What Made This Chiropractic Radio Show Explode?

Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Chiropractors.Media

I want to bring up a situation at the onset of your, that radio career for 15 years. What did they tell you, right at the beginning, about how it would grow, you know you take a long time to grow and then what happened that and the disbelief, you know, we I know about it.   I want you to talk about it here. 

Alan Bonebrake – Teaching Chiropractor – Plano, Texas

Okay well you might remember when McMahon and the Chicago team won two Super Bowls in a row right mm-hmm well actually I was doing acupuncture and they asked me to come on and I actually got a free spot doing acupuncture on KSN in Wichita, Kansas.

That was kind of the first time I did any of that. Now, I was running radio ads. But then I decided, I left Wichita and I decided I’m going to go to a small town. Now, I had a large practice in the Midwest in Wichita. That’s a whole long story about how I know that from two different sources. But anyway, I went to this little town, and so I thought, okay, I’m going to do my own radio show. And you’re going to laugh with this, but I was so bad I was just reading out of a textbook.

Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Chiropractors.Media

Everybody’s got to start somewhere, right?

Alan Bonebrake – Teaching Chiropractor – Plano, Texas

And finally, the producer said, hey, look at me and talk to me. Yes. I go, oh, okay, all right. And so I did that, and I developed and I had several TV ads that I ran out of Ponca City and, got people to go on TV and do TV ads. People are going, how do you get these people to go in? I’m going, well, I ask them. They go, well, I ask them too. Nobody will do it, but I have a special way to do it.

So anyway, by the time I got down to Dallas, I was asked to do a one-hour show. And I thought I did pretty good. And so the producer, I said, How’d that come out? And he said, Well, it took me a while to edit it. And I’m, What do you mean? Man, there were so many uhs and ahs in there. I couldn’t believe it. Really? I did not notice that.

Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Chiropractors.Media

Nobody ever does.  So, let’s talk about the callers. Let’s talk about the callers. I remember what you mentioned about how they said it would, of course, not generate a number of callers. What actually happened?

Alan Bonebrake – Teaching Chiropractor – Plano, Texas

Okay. Well, I had had quite a bit of experience after that period of time, plus I kind of knew better how to ask somebody to call in than anybody, which I think is very important. Okay.

And they literally told me, well, you might get some sparse calls for, you know, maybe it’ll take about three months. They have to get to know you first. I’m going, yeah, well, I’m going to have a lot from the very start. And they go, yeah, well, everybody says that. So my first show, I got 120 calls. They’re going, what?

And see, they had call screeners and I told them, I don’t care what the condition is, let it through. And that’s saying a lot because people were not just calling about backaches and carpal tunnel syndrome and whiplash. They were talking about everything. Irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease, sleep apnea, snoring. And they would ask really difficult questions.

And on this one, the manager of the station, we did it in an interview style, just kind of like you are. And he would ask me questions. And we’d fill calls. And one day after we were done, he says, how do you know all this stuff? I said, well, I read a lot.