punishment. But clearly. “The reason this matters to me is consistency. Every patient who walks in here deserves the same experience. That’s something I’m not willing to compromise on.” That conversation protects the standard, and it tells your team member that the standard exists for a reason.

The Standard Applies to You

Your values have to apply to you too. If accountability is a value and you’re twenty minutes late to team meetings… If excellence is a value and you’re rushing through adjustments when the schedule gets full… If warmth is a value and you’re short with your CA at the end of a long day… your team sees that. And what they see overrides everything you’ve written down.

Culture flows from the top. The most powerful thing you can do as a leader is hold yourself to the same standard you’re asking of everyone else. That’s not a burden. That’s credibility. And credibility is what makes everything else work.

Practical Application

Three things. One for each part of the framework. All completable this week.

One — define your values. Set aside twenty minutes. Ask yourself: what would I never compromise on in this practice? And what behaviour, if it disappeared from my team tomorrow, would make the practice feel fundamentally wrong? Write down three to five words. Then write one sentence next to each that says what it looks like in action.

Two — prepare for the conversation with your team. Plan a short team meeting. Frame it simply: “I’ve been thinking about what this practice stands for. Here’s what I’ve come up with. I want to hear what you think is missing.”

Three — catch someone living your values this week and name it. One moment. One behaviour. Stop, and name it specifically. Connect the behaviour to the value. That’s how culture moves from something written down to something actually felt.

Closing

Eighteen months. Low-level friction. Slipping standards. At the time I thought it was a people problem. And in a way it was. But not the way I thought. The real people problem was me. Because I had values — genuine, non-negotiable things I cared about deeply. I just hadn’t written them down. I hadn’t turned them into a filter. I hadn’t made them visible.

Culture isn’t something you fix after the fact. It’s something you build before the problem arrives. Define it. Hire through it. Live it publicly. The chiropractor who takes the time to do that doesn’t just have a better team. They have a better practice. And a much easier eighteen months.

All right folks, that’s it for today. Thanks for all that you do. Keep saving lives, and I’ll see you back here next week.