The Practice Gap
The Practice Gap
# 40:Why Specializing Early & Finding Your Own Path Matters-with Haakon Kunle
Starting Out in Practice, Specializing Early & Finding Your Own Path with Haakon Kunle
Starting out as a chiropractor can feel overwhelming—should you generalize or specialize early? What’s the best way to build a sustainable and fulfilling career? In this episode, we dive into these questions with Haakon Kundle, a chiropractor who took an unconventional path from the start.
Coming from a chiropractic family, Haakon had early exposure to the field, but it was his own injuries and experience with functional neurology that led him to specialize early in complex neurological cases. Now, he runs his own clinic in Tønsberg, Norway, where he’s redefining what chiropractic care can look like.
🎙 In this episode, we explore:
✔️ The realities of starting out in practice – what Haakon wishes he knew sooner
✔️ Why he chose to specialize early – and how it shaped his career
✔️ Different ways to practice – from traditional clinics to niche specialties
✔️ How to build a practice that fits your passion & skills
If you’re a new grad, an experienced chiropractor, or someone looking to refine your practice, this conversation is packed with insights that will help you shape your own unique path.
🎧 Hit play now and learn how to create a practice that works for YOU!
If you want to get in touch with Haakon:
post@kvantumklinikken.no
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Kind regards,
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen, DC, MSc
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Hi and welcome to the Practice Gap, the podcast for closing the gap between the practice you have and the one that you want. I'm Elisabeth, a chiropractor who loves to work with the very difficult patients the 20 to 10% that regular chiropractors get super frustrated about and wonder what should I do with this patient? That's his favorite patient. That's his favorite patient. So we're going to talk about in this episode. We are going to pick your brain about different ways to run clinics and what your experience has been in the years you've been working in the States, and also the different ways you've been working in Norway.
Haakon:Cool, okay so when I was in the States okay so, uh, when I was in the states, I feel or I compare it to when, um, my dad and, uh, my mom went to palmer university and they had gonstead like gonstead was the coolest guy with a big clinic in mount horb and had a hospital or a hotel next to it and had an airstrip and all this stuff. And I feel atlanta at the time where me and my friends that went to school from norway came to america, dr karek was kind of like the gonstead of our time and over the two first years of me going to school in atlanta he built this 20 000 square meter clinic in atlanta and had like 25 different treatment rooms and all the coolest high-tech things with off-axis rotational chairs and all this see-through mirrors, was perfectly for observing and and it was very like mind-blowing. I'm like whoa, this, this is very, very, very big compared to my tiny, my dad's tiny clinic in Tonsberg in norway, right, but then when I finished school I went to work for a guy named dr salinski in portland, oregon, and he had a way, way, way smaller clinic but it was super efficient, like he had this perfect way of actually doing functional neurology, because it's hard to make the clinic flow perfectly doing functional neurology, because you do so many different therapies per patient and you don't technically need to have the brain of a chiropractor to run electrical stimulation or to run lasers or to run eye hand coordination and all this. You just need our brain to diagnose and come up with the treatment plan and then you can have what's called techs or chiropractic assistants in order to run all these other gadgets that you have in the clinic. And when I got the working experience and actually got to be a typewriter for him, it was because in america, in order to practice chiropractic, you need to pass your boards, which are quite hard, and so I and I and I never thought I was going to stay in America when I, when I was here and was there in the beginning, and then when I got this job offer, I had to take all four boards very, very fast.
Haakon:So for the first three months when I was in Portland, I wasn't allowed to work as a chiropractor and I was just being a Dr Slinsky scribe. So, and that was probably whereI learned the most and I was I was listening into his case history reports and also his report of findings. When he was doing the report of findings, I was the guy typing all the stuff he said, all the findings. He said so, and it's very funny, because when now I do report of findings, I feel like I'm just talking this exact same way that he's doing, and I almost feel like I can sell ice to an Eskimo. It's very interesting.
Haakon:After being at his office for quite some time then I got confident to say like, oh, maybe you actually can make this work because he has a business structure that makes functional neurology doable, because I had heard that like, oh, you can't come back.
Haakon:Business structure that makes functional neurology doable, because I had I've heard that like, oh, you can't come back to norway and do functional neurology right off the bat. You have to start a regular chiropractic clinic and then you have to work up a reputation and then, after a few years, then maybe you can do what you want. And I'm like that's not what I want to do, though like the only reason I came to chiropractic is because I want to do this stuff, and I think it's very, very important and and it's yes, maybe it's only the 10 percent or the 20 percent of the normal chiropractic patient basis, but that's a huge number of people. Right when I got back to Norway, I was fortunate enough to be able to do turners at both um eureka sandvika with matt somber and um guys, they're there. Oh, they're gonna be so pissed.
Haakon:Yes, absolutely gonna be so pissed if I don't remember their names and uh and also um. So I did 50 50 there. And then I did 50 at a functional level log center in hegdausveien with um, kim, lauring and olivillingset, which were like the guys I looked up to when I went to school because I'm like, oh, they, they've been doing functional neurology for so many years. Like, oh, this is so cool. It was very fun because I got to bring a new light into the clinic with all the new knowledge and the business structure that I learned in america. So for the entire tuners year that I was there, it was super fun to try to work this stuff in.
Haakon:But Again, it's super hard because I came from a clinic in America where we were seeing maybe 15, 20 really hardcore neurological cases a day. And then I came to Norway and I'm like, wait, I'm seeing one patient every week. Like well, I have to start from scratch again. And then, who are you Like? What do you do? You do concussion work. You do some functional neurology. You're not even a chiropractor. Like no, no, not even a chiropractor. Like what? No, no, I am a chiropractor. And it was very hard in the beginning to kind of get get your roots into norway and I don't know if it's due to yanteloven or what it is, but you're not supposed to think that you can teach anyone anything, or you shouldn't think highly of yourself and all this stuff, but uh so don't stick your nose out, don't try to be better than I.
Haakon:Don't think you're better than anyone else so no then um, I obviously got a little bit of help from mom and dad sending me some patients and stuff, and then all of a sudden it started to to gain some traction in oslo as well, and it was a very cool learning experience and super fun to work with those guys in oslo. But then I got the opportunity take over mom and dad's clinic in um tunsberg how many years had you been working when you took over the clinic?
Haakon:one and a half yeah, yeah, but also plus plus one year in the states, so two and a half years so um and then three different clinics, right, yes, yes. So then I moved back to Tonsberg and then I got the same thing, told me the same thing. You can't do functional neurology in tiny, tiny, 40,000 people city called Tonsberg. Like you barely made it work in Oslo, you really think you're going to make it in Tonsberg? And I was like well, you know, I love people saying no to like.
Elisabeth:well, you know, I love people saying no to stuff you know, and um actually that was the same when I opened my specialty clinic in treating pelvic pain and children. It was eight and a half years ago and my colleagues and friends are like, well, you can't open a clinic, you just live off treating colic children or don't think that pregnant women will just walk into clinic just because you say that you know anything about it. And it took me a month and then I was, I had a full full, it was I could pay all my bills the first month amazing.
Haakon:It's very cool. No, I think that's. I think that's very cool or a very good point to make. I think you're way better off doing your specialization as soon as you can, I remember in school, because school is tough, as it is right. Chiropractic education is very intense and there's so much stuff you have to learn. But still, I would encourage any student that are in school or want to become a chiropractor to try to do their specialization while they're in school, because I had so many friends in school that said, like I'll do functional neurology after school, I'll do this after school. But then your bills really start racking up right your housing bills, your clinic bills.
Elisabeth:You get children and then all of a sudden student prices on the seminars anymore and you have other priorities. It's tough.
Haakon:So, yeah, that's my number. One thing is to specialize early and also, then you get ahead of the curve. It's super cool and I don't really compete with any chiropractors in my neighborhood or even within my field County, county. There's no one like I, I don't see any. There's no patient of mine that come in and say they have neck or low back pain. They, most of them, have that, but they always, always have something above it, like epileptic seizures, concussions, dizziness, chronic migraines, sieg syndromes, dysautonomia, dystonias all these weird neurological cases. And then when you actually get to stabilize their system, then I, then they respond perfectly to our normal chiropractic care, right.
Elisabeth:So that's what I think is really cool, because then I can send it back to the chiropractor that so if I have a problem case, a problem case that, like I fix something and it's just they don't get better, I can send them off to you and you work on them for a while and then when they become, they have those big issues resolved and just become a more regular patient, then they can come back to me and have a great life with me yeah, because this is this.
Haakon:This comes down to what I, what we talked about in the previous podcast and like that is. The chiropractic adjustment in itself is so powerful that sometimes when I do it on my patients, it's not so cool, like I actually either make them super dizzy, I make them faint and all this stuff if you don't do it correctly, because their nervous system is way more unstable than and I don't say that that this doesn't happen in regular chiropractic clinics, because I tend to do that sometimes too because we see we see a lot of very special cases in a normal chiropractic clinic too, but I tend to feel that if you don't give them time to talk about their issue, then maybe you missed that they had a head injury or they. They have this other dizziness thing that you didn't really talk about because they didn't have it as a chief complaint and we all have the patients who come back three days later or three visits later.
Elisabeth:I was like, oh, did I? And they talk about some crazy injury or operation. And I'm thinking like, oh, I'm the worst chiropractor in the world because I didn't, I didn't pick it up and they never told me, or they had cancer or something crazy, and they didn't think it was relevant right, because what you're just a? Chiropractor, you're just cracked backs. Yeah, right, and and I think that's uh.
Haakon:I think that's why I really spend so much time on my initial consultation, because I try. It's what they say in this when you get your diploma at Life University. I don't know if it's like this for any other chiropractic, but it says the Hippocratic Oath like first, do no harm, right. So it's very even if you don't fix them, try not to mess them up, right.
Elisabeth:And maybe not stimulate too much. We all have the patients we gave that it's too much less is more.
Haakon:Yeah, right, this is definitely more, and I'd still like, even now, that I graduated in 2016, so I've been working for seven years almost I must be.
Elisabeth:I mean it's 25, so it's nine years this is what happens you've been working for. You have no idea how long you've been working yeah.
Haakon:So I and I tried so hard not to overstimulate my patients, but the way my practice runs is you don't get to choose your care plan. It's either if you're within a vicinity of 40 minutes.
Elisabeth:It's either three times a week for four weeks and then we do a re-evaluation and then you get six weeks of home care if you're out of or longer away from that if you so if I'm in the, I'm a chiropractor in the north of norway and have this really hard case, if I want to send them to you, and I mean they can't fly back and forth, so what? What is a way they you can help them and help me as a chiropractor, right.
Haakon:So this is what is super cool about doing functional neurology, because so what we do then is we have what's called intensive weeks. You can either choose one full day of treatment, three days of treatment or five days of treatments, and it might sound too much, but we, we see them. We see each patient maybe like five times a day for five days straight, right, but I can't adjust them five times a day for five days straight, right, but I can't adjust them five times a day. So this is where all these other therapies comes in, right.
Elisabeth:So functional neurology is just it's kind of like being in a rehab center.
Haakon:Yes, it is One session we might do eye movements. One session we might do vestibular rehab. One session we might do fascia work. One session we might do chiropractic rehab one session we might do fascia work. One session we might do chiropractic and one session we might do laser. And then you try to combine this into make this orchestra of your nervous system play correctly, because I think this is where most traditional neurological rehabilitation fails is. So, say, you go to synos or you go to fram, or these are rehab center, not rehab rehabilitation centers in norway.
Haakon:Yes, when you go to these places, I feel like a lot of the normal neurological rehabilitation is very segregated. So, like today you're only going to do vestibular rehab, or today you're going to go see your physio, or today you're going to see the neurologist, or today you're going to see your personal trainer, and it's very often in groups session therapies, right, but you as an individual, like you, have to see you or the patient as an individual, because even though they present with the same type of dizziness or the same type of headaches or the same type of problems, they are unique as the person that comes into the room. So you have to try to tailor, make it, make the treatment plan into as the person that comes into the room. So you have to try to tailor, make it, make the treatment plan into that specific person that is in front of you.
Haakon:I think that is beauty of knowing the nervous system and it's a very fun thing to do, because all I do is I put a stimulation in and see what is the motor motor respond, and is the motor respond favorable, cool, then I can maybe continue doing this therapy. If I do this therapy and the balance gets worse, I'm like I'm not doing this type of therapy, then I have to find some other ways of coming into the nervous system from, because there's so many avenues of hitting one different, one specific area of the brain. You can go through so many different pathways and exits, entries in order to hit that one spot and you just have to be creative of how and why and when do I wanna stimulate this area, and I only do this to the point where I'm like now you're perfectly fine. Yes, now I can blast your nervous system with an adjustment to actually try to facilitate neuroplasticity, and I think the chiropractic adjustment does that best out of all the tools I have in the clinic.
Elisabeth:So if we're going to sum up at the end, if you're going to give some advice, especially for the younger chiropractors who are really interested in some kind of specialty if it's ankle or knee problems or some kind of other kind of specialty if they, what are the advice? Or geriatric population what are some of the best advice you can give the new chiropractor who really loves some sub part of chiropractor they want to jump into, dive into?
Haakon:yeah, this might sound biased, but I think, regardless of your, regardless of your speciality, if it's children, if it's pediatrics, if it's sports chiropractic excuse me if it's geriatrics, if it's dizziness, if it's networking, if it's upper cervical, it doesn't really matter. But the coolest thing about functional neurology is that just by learning how the nervous system functions truly will elevate any technique you do afterwards, because it does truly matter if you adjust the neck on the left or the right side. It does really matter if you adjust the right ankle or left ankle. It does really matter. If I take my skin contact this way, depending on this way, like all these stuff matters. But then people are like ah, but does it really, though? And I'm like it all depends on the patient that you see. But this comes down to when you do chiropractic perfectly. It's miracles almost every time, and if you do it kind of perfect, it's like cool, I got a little bit better. But then and I hear- this.
Elisabeth:You probably missed the miracles, right. Then you. Then the profession gets boring and then you don't want to maybe renew yourself, and then you get tired and then suddenly you do something else right, and this is the.
Haakon:It comes back to the three parts of making yourself a chiropractor, because it kind of gets redundant sometimes. Right, doing the same stuff monday through friday and all this, but going to seminars is probably the most motivating thing ever I just got back on my seminar, junkie right oh, I probably do like five or six seminars outside of the norwegian association seminar every year and I was just.
Haakon:I just came back from a 48-hour trip to the States two weeks ago to do a neurological conference and it was so much fun, even though it was tiring and a little bit jet lagged at work on Tuesday morning, but it was so cool and it was so inspiring. I had such glow in the clinic when I came back and I'm like, oh, like, oh cool. Now I can implement all this stuff and I have learned a new skill in order to treat my patient and maybe they get better even faster. And this comes back to also the the type of treatment that we do in the clinic. With these intensives that we have, it make any, any patient anywhere in the world can actually come to the clinic. I'm not bound by the people that can drive there right yeah, so you come.
Haakon:If you have a big problem and a terrible chronic, you will go somewhere to get help yeah, it's quite cool because, like this told me, like, oh, you can't do, you can't do functional neurology in Tonsberg, but I mean, I bought the clinic in the end of 2019.
Haakon:And last year, I think, we had patients from England, sweden, hungary, denmark, germany, and they all fly in just to tiny little Norway and tiny little Tonsberg to get treated by this chiropractor that hasn't been in practice for 10 years and I still feel like I know nothing compared to, like, all the great people that I've been able to work along with and learn from.
Haakon:So it's very, it's a very humbling experience and I still be like I don't know enough, and that's why, please, like, find yourself two or three mentors and really, like I I still, to this day, talk to Dr Selinsky, dr Mark Ellis, like on a daily basis, I talk to them and I'm like, hey, this case it was really hard.
Haakon:Do you have any pointers that I can do or fix, or do you have anything else that I maybe missed or anything like this? And it's very, it's very. You don't feel so alone in the world, because it could be quite hard even just being the one doctor, especially if you're a new one, and I remember, like being the shaky hands like when you're touching people and you're like, oh man, I'm not that nervous, but I'm like I'm super nervous, so it's a very so. The number one thing is to get two or three mentors go to so many seminars like all the seminars you can do and then observe clinics and if anyone wants to come and hang out in the clinic, I allow anyone to come and hang out for two or three days if they want to see what a functional neurology clinic looks like.
Elisabeth:Perfect. I get super inspired by listening to and my favorite thing is, I get so much hope for the future of this profession because we have so much to do and so much to give and there's so much out there. And if I'm going to sum up my take-home messages now, especially for the young chiropractors out there get start early to specialize in whatever you do. Also, do more functional neurology, because that will help you in any kind of specialization you want to do. And go to seminars, get mentors and observe Just learn more.
Haakon:And don't be afraid to fail.
Elisabeth:Don't be afraid. That's when we learn. We learn mostly when we learn, that's, we learn mostly when we fail. Perfect. Thank you so much for being here. It's been really really awesome and if people want to contact you, can I just can I put your name and email address in the show notes. Thank you,