Lightning In A Bottle – Round 2

lightning in a bottle – An incredibly difficult, unlikely, and/or elusive achievement or period of success.

In round 1, I shared with you my first experience of catching lightning in a bottle. From 1990-1993 at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point (UWSP), we produced unprecedented results that have not been duplicated since. As remarkable as these historical accomplishments were, they merely set the stage for Round 2. Once you know what to look for and the results it can produce, it can become an addictive pursuit that you want to do again, and again, and again. Unfortunately, just like being struck by lightning, the odds are so infinitesimally small that it’s an almost impossible feat to replicate, let alone catch it at all. I can’t promise that this will occur for you, even knowing what it looks like, but I will share that the impact of doing so can literally change the world forever.

Round 2 – Chiro One Wellness Centers May 2003 to present day – After leaving the UWSP wrestling program in 1993 and going to USA Wrestling (USAW), though a phenomenal opportunity, I felt a significant void since we hadn’t accomplished what we set out to do…win the NCAA DIII National Wrestling Championships. In short order, the benefits of working at the Olympic Training Center (OTC) as an administrator and coach amongst the very best wrestlers, coaches and support staff in the world overweighed the loss of a dream not realized. Though this next venture was not my ultimate objective of owning my own business, it was yet another magical time period in my life…just not catching lightning in a bottle.

My job at USAW was to develop a national coaches education program that could improve wrestling coaching across the country while also supporting the athletes at the OTC. Building on what I had learned at UWSP and from the best wrestling coaches in the nation, I was fortunate to finish my wrestling career on a high note in 2000. During the seven years I served as the National Coaches Education Program Coordinator, I authored my first bestselling book, ‘USA Wrestling Coaches Guide to Excellence’, created a flagship coaches education program for the OTC, traveled to all 50 states, and had the chance to participate in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, GA. While this was incredibly exciting, my childhood dream of entrepreneurship was calling me to discover my full potential.

It was New Year’s Eve, and I was partying like it was 1999… because it was. My best friend, Dr. Ben Lerner, and I had a dream of doing something together that would change the world for the better ever since we first met in 1981. We had no idea what it would be; we were just crazy enough to believe we could. After graduating from college a year apart, I took the coaching route, and he became one of the greatest chiropractors in history. Because of our lifelong friendship and childhood dreams, we stayed in regular contact, and as a result, he joined me at USA Wrestling as our team chiropractor on a volunteer basis. It was the first time in history that USA Wrestling had a chiropractor at the world championships and Olympic Games in 1996. Spending as much time together as possible, I went to his home in Orlando, FL, to celebrate bringing in the 21st century together. During this weekend, he shared with me an opportunity that could finally turn our dream into reality. He said, “Brett, my business partner and I are building a chiropractic practice management company, but we are both working full-time in our offices. If we had someone who could grow and manage it while we continued building our practices, I think we could really blow it up, and I think you’d be the perfect person to do that!”

Finally, the stars aligned and an opportunity beyond my wildest dreams appeared right there for me. I said, “Let’s do it!” I wrapped up my career at USAW, moved to Kissimmee, FL, in the spring of 2000 with my best friend and now business partner, and we set out. Two and a half years later, we had built the second-largest chiropractic practice management company in the industry. Sadly, as the business grew, our friendship imploded. We parted ways professionally, repaired our relationship, and I moved to my favorite city, Chicago, IL. Now a lifelong chiropractic patient and semi-seasoned executive, I had no clue what I was going to do next. Until… I went to get adjusted by a local DC named Dr. Mark Lagerkvist, who also happened to be one of our first clients at the company I had just built and left with Ben. After his adjustment, he asked what I was up to, and I told him I didn’t know. He mentioned that he and his partners, Dr. Stuart Bernsen and Van Carrigan, might try to replicate and even surpass what I had achieved before, and asked if I would be open to discussing the possibility of working together. The four of us met in downtown Chicago in May 2003, and thus began Round 2 of catching lightning in a bottle.

Van, Mark, Stu, and I started a practice management company called LifeWorks, which supports DCs in making their business and life work, hence the name. One of our first clients was a group of three DCs we affectionately called the Naperville Boys. They all graduated from Sherman College of Chiropractic in 2001 and, against everyone’s best advice, decided to open a single practice in Naperville, IL, with the three of them caring for patients together. They named their organization Chiropractic One, and their names were Dr. Sam Wang, Dr. Gary Roeben, and Dr. Brian Rutecki. With two of the three having been mentored in Dr. Stu’s and Dr. Mark’s offices before opening, they knew what they wanted their practice to look like and had mentors who not only had what they wanted but could teach them how to achieve it. With Van, the proverbial “father of us all,” combined with Stu and Mark’s mentorship, they overcame a rough start and began to thrive within their first 18 months. When I joined in 2003, I supported the Naperville Boys, Stu, and Mark in marketing to attract patients, and within a year, we discontinued the practice management company and began opening additional chiropractic offices independently.

As both organizations grew over the next three years, we stayed in touch but were secretly competing against each other. As the years went on, by 2006, we had seven offices, and they had five. With our LifeWorks offices in the North and South suburbs of Chicago and their Chiropractic One offices in the Western suburbs, we weren’t competing for business and enjoyed friendly competition for bragging rights since we weren’t going head-to-head. That was until both of us planned to open practices in Schaumburg, IL, less than a mile apart in 2006. Suddenly, it went from fun and games to ‘game on’… unless we worked together. After six months of spending most weekends debating whether to join forces, asking and answering every imaginable question, we finally realized that we had the potential to be much stronger together than as two separate organizations. This marked the culmination of our vision, “that all human beings discover their full potential,” which brings us back to Round 2 of catching lightning in a bottle.

As I write this in September of 2025, only 22.5 years after lightning struck and we caught it, we’ve been blessed to accomplish the following:

• The largest privately owned chiropractic company in history
• 160+ offices nationwide from coast to coast in 13 states and growing
• $1B+ Gross Revenue
• 3X Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies in USA
• 3X Crain’s Chicago Business Fast Fifty Recipient
• 2X Inc. Hire Power Recipient
• Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year
• First chiropractic organization in history to complete a 9-figure financial transaction via private equity…and many, many, more. 

Although the accomplishments and accolades may be impressive, we have only begun to explore what’s possible and continue to look inward to find solutions to the challenges that come with high achievement. With every problem…there’s a solution. With every solution…comes a problem you couldn’t have foreseen. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished so far but more importantly, we realize how little we’ve done compared to what’s still needed to manifest our Vision. As a result, it becomes a never-ending cycle of problem and solution, always moving forward. As I shared in “Lightning In A Bottle-Round 1,” you can’t violate any of the five components of capturing lightning in a bottle and still expect it to work. For us…with seven original founders (our wise sage Van Carrigan died in 2020) and now ten partners; it’s like applying growth hormones and steroids to the five tenets.

As impressive as Round 1 was at UWSP and the overwhelming success that followed, it is nothing compared to what Round 2 has achieved and continues to deliver. If you’re curious about the difference between being great and truly transcendent, here are the key factors that have elevated us from being the best in history so far.

1. It always begins with the Leader—our original founder, CEO, and leader, Dr. Stuart Bersen, knew he would be a chiropractor since 1977 when his grandfather suggested it. He saw Star Wars and realized, like a Jedi Knight, he would work with and activate the ‘force’ within every human through chiropractic adjustments. After graduating from Loyola University and then Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1992, he started the first practice that would eventually be called Chiro One Wellness Centers in Evanston, IL. After initial struggles, and with the mentorship of Van Carrigan, he overcame his own limitations and within six years built a practice among the top 1% in the profession. He embodies the Level 5 leader Jim Collins describes in “Good to Great-Why some companies make the leap and others don’t.” Although deeply driven, he’s also modest and avoids the limelight as much as possible. He knows how to identify stallions and let them run as long as they produce results rather than excuses. This is balanced with holding himself to the highest level of accountability. Partnerships in business rarely succeed long-term, and according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 20% of businesses fail within their first year. After 10 years, that failure rate rises to 65%. Add one partner and the failure rate doubles. Start with seven partners and then add four—there are no statistics to measure it because it just doesn’t happen. The only way to keep 10 partners with different skills, strengths, and weaknesses working together in harmony is by having a Level 5 Leader.
2. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Starting with a vision as transcendent as “that all human beings discover their full potential,” if you assembled a team of founders with expertise in all necessary areas to make that vision a reality, you’d want a leader, financier, organizer, preacher, teacher, doer, and psychologist. Add checks and balances to manage all those egos and include complementary skillsets to keep the team cohesive and moving forward powerfully—you have lightning in a bottle. We have the remaining six founding partners who embody each of these qualities in abundance. Besides being extraordinarily talented leaders individually, their primary strengths are: Stu — financier; Sam — organizer; Brett — preacher; Brian — teacher; Gary — doer; and Mark — psychologist. Include robust accountability measures—such as a $100 fine for being just one second late to a meeting or a $1,000 fine for missing a business trip but still sharing your portion of the costs—and combine that with the complementary skills of our additional four partners (Dr. George Walker, Dr. Tony Deneal, Dr. Sylvia Kim, and Stephanie Byriel). You can see how perfectly our engine was assembled to build a Unicorn in the business world (a $1B+ company). Remove one part of this engine, and it fails. Keep it all together, and there’s no limit to how far you can go.
3. Work turns into play – To build a Unicorn in business, you don’t count the hours needed to accomplish it. If someone asked me how many hours per week my partners and I put into this venture, I honestly couldn’t tell them. If…and that’s a big ‘if’, I knew…it would easily be over 100 hours weekly. When you do something you love with every fiber of your being and it aligns with your highest values, there’s nothing else you’d rather be doing. You’re inspired to work rather than needing motivation. All your thoughts, energy, and effort go toward sculpting your proverbial David, and everyone in your sphere of influence gets to enjoy the ride. As a result, from the moment you wake up until your head hits the pillow at night, you’re living your passion. To avoid burnout, we took a powerful cue from Stephen R.. Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and made a conscious effort to include ‘Habit 7: Sharpen the saw’ as part of our approach. The goal was to intentionally blend play with work by going places and doing things that bring us joy while working ‘on’ the business rather than being fully immersed ‘in’ it. This sharpening-the-saw approach is a vital part of our recipe for success in capturing lightning in a bottle.
4. It’s not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when.’ After agreeing to work together and renaming our joint venture Chiro One Wellness Centers in 2007, our initial BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) was to open enough offices in the greater Chicago area to be within a five-mile radius of each other and effectively cover the entire market. Using a map of Chicago, then taking a compass and drawing concentric circles until they all touched, we realized we needed to open 41 offices to meet our goal. Most great endeavors get bogged down and never get off the ground because the principles believe they must know ‘how’ they will accomplish their goals. We never immersed ourselves in the ‘how,’ but solely focused on our ‘why,’ knowing that when the why is big enough, the ‘how to’ always figures itself out. We knew that if we could dominate the third-largest city in the country and provide access to chiropractic care for all its residents, regardless of where they lived or worked, we could set a model to eventually do this worldwide, thus manifesting our Vision: “that all human beings discover their full potential.” Less than two years later, we achieved our 41-office goal and have never looked back. When your vision now includes 8 billion people and is still growing, there’s no arrival—only progress.
5. You’re connected eternally — long before inclusion was a “thing,” our clan of crazies was the original United Colors of Benetton, spanning religions, races, sexes, and ethnicities. When we came together in 2006, four of our seven founders were married, with a total of seven children under 5 among us. Now, all 10 remaining partners are married with 18 kids in the group. We’ve almost sunk like the Titanic, but like the Phoenix, we’ve risen powerfully from the ashes. We’ve experienced marriages, divorces, remarriages, more children, and death. Along the way, we’ve faced breathtaking highs and devastating lows, made millions, lost millions, and directly improved millions of lives. We’ve traveled the globe, fought, cried, laughed, and made the antics on The Wolf of Wall Street look tame. Despite our personal differences, viewpoints, changing roles, family dynamics, or job responsibilities, we stay united, arm in arm, in our mission to bring chiropractic to the world and realize our Vision: “that all human beings discover their full potential.” I don’t know what the future holds as life moves forward, but I do know that my brothers and sisters from other mothers are forever connected.

Our journey isn’t over; however, like all things, change is inevitable and ongoing. I pray that something I’ve shared about my experience of catching lightning in a bottle twice will inspire you to realize your dreams, goals, and full potential. In the timeless words of B.J. Palmer, “We never know how far-reaching something we may think, say, or do today will affect the lives of millions tomorrow.”

Believe…