I first learned about Dr. Paul Hambrick by accident. I was stumbling around on the internet one day last summer and came across his site uppercervicaldocs.com.
When I took my hiatus from school, I really immersed myself in learning about internet marketing and blogging. Since returning to school, I’ve always wondered why more chiropractors don’t use these tools more often.
I was impressed to see that Dr. Hambrick WAS utilizing the internet to promote Upper Cervical Chiropractic. Not only was he marketing Upper Cervical patient newsletters, but he was doing interviews with some of the leaders in the world of Upper Cervical Chiropractic. He has interviewed the likes of Dr. Kirk Erickson, Dr. Larry Allen, Dr. Stan Pierce, Jr., Dr. Daniel Clark, Dr. Tom Forest, Dr. B.J. Kale, and Dr. Darren White.
I, for one, really enjoy the interviews Dr. Hambrick does, and I am grateful he has taken time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions for The Atlas of Life.
Brandon: Why did you decide to become a chiropractor?
Dr. Hambrick: “My mom loved her chiropractor, and took me and my sisters with her, pretty much anytime she went. She and our chiropractor always said that I should be a chiropractor, but I always thought chiropractors were just glorified masseuses.
I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon, and joined the Army as a medic to get a taste of being in the medical field.
One day, while in Korea, I jumped off the back of a 2.5 ton truck, hit a patch of ice, and wrenched my back bad. I immediately had severe low back pain, and nothing I did helped the pain. There were no chiropractors in the Army, and none in Korea that I knew about. So I lived with it… wasn’t easy.
When I got back home, I went to the chiropractor we had grown up with. By this time, I had developed severe sciatica as well.
She was able to give me moderate relief… usually it lasted as long as it took me to get back to the car, and I had just resigned myself to live with low back pain and sciatica for the rest of my life.
After 10 years of this, my brother-in-law, Stan Pierce Jr., was in school at Life University, and needed patients in student clinic.
He convinced me to be his guinea pig. He was practicing AO on this old medieval looking instrument called the Life Upper Cervical Table Mounted instrument. It had huge hand cranks, and gears, and was black and hulking. But it was very possible to replicate a nearly authentic Atlas Orthogonal adjustment on this thing.
Technically he wasn’t supposed to be practicing AO in clinic, so he said he was using Life Upper Cervical Technique, and most of the floor doctors didn’t know the difference, and the ones that did, didn’t care.
When I laid down on that table the first time, I laid down with a bout of low back pain, and sciatica. He set me up, made a clacking noise with the machine, and when I sat up, I was pain free.
Except for one other incident about a month later, I’ve been completely free of low back pain and sciatica ever since.
I was planning on going to law school, and getting into public relations of some sort at the time. On a road trip with Stan, from Alabama to Marietta, GA, we were talking about how to best spread the word about upper cervical, and I was giving ideas on what I could do to help.
Stan said that I should just go to school, and become an upper cervical doctor myself, and I thought, “Maybe I should.”
I never went to school to be a chiropractor, from the very beginning, I wanted to practice only upper cervical. I knew it was different, and could really make a difference in peoples lives like it had in mine.
So basically, my brother-in-law talked me into it.”
Brandon: How did you learn about Upper Cervical Chiropractic?
Dr. Hambrick: “My whole family was having supper at the table one night, and my sister was talking to my mom about what kind of chiropractic her new boyfriend’s dad (Dr. Pierce Sr.) practiced.
She said that he practiced a technique that specialized in correcting misalignments at the very first bone in the neck. Since every single nerve in the body passes through this bone, when it’s correctly aligned, it takes care of a multitude of problems in the rest of the body.
I remember thinking to myself, “That makes sense. Kind of like a main circuit breaker in an electrical system. If it ain’t right, nothing’s right.”
And that was how I first heard about the concept.”
Brandon: What was your experience in practice like?
Dr. Hambrick: “I had my own practice from the very beginning, and I tell everybody, that the best education anyone can ever have is owning their own business.
If you are still in school, and you are planning on having your own practice, but you have never owned your own business, start something now; read and learn how to make it successful, and make it successful.
It will be the best education you could ever give yourself.
I was very arrogant and cocky when I got out of school, and bought an existing practice in Sarasota, FL.
I basically thought I was buying a shrine to myself, and that my patients would be this perfect idyllic vision that I had in my head. They would come in with problems, and leave with corrected atlases and no problems.
It only took me 3 weeks to realize that I had a lot to learn. I nearly ruined that practice by trying to forcibly conform my patients into my way of doing things.
Over time, I came to realize that regardless of my education and ideals, I was first and foremost a service provider providing a service to my patients, and if they weren’t happy with the service, they would go somewhere else.
Dr. Pierce used to always say, “When it’s all said and done, you’ve got to deliver the goods.”
So I learned how to be a doctor, teacher, leader and obsequious all at the same time.
Brandon: What was the most amazing thing that you witnessed while in practice?
Dr. Hambrick: “I was very fortunate to have as a patient, the longest surviving victim of primary bone cancer. He had been in remission for over 40 years by using alternative and conventional means of his own devising. He was a brilliant human being, and he consulted with hundreds of other cancer sufferers.
He always said that there wasn’t a cancer patient who didn’t have a problem with C1, and he new through the type of testing that he did, that C1 needed to be addressed, but he didn’t know how to approach it.
He had referred to many other chiropractors who were not specifically upper cervical, and none of them could do anything for his clients, or himself. He had totally given up on chiropractic as having any value to him or his clients.
Then he decided to give me and upper cervical specific a shot, and with the first correction I made, he got relief from a particular problem that he had been dealing with for over 15 years.
He then made me and upper cervical part of his routine protocol for all of his clients who consulted with him for their cancer.
So the most amazing thing I saw was this huge parade of cancer sufferers, really, really sick people, getting their atlas corrected.
I’m not saying they were all cured, many waited too long, and there is such a thing as a limitation to matter, but I saw many of these people get better and add years to their life.”
Brandon: How did you come up with the idea of writing monthly newsletters for Upper Cervical Chiropractors?
Dr. Hambrick: “I needed a way to differentiate myself from other chiropractors, and I needed a way to market that difference.
I knew that the best way was to market to my existing patients because, after all, they already knew me, and had a relationship with me, and we all know that referrals are the best source of new patients.
I looked at some canned newsletters to send out, but none of them addressed the spine from the perspective that I did, and I did not want to send out something that was incongruent with my practice.
So I created my own upper cervical patient newsletter. I sent out the first one in November of 2004. I made an offer to new patients, and to inactive patients, and I was absolutely overwhelmed with the response.
The next month was even more overwhelming.
The first year I sent out that newsletter, the clinic’s profits increased by over 30% from the previous year. The next year increased another 30%, as did the year after that.
I sent the first newsletter out to 250 addresses. Four years later, I was sending newsletters to 985 addresses.
I was always surprised when I met an upper cervical doctor who didn’t send their patients a newsletter, and I was even more surprised at the ones who sent a generic, full-spine newsletter to their patients.
I decided that it was about time someone offer something that upper cervical doctors could send their patients.
It is by far, the best patient education tool, and marketing tool a doctor can have in their arsenal.”
Brandon: What is it like getting to interview some of the more well known names in Upper Cervical Chiropractic?
Dr. Hambrick: “Every time I do another interview, I get more excited about spreading upper cervical chiropractic, and doing the next interview.
Just the other day, I was relating the story of Stan and I on that car ride back from Alabama to my wife, when it hit me… I originally wanted to help spread upper cervical through some sort of PR means, and here I am several years later doing just that, in a way I never dreamed.
The interviews are a blast, and I hope people enjoy listening to them as much as I enjoy doing them.
Brandon: Do you think that successful internet marketing can and/or will get the word out about Upper Cervical Chiropractic?
Dr. Hambrick: “The internet is like your very own radio/television station and publishing house all rolled up into one, inexpensive package.
More and more people are going to the web first when they want to check out a new business, or a new doctor, and I think it’s the ones who have a relevant presence on the web that are going to succeed at spreading the message they want the public to hear.
So, yes, I think that we are right at the tipping point where you won’t be considered relevant unless you are on the web, with relevant information that answers the questions that people have about you, or the service you provide, or the message that you are trying to convey.”
Brandon: What is your vision for the future of Upper Cervical Chiropractic?
Dr. Hambrick: “Upper cervical chiropractic is on the cutting edge of chiropractic clinical science, and I would like to see us on the cutting edge of every single aspect of patient care.
I want to see us adopt, as standard, seated CT imaging with objective computer analysis.
I want to see us proving correction with objective post imaging, and I want us being unashamed of calling what we do a specialty.
And I would love to see us agree on a criteria for definitively determining atlas subluxation whether that is scanning palpation, supine leg check, instrumentation, cervical syndrome or a combination of all of it.”
Once again, I really appreciate Dr. Hambrick’s time, as well as his efforts in promoting Upper Cervical Chiropractic on the web.
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