Dr. John Pecora is a Sports Medicine Specialist and graduate from Southern California University of Health Sciences. He has worked with athletes from the NFL, NHL, MLB, NBA, PGA, WSL/ASP, X Games, as well as Olympic and collegiate athletes.
As Vice President of Business Development, Dr. Pecora has more than twenty years of clinical experience in the health and fitness industry working with professional and elite athletes. His broad spectrum of experience includes marketing, creative, content creation, research, strategic and business development experience.
In this of TechTalk Podcast, Brad Cost, Dr. Jay Greenstein, and Dr. John Pecora sit down to discuss:
Dr. Pecora's 'why' for sports chiropractic.
Chiropractic presence & influence within the industry.
Companies need commitment, quality, and community for success.
SHOW NOTES:
3:41 – From dreaming of being an ortho to enrolling into chiropractic school. “I grew up in Milwaukee, graduated from undergrad in Wisconsin and moved out to Huntington Beach, California to play qualifiers for AVP, the pro beach volleyball tour. Throughout my athletic career, I had a series of knee and low back issues and my mom, who is a PT, took me to every sport ortho and PT. One thing I noticed over time was that if my knee was bothering me, they focused on my knee. One of my coaches, Billy Brown, who is one of the greatest sports chiropractors, brought me into his clinic one day to tell me it wasn’t my right knee or the right side of my low back. My left hip was so tight and, within a couple months, the pain and challenges I'd had for 10-15 years were almost immediately gone. At the time, I was considering going to medical school to be an ortho, but Billy convinced me and Travis Conley, who is a good friend of mine, to go to chiropractic school. Billy wrote our reference letters and we drove 45 minutes every day to LACC, which is Southern California University of Health Sciences today.”
7:03 – Career journey of Dr. Pecora. “We would shadow Tim Brown, the original medical director of the AVP of the pro beach volleyball tour, and he would have Lennox Lewis, professional surfers, and professional skateboarders walking into his office. He had an ability to spend time educating people that the symptom of their hurt was not always the cause. I spent years studying under Tim and still work with him on a daily weekly basis. I was in private practice, seeing college, high school, pro athletes for about five years after graduating in 2004. Tim left practice to start a company called Intelliskin, which was posture apparel, and I became his Director of Sales, Business Development, Research. We grew in Intelliskin and then I had an opportunity at Meyer DC as the VP of Education for five years. That was an amazing experience. As the only clinician in this $250 million business, they would lean on me when new vendors would come on to sell a product through the catalog or online. I also had the opportunity to consult with one of the top five NBA athletes, where I realized I missed spending more time with athletes, so at the end of 2019, I started a consulting group. I'm also the VP of business development for a company called NeuX Technologies that is a direct current stimulation technology, which is the future of health and performance. I'm going to consult for WebExercises, where we've got a number of brilliant speakers. We do webinars where you can get CE for DCs, PTs, athletic trainers and more.”
12:59 – Sports chiropractic highlights. “It's really hard to change the tire on a sports car that keeps rolling, that never stops. You can never really put it in the garage and do what you want to do from a recovery, regeneration, rehab standpoint. 2020 became a time for guys to take a break and really work on the stuff that they just couldn't get ahead of. It was great for us as practitioners to continue to treat athletes from the NHL, NFL, NBA, PGA, a few pitchers, UFC guys, and some Olympic athletes. We also work with high school and college athletes. Typically, our two main goals are to improve tissue quality and activate muscles that are disconnected. You're either being pulled out of balance and are overly tight or you're trying to activate stuff that isn't firing or engaged. We'll also always touch on diet, hydration, sleep, and things like that.”
18:08 - Chiropractic influence in sports. “Just like anything else in the world, it's never big enough. We always wish there was more awareness and access. There are some amazing godfathers and thought leaders that have really helped to propel the profession forward. You talk to guys who have been with teams for a long time yet hear about the challenges and the perception out there of what we do, what we can do, how we can help, and just in the profession in general. We're in a tremendous time right now where there's more interest in utilizing whatever means possible to enhance human performance and reduce the risk of injury. There's a lot of brilliant minds out there. With social media, we've never been so connected and disconnected at the same time, but fortunately there's a lot of great stuff out on social media where you can learn about whatever! Our goal throughout the years is creating more awareness for the great minds out there for the great innovators who are doing amazing things. We're getting closer to that tipping point, but the pendulum moves slowly. You look at an organization like the APTA, the American Physical Therapy Association, where they have one governing body, 20 sections. This is one of the reasons that we don't have more impact, especially in the sports world, because we just can't seem to come together as one united front with one voice.”
23:58 – Chiropractic presence in sports. “It's such a tremendous benefit. There's a lot of chiropractors that work with teams where they just do tissue work to a degree. Once again, it's bringing in your specific specialty and doing whatever you can to help the team. It's becoming more widely accepted and utilized, so hopefully those numbers continue to grow in the future.”
24:48 - Becoming the best at what you do. “Find someone that does what you want to do, how you want to do it, where you want to do it and go learn from them. In order for you to be successful at anything, you have to love the grind. I know some amazing adjusters who see hundreds of patients a day. They're tremendous and help so many people, but that's what they want to do. That's what they love. You have to be where you want to be, you have to love where you live, you have to work with a patient demographic that you love to work with. I love the general population, but I love athletes because you don't have to motivate them. They will do the work. The biggest challenge with athletes is you have to keep them from doing too much work, whereas most people require you to pull them along to get them to do anything. With athletes, if you want them to do it for 10 seconds, you have to tell them to do it for one second, because one second will turn into a minute. I love working with people who are willing to put in the work to get better and take an active role in their health.”
33:05 - Common components of successful Meyer DC vendors. “Number one, you have to have a commitment to have some longevity and survive. You have to be willing to persevere and have persistence. It's a challenge to start a company, to grow a business, to get people to adopt and create awareness. A lot of groups would be in the expo hall at conferences, but they’d get no ROI, and tell their investors they didn’t sell much and made a few relationships. You'd never see them again and that’s one of the reasons professionals are so weary when they're walking around an expo hall. They've got to see at least three to four years before they'll even stop by your booth. You don't want to put your name behind something and tell your patients about something that next year isn't going to be around. The ability to have resources to survive is important, but having a product that is beneficial is amazing. You want a great product that works. More than anything, you need to create a community. Think of Lululemon - they featured their ambassadors on their website and grew a yoga community that people wanted to be a part of. You need to show that you're doing things to connect with people. People want to be a part of it. That's probably the most important thing – get out there. You need to have a great product and create awareness while building a community. Commitment, quality, and community.”
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