Join Michael as he interviews Dr. Beau Beard, one of the founders of The Farm! The Farm, which stands for “Functional Athletic Rehabilitation & Movement,” is a facility located in the Birmingham/Chelsea, Alabama area that specializes in chiropractic care, rehabilitation, performance training, and functional medicine! Podcast Transcript: Michael Wienecke Hey and welcome to the Peskies Pest Control Podcast today. I have got Dr. Beau beard with me. He owns The Farm chiropractic business in Birmingham, Alabama, and also Chelsea, Alabama. Beau, how you doing today? Dr. Beau Beard Doing pretty good. Hope my voice holds out here, so we’ll see. Michael Wienecke Hey, all good. You sound great on, you know, on camera and all that. So both tell us a little bit about your business. Let’s just kind of, you know, go into why you started all that fun stuff. Dr. Beau Beard Yeah. So we’re, again, we’re a chiropractic and rehab center. So it’s called The Farm, functional athletic rehabilitation and movement, which can be a mouthful. So just go by the farm. But it’s myself and my wife, Doctor Sloan, who started the practice back in 2014 and like I said, it’s a mix of chiropractic. So people tend tend to think chiropractic is just coming, get your back adjusted or popped and see you later. But we both have a masters in sports rehab. We have a lot of other, you know, fancy certifications nobody want to hear about. But what that allows us to do is kind of look at your whole health from, you know, global standpoint, yeah, we have a musculoskeletal focus, but our tagline is better than before. So the goal is, you don’t just come in and, you know, get your back pain taken care of. We’re looking at how you move, how you eat, how you train, kind of, the things you do throughout your life, and really try to get you to move better than before. So we don’t see you for the same thing in our office, hopefully, again, Michael Wienecke That’s great. Yeah, I know as a firefighter, you know former firefighter, mobility is everything. Strength is everything, because you just as we age, we start to fall apart. Dr. Beau Beard It’s a natural part of life. And I did a talk this morning to a bunch of firefighters, and we were talking on the importance of not waiting for injuries to show up, but hopefully getting yourself moving better and maybe a little more often so they don’t show up at all. That would be the real goal, which is kind of a bad business model, but that’s, you know, that’s what we want our patients to work towards and strive for. Michael Wienecke Yeah, I would 100% agree. I mean, the food is almost 100% if you’d agree. Dr. Beau Beard Yeah, it’s, you know, the funny thing is, people come to us, obviously, for, you know, an ankle sprain, low back pain, a headache, jaw pain, and, you know, within a couple visits, we’re talking to all these people about, yeah, how you sleep? How do you eat? Are you exercise, not enough or too much? Should you try something different? And, you know, all the fun stuff in between. But yeah, we’re really trying to take care of your whole health to our best ability, and also just be be a part of your healthcare team, you know, which is maybe a lost art nowadays. So we’re trying to bring that back. Michael Wienecke I would agree. I think, I think health in general is a lost art. Dr. Beau Beard We can have a long conversation on that. But yeah, like I said, you know, if somebody comes to me, and let’s say it’s because of their knee pain, and I think that maybe one of the more important aspects to not only help their knee pain, but for their health, is to, you know, decrease inflammation, lose some weight, you know, we kind of say, give them what they want, but keep them around for what they need. So we want them to be on knee pain, but I also want them to be a healthy individual that doesn’t need pain anymore. So we’re to pay anymore. So we’re gonna have those hard conversations that, you know, maybe I don’t have a treatment or a tool specifically for that, but I can help you walk, walking down that path. Michael Wienecke No, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So what got you into business, you know, let’s just talk about what made you want to start and go out on your own and take that leap of faith, if you will. Dr. Beau Beard Yeah, so going way back, since I’m old now, when I was nine years old, I fractured my femur playing kind of pick up football. I still, to this day, have a titanium rod my left femur. And on the back end of that surgery, I just, you know, I was from small town in central Illinois, didn’t have the greatest, you know, post op rehab program, which meant none, and they basically, I guess, thought I was a kid and you’re going to be fine, you’re resilient. And everything wasn’t perfect, especially when I got into sports. So some things kind of came to light later. So I really got into this because I was fortunate enough to play sports, you know, for a long time after that initial injury. And I want to make sure when I first got into practice that that never happened to a patient that I saw, right, if a kid came in with injury, or an adult that they got the best possible care. As it’s evolved now, it’s kind of more what we just talked about. Like, I see, you know, we have an athletic spin, but I see a lot more just, you know, general, you know, average Joes, weekend warriors, people that are just trying to be the best they can every day. And that tends itself towards a more holistic approach, or whole health approach. So now what kind of fires me up is, you know, solving the problems of, you know, can I not only get somebody out of pain, which becomes easier and easier as you go into practice, it’s well, can I get them to put on some muscle, you know, get over this kind of osteoporosis thing, lose a little weight, deal with this autoimmune issue, and you’re trying to do that is economically and as timely as you can. But also, like I said, like, we want them to get what they came for, which, if you package it correctly, you can do all that at once, and you just gotta, you know, that’s part of business, right? It’s figuring out how to package that. Michael Wienecke 100% Well, I mean, and I’d say it is all in a package. I mean, you’ve got to eat right. You’ve got to exercise. You’ve got to you’ve got to do all the things. So just like here at Peskies Pest Control, with the pest control, sometimes our customers have to help us out, just like your customers have to help you out. Dr. Beau Beard Yeah, I mean, there’s, I think everybody understands this. I could give you all of the best information. I could tell you stuff that’s in, you know, some of these books here behind me, and if you don’t act on it. I mean, it doesn’t change anything. So we don’t just say, Oh yeah, you got to go do this stuff. The really what your job becomes kind of a coach. It’s like how to kind of motivate people to stick with this, or make the change, or do their home exercises, or, you know, whatever it is, and that that can be really tough. I mean, myself included, I don’t think I eat perfect. I think I eat really good. I don’t do all the things I could do to keep myself feeling awesome, because I just want to go, you know, hit the trail and run, instead of doing my, you know, drills every once in a while. So the goal is keeping the motivation high, making it fun, right, not making it kind of a drag. Have to come into a clinical setting and at the end of the day, just, you know, really aligning goals. So if somebody wants to be able to do something that maybe they told they couldn’t do or they shouldn’t do, and you will allow them, or allow them to see that they could do that and eventually accomplish it. I mean, that’s that’s the fun stuff. Michael Wienecke Oh, 100%. Well, other than the amazing passion that you bring to this, you know, this line of work, because I know I’ve spoke with you off camera, you know, you bring a lot of passion to your to your business, and I really respect that. So what else sets you apart? Dr. Beau Beard Yeah, like I said, we, you know, when we it’s funny. So when we first came to Birmingham, I thought we are coming into the sports medicine mecca, right? We have James Andrews, who set up his Andrews institute here, who is basically the godfather of orthopedic surgery in the sports realm. And I kind of walked in, I was like, Oh, we’re kind of set apart and different based just on what we offered, right? That kind of chiropractic, physical therapy, sports performance, functional medicine, like nobody was offering. All that. Times have changed, right? We’re talking 13 years later. There’s more people offering those products, and now it’s kind of well, what does set us apart? I really think, is if you came into a session and, you know, just kind of follow to all the clinicians around the office, you’d see we have a lot of interns from a lot of, you know, chiropractic and physical therapy schools all over the country that come and hang out with us. So there’s an educational component to what we’re doing as doctors with other students that bleeds over to the patient visit, where it seems to be this kind of teaching thing. There’s also, you know, I teach to professionals as well. So the fact that I have to kind of stay sharp and hone my skills enough to where I’m not just, you know, treating people, but it’s like, Well, how am I going to go help other professionals treat on the same, you know, I don’t want to say the same levels. That’s like, we set the bar, but we’re trying to so I really think education is at the epicenter of all we’re doing, and it helps me stay sharp. It creates a more fun experience for the patient when they have interns in there and they see it’s kind of a team approach to their case. But yeah, if y