An Eerie Fairwell To Edgerton

From the very beginning, I could see signs that the whole Edgerton venture was going to be just another headbanging disappointment. Little could I have guessed then that the final straw would be an altercation with a ghost which would close the door to Edgerton all together. Joni, the massage therapist I was sharing the place with, owned the building that I had my practice in. From the moment I set foot in the house, I knew something wasn't exactly right. But I figured it was just an old house, and it had that "old house" feel to it. Besides, most of the town seemed like that. After all, sharing a place with another healing practitioner who would refer clients to me was ideal.

The population of the town is right around 1,000. It was a town full of farmers, kids, and locals who just opened new businesses. Sounded like an opportune place to be. Then I learned that the people there were of Dutch descent. I knew from growing up around the Pennsylvania Dutch that such people shy away from anything that is "new" and are very skeptical of anything that might make them have to think progressively. Soon I came to realize that these people were no different. My ads that I placed in the local newspaper, and even an interview in the same paper, generated only three new patients -- people that were already clients of Joni. For a town that size, I wasn't getting the reception that I thought I would.

Even as far as Joni herself goes, she is a great person and fun to be around, by Edgerton standards. But her own reservations about getting the care she needs, chiropractically speaking, and the fact that she couldn't even pronounce Reiki correctly, brought me to the realization that I was probably in the wrong place after all. I didn't really see much of a "spiritual" component to her practice. It was more about her interest in selling Arbonne products. Even the massage therapist who was sharing the place with her was a very uncultivated redneck. All in all, Joni was nice enough to allow me to sleep overnight at the house so I don't have to pay to stay in a hotel. Besides, the closest hotel was 21 miles away in Luverne. (There were two bed-and-breakfasts in Edgerton, but that's not my thing.)

Even though Joni offered her place to me, I didn't take her up on it right away. I had listed my hours as being Wednesdays and Thursdays from 3 PM to 10 PM. Out of the three weeks I spent taking care of patients there, the first week I had driven down and back all in one day because I had only one patient scheduled on Wednesday. But that was way too much driving, and I realized how quickly I got tired out. A 3-1/2 hour drive one way where all you see is farm fields the whole way was just too much to handle. But the next week were different. During the second week I had a new patient scheduled for Wednesday and the client from the week before scheduled for Thursday. So I stayed at the house located at 321 East Mill Street overnight.

It was a quaint, small house with a kitchen, full bath, and laundry room on the first floor and three bedrooms on the second floor. This is where Joni had lived until she got married several years ago. She retained ownership of the house, and now uses it just for the massage studio and to house family guests when they come to town. Now if the "old" vibe to the downstairs of the house wasn't scary enough, the feeling I got when I went upstairs to the bedrooms was downright frightening. Still, I set up my Aerobed air mattress and settled in. After all, it sure beat paying to stay in a hotel. But later that night, I wouldn't be so happy about my decision to stay there.

Being the nightowl that I am, I decided to go for a joyride late at night. The town of Edgerton was so still that you could hear a pin drop a mile away. So I decided to drive down to Sioux Falls, South Dakota just to see how long it took to get there. After all, I had my laptop with me and I was hungry, and I was looking for a place to take it easy for a while. Just over an hour later I arrived at a Denny's Restaurant, the only one in Sioux Falls. They had internet connection there, and both my need for food and for being online were fulfilled. When I arrived back at the house in Edgerton it was almost 3 AM.

I laid down on my air mattress, felt the eeriness of the air around me, and hoped to fall asleep soon. Instead, for the next three hours I would be constantly woken up by an unseen force. This force was no stranger to me. I knew EXACTLY what it was -- an evil entity that was there to attack me. I knew because I had this exact same thing happen to me only once before in my life, the night after I performed an exorcism in the apartment I lived in in Smyrna, Georgia ten years ago. Invoking the same healing energy I used to dispel that unwelcome spirit, I shrouded the house and myself with protective light in hopes that the disembodied attacker would go away. The attacks did lessen, and at dawn they stopped all together. I was then able to sleep soundly the rest of the morning and into the afternoon.

I didn't think much of what happened during the night. Haunted houses are aplenty, and I've even gotten rid of a few unpleasant entities in my day. But I do so only if the owner of the property asks me to do that. I don't just go around "playing with energy" like a voyeur. But how was I to tell Joni that there is something evil in her place, the house she once called home? I didn't. Right after I took care of my patient for the day, I packed up and went home to Richfield.

Now came this past Wednesday. I received the bill for the ads, saw that the interview appeared nicely in the newspaper, and I was confident that word was getting around that there was a new chiropractor in town. I only had one patient scheduled on Wednesday. My plan was to stay overnight again and spend the day on Thursday going around the city and to neighboring areas introducing myself and posting signs. Joni asked me how it was staying overnight the week before. I said that they energy wasn't very good, but it was probably due to the fact that I was sleeping in an unfamiliar place. I thought to myself I would give it another try though because, again, it still beat paying to stay in a hotel, and I thought maybe this time things won't be so disruptive.

I had gotten only 4-1/2 hours of sleep the night before. So after I took care of my patient I was in no condition to go for a joyride again. I stopped by Tally Ho, the local coffee shop, to get myself something to eat, and I return to Joni's house to spend the rest of the night reading and typing on the computer. I finally felt tired enough to go to bed at 1:30 AM. But instead of getting a good night's sleep, the SAME EXACT thing happened as the week before, and it was now WORSE! This ghost was more aggressive as it not only "stole" my sleep from me but was also poking me with something that was sharp or burning. I didn't even bother to call upon the protective energies. I figured if I could just put up with it until daybreak I'd be fine. But the more I laid there, the more I told this intruder to go away, the more adamant it became. It really wanted me out of there!

I can sense the negative energy around me. It feels like a still, heavy, dark cloud. Whereas some mediums and psychics can actually see spirits, auras, and energies, I feel them and intuit them. By having my sleep "stolen", I mean that I would be sound asleep one minute and then would find myself lying wide awake the next without apparent reason, and this would be repetitive every time I started to fall back to sleep again. But the poking and prodding was something new. Now I knew I was dealing with something I never dealt with before. Still and all, it wasn't in my place to play the rescuer of the house here. Just before daybreak, I finally gave in and said, "You win. I'm outta here." And at 5:30 in the morning, I packed up my belongings, my patient records, and my chiropractic table, and I left for good, never to return.

This event wouldn't end without something positive coming from it, though. As I drove down Murray County Route 1 on my way back home, the scenery all around me was one on the best I had ever seen in my life. Daylight was just starting to creep above the horizon in the East, and the dark silhouettes of the hundreds of windmills flapping in the night sky filled my vision. The planet Mercury sat on the horizon to announce the beginning of a new day. I turned around to see the night sky behind me. Clouds just started to obscure a bright full moon. Despite all that happened, this one vision of the morning sky in Edgerton is what I will walk away with and will cherish the rest of my days. It was as if the Universe were saying that from here on, things will be better.

The Surprising Update

I was browsing through the zip code locator that I used to find all those 40 cities that I had on my list of "underserved" populations when I was deciding which one to choose to open a satellite office. I was quite surprised to see that Edgerton made it on the list quite by accident! The marker that shows where the zip codes are located was actually pointing in the wrong spot. With this in mind, I decided to redo the entire list. Now the list of underserved populations in Minnesota, chiropractically speaking, is down to 24 cities. The closest of these cities to where I live is Willow River, a mere 112 miles in comparison to Edgerton at 197 miles. But, accidents do happen. Sometimes it's the accidents that lead to something great big huge. My plans won't change because of this. It's an interesting find, nonetheless!

Nine Years In The Making

In just nine days from now I'll be celebrating my 9th Anniversary of being a chiropractor. In numerology, nine represents the end of an era and the beginning of another. In this case, let's hope so! Although I've never been successful at building a successful chiropractic practice, I did a lot of tweaking along the way which led me to the way I practice today. What I do today would indeed be something people would flock to, if I only knew how to market myself. People always told me to just do what you do and if people like it they'll tell others. That worked to a degree when I was still in Atlanta, Georgia, when I was in Maysville, Kentucky, and also when I was at the truck stop in Bartonsville, Pennsylvania. It did not work at all here in Minneapolis, Minnesota -- not in the seven years I've been here! But no matter where I was, I still have yet to make a 5-figure income with chiropractic alone.

When you look at my website, you will see all the things that I do at The Sufletesc Center. Each page of the website was written by me and me alone. Each service I offer and each technique that I use were part of the nine-year evolution. Now that I am taking this concept of the practice the way it is today to the small town of Edgerton, there's no telling what might happen. Most people don't realize that chiropractic care is pretty much a MUST for children if they are to have a healthy childhood. Most people don't realize that there is a chiropractic technique specifically for extremity injuries. Most people don't realize that chiropractors can perform Department Of Transportation CDL driver fitness exams and employment exams. Most people also don't realize that chiropractors can order lab tests including hormonal profiling, metal toxicity testing, and food allergy testing. I do all of these things at The Sufletesc Center, and it will be interesting to see what the people of Edgerton make of it.

Later today the local newspaper, the Edgerton Enterprise, will be interviewing me for an article they will place in their paper on Wednesday. What a PERFECT opportunity to tell my story! I am hoping that this opens some eyes. Like I said, what I do evolved over the past nine years. What also evolved over the past nine years was my confidence in what I do, what I offer, and how I can present myself. The reason for that is because I did so many things that DIDN'T work, both advertising-wise and business-wise, and so I can assuredly explain who I am and WHY I do the things I do.

There has been an ad in the Edgerton Enterprise running for the past four days. I am figuring that nobody called yet because they don't know that they CAN call. The ad says that the office opens for business on Wednesday. I certainly won't be driving all the way down there if nobody calls for an appointment. So, I will keep my hopes a bit elevated for another week and see what happens. If nothing happens in another week and a half, then I can start saying that this was yet ANOTHER attempt at success that went nowhere. But I'm not going to say "I have a feeling" because I've had "feelings" in the past. (Besides, Bianca knows better to roll her eyes when I say that.) Instead, I will say that I'm keeping my chin up -- for another week.

All Ready To Go

This is the ad that will start appearing in next Wednesday's Edgerton Enterprise. There had been an ad that started this past Wednesday, but I was very dissatisfied with it. That weekly area newspaper needs an editor very badly! So I decided to design my own ad. Here it is. I already submitted it to Joni as well so that she can distribute it all over town.

I'm not quite sure what the actual population of Edgerton is. It's anywhere between 800 and 1,200 people, but the exact number remains a mystery to me. I feel that the two days a week I spend there will be fruitful, though. They have a local coffee shop where I plan on eating lunch. They also have an inn just on the outskirts of the town whose owners Joni knows personally. There is also a pizza joint, a volunteer ambulance service, and a volunteer fire department where I am sure I'll make lots of contacts. But, this is all stuff I am thinking of in my head. None of it will become a reality if nobody actually CALLS me to become a patient. That's the problem I have here. I certainly would hope things would be different in a town where the closest chiropractor is 18 miles away. Time will tell, I guess.

Back here in my home city of Richfield, I am excited about the chance to serve on the local Advisory Board of Health. The first meeting I will actually attend will be this Monday night. I figure it's about time I become a community activist, now that I actually am a homeowner and settled in a community. Richfield is a great place to live, and I never considered living here before. Now that I know that there are neighborhoods in Richfield as nice as the one I live in, I am glad to be here. If you're just passing through on Nicollet Avenue or 66th Street, you pretty much miss all the good parts. I feel that Richfield is the nicest suburb of Minneapolis where you can get a lot of house for the price. Also, from the people I have met thusfar who sit on the City Council, I feel as thought I am surrounded by some pretty caring and involved people. Two thumbs up for "The Urban Hometown"!

The Curse Of Modern Technology

Remember the TV commercial for some cell phone company that was showing how human reactions to what is said, or is not said, depends very much on what message is received, or not received? That's pretty much what has been happening during the past four days between me and Joni, the person I am to share office space with in Edgerton. I had already pulled the plug in my mind, and I made contact with Joni's competition to examine the possibilities there. Then suddenly this morning I received a phone call from Joni saying that she had placed the ad in the local paper about me joining her office, and the reporter wanted to interview me for an article. WHAT??? Here is the same person I hadn't heard from in 12 days, who never returned my phone calls. And now she's acting as though everything is just peachy? Hmmmmm! When I called her back and wondered what was up, she asked me if I had received the phone messages she had left on my cell phone both Thursday AND Friday. I received neither, thus she was very surprised by my reaction when I called her back today.

After we figured out a way to get around this glitch so that neither of us thinks the other has dropped the ball and lost interest, we proceeded to make plans for opening day. The ad for me in the Edgerton area newspaper will start running THIS Wednesday, and my first day actually working there, provided somebody calls and sets an appointment, will be next Wednesday the 18th. Wow, what a turn-around! And once again I am looking forward to a regular breakfast stop at Emma Krumbee's. Once again I look forward to seeing those windmills dot the countryside as I drive into town. The sun has risen on Edgerton! Whew!

Oh, and regarding my conversation with Dr. Graber, my new "competition," I found out all about his game plan. I guess this curse of technology was meant to be JUST so I can find out what this guy is up to -- and figure out a way to outmaneuver him. I don't see him as competition, though. In reality, there aren't ENOUGH chiropractors in the world. There just aren't enough people going to chiropractors, and there aren't enough people who are educated to the fact that chiropractic is all about optimal wellness and not just relieving back pain. Perhaps in the future it would be great for Dr. Graber and I to cohort. However, from learning a bit more about him I will say that the way we treat our patients vastly differ. He uses physiotherapy machines to zap and prod his patients. I use my hands to correct their subluxations and help them HEAL.

Another Thought On Edgerton

So Joni, who appeared to be quite interested, suddenly changed her mind without telling me. After saying how excited she was and that she would do all this advertising and even make up new business cards for me, she is no longer answering my e-mails or returning my phone calls. But let's look at the other side of it all -- she certainly was not all smily and friendly. She was very businesslike, and she kept referring to her "competition" who suddenly moved into town, that being a salon up the street, who she seemed determined to undermine. So, in the end, it all seemed like one big territorial war for her. Add to that the fact that she said, for whatever reason I have no idea, that the massage therapist that shared her little place with her was not happy there and wanted to be on her own. Oh well. I guess nothing was lost after all.

Now let's look at another situation. There IS a chiropractor in town, and he only works eight hours a week, two mornings a week. His main office is in Fulda, which is about 30 miles away, and Edgerton is his satellite office. His office is located inside that very salon that Joni was afraid would pull all her massage business from her because they have a massage therapist there too. So, what do you think my next step is if I want to keep this Rural Minnesota Chiropractic Initiative alive? Well, I'm no dummy. It dawned on me tonight that I should give this chiropractor a call and see if he wouldn't mind having me share the space with him in the afternoon hours. If he's okay with it, I am sure he will refer me to talk to the owner of the salon. I am all for that. This MAY be my chance to still open shop in Edgerton. If not, then it's on to the next town.

One thing Joni said when I was at her place was, "Don't go running off to those guys," referring to her salon competition. My answer was, "Nooooo. To me it's all about loyalty." I am a loyal person. When I find someone who is willing to give me a thumbs up or a cause that is worth fighting for, I'm ALL for it, and I'll come out with all barrels loaded. Apparently Joni's barrels were empty. And now it's time for me to take my loyalty elsewhere. That's the way it goes in life, and ESPECIALLY in business! Loyalty doesn't really exist these days when it comes to making a buck. It might have in the "old days". But the "new" days are "me first" days, and loyalty is a very antiquated, and practically dead, concept. Let's see where my new idea leads.

The Rural Minnesota Chiropractic Initiative

The title of this post is what I call my effort to bring my services to underserved areas of Minnesota. The remainder of this post is actually a re-post of my progress that I wrote this past Thursday in my Facebook notes. I will also attempt to post the same cute picture that I posted there as well:

My chiropractor, Dr. Joe Donahoe in Roseville, MN, told me that if I wanted to be very successful in my practice that I should look for a town out in the middle of nowhere. So, being the audie that I am, I decided to do that in a very methodical way. Using the criteria that a zip code had to have no chiropractors listed in it, according to the Minnesota Board of Chiropractic's list, AND no chiropractors listed in all the adjacent zip codes, I cam up with a list of 40 towns. While the closest of those towns is 118 miles from where I live here in Richfield, MN, I chose to seek out the more populated towns instead. Redby came out on top, but I didn't find any info on the place anywhere. So, next on the list was Edgerton. But according to the latest census, Edgerton is actually bigger than Redby. Not only that, I did find business listings and a whole bunch of stuff on the city of Edgerton.

I found one massage therapist listed in Edgerton, so it was obvious where I would start in my search to open a new door. Her name is Joni, and I've been in contact with her by e-mail for about a month before actually making the trip to Edgerton to visit her yesterday. The trip was exactly 196 miles from where I live to her office. Edgerton is right on the "edge" of the Minnesota state line, just before you cross over into South Dakota, and is located in Pipestone County. The drive was long and boring. Once I got outside of Bloomington, I saw nothing but wheat fields as far as the eye could see for the ENTIRE trip! I did stop at Minnesota's famous Emma Krumbee's restaurant in Belle Plaine to have breakfast on the way there. What I saw RIGHT before I got into Edgerton was indeed a sight to see -- HUNDREDS of windmills dotted the landscape for as far as you could see! WOW!

Joni and I came up with a business plan. For now, my office hours in Edgerton will be from 3-10 PM on Wednesdays and Thursdays. But if nobody signs up on a particular day, I won't drive all the way there for nothing. Joni will do all the advertising and setting appointments for me. That sounds like a pretty neat arrangement, and I pay her a percentage instead of a flat rent. Pretty cool! Also, the next closest chiropractors to town is 17 miles away in Pipestone or 21 miles away in Luverne. Let's keep our fingers crossed that this pans out.

So the plan is that I will travel down there on a Tuesday night if I have patients scheduled for Wednesday, and I will drive back to the Cities on Thursday night, assuming I have patients scheduled on Thursday as well. It is a 3-1/2 hour drive. Yesterday I drove down and back all in the same day, and that way definitely too much! Then I would work at the Guthrie, like I have been, on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. The job at the Guthrie, and with Mill City Security, will stay unless things get SO busy in Edgerton that I end up increasing my hours there.

Sure it would be a bit of a strain with Bianca and I not seeing each other for a couple days. But she did suggest a while ago that I look for work elsewhere since nothing is panning out here in the Cities. So, that's what I am doing here. Although Austin, Texas WOULD be a nice change! (haha) Besides, I have come to accept the fact that I am a MINNESOTAN now, and I better get darn used to this winter crappy weather. I've become accustomed to living in the constant below-freezing weather. But it is when the temperature drops below 10 above zero that things start to get unbearable, and I start screaming that I need to get out of this place. Oh well. C'est la vie!

Rural Chiropractic

I just completed a huge project that took me several weeks to complete. It was inspired by my chiropractor, who recently shared with me the plight of a chiropractor he knows very well. This chiropractor moved from a small town in western Minnesota, where he had a hugely successful practice, to the big city. Now that he is in Roseville, just north of downtown Minneapolis, he is struggling like never before to even have somebody give him any credibility. That sounds all too familiar. My chiropractor suggested that maybe the thing for me to do would be to open up shop in a small rural town. That set the wheels in motion for me to make a study of the entire state to find possible places to go.

Now I had been in a small town in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. There were 25,000 people in the city, and 25 chiropractors who were all struggling for the most part. I certainly didn't want a repeat of that situation. Therefore, I set very specific rules for what a prospective town had to have. (Remember, as an audie I thrive on making rules!) I investigated the possibilities by zip code. Not only could there not be a single chiropractor in the zip code. There could not be a single chiropractor in any of the zip codes that border that zip code. I found a great online zip code map, and I looked in chiropractic directories to double-check. In the end, I had a list of 40 zip codes throughout the state that met the criteria. The closest one, though, is 89.4 miles away from my own zip code. So if I do end up in a rural place, I certainly won't be commuting every day!

Then, after looking at populations, I chose what appears to be the most populated of these 40 towns. I say "appears" because different sources give different populations. The most populated, thusfar, appears to be Edgerton, Minnesota. The actual town is 197 miles from my home in Richfield. Just before I began writing this post, I gathered a list, although quite small, of potential businesses I may want to partner up with, eg massage therapists. I WILL be contacting them very soon.

On that note, tomorrow I will be taking care of my first new patient since October. I am excited about that, and so is my new patient. Tomorrow also will begin my hopeful venture into becoming a community activist. In 46 years, I have never felt as though any one place I've ever been was "home". Now that my wife and I are settled somewhere, now that we own a home and are set in our careers (at least she is), I figure it's time to start getting involved in the community. I will be dropping by the Richfield City Hall to hand them my application to be part of either its Advisory Board of Health or one of its other seven commissions. My first choice is to be on its Civil Service Commission, since this field is where I spent twelve good years of my life when I still lived in Pennsylvania.

I have been setting stages lately. Stay tuned for the opening act!