E33: How to Scale Your Local Business Using Instagram | Dr. Hunter Alario
Most local business owners rely on SEO and ads, but what if Instagram could be your biggest growth tool? In this episode, we break down how one entrepreneur built a thriving business using only Instagram—no Google Ads, no SEO.
We dive into what makes content effective, how to engage the right audience, and why personal outreach turned followers into paying clients. By testing, refining, and doubling down on what worked, this strategy created explosive local growth.
If you’re struggling to get leads, this episode will change how you see social media. Tune in to learn how to attract your dream clients and grow your business using Instagram.
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Sean Garner is a marketing consultant and Certified StoryBrand guide dedicated to helping small business owners grow and dominate their industries. He created the Marketing Domination podcast to teach people how to combine storytelling with strategic marketing to help businesses connect with customers and stand out online.
Born and raised in the heart of South Louisiana, Dr. Hunter Alario grew up in a small community with limited access to holistic care. From a young age, he knew he wanted to pursue a career in health care to help others achieve optimal health and well-being.
He graduated from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette with a Bachelor’s degree in Kinesiology, which laid the foundation for his journey into holistic health. During his studies, he discovered his passion for chiropractic care, which led him to Dallas for further education. It was there that he met his wonderful wife, and together, they embarked on a new chapter in Oklahoma, where he accepted a position specializing in chiropractic care.
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EPISODE 33 TRANSCRIPTION
Introduction
Sean Garner [00:00]: If you have a local service business, you are not going to want to miss this today. I have the opportunity to speak with Dr. Hunter Alario from Chiro Correct, who has done something I have never seen before. He's going to share how he was able to grow a local service-based business only using Instagram.
He doesn't do anything with local SEO, which is my world. So I was super excited to have him come in here today. He shares exactly what you need to do for your local service business to leverage Instagram, reach your dream clients, and grow your business. Welcome to Marketing Domination.
Sean Garner [00:43]: Well, Dr. Hunter Alario, I am honored to have you on here today, sir. Thank you so much for taking the time to share some of your expertise and your stories with us.
Dr. Hunter Alario [00:52]: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Sean Garner [00:54]: So, my side note to all of this is I met Dr. Hunter a couple of months ago through what he's going to teach us about today. Awesome man, awesome man of God, awesome family man, crushing it with his business.
He's my personal chiropractor, so if you see me standing up taller, that's why. Just to honor you for a second, man, you are authentic through and through. That is one of the things I appreciate about you.
Every time I leave an appointment, I tell my wife, "Dr. Hunter is my guy. I just like hanging out with him." So, thank you so much. I just wanted to honor you with that, man.
Sean Garner [01:24]: To start off, Dr. Hunter, give us a quick overview of your business and your practice.
Dr. Hunter Alario [01:39]: You said that, man.
The Journey to Entrepreneurship
Sean Garner [01:51]: And then also, kind of the quick version of how you even got this thing started. Your facility is newer, right? Walk us through that.
Dr. Hunter Alario [01:58]: Yes, we were building this facility in November of 2024. I'm a chiropractor. I believe a lot in the power of the adjustment and what it can do for the body in restoring order. Taking it a step further and rehabilitating the spine through curve correction and using the systems in which the body holds to create normalcy.
I very much live by the philosophy that the power that created the body can heal the body. God created the body in its perfect form, but that doesn't mean that imperfect things don't happen. For the same reason that when you cut your arm, you don’t sit there and tell it to heal—there’s a system of processes that happen. In about a week, it scabs over, and there's a scar left behind. But if you had a platelet deficiency, it wouldn’t heal the same.
The same thing is true in the body. You can get an adjustment, create mobility, and for some people, that's all they need. But when you take a deeper dive, a study came to light when I was first in college. I was getting adjustments but sitting down and looking down all day long, and I kept needing adjustments. Then I looked into the PT side of it and thought, well, yeah, that helps.
But then I found a specific technique called chiropractic biophysics, which is the study of posture analysis and reshaping the spine to create long-term health. That’s what Chiro Correct specializes in. That’s something I wanted to do since I first started graduate school, even before I knew where I wanted to go.
I actually moved myself and my wife, who was six months pregnant at the time, all the way to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I'm from South Louisiana, she's from Wichita, and we met in Dallas. We found ourselves in Tulsa based on chasing the implementation of that technique.
I was with a previous employer, learned a lot there. Three years down the road, Chiro Correct actually started as an idea in a business class in graduate school—the name, the concept, all of it. Three years after graduating, I had the opportunity to bring it to life. Since then, it has been absolutely a blessing, truly a calling from God. The timeframe in which it all happened was incredible.
That’s kind of where it all started. We started in a small room, like tiny, like I'm in—
Sean Garner [04:20]: Really.
A Unique Approach to Chiropractic Care
Dr. Hunter Alario [04:50]: I don't know if I should show around, but we're good.
Sean Garner [04:52]: Yeah, show us the place. This is an awesome place because it's not a normal medical practice. It looks like a sports performance facility with adjustment tables.
Dr. Hunter Alario [05:02]: Right, open concept, inviting. We're playing music in here, everything's comfortable. Everything's out in the open, and it's designed so I can keep track of what's going on and call audibles—like, yeah, you know what, I need to switch his traction up today based on how he reported back from this visit to that visit. Or, hey, he needs to bump up his exercises. He's ready to move to the next section.
What we're doing is finding out the root cause of the issue. If we can fix it, let's fix it. If it's postural-related and you have a reverse curve that's contributing to 10 years of neck pain, hands going numb, and bicep weakness in the right arm, we're able to dial that down by looking at disc space or bone spurs. Now, I can't see the soft tissue, but uniform spacing throughout the spine tells me a lot, along with symptomatology.
If I can create a fix on that, I don’t want to be an expensive aspirin. Let's fix the issue. Health doesn’t just reside in pain and comfort. It's about working out, eating right—there are a lot of other steps to healthcare. For a lot of people, I’m just the first step to getting comfortable, and then they're able to pursue those other goals.
Sean Garner [06:28]: Yeah.
Dr. Hunter Alario [06:29]: Exactly.
Sean Garner [06:30]: That's what I love—you’re all about getting down to the root issue. Like you said, not just walking in, getting a quick pop and crack, and then leaving, but really trying to fix the problem.
Dr. Hunter Alario [06:39]: Yeah. And look, for some people, that’s what they like, and that’s where they are in their health—just maintaining mobility. But for others, I’m not going to fix 10 years of discomfort and nerve impingement in one visit. That’s some Jesus stuff, and I’m definitely not that guy.
Sean Garner [06:44]: Yeah.
So tell me this, Dr. Hunter, how did you make the jump? Because it’s a mindset shift. It’s a jump from being an employee to wanting to be an entrepreneur and doing your own thing. Especially in a field like yours, where you went to school forever. Most of the time when people go through something like that—law school, medical school, or any field that requires a lot of education and expense—they don’t immediately turn around and say, "Hey, let's go all in and open our own place."
What was your journey in deciding, "Hey, I actually do want to be an entrepreneur and do this on my own"?
The Turning Point: Taking the Leap
Dr. Hunter Alario [07:40]: Yeah. So with the previous employer that I was with, there were a lot of great things promised. And what we were doing in that office was similar to what we are doing here. Then along the line, those promises weren't upheld. It was a business decision. My family comes first above all things, being able to take care of them.
I worked in their main facility for a couple of years and then opened and ran the Owasso facility for a year. The things that were promised didn’t come to fruition. And I had an opportunity to talk to God a lot about it. Funny enough, in the midst of the largest storm that we’ve gone through as a family.
We were on the fence about being where we wanted to be because I loved what I did. We loved where we were. It took us a year to meet the people that we've met because for the first year of us being here, my wife wanted to move back to Texas. We prayed a lot about that. It was a big transition for her to stay close to home because she was working in Texas every weekend.
Sean Garner [08:56]: Yeah.
Dr. Hunter Alario [09:09]: That fit the lifestyle, and I was able to take care of the kid at the time. Thankfully, when she got out there, we met all the people that we consider family today. We got to Owasso, and I was still stagnant in the same place as when I first came here. I was like, man, this is not for me.
I asked God a bunch, "When is the time to go?" He kept saying, "Not yet, not yet." Then something would happen, and I’d ask again, "Is it now?" And still, "Not yet."
Man, last summer, we had the tornado. Not a whole lot of people know this, but we lost a child. My wife had a miscarriage. And in the midst of all that, I was threatened with job security. All within a two-week span, God said, "Now."
Sean Garner [09:42]: Yeah.
Dr. Hunter Alario [10:08]: Now. Like of all times—now. Every other time seemed to make the most sense. But what He was doing was prepping me for that jump. It taught me how to run a business. It taught me what I wanted to do with chiropractic care, how I wanted to be as a doctor. It also gave me the opportunity to do the marketing—really, the only marketing that I run—that has grown my business.
The Power of Instagram for Local Marketing
Sean Garner [10:10]: Yeah.
Dr Hunter Alario [10:38]: Expanded it so quickly because the reason that came to light and how I knew that worked, that type of marketing through Instagram is because for 10 months of us being in Owasso, I'm from South Louisiana, dude. I don't know a soul over here. But what we thought was with the company being existing as long as they had been moving to Owasso, it would be like, everybody knows us anyway. They're just excited to have another.
you know, us branching out further north. That wasn't the case, man. So for 10 months, we were breaking even. Like, weren't under, but we weren't over. And it came to the, the more I looked at it, it's like, we weren't having the new patients. And if you don't have new patients, you don't grow. As much as we were getting people out of care, we were bringing people on. So that's why we were just staying.
Sean Garner [11:34]: Yeah, just barely, barely watching.
Dr Hunter Alario [11:37]: Yeah, so I sat down with the owner and I was like, hey man, this is a marketing problem. We've gotta go a different direction with this. He was like, well, such and such holds it, you know, it's working. We know we're getting this amount of calls. I was like, well, it's not translating into patients. We can have all the impressions and we can have all the website clicks, but if it doesn't transfer over to
phone calls and appointments made, what's the point? What are we paying these marketing companies for? What are they doing? SEO and Google ad spend. I said, man, give me the budget of what the ad spend is. Let me run it separately on my page. And if it doesn't work, then we're back at square one. And he didn't think it would work.
It's like, here man, we won't post on 918, then we'll see if yours truly works. Cool, awesome. That was nine days into February. We had seen two new patients. I think we hadn't even made two grand, man. Like it was fixing to be the worst month we ever had. To end February, we had seen 23 new patients, which is the most we had seen in a month period, and we were a third of the way through done.
And we had ended up doubling our earnings, comparative to every other month, right?
Sean Garner [13:09]: Okay. So let's do this now to pause here for just a second. Let me explain what you've told me, what the thing is, because this is the main reason I wanted you to come on and share was this right here is how this happened because I have never seen this happen before. So with our agency, with all the clients that we work with, we do the things—we do the websites, SEO, and stuff like that for attracting local businesses. And we have clients that reach
national markets, do tons of stuff with social media, but they're reaching a national market. What you did, just so everybody knows—and he's gonna tell us his process here—Dr. Hunter grew the entire practice with Instagram. He targeted a local market by creating content on Instagram, and that's all of the marketing he's talking about. And when he's talking about the budget, you weren't doing paid ads on Instagram or anything, right? That yet, or were you?
Dr Hunter Alario [14:04]: No, so I was, but that was.
Sean Garner [14:06]: So tell me, yeah, tell us the process. How did you use Instagram to attract the local market?
Cracking the Code: A Strategic Instagram Growth Plan
Dr Hunter Alario [14:12]: Yeah, so when we found that, when I kind of dialed down why we were tilted and why we weren't growing, I have a buddy out in Dallas, his name's Dr. Stratt Paulson, and he opened up a practice straight out of school, and now he's one of the most famous chiropractors on social media through YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, the whole nine. So I called him, explained my struggles and everything, and he started explaining.
the Instagram stuff, and I wasn't familiar with it. I knew the personal side, but then he started talking about the business and changing profiles. I'm like, man, I'm gonna drive down to Dallas this weekend. Let's grab lunch. There was a three-hour lunch over Korean barbecue that essentially changed the trajectory of everything in business and marketing for me.
Basically, what it comes down to is, as a chiropractor, unless you're a nationwide brand like The Joint or 100% Chiropractic, you still have to bring people in. This isn't a product—it's a service, and the service is always localized. So what I learned to do from Dr. Stratt was:
You film high-quality content videos, right? At the time, what he was doing was ASMR adjustments. And there aren't a ton of chiropractors here locally in Oklahoma that do that. I don’t know any that are doing ASMR content. The closest ones are in Houston or Dallas, and other than that, it’s out on the West Coast.
So what he taught me was, that's your first thing—something engaging, something that stops people when they're death scrolling and makes them want to watch. Then, I converted my personal page into a business—well, actually a digital creator profile—so I could track the analytics.
Because starting a business, dude, I didn't want to pay extra. I was trying to cut costs, so I was figuring out what jobs I could handle myself, and marketing was one of them. So what we did was:
First, got a videographer, filmed ASMR adjustment content, which is super popular. Come to find out, that’s what people do at night—they just scroll and listen to adjustments. So that was something to catch the audience’s attention.
Then, when uploading, I added a geo filter. I’d film three adjustments—three videos I wanted to run at the same time. I’d put the same amount of ad spend and the same geo filter. When I first started, I set a 12-mile radius because people didn’t know who I was, what I did, or how far they were willing to drive. So I started with 12 miles and put $5 a day.
Scaling with Paid Ads and Content Strategy
Dr Hunter Alario [17:37]: For 10 days. So 50 bucks on three separate videos. At the end of that, what I would do was go over the analytics of which one had the most traction, which one had the most impressions and views. And then I would run it again at a higher ad spend. So now it's pushing it in front of more people because the whole time, Instagram is figuring out who your audience is. It's learning. Every time it completes a run, it refines the targeting, so you get more and more engagement.
All the while I was doing that, I was uploading more videos and testing the same thing. So I was always popping up on someone's feed. And I don’t handle this part—Instagram's really good at it—but there were times when people were like, "Man, I was thinking about low back pain, and you came across my feed." That's the creepy side. I was like, "Look, that's your FBI agent. Have a conversation with them about it."
But it worked so well. The more ad spend I put in—so let’s say I did five dollars, then the next time I was like, "You know what? I'm going to do $15 for 10 days"—if it reciprocated in engagement, more people reaching out, liking, or following, I would keep testing. I would put a cap on the daily spend but run it for a longer period or adjust based on performance.
Dr Hunter Alario [19:01]: What really helped me grow fast was that when people liked or followed, I would reach out. If you're willing to like or follow, I'm reaching out. I would leave work at 5:30 and be on my phone until 10, responding to people who engaged with my content. At times, that was redundant, but it was necessary in the early stages.
I started that in February, and by May, we had quadrupled earnings and new patients in a two-month span before I left my previous employer. That’s when I knew this was working. Marketing can make or break a new business. You can either spend all your money and not get the patients you need, or you can figure out the strategy that helps you grow the most.
I believe God was waiting for me to figure that out before He said, "It's time." I left my job on May 14th. By June, I opened a small one-room shop. I had a desk, a table, and my laptop. After paying rent, I didn’t have a dollar in the bank. We actually had to pull from personal funds for ad spend. It started with just a couple hundred bucks, using the same process—reaching out, making it personal.
Eventually, as trust built through my Instagram presence, I didn’t have to DM people anymore. People would see the videos and feel like they already knew me. But in the beginning, that hustle was necessary. My wife was the most understanding woman through it all. Even when I didn’t want to, she’d grab my phone and say, "Respond. This is what you asked for. This is what you were meant to do." Without her support, there’s no way ChiroCorrect would be where it is today.
Sean Garner [21:38]: DMing people.
Dr Hunter Alario [21:49]: Yeah, and when patients would finally come in, they already felt comfortable, like they knew me. We had already had conversations. They trusted me before even stepping through the door.
At first, I was really out of my element because I didn’t have an X-ray machine. There were a lot of people I had to turn away because I didn’t want to cause more harm than good. But from June to October, the goal was to grow as much as possible, so that when we opened the full facility in November, it would already feel full—like we had built momentum, and it wasn’t a waste of time.
That period forced me to hone my skills. I learned new adjustments like the jaw adjustment and the towel pull ring dinger. I became more efficient with my hands because that was all I had. No traction, no X-rays, no rehab equipment—just my hands. It took me back to my roots and made me a better doctor for it.
Sean Garner [24:38]: So let’s get into some technical marketing questions. When you were running these ads, you had three posts running at the same time. Were you running multiple ad sets at once, or would you run three, then another three?
Dr Hunter Alario [24:42]: Yeah, I would do three, pick the one that performed best, put more ad spend on that, and then run another three. I don’t do that anymore, but in the beginning, it helped me figure out which content was the most engaging. Then I would put more ad spend into that winning post. Eventually, I had two videos that were running all the time and always in front of people.
Sean Garner [25:03]: Awesome, so there was always a three-test rotation.
Dr Hunter Alario [25:26]: Yeah, and now I think I have six or seven videos running because now people can’t escape me. If you’ve liked or clicked one of my videos, here’s another one. Then another. Then a testimonial from someone who completed care with me.
It’s crazy because that wasn’t even my intention, but now I’ll go places like Bass Pro, and people will recognize me.
Building Trust & Brand Recognition
Dr Hunter Alario [25:56]: Over there buying arrows and getting them fitted and buying broadheads for the season. I have my son with me, and he takes a spill. I pick him up on my knee, and he's okay. The person behind me goes, "Well, good thing your dad's a chiropractor." I laughed and kind of stopped and was like, "How'd you know that?" They're like, "I'm sorry, I follow you on Instagram. I watch all your videos." And that's happened multiple times.
Sean Garner [26:13]: Like, "How'd you know that?" Hahaha
Dr Hunter Alario [26:25]: We're at a 90s cover band concert, and someone comes up like, "Hey, I reached out to you on Instagram. Can't wait to see you next week."
Sean Garner [26:31]: That's awesome. I mean, that's how I discovered you. Courtney and I own a couple of businesses here in town. She was like, "Have you seen this guy, this new guy popping up in Owasso? His content's really good." And I was like, "No." Because here's the thing—I think this is important for local business owners to see. The content you're watching from other service providers, especially physicians, is usually from bigger cities.
They've already established a brand. You think of people like Dr. Axe and these neuro-biohacker-type influencers. Those are the people you're used to seeing. You don’t expect to see a chiropractor in Owasso, Oklahoma, from South Louisiana, creating content at that level. So when she first showed me, I was like, "Yeah, but who's the guy in Owasso?" She said, "This is the guy in Owasso." I was like, "What?"
Dr Hunter Alario [27:06]: Yeah, yeah.
Sean Garner [27:26]: And it was funny because I went through the same process, and that’s how we got connected. I started following you, and immediately I got a direct message. At first, I assumed because you’re a doctor, this was the front desk admin or an automated response. But then I quickly realized, "I think I’m actually talking to Dr. Hunter."
Dr Hunter Alario [27:48]: Yeah, because I had talked to your wife the day before and was like, 'Hey man, I actually had a conversation with your wife. She's down.'
Sean Garner [27:56]: Yeah, exactly. I was like, "Okay, this isn’t a bot or a VA or something. I’m talking to the guy."
Dr Hunter Alario [28:02]: Yeah. And it’s that personal aspect, man. I’m extroverted, and I care deeply about my patients. Eventually, I learn about their kids, their grades, the plays they’re in—all of that started from a conversation on Instagram. "Hey, what’s bothering you? How long has it been going on? How is it affecting your life?"
Maybe it makes life easier to hire AI bots or have someone else handle it, but that takes away the personal aspect. We already live in a world that’s so disconnected. It used to be that you’d hang out with friends on a Friday night. Now, you just text in the group chat. AI takes it a step further.
I cannot tell you how much it grinds my gears when I call a company and only talk to robots. And then at the end, when I need an answer, I hear, "Sorry, I cannot answer your question at this time."
Sean Garner [29:30]: Yeah. Give me a human!
Dr Hunter Alario [29:32]: Yeah.
From Social Media to Real Business Growth
Dr Hunter Alario [29:53]: Because I've had people read it and not respond but then schedule and have the same thought as you, like, "Oh wait, I thought that was just an automated thing." But then it’s like, yes, I have something that I follow upfront, but you’re talking to me.
Sean Garner [30:12]: Yeah. It's you pasting the messages in there, at least like that. That’s honestly one reason—so one of the services that we do not provide at our agency is social media because of that reason. I'll be honest, businesses would love to pay me money, and financially, I would love to take it, but I know that it's not going to work. I tell my clients this all the time—you're not that special.
And what I mean by that is the exact same way you're engaging with social media content is how your potential customers are. You're probably not engaging with a bunch of stock images and infographics from a clinic. The type of content you're creating is about actually getting to know the face behind the brand. It’s that type of video content where you're establishing that rapport and relationship, and you can't outsource that.
And for local service businesses, you're not getting brand deals or anything like that. The only reason you're doing it is to find and service patients so they can hire you. If you're not having that direct interaction where you're managing it, you're going to miss opportunities for connection, follow-up, grabbing leads, and closing them. So I love how you do it, man. Love it.
Dr Hunter Alario [31:20]: Yeah.
Sean Garner [31:22]: Yeah.
Dr Hunter Alario [31:24]: And going back to what you’re saying about video and stock images—man, I have friends, and this works across all platforms. It’s not just for a chiropractor. The number one goal is a quality piece of content, something people want to stop and watch.
I have friends who are estheticians, right? I can’t tell you how many times I come across a video, and I end up watching it because it’s ASMR, and they’re doing the brushes on the face. It’s super aesthetically pleasing, and I’m like, "What am I watching?" But it grabs you because it's high-quality content, and the sound is neuro-stimulating.
So first, it's quality content. Then, it's engagement—people want to know who you are. They might think it’s someone in Dallas, but when they see "Owasso, Oklahoma," they’re like, "Crap, this is right next to me. This looks awesome."
And then, being unapologetically you. I've always been told, especially out of school, "You’ve got to be a certain way. You’re the doctor. You’ve got to dress a certain way." Yeah, all that’s true, but you can be professional and still be yourself.
The big thing I’m now capturing on Instagram is the personal side of me. I’m a huge outdoorsman. It’s what I live and breathe. It’s how I was raised in South Louisiana—we ate what we caught, what we grew, and what we hunted. I’m going to pass that same mentality down to my son.
We’re not just going to live off of fruit gummies for the rest of our lives. But capturing that side of myself helps my patients know who I am as a person, and it also brings in my ideal patient.
Sean Garner [33:24]: Ha! You're gonna jive with them.
Dr Hunter Alario [33:52]: Yeah, because I’m capturing the personal side. My dad still to this day is a shrimper for a living. So I can resonate with the blue-collar worker on a different level because I learned my work ethic from my father. No matter how hard your day is, no matter how tough it gets, no matter how bad you’re hurting financially, you don’t have a choice but to push forward.
That also translates into dealing with discomfort. It doesn’t matter how bad you hurt that day, moving hay bales, tending cattle—you’ve got to feel good. And if you don’t, you can’t perform your job adequately.
And reverting back to what we were talking about before we hopped on, I have to take care of my body in order to continue working. I get chiropractic care, I get deep tissue massages, I put the right things in my body, and I lift three to four times a week. If I didn’t, I couldn’t be the best version of myself for my patients.
Sean Garner [34:58]: Yeah.
I love it, man. So kind of the last thing here on the content side—one of the things you said to me that was like, "Dang, that’s what I do," was about the type of content you create. You said, "It's not just me talking to a camera because people don’t know me enough to want to stop and listen. I’m trying to create something engaging so eventually, I can."
And now, after following you for a while, I can see that progression. A lot of your first content was adjustments and ASMR-type videos. For me, the thing that caught my attention was the towel pull adjustment—people, you need to go check that out on his Instagram. It makes you stop and watch.
Now that you’ve been in it long enough, you’re starting to share testimonial success stories, hunting content, and personal stuff. But you didn’t start with that. And to me, that was like, "Duh, that makes sense now." Because of course, people aren’t going to stop and watch me just talk to a camera. Talk a little about that approach to content because I think it’s so smart.
The Evolution of Content Strategy
Sean Garner [36:13]: Like how you decided what type of stuff to start with and how that's evolved.
Dr Hunter Alario [36:18]: Yeah, so this goes back to a conversation with Dr. Shat. He was like, "Man, people don't want to hear you. All the informative stuff you do is great, but people don’t want to listen to you yet." He said, "We're healthcare professionals. Go look at everyone’s page, especially doctors. People have heard it all before. When they’re scrolling, it’s not that they don’t want to hear what you have to say, but they’re not going to sit there and listen unless they just came from a super social job and all they've done is hear people talk all day."
Especially my people who work in salons—all they’ve done is socially engage, and all they want to do is tune out and scroll. If you’re sitting there talking, they’re going to get five or six seconds in and scroll. When I first started at the previous place, my average watch time was four seconds. I thought, "Dang, maybe he was onto something."
But when I started doing the ASMR adjustments—he told me, "Just do two of them"—the watch time jumped from four seconds to 25 to 30 seconds. Way more engagement, way more views, shares, and saves. Because people saw that and thought, "Man, I want that. Where’s that at?"
When you're just talking, they're like, "Yeah, I don't want to listen to this. Same thing my other four doctors told me." But what I’ve heard from a lot of patients is that they knew the adjustments were worth something because there’s confidence in doing them on camera. Especially for patients who have never been to a chiropractor before—if something went really bad, and you caught it on camera, that wouldn’t be good.
Sean Garner [38:36]: Yeah.
Dr Hunter Alario [38:45]: My mindset is to pretend like the camera’s not even there. When I’m adjusting, I have no idea where Frank is—he’s my videographer, super talented. I lucked out getting to work with him at my previous job. He knew exactly what I wanted. I’d go back and edit a little, and he was like, "Hey man, you want me to do that?"
Sean Garner [38:54]: Yeah, yeah, I got to meet him the other day. Awesome guy.
Dr Hunter Alario [39:15]: He’s great. And his thing is, "Man, that lets me know what I need to do for the next one." Because within the first 10 seconds—really the first five—you need something that grabs the viewer. That’s the magic hug, the towel pull, the jaw adjustment. Every chiropractor on the planet does the neck rotation adjustment, the mid-back, and side posture.
Sean Garner [39:15]: Ha.
Dr Hunter Alario [39:44]: But what I’ve noticed is that I didn’t set out to be the TMJ guy in Oklahoma, but those videos translated into that. And I’m so thankful because there’s a huge, untreated population of TMJ patients who are just thrown a mouthguard or Botox, and it’s not getting to the root cause.
So, those first five seconds are key. If you can get people thinking, "Okay, what’s this about?"—whether it’s a funny trend or an engaging moment—that alone can hold the viewer for 10 to 15 more seconds. Then they click your profile, see you’re local, start watching your content, and eventually, they’ll listen to your talking-head videos.
Sean Garner [40:34]: Yeah, exactly.
Dr Hunter Alario [40:42]: So that's why I structured it this way. Engagement comes first. Get people to say, "Wow, that looks like something I need." Like the towel pull, people see it and think, "That looks amazing. I want to try that."
Sean Garner [41:22]: Yeah, that looks awesome. I said before, when you do that, it’s like adjusting your soul. It looks so good. Let’s go. Alright, Dr. Hunter, it was an honor to have you, sir. So, the website is chirocorrectok.com, but I definitely want everyone to check out your Instagram. It’s @dr_hunteralario, right?
Dr Hunter Alario [41:28]: Yeah, yeah. They'll be seeing you on camera here soon.
Sean Garner [41:48]: On Instagram—we’ll link everything down below. Any last words for us?
The Instagram Blueprint
Dr Hunter Alario [41:55]: For my business owners or people who are jumping into being an entrepreneur and are on the fence, working the nine-to-five for somebody else—it is the best thing you could possibly do, being your own boss. Everyone around you will tell you that you can't do it. The only person truly standing in your way is you.
Making that step and then being as successful as you can be comes down to having a plan and strategically marketing. Market, market, market. If you can do the correct marketing and get yourself in front of the right group of people, you’ll succeed. And I don't think I've said this yet, but Instagram is the only form of marketing I've run—and probably will be until it stops working.
Every dollar I put into it has mirrored directly in return. As long as that happens, I'm going to keep it that way. There are tons of businesses that do Google SEO, have a marketing manager, and all these other things, but I have one thing—social media. And what’s crazy to say is that social media has now turned into word-of-mouth referrals.
Word-of-mouth referrals will always mean more coming from someone, but it's not impossible to build through social media first. Times are always changing, so will marketing. Take the leap of faith. It’s the best thing you can do.
I’d love to teach more on this if anyone is interested because this process isn't just for chiropractic. I have a roofing company doing the same thing, an esthetician, a lash tech—it works across different industries. The same steps can be applied to any career field.
Sean Garner [44:02]: Thank you so much for sharing all this with us, Dr. Hunter. Everybody, definitely go check him out. Watch what he does. You don’t have to figure this stuff out—just mirror what works. It’s working for Dr. Hunter, and it can work for you too. Thank you so much for your time today, sir.
Dr Hunter Alario [44:16]: Amen. Thank you.
