Why I Moved To Florida?!

Life is fragile, and it is short, so you should start doing something to reach your dreams. In this episode, Kevin Pecca shares the reason behind his 6-month-long hiatus from the show. Losing his parents made him realize the harsh reality that life is delicate and transitory. It served as a wake-up call, reminding him that simply waiting for your dreams to materialize will not take you anywhere. Kevin narrates the journey he’d taken to make his dream possible. He emphasizes how having the destination allows the puzzle pieces to fall in place, and why taking massive action will change your life. Be inspired to take action in making your dreams possible from this inspiring episode!

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Listen To The Episode Here

Why I Moved To Florida?!

Life Update

This episode is going to be a little bit different. I usually have a special guest on, but now I am solo. I just wanted to share with you a lot has changed over the past year. Some ups, some downs, I moved, why I moved, starting a new practice. Unfortunately, some other things have happened in my life. My mom passed away. I wanted to share with you a little life update about where I'm at right now, what I'm doing, and what the near future is going to hold. If you guys enjoy these one-on-one episodes, I will start doing some more. I already plan on it. If you guys have any other special guests as far as amazing life stories, doctors, and healers that are talented, and that are thinking outside the box, message me those people. I would love to have them on the show.

Again, thank you, everybody, for tuning in over the last few years. If you're new to the show, welcome. My name is Dr. Kevin, and I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. You can find me on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube @DrKevinPecca, and Facebook @MontclairUpperCervical.

If you'd like to send me an email, you can reach me at DrKevinPecca@Gmail.com. More episodes to come, guys. You can watch it on Spotify. You can watch the video-recorded episodes on YouTube and other podcast-playing platforms everywhere.

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Sorry for the long delay. I took about a six-month hiatus from the show. I had a lot going on. This past year has had so many life changes. I'm excited to update you guys on everything that's going on. This episode is all about what happened over the last past year. I moved and had a lot of new things happen in my life that changed the course and trajectory of what I thought was going to happen. A lot of unexpected things happened, and for the most part, it shed new light on how I look at life. I'm excited to share with you guys everything that happened and what's been going on.

In this episode, I wanted to go over why I moved to Florida, life updates, what the future's going to hold as far as upper cervical chiropractic goes, and what this show is going to be about. I appreciate everyone who's taken this journey with me, who's been tuning in over the past years. It means the world to me. I love your support. If you guys know anybody with an amazing life story and any doctors that are doing great work outside the traditional medical realm, I would love to interview them. You can tag them in the comments below or send me their name. I’m always looking for new, exciting guests on the show.

Let's start it out here. Why did I move to Florida? In order to answer this question, we have to backtrack a little bit on graduating from chiropractic school in 2017. When I graduated from chiropractic school, upper cervical chiropractic was the only thing I wanted to do. It’s all I thought about. I would've opened up my office in the middle of nowhere if it meant I got to do upper cervical chiropractic every day of my life. It's my passion and still is.

I bought a practice in New Jersey, Montclair Upper Cervical Chiropractic in 2017. It was this phenomenal upper cervical doctor's practice. Dr. Meg Banitch practiced for over 25 years. Her father, Dr. George Banitch, ran it before her, and then his father before him started the practice around 1948, Felix Banitch. I'm the fourth generation to step in and the first one outside of the family. It's an honor to be a part of that practice and watch it continue to grow.

Back to the question here. When I graduated from chiropractic school, that was all I wanted to do. The one question I never asked myself was, “Where did I want to do it?” As I said, I would've opened up in the middle of the country or a different country. It didn't matter as long as I got to do upper cervical chiropractic. That's all I wanted to do starting out. I hit the ground running. I opened up in 2017. We started and were really busy. There were not a lot of Blair Upper Cervical chiropractors in the area. As some of you know, there are only two in New Jersey. Once we opened, we hit the ground running and were very busy. I was living my dream of being an Upper Cervical Chiropractor in my own office and adjusting people as often as I could.

I even opened up a second practice about an hour South of me down the shore where I grew up. I was seeing people on Sundays. After about a couple of years, I burnt out. I was doing this almost every day of the week. If I wasn't doing it, I was doing episodes for the show and marketing, and it took its toll on me so much so that I threw my back out 3 or 4 times where I couldn't even get out of bed. I was bedridden for a couple of days because of the constant bending down and checking patients. If you've seen the adjustments, you bend over pretty far, seeing 40 to 45 people a day doing that. Not only was it physical stress and mental stress, but definitely burned the candle at both ends. I was exhausted.

One of the most amazing things that happened to me after that, I believe I was in practice for about three years, was I met my wonderful wife, Pri, in Brazil. That changed the course of my life completely. She was such a godsend to me. She's made my life better in every which way possible. I'm going to do another episode on how we met in Brazil because it was very serendipitous. I wasn't expecting it at all. I've had a lot of amazing things fall into place in my life when I'm least looking forward. That's the best way it comes. After I met her, I started to realize there's more to life than Upper Cervical Chiropractic and adjusting people every day.

I realized that there wasn't a good work-life balance in my life. There were zero soul-fulfilling activities in my life or some things that I need to stay balanced. If you know me, I'm a beach person. I need to be by the beach. When I jump in the ocean, I'm a completely different person when I walk out. It helps me balance out. Four years into practice, I was always anxious and emotionally stressed. I didn't have those soul-fulfilling activities of surfing, fishing, and jumping in the ocean. Those are the things that balance me out. I was about an hour away from the beach in New Jersey. To some, that might not seem too far, but it was way too far for me. Mental health declined. Physical health, as I told you, I was having a lot of back issues, even though I was under phenomenal upper cervical care.

I was stressed. I needed to make a change. That's exactly what I did. One of the things that always stood out in the back of my mind, which is one of the biggest reasons I moved down here, was my parents’ dream together to retire at the age of 60 and live on a golf course. My dad used to love golf. He would golf every day if he could. They wanted to wait until they retire, move to a golf course, and start creating and living the life they wanted. When I was 16 years old, my dad was 48 at that time, I woke up one morning. He was doing his morning exercises and had a pulmonary embolism right in front of me. We didn't know what to do. We called the ambulance. The ambulance came about 10 or 15 minutes later and they took him away.

My dad was the perfect bill of health. No health issues, exercised every day, and big strong guy. I didn't think in 1 million years when they wheeled him out on the stretcher that that would be the last moment I ever saw him. Sure enough, we got to the hospital. There was a nurse waiting for us outside. They said, “Your dad had a pulmonary embolism. He passed away.” It’s a huge shock to me and my mom. He was here at 8:00 AM and by 10:00 AM, he was gone. That changed the way I look at life. It made me grow up a little bit faster and I had to change my priorities. At that time, I remember my mom. We were sitting on the couch that night when he passed away and she's like, “What are we doing now? What do we do?”

My dad was the provider for our family. I feel like in that instant, I woke up and grew up a little bit. I decided to step it up, do everything I could, and do as much for my family as possible. At sixteen, there's not too much you can do, but my mindset changed. I got more mature overnight. I took life a little bit more seriously than what I was doing before. My dad passed away at 48. My mom was also very healthy. If you look at her, she looked like the perfect bill of health. She didn't have anything going on.

She would get her yearly physical exam and nothing major was showing up there. In July 2022, she got diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and it metastasized to her pancreas. She called me and she said, “Kevin, I'm having this weird mid-back pain and it doesn't feel like chiropractic. It was very deep.” I told her to come up to the office and we would adjust her. Nothing was taking the pain away. We went on for a couple of weeks until the pain got so severe that she went to the emergency room and was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. By the time we caught it, it was way too late. She was about to start chemotherapy one week.

The week she was supposed to start, her health declined tremendously. We didn't even get to do the chemo. She passed away a couple of months after the diagnosis. At that time, I was still living in New Jersey and thinking to myself, “My dad passed away at 48. My mom passed away at 60. They didn't get to live their dream because they waited for retirement.” That's great. It works well for some people but it made me realize we don't have the time we think we do. For a lot of people, we want to wait until we're retired and have the right money and assets. We plan for these things to start living our life twenty years in advance. If I didn't have these major life events that happened to me, I probably would've done the same thing.

The Life I Wanted To Live

I saw my parents not being able to live the dream they wanted because they wanted to wait for retirement. I noticed that that's an illusion. It's not a real thing. After my mom passed away, I wanted to live intentionally by setting up the life I wanted to live, not wait another 20 or 25 years of retirement to start living where I want to live and doing what I want. It was a big wake-up call. We think we have all this time. When these things happen in our life, we notice it's very fragile and tomorrow is not promised. From that moment, I said, “Where do I want to live? What do I want to do going forward? What practice do I want? How do I want to spend my days?”

These are all important questions I asked myself. They all revolved around not being in the place I was at currently. I knew changes were supposed to be going to have to happen. I was thinking about changing the setting where I wanted to live. In 2021, I started to think about it, but my mom's passing put the icing on the cake. For a while, in 2021, when I first started thinking about this, I thought I was stuck. I have a business in New Jersey. How am I ever going to leave this? Florida was in the back of my mind.

How am I going to move to Florida when I have a business I have to take care of? In my mind, I thought I was stuck and that it wasn't possible for it to happen. This was a self-limiting belief on my part. When you ask other people, “Is it possible?” sometimes people shoot at your dreams or they don't understand that it is possible and you start to believe them. It was something I wanted so deeply. I wrote it down and decided I was going to give myself two years to make this move. One of the best things you can do is to write your plan down and reverse engineer it from there. I like to say put all the chess pieces exactly where you want to win the game, and then work backwards from there.

Now, a lot of people will say, “This piece can't go here. This doesn't go there. You can't do that.” Right away, when you think like that, you have lost the game. You got to put the pieces exactly where you want, don't listen to what everybody else has to say, and then put a plan, reverse engineer, and start to work backwards from there. One of the first things I did was I hired a business coach who has helped people do this before because I didn't know how to do this by myself. If you think about it, especially if you're an athlete growing up, we have all these amazing coaches and trainers to help. They help us get where our goals to what we want to accomplish athletically. Once you get to about 18, 19, 20, or 22, that stops.

Have A Destination

You don't have that professional guidance anymore, people that have been there before and help you accomplish your dreams. I hired a business coach who was very successful at helping Upper Cervical Chiropractors. Shout-out to Kevin Weir of ActionCOACH. He helped this move happen in ways that I couldn't imagine. For two years, we sat down once every couple of weeks and we reversed engineered this plan, and worked backwards. Every week, I had something to do to get closer and closer to this goal. One of the first things we had to do was we had to hire somebody to take my place at Montclair Upper Cervical. When you have a very clear picture of what you want, pieces start to fall in place.

If you don't have a destination and you don't know what you want, it's very murky. The universe doesn't know what to give you now. Call it whatever you want, Universe, God, or some attraction to bring things towards you. If you don't have a destination, the world doesn't know what you want. If you write it down very clearly, you'll see a lot of amazing things start to pop up and fall into place in your life that wouldn't have been there if you didn't know which way you wanted to go. The first person I reached out to was Dr. Jeff Scott, who is our Clinic Director at Montclair Upper Cervical. He’s a phenomenal Upper Cervical doctor. When I texted him at that time, he already had a chiropractic job and he wasn't looking to leave his job. I texted him and he said, “Thank you, Kevin.

I'm happy where I'm at right now.” I said, “Jeff, best of luck. Thanks for getting back to me. If anything changes, let me know.” I interviewed 2 or 3 other doctors that seem to not be a good fit for the practice. I didn't want to get somebody in there for the sake of getting somebody in there. I wanted them to be very good. Don't jump on the first person or thing that comes into your life. Make sure it resonates with you and it's going to let your goals and dreams be achieved. If I hired the wrong person there, if I hired the first person or second person I interviewed, it wouldn't have worked.

I remember sitting down one day, I reached a dead end, and I said, “God, give me a signal or a sign. If there's anything that can help make this plan happen, shoot me a sign now. Please, I'm begging you,” to the point where I thought I was stuck again. I was almost in tears because things were not going my way. I remember getting to the office that morning and I get a text from Jeff. He says, “Kev, I'm interested in taking you up on this offer. Can I come by the practice this week to see how it works and if it's a good fit?” I said, “Perfect. Come by.” Jeff came by once. He liked what he saw. He came by again and then a couple of weeks later, I hired Dr. Jeff Scott.

He has been a godsend to Blair Upper Cervical. In my practice at Montclair Upper Cervical Chiropractic, he's my chiropractor. He’s excellent at what he does and patient care. He is now running Montclair Upper Cervical. If you notice too, once you do one thing, the second time around becomes a little bit easier. We were getting so busy at one point that me and my business coach, Kevin, said, “In order for this to work, you have to bring in another doctor because it's going to be too much for Dr. Jeff to handle.” I started putting my feelers out again. I met a lot of great students at the Blair Upper Cervical Conference in Texas in 2021. There was one doctor that said one of her dreams was to live in the New York City area and become an upper cervical doctor.

Take Any Action

I reached out to her, Dr. Neshi Rodrigues and she is now the second doctor in our practice. She’s doing so well. We got that second doctor in there. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place, which I was thrilled about. Again, write those dreams down, work backwards, and reverse engineer everything until it's grounded and concrete of what you want to happen. Don't forget, you can write this down, but if you don't take any action, there's going to be nothing that's going to change in your life. You have to take massive action to make these dreams come to fruition. Dr. Neshi joined us in March 2023.

There are things that you can't control either or out of your hands. My plan was to be in New Jersey until January 1st, 2022. I wanted to spend a whole nother year in my practice to get it ready. I asked my landlord at that time to extend my lease on my house, and he said, “Kevin, I can't extend your lease because January is not a good time to have people look at houses. A lot of people start looking in the spring. In the summer, I want to have somebody in the new house by the next school year.”

He extended my lease for about one month. That's the best he could do. As soon as I heard this, me and my wife hopped on a plane to Florida, and we started looking at houses. We got a couple of connections. We had a really good realtor. We flew in on Thursday and we closed on a house on Saturday, which was unbelievable. We saw about 10 or 12 different houses in about two days.

We found the house we wanted. It was a dream house and beautiful. It pushed things up for about eight months. Your plan is not going to be extremely linear. Everything is not going to fall into place perfectly. You do have to make modifications because there are unforeseen things that will pop up. If you can't adapt, it's probably not going to change either. You have to be able to adapt and little Roblox is going to pop up. It's all about problem-solving. Nothing has ever really finished. I look at it as more of a challenge than an obstacle. If you brainstorm it out, there's usually always a solution. It's not a problem, but another obstacle or hurdle that's going to make you better.

Once you overcome that, there's going to be another hurdle or obstacle in the way but brainstorm and map things out. Problem-solving is a huge asset. It’s one of the best things you can do when you're trying to make big, massive dreams come true. We had to put a lot of systems in place in our office. Dr. Jeff Scott took my place in the office. He's been seeing all the new patients and doing all the first adjustments. That didn't happen overnight either. It took about a year and a half for him to be completely up to speed and excellent at what he does. Now he's excellent at patient care and the Blare Upper Cervical technique. We had Dr. Neshi take his place. Now she does all the exams and handles Dr. Jeff's overflow.

Put A Lot Of Systems In Place

You need to have very specific systems in place so the business runs without you. If there's something that you can't remove yourself from in the business, then it's not going to work because if you fully want it to run without you, you have to put every system in place designed to run without you. When you're not there, that system is not going to work. Again, map it out and see what you have to work on. You're not always going to remove yourself and put it in the system and it's going to work. It's going to be a lot of trial and error until it does work. Don't be too impatient when it becomes to this. Just because you have an idea and it's not going your way, you want it to happen in a year. It might take 2, 3, or 4. You got to be patient and make sure it gets done right.

Down the road, you're still able to do what you want to do without you being in your business. I can't say how great that has worked out at Montclair Upper Cervical. Now the goal is to open up a brand new practice in St. Augustine, Florida in September or October 2023. We chose St. Augustine, Florida because I love to surf and fish. I love the warm weather and the sunshine. It's a beautiful city. It's somewhere both me and my wife wanted to be. That's how we chose that location. It's something that's resonated with me. That could be in the mountains in Colorado for you or it could be a different country like Amsterdam, Portugal, or Spain. It's wherever you want to be.

You can't live somebody else's dream because somebody else is doing what you like. It has to be straight from your heart. Where do you want to live? What do you want to do? It has to be your own manifestation of your dream, and that's the only way it's going to make you happy. St. Augustine was that place for me and my wife. We're very excited to open up here. We're looking at office spaces. It's probably going to be a 2 or 3-month process. I'm very excited to serve the Florida community. Those of you who are tuning in to this show might know there's nobody doing the Blair Upper Cervical technique on the entire East Coast of Florida.

We will be the first Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic technique in North Florida. There's Dr. Schrier down in Delray Beach, but we're four hours apart, so there's not too much Blair Upper Cervical on the East Coast of Florida. I'm excited to bring Blair Upper Cervical to the East Coast of Florida. Upper Cervical Chiropractic completely saved my life. It's tough when somebody is going through the exact same thing I'm going through like post-concussion syndrome, brain fog, vertigo, dizziness, headaches, anxiety, and depression. They have nobody to see because there's nobody in their state or country. My goal is to open up these offices around the country and the world. We got a long way to go. We're starting with office number two here.

If you are interested in becoming an Upper Cervical doctor and this message, and this resonates with you, come find me. Let's talk. I would love to help you either start your own practice or if you want to be an associate in mine. I love to help you out. We need more people doing this work. I am always open to helping any upper cervical chiropractor looking to get into the field. Also, if you're a patient and looking for an upper cervical chiropractor, please reach out. A lot of people ask me questions when they're under care because the healing process is very up, down, and all around. You're good for a couple of days and then some of your old symptoms come back. It could be a little bit of a rollercoaster. If you are looking for some advice while you're under care, I'd be happy to help too.

One of my favorite books is The Alchemist. If you haven't read that book, it's one of the most inspiring books I've ever read in terms of following your dreams, serendipitous things happening in your life, and having everything fall into place. It's got so many good metaphors and it's a beautiful story. If you're thinking about making a change in your life or following your dreams and you don't know how to do it, I would 100% start with that book. It's very eye-opening. It's got a great message. It's my favorite book. I picked it up last January 2023 or last December 2022 when I went to Brazil for a month and read it while I was on vacation.

It's a beautiful book. It goes along the lines of what we're talking about right now. I want to share with you a couple of quotes that popped into my head while recording this episode. It had been sticking with me over the past couple of years, especially if you're trying to follow that dream you've been trying to put into fruition. It’s, “Whoever you are or whatever it is that you do, when you want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It's your mission on Earth.” These little things that pop into our mind about whether we should be doing something, these things are not accidents. As this quote says, it's in the soul of the universe.

It's written for you and your goal as a human being is to bring those into fruition. The universe applauds people for following their dreams. When you do follow that dream, a lot of amazing things are going to start to happen in your life. Another quote from The Alchemist, “When we strive to become better than we are, everything us becomes better too.” If you follow those dreams and develop skills to become a better person to serve more people, a lot of things around you in your life will start to become better too. This is one of my favorite ones that got the ball rolling for me, “When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it.” When you do make that decision that you are going for it, know that the universe, God, or whatever you want to call it is on your side.

It's going to do everything in its power to help you achieve it. If you're going to hit some roadblocks, it’s what we talked about, problem-solving. It's not a roadblock or another problem to solve. Everything is in your favor. Keep working. It might take a little while but don't get discouraged. The universe is on your side. Those are a couple of my favorite quotes that popped into my head. That's a little life update here for me. I’m living in Florida and opening up a new practice in September or October 2023. A lot has changed over the past years. Some good, some bad. Maybe some are not good or bad at all. It is what it is and it happened. You have to do your best to overcome those obstacles and challenges and keep on keeping on.

Everybody, thank you for tuning in to this show over the last few years. If you're a new reader, this show is not only about Upper Cervical Chiropractic. I like to interview people with amazing life stories and other doctors and healers that are doing amazing work. If you know anybody, please reach out. I'm always looking to learn more from people. I love listening to amazing life stories. Send those people my way. I would love to have them on the show. I'm going to try to crank out 1 or 2 episodes a week from here on out. I have a little bit more time than usual over these next 2 or 3 months, so expect more episodes coming your way. Everybody, have an amazing week. Cheers, love, and expect miracles. Thanks for reading.

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• Amazon - The Alchemist
• ActionCOACH

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