Selling and the chiropractic profession. I get it.
In reality we are all selling something in our daily lives. We've all heard that before. We do have to sell our care, we even have to sell ourselves to our spouses. That cliche is everywhere, and true.
I'm not here to condemn "selling". We all have to make our cheddar. We should always encourage the production of novel and innovative products and services. And the creators of those things should be rewarded for their work and contribution to the profession and society at large.
My conception of what the chiropractic profession is as an entity constantly evolves. When I was younger I thought that if you practiced, you'd make plenty of money, and after a long career, with sound financial planning, you'd be able to retire into the sunset satisfied with a job well done.
The thought always was that your income and return on investments (home, stocks, etc) would outpace student loan interest rates and debt, and eventually you would come out on top due to the graces of compound interest. The American Dream is mathematics.
But if you look at our profession in its current state, that is NOT the reality we see. Nearly everyone is selling something or has their hands in something beyond their clinical practice. Products, consulting, services, insurances, supplements, seminars, books.
The new chiropractic dream is to create a thing that will make you enough money to not have to practice anymore. I'm not condemning that either.
What I am not comfortable with is colleagues who behave purely in a pecuniary manner. Where their every action, every motive, every social media comment or private interaction, is one that attempts to move their audience towards a sale, towards their product, towards their service.
The audience gets wise to that. Eventually they see your name on a post and KNOW it's going to be a sale/product pitch. I don't want this group to be that. I was kind of hoping this group would be about real DCs sharing their real ideas in a virtually real environment.
I wanted leaders and the old guard in here sharing wisdom and old stories and resources. I wanted the successful sharing how they did it and how you can too. I wanted the not successful yet to be able to ask for help and direction. I wanted it to be open sourced.
That doesn't mean that success doesn't come with a cost. We all have to invest in our success. But I feel personally there are some peers in our profession who hold extremely valuable information from others, for ransom, in order to profit off of it. That doesn't help raise the bar. I'm not about that.
Our leaders fail us. Our education at times fails us. Our professions divisiveness fails us. The last hope we have is to turn to our closest peers and sometimes they fail us, in order to protect their income/proprietary ideas.
The FTCA is heavily researching what it will take to become a non profit organization. There are individuals who sell products or services that have come forward and offered percentages of their companies profits to go towards the FTCA. They believe in what the group stands for and want to see it succeed. They will be "advertising" to you, also with a strict understanding that they will be expected to EMPOWER you as well. Not just sell.
I prefer not to hold knowledge for ransom, or participate in pay to play clubs who hijack knowledge that should be readily available to the whole, for the sake of profit.
That is NOT patient centered thinking.