Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:23] Welcome to Cherokee Business Radio Stone Payton here with you this morning. And today’s episode is brought to you in part by Alma Coffee. Sustainably grown, veteran, owned and direct trade, which means, of course, from seed to cup, there are no middlemen. Please go check them out at my alma coffee ecom and go visit their Roastery Cafe at 3448 Holly Springs Parkway in Canton. As for Harry or the brains of the outfit, Letitia and tell them that Stone sent you. You guys are in for such a real treat this morning. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast. First up on today’s edition of Cherokee Business Radio with Genesis Center for Optimal Living. Dr. Thomas Graham. Good morning, sir.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:01:10] Good morning. How’s it.

Stone Payton: [00:01:11] Going? It is going well. We’ve been looking forward to this for some weeks now. I’ve really have kind of envisioned us having this conversation for a few reasons that may come to light as as our discussion unfolds. But you and I, I think we initially connected at maybe Woodstock Business Club or YPO, one of these local business organizations that were so fortunate to have here in this community. Am I remembering that right?

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:01:37] Yeah. I believe I originally met you, the y pow and then later on at Woodstock Business Club. So.

Stone Payton: [00:01:44] So incidentally, why Powell? The why and why Palestinians for young, why they let me participate in that group? I don’t know. But I am so fortunate your heart. That’s I am I am young at heart. All right, Dr. Tom, tell us a little bit about mission purpose. Would your work with your practice? What are you really out there trying to do for folks?

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:02:08] Well, I’ll start with just my purpose statement. I feel that gives a lot of clarity to what we kind of do in this crazy rock we call Earth. So my purpose is to elevate humanity’s consciousness through personal growth and development, utilizing inspiration, education and opportunity.

Stone Payton: [00:02:26] I feel like you’ve answered that question before, maybe once or twice. That was very articulate, very, very eloquent. All right. So say well.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:02:33] So ultimately, my my place on this earth is to try to get people thinking clear, trying to elevate their choices, and then also creating education, hopefully inspire people with things like this radio show and then, of course, create opportunity where someone could go better, their mind better, their life, their health. What’s the next step for you and your evolution ultimately?

Stone Payton: [00:02:56] So let’s do that. Let’s talk about optimal health, because I’m operating under the impression you probably have a very distinct frame of reference definition for that. And maybe in the course of that same discussion, maybe a little bit about, you know, what is disease in your mind?

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:03:14] Well, it all starts in the the root of the word dis ease. So disease is literally the lack of ease in a body. So chiropractic on a on a I’ll say historic level has looked at health a lot different than, let’s say, many Western medicines. And they look at disease as essentially things that you come across in your surroundings, your environment, things like that that ultimately your brain can’t fully process. And with time that starts to create resistance or the lack of ease in a system or the lack of flow in an energetic system, so that at the at the end of it all, disease is essentially these things. You can’t process finding resistance in your body. And with time, that usually ends up creating dysfunction disease. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:04:11] All right. And so optimal health is in your mind the the other end of that continuum or the.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:04:17] Exactly. So so health is is very much a spectrum. On one side of health, you have optimal health means that, you know, all the cells in your body are doing their appropriate function, your organs are are giving back. All the cells in the body have right communication flow. And essentially that would be things are regenerating with you at your at your prime. There’s there’s guys even today that, you know, 100 years old are running marathons and wow, what’s possible for one is possible for all. It’s a matter of it’s a matter of the steps you take to actually achieve that and how you can essentially create more ease throughout the system.

Stone Payton: [00:05:00] So in our admittedly pretty cursory conversations, you have mentioned on more than one occasion brain and nervous system. And this is a this is a very important aspect of of your practice. Can you speak more to that?

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:05:14] Absolutely. So the brain and nervous system is really what I focus on at Genesis as chiropractors. Ultimately, like I said, the body is all energetic. Flow in the brain and nervous system is the key system. It’s also the master control center, kind of like at the computer of the whole body. So if the computer can’t connect to the part, right, the part is going to start malfunctioning.

Stone Payton: [00:05:45] I love these stone level descriptions. I know it’s helpful for me and I think it’s probably helpful for the listeners. Thank you. Yeah. Keep going.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:05:51] So if you can’t get full communication to all the cells in the body, essentially that’s what starts the process of disease or dysfunction. So the brain and nervous system, right, all runs through the spinal cord. So those that have seen chiropractors of any sort, generally they’re working with your spine somehow. That’s because 90% of all your nervous system essentially is between your head and your tailbone happens all through that core layer. And when that starts to dysfunction, twist the spine and the body start to twist, distort things like that. The level of communication that goes to those cells goes to your different organs and tissues starts to minimize. And now the cells don’t know how to react to the rest of the body. They’re not getting all the right information right. So if you’ve been on a phone call with someone, you can only hear 50% of the conversation. You try to get to Woodstock, they end up in Alabama.

Stone Payton: [00:06:53] So I think most of us laypeople already understand there’s probably a little bit of a departure from the the art and science of chiropractic versus traditional Western medicine. But I get the sense that there’s a little bit of a departure in, in in your path, your approach to chiropractic than maybe what we might describe as traditional chiropractic. Is that.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:07:17] Accurate? I will I will actually correct you slightly.

Stone Payton: [00:07:23] It happens to me all the time. My wife, Holly, does that a lot.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:07:25] I am actually what you would consider a traditional chiropractor.

Stone Payton: [00:07:29] Okay.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:07:30] Because this is the philosophy that that the profession was truly founded on. Right. It uses principles. We even have something in the chiropractic profession called the 33 principles. Some of them are talking about universal principles. Some of them talk about biologic principles. But when you add all those together, essentially you come up with a very clean framework about how someone can go about their life, starting to make better decisions and starting to up the game. Right. So universal principle number one, there is an intelligence that exists through all of matter universally. So whether it’s in the table, the chair, our bodies in this microphone, the computer, there are some sort of intelligence that holds atoms together, some sort of intelligence that allows stuff to stay operating. I’m not that smart to know what that intelligence is, but I can observe it every day, all the time, right? Oh, yeah. So another one would be time. Principle number six is all processes require time, right? You can see it easily observable principle that you could basically demonstrate over and over and over and over again. Right. So when you when you take that approach using principles as far as how you start facilitating someone’s health journey at the at the end of the day, as long as those principles are true, then, then absolutely you’re going to end up at much higher gains in your life and function so that traditional chiropractic takes that approach. Western medicine has has started to integrate with a lot of chiropractic and.

Stone Payton: [00:09:17] Much more so than in recent than, you know, a decade back. Right. It was not so much back then. Yeah.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:09:23] I would say it really it really started in the late seventies and eighties is when when insurance got involved more with the profession, diagnosis, things like that. So a lot of the profession took on more of a Western medical allopathic treatment protocol versus principles of living. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:09:47] Well, so far.

Stone Payton: [00:09:48] I’ve got.

Stone Payton: [00:09:48] Lots of other questions. I mean, there’s just so much I don’t know about so much, but particularly this domain. I’m not going to run out of questions. We’ll just have to have you guys back. All right. We’re going to dove more into that because I really do. It fascinates it fascinates me. And I’m on my own personal health journey right now that, you know, it’s my show. So I’m going to talk about that a little bit, too, in a little while. But you brought somebody with you. Tell us about who you who you brought with you. Man, this team.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:10:12] Up, he’s he’s like my brother from another mother. We met later on in chiropractic school. We basically look like twins.

Stone Payton: [00:10:21] Yes, you do. You should start your own cult or something. I don’t know.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:10:26] It’s a endeared friend of mine. Fellow fraternity brother in the chiropractic, professional fraternity and doctor, or soon to be Dr. Zack Conner. He’ll be graduating and starting practice in Michigan in December as when his departure from from Georgia happens.

Stone Payton: [00:10:44] But. All right. Well, welcome to the show, Zach.

Dr. Zach Conner: [00:10:47] Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Stone Payton: [00:10:48] Yeah. So you can see it now. The light at the end of the tunnel, you’re going to you’re going to get your credentials and then you’re making a bold move right out of the box here. You’re leaving sunny Georgia and going to Michigan.

Dr. Zach Conner: [00:11:01] Yeah, yeah. My, my better, more beautiful half and her family are up there, and it’s going to be exciting north of Detroit, Macomb County, somewhere in that area.

Stone Payton: [00:11:10] So when and how did you make the decision to pursue this path? Because, I mean, you’re a good looking, strapping, young, healthy guy. You could have been a lot of things, right? You could have been an Army man, bus driver. I’ll explain that to our audience here a little bit.

Dr. Zach Conner: [00:11:29] It’s almost as if you’ve known me for.

Stone Payton: [00:11:30] Exactly.

Dr. Zach Conner: [00:11:31] Yeah. So I was in the Navy for a while and I was going to get out of the Navy because they treated me nice and it went well. But as far as people telling me what to do every day, I was kind of getting sick of that. And I threw this Hail Mary, which is basically I’ll re-enlist if I get this job. And it’s not like I had pool. I didn’t have leverage like that. I just got lucky and I got it. And they call it cake duty and it’s just an intentionally easy job that somebody has to do. And I happen to be that guy. So I had too much free time basically, and just spent my time out in San Diego researching and and exploring, really fell in love with philosophy and ancient Egyptian philosophy and anything that had to do with base principles and stacking of awarenesses and understandings. And then I got out of the Navy and just played for probably way too long and worked in the service industry, got into bartending and met, you know, cool, interesting people like Dr. Tom here and just kept talking philosophy. And one day my my neck was messed up from a fall and it was like, you know, I can crack my own neck. And and I was actually at work bartending and I went to crack my own neck and made it way worse. Ended up going to a local chiropractor, Doctor Bobby Braille. He’s still in Marietta practicing. And he spit the philosophy at me and it hit me, like, deeply, because I’m like, wow, this is an application of these fundamental truths that I’ve been studying for all these years because I wasn’t specifically studying the body, but the fundamental truths are represented in the body. And so it was just this beautiful union. And ever since then, it’s been nothing but a re affirmation. You know, it’s it’s very affirmed. This is where I’m supposed to be.

Stone Payton: [00:13:16] So both of you and I’d like for both of you to speak to this. So you you’ve got your credential. You’re out doing your thing. Dr. Tom. Zach, you got your whole life ahead of you with this. And you both also know you’ve got your business people. So, I mean, that’s a whole nother domain of expertize and angst. And and I don’t know what, but I’ll start with you, Dr. Tom. Tell us a little bit about that, like becoming a business person, things you found exciting, things that didn’t maybe go so well, challenges, rewards. What was that like?

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:13:51] Well, I’m still learning every day. And I definitely didn’t go to business school for 15 years. Yeah, that was a rude awakening. But but ultimately, it’s, it’s that stepping stone for for helping other people. So even even through the stuff, you know, I don’t absolutely fall in love with doing at the end of the day, it’s become worth it because you get to help more people make good connections, everything like that. But yeah, the business the business side of the business side of things has definitely been a learning curve just because there’s a lot of aspects to it. You’re the you’re wearing all the hats, right, right, right. Right off the bat as well. Of course, you know, starting on a on a student budget, I’ll say don’t have the finances to hire people and stuff like that. So so yeah, it’s been definitely a learning curve but enjoyable.

Stone Payton: [00:14:51] So so far, how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a guy like you at practice? Like, are you out there shaking the bushes or are you creating really important relationships with other people in that in the health ecosystem? How are you getting the new business?

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:15:09] So most recently it’s been a lot of business to business connections, honestly doing networking, stuff like that. Besides that though, but I’ll say before I did a whole rebranding. Assess for about a year out of my office and everything like that and was basically just word of mouth. So luckily when you’re good at what you do, people do sing praises, which I’m grateful for. So, so yeah, in that process, it’s just been keeping me floating. And going forward, I’ll say and then now that I’ve actually got rebranded completely and everything, doing a lot more actual personal outreach, doing health talks, education’s definitely one of the the pillars as far as making a sustainable practice, especially especially a model like this, because you’re not looking for the the one time Nick Payne Pop or whatever really it’s showing people that health is a journey and showing them that chiropractic can be part of their brain and neurology piece of that, just like nutrition is, you know, a piece of that as well. Exercise, it’s a piece of that big journey.

Stone Payton: [00:16:22] So are you finding that you’re educating different groups of people like lay people like me who may need and want to be clients of yours, but other practitioners and other domains like are you educating doctors or people who are nutritionists? Are you educating them as well so that you can?

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:16:42] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I’m always, always an advocate for reaching out to other businesses in the health realm because my office brain nervous system. That’s it, right? I can make recommendations of of supplements and stuff like that. But really, that’s not my forte. It’s not what I do in office. So I want people if you want to lose some weight, I have a couple of people I can call up. Oh, I got the person for you. Or if you want to go, get in better shape. Yeah, I got the person from you for you. You need a massage? Yep, I got a person for you. So having that trusted network of people is absolutely part of my business model. Maybe eventually down the road, I’ll get to a place where I can have it all under one roof. But. Right, well.

Stone Payton: [00:17:27] That could be.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:17:28] Cool. But right now, I love, love the thought of just taking care of people’s brain nervous system and and love them. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:17:35] Yeah. Okay, Zach, you got to get out there and run a business here before too long. Are there some things you’re doing now to to prep for that? Because you don’t want to just land a mission and go, oh, gosh, I got to do something. Right. So you’re doing some stuff now?

Dr. Zach Conner: [00:17:50] Yeah. So right now I’m collecting resources essentially, and I’ve been mentor shopping the whole time I’ve been in school. And so I’ve been finding more and more successful people that are willing to willing to help out. And luckily I’ve got my again, my more beautiful half Fiona Gallagher. Her father, Terrence Gallagher, is a successful businessman who’s opened many chiropractic offices in Michigan, and he’s willing to help us out on the coaching of the business end of things. And so from what I’ve heard, whether it’s an organization that’s you pay a certain amount of money a month or you do a full on franchise, having some type of coaching and mentoring is really where it’s at. And so and I’m going to be pulling from as many resources as I can. So that’s a long way to answer. I’ve got a lot to do.

Dr. Zach Conner: [00:18:42] I’ve done a lot of step one and stepping into step two shortly. So sure. Yeah. Making preparations, you know. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:18:50] So let’s shift gears a little bit. I’m going to ask you first, Zac, but could you speak to to some of the misconceptions that a layperson, like, like myself, might have about this whole field of chiropractic or about, you know, wellness in general? Are there are there some patterns that you see over and over? You know, like if you get in a conversation with a lay person, you almost can be assured this topic is going to come up and you’re going to do your best to kind of nudge them in a direction.

Dr. Zach Conner: [00:19:19] Yeah. So Barton gives me an opportunity to practice communicating chiropractic to the layperson. And I’ve actually found and I don’t think Lay is derogatory, just the non chiropractic person. I found that it’s easier to communicate chiropractic to people who have no exposure to chiropractic or minimal exposure to chiropractic than it is to people who feel like they’ve had a lot of exposure to it and then maybe didn’t have a good experience. You know, chiropractic works, it’s just that some chiropractic works better.

Stone Payton: [00:19:54] And.

Dr. Zach Conner: [00:19:55] And so maybe they were at an office that worked but maybe didn’t work enough or they just the communication maybe wasn’t there because sometimes when the healing process kicks in, areas of the body that have dimmed down a little bit because of to prevent further injury, part of that would be maybe even the pain signals have turned down. And so as we go through this healing journey, one of the things that might happen is the pain. Might actually increase their start in a new area that it wasn’t. But as long as we see that it’s changing, that’s how we know the body is adapting. And so the difference there in the communication is the process of healing shows adaptation and the process of disease and sickness shows a pattern. And so even though we may have something new, arise in the initial stages of the healing process, that’s still gauged, and we can tell that you’re on a healing journey. So communication like that, and I know a real common one that comes up when I’m talking to people about it is imagine a guitar, but imagine that the guitar is a self tuning guitar with artificial intelligence and now imagine it gets kind of stuck and then it just needs a little nudge so it can continue its process of auto tuning. And so we are like a third party perspective and we can see areas the bodies have just gotten stuck and they just need a little nudge. You know, humans weren’t made dependent on chiropractors, but we have had a interesting 150 or 200. I mean, we’ve had an interesting time with the Industrial Revolution going into the early 1900s. You know, we’re sitting all the time. We’re stressed out, we’ve got blue lights, we’re on unnaturally flat surfaces. And so the body gets overwhelmed and chiropractors are there to assist the body in doing what it’s already doing. So those are a few of the things that kind of come up in the just regular person conversation.

Stone Payton: [00:21:43] Yeah, so same question for you, Dr. Tom. And are there different? What’s the right word? Techniques, approaches to this business of chiropractic? And if so, can you kind of lay them out for us a little bit?

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:21:58] Yeah, so? So absolutely. There’s over 350 techniques of chiropractic. Believe it or not.

Stone Payton: [00:22:06] Holy moly.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:22:07] But different different techniques use different approaches. End of the day, all chiropractors, whether you’re traditional or or more modernized and everything like that, generally are looking for some sort of increase in neurology and brain function. So you could be taking x rays. So they have just, let’s say specifically x ray based approaches where they’re trying to get your your curves and your spine back to normal. Because there’s a ton of science showing that when people’s curves in their spine are normal, they have less pain symptoms and disease, right? So some versions of chiropractic will just focus on that. Other versions of chiropractic use lots of, let’s say, muscle testing, things like that to try to analyze where the weaknesses are. Other versions of chiropractic are just strictly energy, which is just essentially even being able to visualize someone. You can feel heat readings off of them when there’s dysfunction. There’s also lots of different tools sometimes people use to try to measure the function of the nervous system. Like thermography is even muscle testing, like they have electronic muscle testings where people can figure out what’s going on. So yeah, many different approaches to to ultimately the same goal, get the person’s brain nervous system firing better wiring together. And when that happens, health increases, right?

Stone Payton: [00:23:43] Yeah. And then initially, do you run into some of these same kind of misconceptions Zach was describing and or some others?

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:23:50] Absolutely. And as he said, it’s actually easier to to communicate with someone that doesn’t have previous previous notions about what chiropractic is. Right. Just because, again, it’s not it’s not necessarily bad thing, but a lot of people are just associate chiropractic. Oh, headache back pain, neck pain. So so when you have some sort of musculoskeletal issue, oh, this is the pain doc. So yeah, trying to deprogram and or reprogram someone to be like, okay, what are you doing when the pain goes away? Because pain is 5% of your whole neurology, so you’re just focusing on 5% or do you want the other 95%? Because function is really where it’s at. It’s not about it’s not about the pain. It’s what the pain is keeping you from doing. You want to go play with your grandkids again or you want to go out and play softball, right? So, so trying to trying to alter someone’s perception so that they can see a bigger picture when you’re dealing with someone that does have preconceived notions of it, that’s the challenge, someone that’s brand new to it. You can you can basically say, hey, this thing, the brain controls the whole body, right? So if we help the brain function better, your whole health is going to be better, right? It’s a little bit more of an organic, easier conversation than someone that’s stuck in, oh, you treat my back pain and headaches.

Stone Payton: [00:25:22] Right, right. Okay. Let’s talk about me for a minute. It’s my favorite topic. So I really am kind of on a health journey for, I’d say, about five weeks. And now the result has been 12 plus pounds lost, close fitting a lot better. You know, I still had that little, little paunch, but nothing like I did. And I didn’t really go in my mind radical. I still enjoy, you know, a bourbon or a scotch, you know, a couple of evenings a week, not as much. I backed off the beer a lot because it seemed to have a real impact on on my gut. I walk a ton and of course I have walked quite a bit since I moved here. But I don’t stop at every beer market, every walk now.

Stone Payton: [00:26:07] For that bit of refreshment. But I think one of the biggest moves that I made, I was having a conversation. She wasn’t on the show, we were just talking. But she came to the studio with Stacy Roby, who’s in the Woodstock Business Club. And she she has some real knowledge and personal experience around this whole idea of of functional medicine and, you know, food as medicine, I guess I would almost say. And so we got to talk. She was so helpful because she put it at stone level for me and she said, you know, you might want to look at not so much process, not so much sugar, you know, and maybe more Whole Foods. And I said, well, help me with that Whole Foods. And she said, if it has a mother or comes out of the ground. So that’s been like my guideline, right? And I’ve been eating a little bit less meat, so I’ve had some success and now I’m feeling momentum. So I’m encouraged, you know, like you get a little bit of of momentum. So I’m thrilled. I feel better. You know, I don’t know if I look any better, but my clothes fit better and I feel better about myself. I feel like I have more energy. My question so I intend to continue on that path and try to learn more. And I’m reading books like on longevity, like The Blue Zone and all this stuff. What, if any, attention should I put toward this domain? Like, I’m not in any pain, but is there is there potentially some value perhaps in visiting with someone in your line of work? I don’t know, just just to kind of do like a baseline assessment or to tune some things up and yeah, anything either of you have to offer in that regard.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:27:46] Do you do you feel as healthy as you could be?

Stone Payton: [00:27:49] No, no, no, no. Absolutely. Absolutely not. I feel like I’ve made tremendous progress in five weeks time, but I feel like there’s no I can do ten push ups and I could do five when I started.

Stone Payton: [00:28:03] But no, the short answer your question is no.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:28:05] So if you’re not feeling like you’re as healthy as you can be, that’s the brain. It’s the neurology there is in every single piece. So it doesn’t matter whether I have I use five pillars of health in my office. Nervous system brain is pillar number one. Mindset pillar number two. Nutrition. Pillar number three, exercise is pillar number four and then detox and de stresses pillar number five. Right. But the reason brain and neurology becomes number one is because if you’re let’s say your brain isn’t connected to your digestive system, to your intestines and stomach. Right. Is your intestines and stomach going to be taking in all the nutrition it could be? Does it know what nutrition it needs or is there some level of miscommunication? Right. Your muscles doing five pushups to ten pushups. Right. Most most of that, believe it or not, was probably neurology training in the beginning because your your neurology sets all aspects of your life.

Stone Payton: [00:29:13] And day one, it was like, what are you doing?

Stone Payton: [00:29:17] So this is not us.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:29:18] Don’t to the point they even have studies again where after an adjustment, athletes will get a ten or 15% increase in their max weight. Huh? Right after an adjustment. Wow. Because the brain is when you can’t lift the weight. That’s because your brain is telling you that you can’t lift it. So if you clear the communication between the muscle and the brain, oh, now we got rid of some of that disease, some of that stress and that muscle, and now we’ve got another ten or 15% more.

Stone Payton: [00:29:48] Okay. So your answer is an enthusiastic yes. If I’m serious about that.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:29:51] Every part of your body, it starts at the brain in neurology.

Stone Payton: [00:29:55] Yeah. Okay. All right, Zach, anything to add to that or any personal experience where you’ve kind of seen what he’s describing come to come to life?

Dr. Zach Conner: [00:30:06] Yeah, there’s no ceiling to optimization, so you can always further optimize. So it’s a never ending journey. You know, it becomes this lifelong endeavor to continuously optimize the the nervous system. And that’s why I plan on doing, you know, a monthly. I just want to charge people monthly because I want them to be able to come in as often as they can. And I want to charge a very fair amount, you know, because having a third party perspective look to see if there’s interference in the nervous system and then initiate a process of self. Correction is something I think everybody would benefit from two times a week for the rest of their life. And if they’ve got something dynamic going on maybe three or four times a week, but especially with the low force technique that both Dr. Tom and myself do it, you know, this concept of being over adjusted or causing harm with adjustments, it’s absolutely not possible with the technique that we use. So yeah, I think on your healing journey, Stone, I think you would greatly benefit from regular chiropractic care. And I think Tom being in the region is a great chiropractor.

Stone Payton: [00:31:17] All right. Good option for you.

Stone Payton: [00:31:19] Fantastic. One more question. I’m not going to go too far down this road on air. I may off air. But I got to believe this. The work I’m already doing and complemented with brain and nervous work and the detox stuff that that you talked about on the other end, as I envision it, would certainly have a potentially some real positive impact on libido, love, life, that area of your life, is that accurate?

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:31:48] Absolutely. So so I kind of put people in different levels depending on on where they’re at. I’ll say energetically, functionally, when your body is in a state of disease. Right. And it gets really bad, you don’t have the energy to get out of bed. Right. You’re so you’re so energetically locked that that even getting out of bed seems like a task, right? Because most of your energy at that point is actually going into defending your body and essentially and trying its best to heal. But ultimately, things are locked, things aren’t flowing. So when you actually start to get rid of some of these inefficient programs that this brain neurology is, we call them patterns in chiropractic. When you start to break some of these inefficient patterns, that frees up energy. Just like if you have 50 programs running on your computer and you take away ten of them, your computer has more energy now. And what you do with that energy is your life. That’s your quality of life. So now you can go out and walk or eventually run or eventually get to 100 push ups. Who knows? So it’s it’s an evolution ultimately. And yes, the energetic body is really what dictates. Are you are you in a form of defense, what I call training or discover, like discovering your body and stuff like that? Or are you more a little bit more energetically efficient where you have somewhere we would be more in transform care is what we call it. So am I to. Offended right now, or do I have energy to play with and start creating my life?

Stone Payton: [00:33:32] So it does make sense. And our next visit is going to be in your studio.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:33:36] Perfect.

Stone Payton: [00:33:37] And we don’t have to record it, but I’m looking forward to that. You’ve absolutely sold me, you guys. You got Zac Conner’s endorsement. I don’t know what else it would take to get someone to do something if Zac says to do it. Zac, I’m going to say this and I’m gonna explain to our listeners why it’s okay to say this. I am so excited for you and I am so proud of you. Zac. Incidentally, Zac Connor is my nephew. His father’s name is Rock, by the way. Mine is Stone. His father and I have actually worked together in the same company, and it did create some interesting conversations when people would call that company and ask for rock. Well, Rock’s out to lunch, but Stone here. What can I do to help you? Very dear. Family member. I have watched Zac grow up and I. And he really did it one time in a school play that Holly and I attended suggested that he wanted to be an army man bus driver. He’s he’s since pivoted and is clearly now going to go into this practice. I’m excited for you. I am really proud of you. And I am so I’m so looking forward to to watching your life and your career and your and your and your family unfold. I don’t know what might be appropriate at this juncture, but I would love for people to be able to connect with you who might want to. And so I don’t know if it’s a LinkedIn, an email, whatever, but before we wrap, let’s leave them with some some point of contact for you, please.

Dr. Zach Conner: [00:35:09] Yeah. And I’m still building, you know, what’s going to end up being my brand. And while it’s coming quick, December right now, the only I think the best point to would be Dr. Zac Conner on Instagram. So it’s at D, r, z, a, c, hc0nner and once I finally get a website up and LinkedIn and all that going professionally in the next year, a few months it’ll all be hosted on there.

Stone Payton: [00:35:33] So and when you do that, if you come to town and you’re seeing rock and glory or whatever, we can come back in the studio. But if not, we’ll set up like a virtual interview and kind of do an update. I think that could be we have like a whole series follow. Zac Well, it’s been a delight having you in the studio, man. It’s so good to see you.

Dr. Zach Conner: [00:35:52] Good to see you, too, Tom Stone.

Stone Payton: [00:35:54] All right, Dr. Tom, let’s make sure that it’s that it’s easy for folks to come see you. Or maybe at this point, they just would like to have a brief conversation with you and explore some ideas. Let’s leave them with a nice, easy way to connect with you, man.

Dr. Thomas Graham: [00:36:07] Yeah. So practice name is Genesis Center for Optimal Living. It’s Genesis Optimal Living dot com has my phone number also email if that works for you as best ways to get out.

Stone Payton: [00:36:21] Yeah, fantastic. Well, thank you so much for coming. Thanks for bringing Zach. My pleasure. I really look forward to seeing your practice flourish and I’m quite sincere on both counts. One having you back on the show sometime, I think that would be really interesting. It might even be fun perhaps to have a delighted client join you and or market partner. You know, it strikes me that some of your market partners might be clients too, but it might be fun to kind of explore how you guys work together to, you know, to mutually serve a client. So let’s keep that channel open. And I’m equally sincere. I’m going to come see you because I’m quite serious about this journey and I’ve experienced enough early success that I don’t want to. I don’t want to lose the momentum, man.

Stone Payton: [00:37:09] All right. Hey, guys, can you hang out with us while we visit with our next guest? Absolutely. All right. Okay. Y’all ready for the headliner out there? Please join me in welcoming to the show with Guru Residential Services, Miss Susan Gouda. How are you.

Susan Guda: [00:37:25] Doing? I’m doing fantastic. Thanks, Stone, for having me out. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:37:29] So. So what did you learn in that last segment?

Susan Guda: [00:37:32] Oh, my goodness. There were so many, I believe, very strongly in chiropractic, first of all. So that’s it’s fantastic. But there are so many analogies to living just in looking at that that highway, you know, that that spinal cord highway to communication. And in segueing into some of the things that are important to me in real estate, believe it or not, I spent 28 years in in education, actually. And people say, wow, education, real estate, really? Oh, my goodness. There’s so many connections to it. And the same thing when you’re talking about body and then you talk about community and why do we do what we do and what’s the value and optimal living that involves the community as well. So going outside the body is super important. So I love I love the practice of chiropractic and what it does for body and mind. And. And then I’ve been a performance athlete as well. So using that to keep me going, keep my body from breaking on the road has been very beneficial. So thank you for what you do and what you bring.

Stone Payton: [00:38:39] To the table. You’re both welcome, guys. And you know, we don’t charge people to come on the show, but I think I may have to invoice you for that little clip. Nice work.

Stone Payton: [00:38:48] Susan.

Stone Payton: [00:38:49] All right, so. So residential services, what are the services and who are you serving?

Susan Guda: [00:38:55] Wow, all of metro Atlanta. I’ve lived in this area for 33 years now. It’s hard to believe because I grew up moving every two years. So that also impacts what I do now. But in residential services, I do full residential real estate and in listing I do all of the photography, videography, 3D video. And even in this market where, you know, you could basically just set a house for sale, sign out and sell your house to optimize the selling of that house. I do everything I would have done in a buyer’s market for that home and to market it because you want to get the best that you can for your clients. So I think that it’s vitally important to do the same thing, knowing how well that goes and get as many eyes on those properties as possible. So and then once I used to just do the videography for my own listings, but once COVID hit and the fear of actually being able to show properties and getting into people’s homes, it became very apparent that we needed that in the residential community or the real estate community overall. And so I opened it up and Atlanta real estate video services became a side of what I do. And for other realtors, because I know what I want when I market my property. So then I was able to open that up, which also gets my eyes out there and what the market is containing as well. So that’s been helpful on both sides, I bet.

Stone Payton: [00:40:26] So outside looking in your world just looks great. Crazy to me, right?

Susan Guda: [00:40:32] And vise versa inside looking out.

Stone Payton: [00:40:34] It looks a little crazy too.

Stone Payton: [00:40:35] Yeah. So both of my daughters, Zach’s cousins, have recently been engaged. They got engaged over the holiday and they have both. They each now have a home under contract. My youngest and Chattanooga’s got one that’s a little bit more of a fixer upper kind of thing, and they’re all geared for doing that. And, and then my oldest up in Washington DC has, has got one and it’s under contract, but the oldest one in DC, Katie, they must have gone after a dozen homes and not and I mean they were bidding what to me sounds like a ridiculous amount of.

Stone Payton: [00:41:10] Money.

Stone Payton: [00:41:11] And they were bidding like more than the asking price. You had a list price, right?

Susan Guda: [00:41:16] Yeah. Yeah. And that’s very common. And so now it’s it’s been a real transition in these last couple of years and we thought last year was crazy. This year is even more.

Susan Guda: [00:41:30] Yeah, for sure. And what I tell my buyers is, look, you’ve got let’s not look at the list price as the value of the home. Let’s look at that as the marketing price because the way that you’re listing homes is so totally different than what it used to be as well. But the thing is, when you’re looking at buying a home, it’s always about what your goals are. So if your goals are to go in there and flip a home and get a quick profit, you may really want to be careful in the market that we’re in right now, but if your goals are to go in there and hold property, I’d say five, seven years. You’re still in a good place. It’s you know, this all turns it comes out in the wash because like we bought a home last March and it’s already up over 20% in value. And so now that’s not going to necessarily happen year over year. We don’t have a crystal ball to know exactly what.

Stone Payton: [00:42:24] Can you help me pick stocks, too? I mean, sounds like.

Susan Guda: [00:42:30] And you know, and that’s what a lot of a lot of the country has done. I mean, 21% gains over the year have been pretty almost standard in many of the larger markets. And metro Atlanta is one of those markets that, of course, we have Hartsfield International Airport. So we’ve got so many of the global operations of of mega companies in Atlanta. And then, of course, we’ve turned into this entertainment capital as well. And that’s been a huge thing. And so people are coming from all other areas of the country and there’s a lot of other factors as well. But people coming in from all other areas of the country, California, and we are having to say, look, this $400,000 home that you’re looking at here is totally different than the 400,000 home you were looking at in California. You do not have to put up with those things here. You can get more for your money still here. But it’s an equalizing it’s it’s becoming equalized more so and so I don’t see a big. Drift in price is going downward. But I do see a steadying coming because we’ve got interest rates that are changing all of those things. So, I mean, it’s it’s not I don’t see it as a tremendously volatile market. Like, I don’t see it as a bubble. And that’s a pretty broad that’s a popular understanding and by economists and and others in the industry. And but it is. It is an interesting market. I tell you. I feel like I should wear a cape when we get to the offer table, when we get the closing table, not the offer table. Goodness. When we get to the closing table with a buyer, I feel like, oh, we won. And and recently I actually had somebody close on a property under list price with closing costs included.

Stone Payton: [00:44:13] Wow. You do wear a cape. Wow.

Stone Payton: [00:44:17] Hey, let’s do let’s let’s get kind of tactical here for a minute. Let’s let’s let’s share some pro tips, if we could, for to help a buyer compete in this market.

Susan Guda: [00:44:26] Yeah. Yeah. And it really depends. I mean, it’s important to have a realtor who really has a good network of other realtors to get along with. You see it as a competition, but it really isn’t. So it’s really a matter of creating win win for our clients. We are all looking out for our clients and so it’s very important that we have good communication with other realtors. So for my buyer, when I’m with a buyer, I will go to the realtor the first thing I do what is important to your client so we can strategize because it’s not necessarily we need to close an eight days and we need to, you know, have no contingencies offers, you know, for my listings, I put them on a spreadsheet. So I know it’s nice to work both sides of it because I know what we’re looking for and you want somebody who’s motivated, so you want to show that motivation. Now, I don’t get too much into the letters and those sorts of things because fair housing is a big deal and you want to make sure that everything is on the up and up. And I so I, you know, but it is important to show that the client is very motivated personally to own that home because they may you might get an offer, this outrageous offer, maybe non committed sort of investor type offer, which some investor offers are great and some investor offers.

Susan Guda: [00:45:41] They’re just throwing a lot of them out there. You get a lot of them right away and maybe they’re lowball or maybe they’re just really ridiculously high, but you know, they’re not going to stick. So, you know, it’s helping my client to get to the top of the offer pile. I it’s a combination of finding out what’s important, asking the questions to both my client and and the seller of the property and then strategizing with my lender or the lender that they have chosen to use. You know, outside of that, if they have their own already to be able to get appraisals done quickly, to get to close quickly, if that’s the necessity and to be able to use a variety of different lending tactics. So things like Ribbon are out there and that is something where they can come in with a full cash deal and make it look like a full cash deal instead. And so it’s a thruway for people to get their lending. And ribbon is the one that stands up for that and gets the cash for that. There are other avenues where you take somebody who may have a 20% down for their they’ve got the cash put 20% down.

Susan Guda: [00:46:58] Fabulous. Well, if they’re going to have to have an appraisal gap and that’s you know, that’s in this market, that’s an important thing to have in an offer. Then you can write that appraisal gap in comfortably by eating into a little bit of that down payment. But then they can upfront pay their principal their PMI, which is the the first, you know, when you’re below 20% that insurance that you have to have that kind of ups the the monthly payment for a while there but you can upfront pay that if you’ve got that you know then then it’s just one price and then you can go in and say, well, I’ve still got that same monthly mortgage. And people think, Oh, well, this 10,000 is going to cost me so much. But the 10,000 per month over the course of a 30 year mortgage is not much at all. Of course, it depends on the interest rates and all of that. And what I say to people all the time is, look, it’s not your it’s not just the bottom line house price, it’s the bottom line plus interest. And of course, that’s playing a part in people’s ability to buy right now as well.

Stone Payton: [00:48:00] Yeah. So you mentioned how important are the realtors are? Yeah. What about lenders? I guess you have marvelous relationships. Those are critical, right?

Susan Guda: [00:48:09] Absolutely. And really in any area of the market that touches home ownership. So my vendor relationships are very important. Having people that I can you know, people come to me all the time asking me, do you know somebody who does windows or does siding or painting or and I want to be able to give them a good, solid resource so I don’t just throw those names out there. Those are relationships that are I need proof in the pudding before I’ll give a name out. And so the lenders I work with and the closing attorneys I work with, all of those are people that I have worked with and trust to bring to do the best by my client to handle the and to communicate well with them and to get them to the closing. People without as little stress as possible in the buying process. I can’t say without stress at all, but, you know.

Stone Payton: [00:49:03] So you mentioned like letters or that kind of thing. So is whether it’s through a letter or just through conversation that you equipped your realtor to have with the other realtor, do things like, hey, we’re a young family. And like, does that help at all?

Susan Guda: [00:49:19] You know, the thing about that is you got to be very careful. I am very careful. Different realtors do it different ways, but integrity is everything.

Stone Payton: [00:49:28] Right?

Susan Guda: [00:49:29] And I don’t want anybody to ever question why we chose one offer over another based on anything to do with family structure or, you know, fair housing practices. And that’s never that’s never the case. Right. And I don’t want there to be any questions. So generally speaking, when somebody says, hey, I’ve got this cover, this letter from my client, I will not pass it along until after an offer is accepted. I just don’t want the questions about that. And like I said, integrity is extremely important.

Stone Payton: [00:49:59] But being very clear about what the client needs and wants, you’ve got to do that before you can do your job, your job properly.

Susan Guda: [00:50:08] Right. And when I send in a listing, I set up a listing in the Mlss. I put everything in there. So I’ll put in there all the upgrades that have been done to the property. I’ll put in every detail of everything to make the offer as easy as possible. But I also put in the priority list of the seller, and then once the bids have come in, I’ve learned that it’s really important also to communicate back with the realtor, to let their buyer know kind of where they fell. Not directly like this is the number and that is the number. It is. These are the numbers of offers that came in at this point over asking. These are the numbers offers that came in, you know, at different areas and with contingency, without contingency, with appraisal, gap, without, so that they learn to write a better offer. And so because, you know, it’s. In this market. We do have as realtors, we have to combat the thinking that we’re trying to get more out of the commission. And I would rather take a person. To me, it’s not transactional. It’s very much relational. And in in with all of my clients, well, that’s what I that.

Stone Payton: [00:51:16] Relationship that’s what I think I’m learning in this conversation. This world is far more relationship oriented. Relationship dependent, I guess I had it in much more of a transactional frame, but I can see where you’re going to be working with that realtor again. So you’re equipping her to help her client and that even if you don’t end up in that particular deal, there’s three more coming down the pike this year. Right. And you need to have that good, good relationship.

Susan Guda: [00:51:44] Absolutely. Absolutely. And with the realtor and with my clients, I mean, I’m building a referral based business, so that’s imperative. I have tried other means of creating lead generation, but the one that speaks mostly to me are the people who I really that, of course, know and and trust me. Sure. And and that can really help to not just go from A to B, but to do all of the and the turns, twists and turns in the process, getting from A to B.

Stone Payton: [00:52:15] So so referrals. Some would come from people who are buying and selling houses. I’m sure I had a great experience more, I would think maybe from other realtors or lenders.

Susan Guda: [00:52:26] Or sometimes in realtors out of the area, of course, you know, or you know, if they don’t do business on the north side, northwest side of Atlanta that Susan talked to Susan, that’s you know, and I’ve even had realtors go in with their client on the buy side and to one of my listings and say, oh, man, this is going to be fantastic. Susan Good is doing this and this is going to be a great property to look at.

Stone Payton: [00:52:49] Nice.

Susan Guda: [00:52:49] So that’s I mean, that’s what you want. That’s the reputation you want to have out there.

Stone Payton: [00:52:54] And then like lenders do, they like.

Susan Guda: [00:52:56] Others can as well. It’s not why I choose lenders so, but it is, you know, you develop that relationship, you you send people their way. I do preferred lenders a lot of times in my with my listings because I know that they are good solid lenders and the people that are approving are not just they’re pre-approved, not just pre qualified. Right. So.

Stone Payton: [00:53:21] Well, I want to jump to something else in just a moment. But but since you brought up, let’s make that distinction. Okay.

Susan Guda: [00:53:28] Pre pre-approved they’ve gone through several of the the paperwork, you know, the proof of their income.

Stone Payton: [00:53:36] And it’s not like there are radio hosts. They probably have like real jobs, you know, well documented income. Right. Okay.

Stone Payton: [00:53:43] Got it. Yes.

Susan Guda: [00:53:44] But a pre pre qual is hey, this is what I make and they just kind of type it in. They’re not doing a lot of actual having to prove their income or you know, and so you might go out to some online company and just type in a number and you get an automatic response. Yeah, you’re pre-approved for this much, but then you get into it and there’s like, yeah, that’s not real true.

Stone Payton: [00:54:08] All right.

Stone Payton: [00:54:09] So all right. So let’s talk a little bit more about this other work, this video, this photography. You talked a little bit about the the catalyst is what you just saw, the need you knew what you needed and wanted. So is this I mean, are you doing this two, three or four days a week or are you doing an ad hoc? How’s that?

Susan Guda: [00:54:28] Yeah. And I really have developed relationships with realtors again to like to use my services for what I do provide there, because I can provide a full site plan and and floor plan. You know, some some realtors decide that because it’s such a seller’s market, you know, they may not want to go to the full extent there, but I think there’s tremendous value in it. It’s especially when I’m working with my buyers to see to be able to actually walk through, also brings in people from other areas of the country. So I can look at it from a distance. That’s right.

Stone Payton: [00:55:01] Or people who are coming and they can see a video or pictures describe again, like what I might see if I saw some. Susan, good work.

Susan Guda: [00:55:09] Right? Right. Well, what you would see, Atlanta real estate, video services, ATL real estate video services. So you can see some of the samples there. But the the 3D video, it’s like a walk through you. You can look from any side. You can measure walls you can measure, yeah. You can put your furniture in there, you know, basically. And and you can get up close and real personal to like the water heater. How old is that really? You know, if you get the right angles, you can get all of that information as well. So that’s really beneficial because it’s it really, truly is like you’re walking through not like it is. And so it’s very detailed. It’s a Matterport 3D tour. And then the photos, I, you know, I actually have learned to take the photos with the Matterport so that. That and the angles that need to be done so that it’s not strange.

Stone Payton: [00:56:03] And so this is a this is a professional tool or suite of tools that you use to to capture photography and video in a way that’s going to really lend itself to.

Susan Guda: [00:56:12] Light and adjust lighting and all of those things to make sure that it comes, that you can see everything in its clarity and clarity and and it shows the true size of a room as best as possible, trying to get the entire room, as you know. And so, yeah, I mean, I love it. It gives me a creative outlet. Sure. As far as how often I do it, I did it a lot when COVID first hit. And now I have kind of I’m very, very busy with my real estate business. And so it’s flexible like that.

Stone Payton: [00:56:41] Right. You can you can kind of squeeze the balloon. Oh, yeah. If you really need business on that side, you just call up people and say, you know, we were going to buy that house, but your photos suck.

Stone Payton: [00:56:49] So yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:56:51] I just happen to know a certain.

Stone Payton: [00:56:56] Hey, I’m a marketing guy. I got all kind of ideas, you know?

Susan Guda: [00:56:59] Well, you see a lot of houses out there that are under listed just because they think, Oh, it’s a seller’s market, they’ll buy whatever. They won’t really still buy whatever. They still are going to be picky about what they buy and you’re not going to get the top dollar that you could get.

Stone Payton: [00:57:11] So early in the conversation. We touched on a little bit, but I could sense in you a genuine affinity for community.

Susan Guda: [00:57:21] Yeah, thank you for that. Thank you for bringing that into the conversation because that’s my heart. You know, I mentioned that I had been in education. I owned a montessori preschool for 21 years, and I home educated my children for a lot of their schooling as well. Community where we thrive. And there’s been so many changes in the way that we do things and way we choose homes based on the community. It’s because people are not tied into their office so much anymore.

Stone Payton: [00:57:54] So right.

Susan Guda: [00:57:55] They yeah, they are able to choose their homes based on what they love to do and if they can create a community that’s live, work, play something that’s very healthy and health minded. I love this area and where I am in Woodstock in that I can walk. I can walk from my home to Woodstock, down the Woodstock pass and find the noonday creek and you know, and have.

Stone Payton: [00:58:23] A so we’re neighbors. Holly and I bought a little patio home right here on the edge of hips is my first lily pad. When I’m walking to town.

Stone Payton: [00:58:30] I love it, I.

Susan Guda: [00:58:31] Love it, I love it. I love the fact that we can I mean, it really is kind of like I’m going to really age myself, but it’s like cheers, you know? Everybody knows your name.

Stone Payton: [00:58:38] Yeah.

Susan Guda: [00:58:40] But and that’s so important to walk down the street. And I have lived in another community for 30 years and I never felt that sense of, of, of closeness. I mean, there’s so many in the community. Well, if you can create that sense of live, work, play in a community and have enough events and have enough feeling that I used to run a magazine and I’d like to really get that started again.

Stone Payton: [00:59:03] Honestly, you can’t hold down a job.

Susan Guda: [00:59:10] Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:59:10] So so the magazine, what would be the the concept for that?

Susan Guda: [00:59:14] The concept is and and was and was fully embraced is really highlighting the stories of people. And so there was a lot of diversity enabled there because people that you wouldn’t normally necessarily have a conversation with, we’re telling their stories. And I think that some of that also allowed for differences of views that were able to be embraced because you understand the back story behind it. And if if our boy is, you know, we’re so polarized, it would be really nice to live in a world where we could really not necessarily agree with everybody. That’s not the that’s not the key. But listen, let’s listen to the stories. And how about these people who are making that pebble drop difference? They’re just living their lives. They live their lives giving. That’s who they are. Let’s highlight those people and let’s change the way we think about our world. So if we if we highlight these people and one of the questions I really love, my favorite one was, you know, who’s the most interesting person you have met here and who would you nominate for this magazine? And because immediately they would look up and they would think, oh, I know this person who lives that way and that. And they give me a whole long list of people that live that way. And and then we all leave just feeling like, you know, the angels are singing in the background.

Stone Payton: [01:00:36] The world is lovely and skies are blue.

Susan Guda: [01:00:39] And, you know, and really, I think we are more good than we. We are not. And I think that we need to remember that that we we really do thrive. By understanding the stories of others.

Stone Payton: [01:00:53] Amen. What a delight to have you come and join us this morning. This is. This is marvelous. Thank you so much. Let’s make sure our listeners know how to get in touch with you on all those fronts. With respect to the real estate and the the video and the photography. And maybe if they want to have a conversation with you, help you get this magazine rekindled. So let’s leave them with some points of contact.

Susan Guda: [01:01:19] All right, fantastic. Well, my my email, if I ever forget that, then I’m in big trouble. It’s Susan at Susan Gouda. It’s Suzanne G. Today.com and Susan and Susan Google.com. And then my website is Susan Gouda dot com. So that’s pretty easy for me to remember. And my, my phone number is six, seven, eight, seven, five, four, seven, nine, seven, seven. And yeah, call me any time I, I answer my phone.

Stone Payton: [01:01:47] I answer my.

Stone Payton: [01:01:48] Phone. Well, keep up the good work. We’re going to continue to follow your story. And don’t be a stranger and I’ll have my my eyes up and my ears open when I’m walking around town. I bet I’ll probably notice you more often now. All right. This is Stone Payton for our guest today and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you next time on Cherokee Business Radio.