Today we’d like to introduce you to Marc Nelson.
Hi Marc, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My wife, Shelbe, and I have always believed there are three things in life that matter most: faith, family, and health. Over the years, our own experiences in healthcare helped us realize how complicated and intimidating taking care of your health can sometimes become. That ultimately shaped our vision for Cadence Chiropractic: to create a safe, friendly place where families could find high-quality, affordable care and feel like they were genuinely known and cared for.
My interest in health and human performance started long before I became a chiropractor. I competed as a diver at BYU and was part of the 2007 Mountain West Conference championship swimming and diving team. I later worked as a certified athletic trainer at Lone Peak High School, including during an incredible period for their basketball program. Those experiences gave me an appreciation for what the human body is capable of and sparked a desire to better understand how to help people stay healthy and perform at their best.
That eventually led me to Logan College of Chiropractic in St. Louis, Missouri, where I graduated with honors near the top of my class. Since then, I’ve continued my education extensively, particularly in prenatal and postpartum care, pediatrics, neurology, sports injuries, and a variety of chiropractic techniques. I wanted to be able to adapt care to the individual rather than expect every patient to respond to the same approach.
Shelbe has been an equally important part of building Cadence. She graduated from Utah State University with a degree in math education and taught high school for three years. When we started the practice, she brought that teaching background with her. Education has become a big part of what we do because we don’t just want people to feel better temporarily—we want them to understand their bodies and have the tools to take better care of themselves.
Before opening Cadence, we were fortunate to spend years learning from and being mentored by some incredibly successful chiropractors. Those experiences helped us figure out not only what kind of care we wanted to provide, but what kind of practice we wanted to build.
Over the last 10-plus years, that original vision has grown into Cadence Chiropractic. What started with the idea of creating a family-centered chiropractic office has grown into multiple locations serving families throughout Utah County. We now care for everyone from newborn babies and pregnant mothers to athletes, working professionals, parents, and grandparents.
Through all of that growth, the purpose behind Cadence really hasn’t changed. Our goal is to help people remove the things that are keeping their bodies from functioning at their best, give them the knowledge and tools to take ownership of their health, and ultimately help them add life to their years—not simply years to their life.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
No, business is never a smooth road. There have been plenty of times when accomplishing what we wanted to build felt much harder than we expected. But I’ve also learned that some of the best stories come from the moments when things don’t go according to plan.
One of my favorite examples happened before we even opened our doors.
When I was starting Cadence Chiropractic, we didn’t have a lot of money, so I looked for every opportunity I could to save. One of those ideas was to build my own chiropractic tables. I designed the plans, bought the materials, and built the tables myself.
Everything was going surprisingly well until I started attaching the legs. I had metal legs specially fabricated for the tables, and while drilling one of the mounting holes, the drill bit bound up and the entire drill spun violently in my hand.
I immediately knew something was wrong. At first, I thought I had dislocated a finger and even tried to reset it myself. That didn’t work. An X-ray showed that I had fractured the fourth metacarpal in my right hand—my dominant hand.
The timing couldn’t have been much worse. We were three days away from opening Cadence Chiropractic, and we already had around 100 new patients scheduled during our first two weeks.
So I opened my first chiropractic practice with a large cast on my adjusting hand.
Canceling or postponing wasn’t something I wanted to do, so I adapted. I changed how I adjusted, modified techniques, and figured out how to make it work while still providing the level of care I wanted our patients to receive.
Years later, we experienced a very different challenge when we decided to expand Cadence and open our Spanish Fork location. We thought we had a pretty good idea of how the process would go after already building one successful practice. Instead, finding the right location proved much more difficult than expected. Between finding a space, negotiating everything involved, and completing the build-out, we ended up roughly a year behind where we originally thought we would be.
That’s one of the interesting things about building a business: the challenges change, but they never completely go away. In the beginning, you’re worried about whether you can afford equipment. Later, you’re worried about locations, employees, construction, growth, and a hundred other things you couldn’t have anticipated when you started.
And strangely enough, that’s part of what makes building a business fun.
If I could give one piece of advice to someone thinking about starting a business, it would be this: **business is a game of endurance.**
We’ve all heard the story of the successful entrepreneur who says, “At one point I had $2 in my bank account, nobody believed in me, and everything was falling apart.” We usually hear that story after they’ve become successful. What we don’t hear nearly as much about are all the people who faced similar circumstances and eventually decided they couldn’t keep going.
I don’t think the difference is always intelligence, talent, money, or even having the perfect idea. A lot of the time, the difference is simply endurance.
I’ve seen the same principle in healthcare. People can face incredibly difficult circumstances, whether that’s building a business, recovering from an injury, dealing with pain, or trying to improve their health. The people who keep moving forward, adapting when things don’t go as planned, and refusing to quit are often the ones who eventually accomplish things they once thought were impossible.
Building Cadence has reinforced that lesson for me over and over again. There will always be setbacks. There will always be moments when the plan doesn’t work. But if you’re willing to adapt and hold on when things get hard, there can be some pretty incredible rewards on the other side.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Cadence Chiropractic is a family-focused chiropractic practice with locations in American Fork and Spanish Fork, Utah. At the core of what we do is a pretty simple idea: we want to help people live healthier, more active lives and give them the tools to take better ownership of their health.
We care for people at every stage of life—from newborns and children to athletes, expecting mothers, busy parents, and grandparents. Over the years, we have become especially known for our work with pregnancy and postpartum care, pediatric chiropractic, sports injuries, headaches, low back and neck pain, sciatica, and injuries from car accidents.
Pregnancy care has become a particularly important part of our practice. I have received extensive postgraduate training in caring for women during pregnancy and after delivery, including certification in the Webster Technique. We love being part of a family’s healthcare team during such an important stage of life, and then having the opportunity to continue caring for that family as their children grow.
One of the things that sets Cadence apart is that we don’t believe every patient should receive the exact same adjustment or treatment. Every person who walks through our doors is different. That’s why I’ve spent so much time training in different chiropractic techniques. We offer traditional chiropractic adjusting as well as very gentle techniques that don’t require twisting, popping, or cracking. We also incorporate things like rehabilitation exercises, traction, extremity work, orthotics, shockwave therapy, and other services when appropriate.
But I don’t think the techniques or equipment are what truly define Cadence.
What I am most proud of is the culture we have built around taking care of people.
Healthcare can sometimes feel rushed and impersonal. We have worked hard to create the opposite experience. We want our offices to feel comfortable, friendly, and welcoming. We want patients to understand what is happening with their bodies, why we’re recommending something, and what they can do outside our office to improve their health.
Education is a huge part of that. Shelbe’s background as a teacher has influenced our practice from the beginning, and we believe one of the most valuable things we can give someone is a better understanding of their own body. Our goal isn’t simply to have someone depend on us every time something hurts. We want to help them become stronger, move better, understand their health, and have resources they can use throughout their lives.
We’ve also tried to build Cadence as a genuine part of the communities we serve. Whether that’s participating in community events, supporting local organizations and schools, working with other healthcare providers, or simply taking care of multiple generations of the same family, we want Cadence to be more than a business with a sign on the building.
As we’ve grown from one office into multiple locations, that’s probably what I’m most proud of from a brand standpoint. We’ve been able to grow without losing sight of why we started.
When people hear the name Cadence Chiropractic, I want them to think of a place where their family will be treated like our family—a place that combines excellent care, education, modern technology, and a genuine desire to help people.
Ultimately, we’re not trying to build the biggest chiropractic practice. We’re trying to build one that makes a meaningful difference in the communities we’re fortunate enough to serve.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
I think there are three major things you need when you’re starting out: belief in yourself, endurance, and a plan.
**First, you have to believe in yourself.**
When you own a business, nobody is going to stand behind you every morning telling you what needs to happen next. You have to be the person who starts things. You have to make decisions, take risks, and sometimes move forward without knowing for certain whether you’ve made the right choice.
I think this is especially important for young doctors. You spend years in school learning the inner workings of the human body, studying conditions, and developing the skills necessary to care for people. Eventually, though, someone is going to sit across from you and look to you for help. At some point, you have to trust your education, trust your training, and know that you know enough to help them—while also having the humility to recognize when you don’t.
Confidence doesn’t mean believing you know everything. It means trusting yourself enough to make a decision with what you know and continuing to learn along the way.
**Second, you need endurance.**
Things almost never start exactly the way you expect them to. There always seems to be an obstacle standing between you and something worthwhile. The businesses we see succeeding today were usually built through years of showing up, making mistakes, adjusting, and doing the same important things over and over again.
I tell my patients something very similar. Healing usually isn’t one big event. The human body often responds to time and repetition. You do the right things consistently, give the body an opportunity to adapt, and gradually you begin to see change.
Business isn’t that different.
Success rarely comes from doing something extraordinary once. More often, it comes from doing ordinary things extraordinarily well for a long time. If you’re willing to endure when things are difficult and continue putting in the repetitions, eventually you can look back and be amazed at how far you’ve come.
**Third, have a plan.**
Opening the doors doesn’t mean people are going to come running through them. You need a plan for how people are going to discover you, why they are going to choose you, and what kind of experience they are going to have once they do.
Before you start building systems and procedures, take some time to decide what actually matters to you. What kind of business do you want to own? How do you want people to feel when they interact with it? What values aren’t you willing to compromise as you grow?
Then build your systems around those answers.
For us at Cadence, family, health, education, and genuinely caring for people have always been important. As we’ve grown, we’ve tried to make sure our systems amplify those values rather than slowly replace them.
So if I could go back and give myself advice when I was starting, it would be simple: **believe in yourself enough to begin, have a plan for where you’re going, and develop the endurance to keep going long enough to get there.**
Contact Info:
- Website: https://afcadence.com
- Instagram: #afcadence
- Facebook: @afcadence
- Youtube: @cadencechiropractic2781
