7 Lessons 20 High-Achieving Osteopaths Want You to Know

Osteopaths shouldn’t be afraid to specialise

The idea of specialising often scares osteopaths as we believe we’re restricting our potential to treat anyone. While we undoubtedly love helping a wide range of people, the summit highlighted how many of us have taken a specific interest for a certain condition or approach and used it with great effect.

Pippa Cossens of Osteopathy For All spoke about how she used her passion for osteopathy and her experience to create not only an award winning clinic but a new model of practice to empower clients and help chronic pain. Pippa has taken her passion for treating chronic pain one step further by through Change Your Pain, an online platform supporting those who want to reduce or recover from chronic pain.

It’s not just pain that osteopaths can choose to specialise in. Tracy Hannigan of Tracy the Sleep Coach covered in great detail how osteopaths aren’t taught enough about sleep and how her drive to educate and empower her patients about the importance of how we sleep has lead her to progress from osteopath to ACE Certified Health Coach, Behavioural Change Specialist and sleep expert.

Specialising can also help you build your practice. Andrew Terry of Compass Health Clinic and Osteohustle’s Senior Business Coach, spoke about how osteopaths can break down barriers with other healthcare professionals and becoming the go-to healthcare professional for a certain condition by focusing his efforts on knowing as much as possible about persistent pain, with a particular interest in Ankylosing Spondylitis.

It’s important to note that Pippa, Tracy and Andrew all took their lived experience with chronic pain, insomnia and Ankylosing Spondylitis respectively to build their specialisms.

Osteopaths work better together

The idea of learning together is nothing new, but osteopaths can become quite hesitant to ask for help by asking others what works in their experience. The summit demonstrated how osteopaths do our best learning together and with other healthcare professionals.

Reena Joshi of Osteo Allies shared her story of feeling lonely in practice and how she wanted to bounce ideas off people and talk through problems she was facing while building her clinic. She then went on to explain how the power of creating a community of like-minded practitioners from all backgrounds has allowed her to build a thriving practice and community-based CPD platform on Instagram.

In my talk The Power of Growing Osteopathy From the Ground Up, I spoke about the challenges I managed to overcome when combining my knowledge from the business and marketing world with the incredible advice from over 300 osteopaths and other healthcare business owners. I then explained how without their help I would have never been able to build a thriving practice, highlighting the importance of bringing osteopaths together to learn the realities of planning, building and growing a clinic.

Osteopaths are needed everywhere

There’s no doubt that there is a shortage of osteopaths, and the summit clearly underlined the need for osteopaths in all corners of the physical and digital world.

Chris and Mandy Bell, better known as the Outback Osteos, spent the last 3 years of their life living and working full-time in a van, bringing osteopathy to the most remote communities in Australia. Bringing their dog Ralph along for the journey and harnessing the power of high-quality social media and getting to know the community as their primary marketing method, they described how locals and other healthcare professionals are desperate for more osteopaths to help their high demand.

It’s not just Australia where osteopaths are needed. Founder of OsteoJob, Arthur Codsi shared his fantastic experience and the pros and cons of working in many different countries including the UK, France, Singapore, Australia, India and Hong Kong. In his own words: “Why stay in the country where you studied when we can migrate to work as an osteopath?”

If you’re like me, you would have found out about Ed Paget along with 1.7 million others through his video How to Correct a Scoliosis With Exercise and Stretching. Ed argues that you don’t need to use your hands to help people. In his talk, Ed went through how he shares his scoliosis protocol to the world and how osteopaths can share our expertise too.

Osteopaths must find their why

Finding your why means finding what you truly want for your career. Finding your why was a common thread throughout the summit and there are good reasons for it: you can master your mindset, set a clear vision and use it to build an incredible reputation.

Mindset coach, Annie Osborne of CURE360 spoke about how important our mindset is in our osteopathic career, explaining that finding your why allows osteopaths to hone in on what actually matters and keeps you on track throughout achieving it.

As osteopaths, we want be seen as genuine, authentic and honest but sometimes struggle to know how when marketing. Branding expert at Osteohustle and Figure Out Creative, Jen Nash, explains how osteopaths must use their why to build a fantastic brand, business and vision, allowing us to connect with true authenticity.

Headaches are incredibly debilitating and we all know the feeling of having one. Helena Bridge shared her fascination with headaches and how it ignited her passion for helping headache suffers. Her talk outlined how her why of helping those with headaches led her to being the co-director of the Osteopaths for Progress in Headaches & Migraines, showing how osteopaths can create a community of like-minded individuals who all strive to help a group of people.

Osteopaths reach the highest heights

Osteopaths seem to always be in the shadow of chiropractors and physiotherapists. The summit put an end to that theory as multiple speakers showcased how osteopaths are very much in the spotlight. We now we have many peak performers to thank for raising so much awareness about osteopathy.

Acer House Practice founder Peter Horobin spoke about how he’s worked at the British Athletics, IAAF World Indoor Championships, World Para Athletics Championships, Hockey Masters World Cup, Paralympic Games and plenty more prestigious events and conferences. What got him there? Knowing everything these is to know about tendon rehab and management.

From one height of sport to another. As the first Human Performance Consultant Osteopath within Formula One, Gemma Fisher of Formula Health has been at the forefront of elite level health & fitness for the past 10 years. For the first time, Gemma shared how she got into elite sport and how osteopaths can too.

As a trailblazer for promoting osteopathy, Anisha Joshi of Osteo Allies covered how she uses Instagram to build her brand which has allowed her to treat the likes of Professor Green, Sir Trevor McDonald, Rita Ora, Nick Grimshaw and more. She also shared the ups and downs of her journey going from graduating as an osteopath to being able to educate the public with published articles and becoming an MSK expert for British TV morning show, This Morning.

Osteopaths are problem-solvers

We believe that osteopaths have the ability to solve any problem within our profession and the summit provided spades full of evidence. If we continue to come together, we can overcome any barrier.

After moving from cold Melbourne treating 2-5 patients per week to 10-15 patients per day in the 35 degree heat and 95% humidity of Queensland’s Gold Coast, Will Morrison found the traditional polos uncomfortable, impractical and unworkable. Failing to find a tailored solution and learning that others felt similar, he decided to create a clothing label for osteopaths by osteopaths – The Healthcare Co.

When it comes to thinking outside the box about how osteopathy can help people beyond the walls of their clinic, there’s few better than Emily Ward of Ebrook Osteopathy and Sports Therapy. Her talk covered how her podcast reaches larger local audiences and encourages them to lead a proactive life while her Modern Back Care app aims to teach people the tools and techniques to take charge of their own recovery from back pain.

Osteopaths are embracing change

Change takes many forms in osteopathy. The summit demonstrated how osteopaths are doing things differently in all sorts of ways.

Change is synonymous with technology and Jonathan Boxall of Osteo & Physio covered how if osteopaths can integrate software and technology, including a website, practice management system, virtual receptionist and bookkeeping software, into our practice that we can save time, money, organise our business better, grow our businesses efficiently and free up time for doing the things we love outside of work.

Aaron Caseley of MOFO Body Mechanic, a determined ambassador for strength and conditioning, spoke about how the general population suggest seeing an osteopath if you’ve got a bad back. So, if we’re going to shake off the stereotype of ‘being something about bones’, we need to start educating osteopaths, including students, about the power of exercise rehabilitation, education and prescription.

Osteopaths are changing the way we think about money. Louise Pratley of Osteo & Physio questions why can’t we keep our passion for osteopathy and earn an amazing income? She then shared her story of how she and the Osteo & Physio team achieved both through building a turn-key clinic franchise model to ensure osteopaths can earn more money when running their clinic without needing to work 24/7.

I hope you’ll join me in thanking Louise Pratley of Osteo & Physio who approached Osteohustle to help her make this incredible vision a reality. Without her innovation, the summit would never have happened.

Everyone involved saw what we were trying to do. We aimed to inspire and give osteopaths doing amazing things a stage to share that with all of us so we can make waves together.