As the owner of Pinnacle Chiropractic and Phoenix Bioperformance, I spend an awful lot of time learning the best ways to market to my patients and consumers. Most small business owners know that you can’t just exist and expect to have customers. Some people don’t think of a health care practice as a small business, but it absolutely is. I spent seven days a week in the early years working ON my practice as well as IN it. We have quite a great referral base now, and while I may not spend seven days a week out doing personal marketing, between Pinnacle and Phoenix Bioperformance (makers of KinetiCream), I still do some form of marketing daily for one or both companies. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are aware of the social media craze. Facebook, Linked In, Google Plus, Instagram, Twitter and several more phone or computer apps are designed to keep you in the know and connected with friends. As a business, it is also a great way to keep connected with your consumers. So I often find myself trolling these apps to determine how to best market my companies to keep my customers engaged. Surprisingly, while searching through social media, I am noticing a trend of people flocking to the health and fitness industry and shouting to the world on how they are improving their own personal fitness. My question is whether this is the beginning of a real era of putting health first, or if it is just another fad.

I happen to be writing this as I sit in my hotel in Davenport, Iowa, getting ready for my 10 year class reunion dinner with my chiropractic colleagues from Palmer College of Chiropractic. Needless to say, due to the nature of the chiropractic profession, many of the folks on campus are extremely fit and obviously health conscious. However, not one to miss many workouts, I ventured to the local Gold’s Gym twice now with my fiancée, Courtney. I was quite pleased to see that there was a big crowd and the people were absolutely loving the gym. The gym had kept up with current trends, incorporating CrossFit style exercise stations and kettlebells, and it had a substantial number of trainers on site who absolutely looked like they were practicing what they preached. I am not a huge guy, but I’m used to being one of the more muscular guys in a gym, and I was happy to see that there were several guys and girls that obviously took their health as serious as I do. There were many beginners, working hard to improve, but they were doing it with passion rather than reluctance. Needless to say, I was impressed with the overall atmosphere that this created.