Ep.125- The Keys To Small Business and Clinical Success with Dr. Ronda Nelson

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, practitioner and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

As you guys know, I'm super excited about today's topics. It's gonna be about integrative and functional medicine. It's gonna be about entrepreneurship. It's gonna be about coaching. It's gonna be about business and brand leveraging and development, pivoting in the middle of a career to becoming something even more successful than you thought you already are. And Rhonda, thank you so much for hanging out with us today.

Ah, I'm so happy to be here. I was so honored to get your request to jump on the podcast. I'm like, yeah, baby, I'll do that.

So for people who don't know this, as an NET practitioner, as a therapist, I actually met Rhonda many, many years ago. It was one of my first integrative and functional medicine nutrition trainings. And I somehow convinced this company to allow me to join the training as a therapist. And I'm probably— my guess is to this day, I'm still one of the only therapists probably doing these type of trainings in this integrative functional medicine world where the majority of the room if not all of the room are either chiropractors and acupuncturists or nutritionists.

Yeah.

So one of the things I'm really glad is one, 'cause you were part of the beginning of my journey when I just like did this functional blood chemistry and looking at labs and helping my clients now on a day-to-day basis with this seems off today, this morning, have my clients with the worksheet from that lab, from the code, right? The, all the things to go get tested.

Yeah.

They have a copy of that going to their primary today. And so nice. And so the amount of clients and people, if you've worked with me or if you've heard me talk about this, Rhonda has been one of those people that I personally want to thank for really getting me fired up and bringing this to my clients. So let's start with that. So thank you.

Oh, well, you're welcome.

So your journey, you are now doing so many different things. We're not going to get there yet. But when I met you, you were practicing as a clinician, private practice, teaching, consultation. So for people who are not familiar, what is the difference right off the bat between functional medicine, integrative nutrition, integrative medicine, and someone going to the average run-of-the-mill— not that there's anything wrong with that, just the average, what they know as a nutritionist or a dietitian?

So when you're thinking about the role of a dietitian or a nutritionist, they're very often— and I definitely don't want to pigeonhole them because there may be some that are listening, so that is not my intention here. But when you see like a dietitian, a very Western conventional trained dietitian, they're often— their goal is really to look at the numbers, like what is the number of calories you're getting in in a day, and the type of calorie doesn't matter, meaning like pizza, as long as it has all the calories, might be fine in the world of a dietitian or nutritionist. That rather than having a salad with olive oil and avocado and some veggies on that salad would be fewer calories. But that's how they look at it. It's not the quality of the food so much as the calories and the breakdown of the proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. There's a very strict kind of guidelines that a lot of them have to go by, and many of them have kind of come out of that and can have seen that there's a different way to look at it. From my side of the world, as being naturopathically trained, you know, I've got a PhD in herbology, and I love this world of functional medicine because what I realized in my journey in discovering this was that it really— our health has everything to do with the food that we eat, and what goes on between our ears. That's really— if you were going to boil it down to two things, I would say it's your lifestyle, what you eat, how you, how you live, and then what you think about. And those two pivotal things were really what kind of shifted me from thinking about this in a Western perspective, like, oh, you're gonna— you have an owie, you go to the doctor, or you have this, you go to the doctor. When I was growing up, I didn't even know how to spell chiropractor. I didn't even know what it was. Like, We were just so excited when the donut van showed up on Saturday morning to get like old-fashioned glazed donuts. Woo-hoo! You know, that was our thing. Who went to the chiropractor? What the heck is that all about? So I really grew up having no knowledge of that world of alternative or functional kind of medicine. And now it's— I live it and breathe it. And it's just every day, just like you, like, it's just what we do.

Right. So that's the interesting thing, right? So knowing that I, as a licensed therapist, was working with all these clients, and I knew that I was hitting a wall, and I knew I knew that I, in my internal personal world, was hitting a wall with some of the work that I was trying to do on myself. Had some major panic attacks around 2010, for people who've already heard this story, right? And ended up going to a conference at University of Miami with Dr. Janet Knauffel. She was the chair of the integrative medicine program. And someone came and did a demo of neuro-emotional technique. I'm like, all right, that's kind of cool. And then a week or two later— meanwhile, that whole weekend, I was having panic attacks while I was at this workshop. Oh dear. Was awful. And trying to keep it together and all this stuff and finally tracked this NET practitioner down who's also a therapist and went to 3 sessions with this person. And within those sessions, my panic attacks went away. Meanwhile, I've done— I went to a buddy of mine who's a neurologist, and he gave me very low-dose psychiatric medication for a very short period of time, which I love about his philosophy, and still will refer to him because he is that— we're doing this for 30, 45 days, Yeah, start off with the lowest dose. We're going to figure out what you need, what you don't need. And our goal is to get you off of it. This is not a lifelong thing. Right. That's brilliant. And very few and far between, which is again why I love supporting that type of clinician as an adjunct to what I can't do. But that didn't work for me. It helped, but it didn't solve the problem. And then years ago, I was at a chiropractor who did this muscle testing thing and then found out this original event where this person injured themself. In this specific spot called and confirmed what happened. And the mom's— their mom was like, yeah, you don't remember this? You fell off the sled when you were this years old. And I was like, this is crazy. Why can't I do this as a therapist? And then that's when I stumbled into N.E.T. and I'm like, oh, okay, I finally can do it, right? This circuitous thing of—

Yeah, I love it.

So going down that rabbit hole, I've seen hitting walls that a lot of times we think therapy is neck up and the doctor's world, the allopathic world, that medicine world is neck down. And what I love about what you and I do from different doorways is we don't separate the neck from the body.

No, it's all— has to be all together because everything that we do, I mean, if you think even about digestion being the first point that, you know, off air we were talking about how if clinically I'm going to hit a home run every single time if I support someone's upper digestion, meaning I'm supporting the way that they're breaking their food down so that the body has the raw material that it needs to repair. And that digestion interestingly starts with your eyes. And it starts with what happens between your ears. So even the most basic fundamental physiologic process starts from the neck up. But we don't— if with— in the conventional model, when that's separated and we get to that, you know, where you're going to go see somebody for your joints and you're going to see somebody for your this and somebody for your lungs and somebody for your heart, when we have that fractured way of looking at it, we don't then look at the whole body. As a one whole mechanistic piece that works together, because what the right hip does affects the left shoulder, which affects the right ear, which affects the left foot, which affects, you know, it's all tied together, right?

Connected to the hip bone, connected to the thigh bone. Wonderful song that we all learned as kids. And it's so interesting. So as I told you, sorry, with one of my clients that I referred, and they're using this worksheet, I hear it all the time, time and time again. And I've had this conversation with Dr. Dan Monte, who's the chair of Marcus Institute's Integrative Medicine Department and one of my mentors. From any— to have had this with other functional medicine practitioners, vitamin D, right? We're, we're, we're, we're, thank God, at the beginning of the end of this pandemic. And all the research is finally coming out just on vitamin D alone, stuff that you knew, I'm sure, way before I knew it.

We knew this for a long time.

A long time, right? And I jumped on the bandwagon when my vitamin D— I love this— my vitamin D a few months into the beginning of the pandemic was 33. And I live in South Florida, right? I'm in Fort Lauderdale. Beaches 12 minutes away. And every doctor throughout my life has never said, oh, you need vitamin D supplementation. And then the research starts coming out from the functional medicine world, get your vitamin D up and the numbers. And I want you, if you can explain this, the difference between the numbers that when someone goes to their lab and their doctor says you're fine, versus the numbers that the functional medicine world looks at to say, wait a second, if your doctor's saying you're fine, and yet you're still on 2 or 3 medications, you still have all these symptoms. Something must not be fine. So can you jump in on that?

Yeah, so when I talk about— when I teach, um, about functional blood chemistry, I always talk about it as looking at it like a bell curve. Though, before, if, you know, you think about, oh, she's going to get all sciencey— no, no, no, no, just think about it like this. So if you have a range, and we use glucose for a really good example because everybody gets that blood glucose, so most lab ranges are going to be 65 on the low end— that's what the lab considers normal— and it'll be 99 on the high end. All right, so in my opinion and based on the research, 80-ish is gonna be like primo, like, "Oh, that's like the sweet spot." If we could be 75 to 80, oh, I'm so happy. I would like, "Yes, your glucose regulation is working perfectly." Now, if the patient comes in and the glucose is at 88, I think, "Huh." It's not 99 yet, it's not 102, it's not 150. We're not in a disease state, we don't have diabetes, we're not insulin resistant, but could the patient be headed that way? In other words, are they starting to swing off the tip of the top of that bell curve being the normal?

Like, we want it trending.

Yeah, are they trending one way or the other? And then I think Okay, 88, mental note, I'm gonna watch this and I wanna recheck it in 6 months, and I'm gonna look at the patient and say, "Okay, what are you eating? Let's look at your diet, blah, blah, blah." Well, in 6 months, if it comes back and it's now 96, now I know we have a bigger problem. Still, on the lab test, it's gonna look completely normal. And so the doctor would say, "Oh, you're 100% normal." But I'm looking at it going, "Yeah, I'm not liking how this line is looking. Like, this trend is going the way wrong way." And if I wait 6 months from now, it's very possible that glucose is gonna be 105. Now we've got a problem. So in conventional medicine, the perspective is, well, we look at the lab ranges to see, is it normal? Okay, it's normal. Fine. You're fine. But yet, the patient is like energy dropping in the middle of the afternoon and they wake up looking for sugar and they can't sleep at night. They wake up between 1 and 3 because the liver is trying to rescue glucose and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, and so medicine often misses it, not intentionally, but just because that's just the way that system is built. So we can't fault them, it's just the way the system is built. It's like you can't fault an airline pilot for not knowing how to fix your car. The guy's supposed to fly an airplane, that's all he knows how to do, that's what he does. So you can't get mad about that, it just is the system. But if you want to look at it differently, then you find someone that understands the way to look at blood labs from a very unique perspective and say, hmm, where are you trending? What might be coming up? What might be a bridge out? Could be a crash and burn up here that we can maybe intervene and prevent right now.

So that ties me into that next start. So I started taking 10,000 IUs of vitamin D at that time, and Didn't make a budge for 6 months and it went up 1 point. So I'm like, all right, so something's going on. And it was a liquid vitamin D. Yeah. And I'm like, all right, so there must be something going on. Am I— because I'm just now— what's that joke? When you buy expensive supplements, you have expensive urine.

That's it. Right.

So I'm like, all right, something's going on. So it must be a digestion thing. I'm not absorbing it. There must be some type of absorption. Let me switch over to capsules. But what I did is I went to a doctor and I'm like, hey, 50,000 IUs, what are your thoughts on this? I presented— I gave him the link to Dr. Vasquez's work. On, on in the functional medicine world of all the stuff that he's compiled on vitamin D. And I'm like, I want to try 50,000 IUs for a very short period of time and then backtrack it off. Can you give me a prescription? And stupid me, I didn't even just go on Amazon, just find a 50,000 IU supplement, but whatever. But I got prescription for it. And I did that for 10 days straight and then did 50,000 IUs once a week, and my vitamin D went up to 86 within the span of like 2 months. And we know from the work, right, 60 to 60 to 90, right? That 80-ish range is really where we should be. And especially with immune health and especially what's going on with COVID and all that other stuff, that these are some of the things that are protective. And we have the average person, especially in the sunnier places, being told by a doctor, no, you're fine at 35, you're fine at 40. And it's—

and, you know, it really comes— it comes down to— I always say you can't treat the test before you treat the patient. So how does the patient feel? You know, does vitamin D really need to be that high for everyone? It may not be. It may be that those lower levels are just fine for some people, but we do see that there is a correlation between immune function and vitamin D. But remember, vitamin D doesn't play in the sandbox by itself. So you found that out, and it isn't— I don't think it's always related to dose. Like, you high dose it and it's going to go up, but Vitamin D has a role, plays a strong role with calcium. So calcium and vitamin D, then calcium and phosphorus. And then, you know, it's a cascade. Vitamin D is just one of several fat-soluble vitamins. So when you're looking at D, you better be looking at vitamin A, and you better be looking at vitamin K. So we never— all vitamins and minerals can't live on an island. So I like to— if you're going to push vitamin D, then we definitely want to be looking at those other factors to make sure that we're not going to tip the apple cart upside down. You know, we're We're favoring one thing and then screwing up another. But it's all about the balance. Correct.

That's a synergistic approach that I think that we're all missing. And especially as a therapist, when I'm looking at a client like, well, my kid needs some stuff, I'm like, well, I will only see you if you and whoever else are the adults in the system shows up also at least 50% of the time for sessions. Oh, no, no, no, I just want to do drop-off therapy, right? And I'm like, that's not how my practice works. You can go to some other therapist and fix my kid, but it's coming from this, right? It has to be the whole system has to be looked at.

Yeah.

So that approach, that systemic approach as it applies to me as a therapist, right? The integrative and functional medicine world, we see this as every— what else is going on in the picture versus just, right? It's a difference of the symptoms versus getting to the core problem.

Yeah, absolutely.

So you've been doing this and this is what you're— so when I met you, you were teaching and you were having a full private practice and doing consultations. And over the last bit, you have evolved.

Yes, I had a little bit of a transformational moment, a situation that occurred in 2018 that radically interrupted my ability to travel and speak. And at that time, I was traveling all over the United States, had great— met thousands and thousands and thousands of practitioners, and just fell in love with them and their practices and what they're passionate about and their unique kind of take on functional medicine. And, and I just got to meet so many cool people. And then all of that kind of came to a stop in 2018. And I had to think, okay, I was traveling like 25 to 30 weekends a year. So I would be in clinical practice Monday through Thursday, hop on a plane on Friday, go fly teach a CE seminar on Saturday, Sunday, fly home Sunday night late, get home at midnight or 1 in the morning, and then be back in the office on Monday. I loved doing the teaching. I loved it. And I, I loved it. It's my— I love doing it. But it, it got exhausting. So when all of that came to a screeching halt, I was like, okay, maybe it's time to kind of reinvent what I do. Because if you stay in the same— if you stay, if you drive the same car for 30 years, at some point the maintenance costs on the car begin to outweigh the purposeful utility of the car. And I kind of felt like that was maybe what was happening. It was like I was sort of being forced into making a career sort of shift. So what I decided to do was I took all my clinical training, I put it in a membership. So that membership right now is thriving, it's doing really well. Took all those seminars, and I basically— all those topics, I kind of parsed them out into bite-sized pieces rather than doing the firehose approach in a 12-hour seminar. Put them all in small pieces, put them in a membership. Okay, so that solved that problem. Then I didn't have to travel, and the, and the practitioners, the doctors, could still get the training that they needed. So that worked out better for everyone. But I realized that the bigger part of the problem was that not that clinicians needed more information to be able to help their patients. Certainly we need to continue learning. Like, you know, you go to the functional blood chem seminar and then you go learn about NET and then you're learning about muscle testing and we have to continue learning. But that learning happens at the expense of what I call clinical obesity. And clinical obesity is just when the clinicians become so obese with knowledge that it paralyzes them and they literally can't get up and walk. So if you think about someone who is physically obese, it's difficult for them to take action because they— their body is now, you know, it's restricted. It's—

does—

there's no ease of motion. And so practitioners become clinically obese because they don't know how to apply it in their practice and they don't know how to say, all right, here's how I'm going to charge Here are the boundaries for me. When you miss 3 appointments, we got a 3 strikes and you're out. Like, I'm sorry, I'm just not the right practitioner for you. Or, you know, whatever it might be. They, they're not comfortable knowing the, the practical aspects of running a business, but they continue stuffing their mouth with all this clinical food and clinical knowledge, and then they get all up in their head, and then they can't put it on the ground. And what— that's the part that pains me because there are so— there are millions of people that need the work that you do and I do and other clinicians do. But if— so I feel like my job now as a business coach for wellness practitioners, people in the health and wellness kind of holistic space, I think my job as a coach is like to motivate them to put your feet on the ground and start taking some action and start helping the people that come to you because if you don't use— get some of this clinical knowledge out of your head and get it out to them where it can do some good, then you're just going to get fatter and fatter. Yeah.

And we just had this conversation pregame, right? As far as a buddy of mine decided to do this massive program versus just do a streamlined training. And I see this left and right. And I joke, having been, like I said, the therapist in the chiropractic world, and I see that it's obsessively— I mean, God bless them for like continually wanting to learn a new skill and a new modality. But I said, right, that execution of can you go home on Monday and apply this? That's what I love about NET. When I tell people about an NET Basic, I'm like, on Monday, take the binder and give it to your client, let them hold it for you like I did while you're going through the charts in the book step by step and say, can you be my guinea pig? And I did that. And now a bunch of years later, I have their top level certification. And right, I'm very involved in the community. And it started off literally with having to call Dr. Deb Walker, the co-founder co-developer of NET, during one of my first sessions on the phone so she can walk me through to making sure I'm not screwing this up, which shows a lot about the beautiful NET community. But people are afraid to do that. And I really do agree with you as far as this obesity. You know, I call it the silver— it's the next silver bullet. This will be the thing.

Oh, yes.

That will finally get me. That's right.

Now I'm going to be ready. Once I know about this, now I'm going to be ready to go.

Correct. And that's in the chiropractic and that entrepreneurial space, seeing that at all the entrepreneur conferences. And you need this thing, and now it's click whatever program, right? And now you need this. And, and it's so tricky because it really is, like you said, that clinical application. Whether you're in a business that is non-medical, we're still going to use the term clinical application.

Yeah.

To just do what you need to do, which is the universe rewards the action steps.

Yep. The basic— if you stick with the basics you're going to serve the patient. Because I think where we get stuck clinically is we're more worried about ourselves than we are about the patient. If the patient came first, you would be willing— I would, I would hope that a clinician would be willing to put themselves out there, just like you described, to say, you know, I think this is going to work, let's try this. Let's just try using some bitters to upregulate your digestion. We know that there's lots of research behind it, and I'm going to use this other whatever, and I'm gonna— we're gonna— let's just see if we can get that bloating and that reflux to kind of settle down. If you just take a step, move in the right direction, get it out of your head and put boots on the ground and start to implement, and then you humbly say, I may not know everything, but man, I'm gonna try my darndest to get you better. Yeah, I think that's what we need to— what we need more of in this field. There's just so many people, to your point with your friend even, that we just keep wanting to stuff our faces with more information and then we never do the practical application.

And majority, if not most, of these practitioners are already amazing, exquisite, incredible in their craft already. Yeah, so, and I see this in every field. I see it in legal, right, with my attorneys. I see it in my real estate clients. I see that. So it's interesting. So having worked— because as a clinician in this field, you've worked with people in all different professional backgrounds as well. Is there some common denominators or common themes that you're seeing people consistently struggle with, whether it's from a client side, right, whether it's for— as in the world of nutrition? And here's the 3 things I most commonly see or now as you're doing this business development, business coaching paradigm that you see the clinician mindset-wise struggling with?

I think there's, I think there's value on both sides of that. There's definitely things that we see clinically now, especially in this, you know, the, the pandemic, uh, era. Stress levels have just been, you know, the mental health. And you see this, like, the mental toll and the emotional toll on our kids and our parents and the elderly, like Both of my parents right now, they both have COVID. They're in their 80s. And I'm, you know, trying to manage that. And they only listen to, you know, the news media that feeds them all of the information that they're going to die for sure. And so I'm trying to kind of manage that. So I think anything that we can do that helps to reduce stress. So I like to use herbs that are in a class of herbs. They're called adaptogens. And these adaptogenic herbs do exactly what the name implies. And they help the body adapt to stress. So instead of me, you know, hitting the panic button when, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, we're gonna die, adaptogens change that to, whoo, well, okay, right, now what? Like, it literally transforms that stress response. So I, I think that's a theme. I think people with— I focus on digestion all the time because when we're in a state state of stress, we can't digest. So when we're in stress, we can't digest. And if we're not digesting our food, reflux starts to— we start to see more of that. We start to see more like epigastric bloating. So we get that bloating up high or constipation or, you know, trapped gas or whatever it is. So I think those are probably two, two of the things. The third thing would just be really kind of ties in with the stress, but it really is dealing with just some neurological calmness. And I like to use things like valerian or skullcap or those types of herbs to kind of quiet down the chronic static, I'll call it, in the nervous system that happens. So on the clinical side, the— that's what I see pretty commonly, not only in my, my patients that I see, but also in the clinicians I work with. They're all seeing the same thing. On the other side, as far as the clinical application in the business, I think clinicians get super stuck not really knowing where to even start. And they think that they can wear the same hat— they can wear a clinician hat and their CEO hat at the same time and make decisions that are good for them business-wise and clinic-wise with the same hat on, trying to fit two hats on the same head. And if you've ever worn a baseball cap You know that your head cannot work with two caps on it. It just is one or the other, and you have to have either your CEO hat on, your business hat, or you have to have your practitioner hat. Because if you're thinking like a practitioner when you're with the patient, you're not in flow, you're not in that place where you're really moving and you're connecting with them and you're listening and you're intuiting and you're feeling and you're sensing and you're reading their body language, all those things, because you're thinking about I hope they pay me in cash because I don't have enough money in the bank, or I hope that this, you know, that they're not— my next— this is going to run long, and what if it's late, and then the next person's going to walk out, and then that— like, you can't do that. That does— those two hats don't go together. So I think that's probably the biggest thing I see is that you, you— to learn how to stay in that— you're either with the patient fully or you have dedicated time aside to balance your bank statement and think about your automations inside your business or how you're going to market or what your emails are, whatever that is. So I think that— and that we could go like lots of places with that, but those are really the two— that's the— those are the two big things I see on the clinical side.

Well, I'm cracking up for those who aren't watching the video on this huge grin on my face that Ron can see, is I always, always, always use that one-size-fits-all metaphor because I've gone and bought hats from stores and that says one size fits all and they don't fit me. So clearly that's not true, right? And, and literally this morning I had this conversation with someone who is creating a new business on the side and they created the product and now they are going out and they're testing it and then they want to figure out how they're going to sell it and then who's going to do the technician side. I'm like, oh man, there's 3 roles, 3 roles: entrepreneur, manager, technician. This is like, right, that's it. Entrepreneur, manager, people in the previous episodes have heard me talk about this, that e-myth. Michael Gerber, right? Paradigm. And we as therapists and clinicians and all, right? Anybody in this clinic, any business has to know what they're absolutely amazing at doing, where their energy can best be leveraged, and hire and build your team around you. And I think that's kind of where a lot of people get stuck, is, right, they have that Superman, Superwoman syndrome. But I can't give up the secret sauce. I can't train an associate. To know with my protocols what I'm doing, because then I'm afraid they're going to go open up their own practice.

And that's where I think that's that scarcity mindset. You know, we're all better together, even if we're in, quote, competing industries. I don't believe it's competing, because people will find a practitioner that's unique enough that it resonates with them. When you show up in the world as a clinician, or just as a human being, when you show up as your authentic yourself, you are naturally going to connect with people that resonate. And you just like— you know when you meet someone and for the first time and you think, oh, I, I really like that person? How do you know if you like them? You don't know if you like them. You've had 10 words with them, but you're— there's something about it that just have that energetic thing. Just, I don't know, it's like the woo-woo part, right?

It is.

And it just— it's the woo-woo, and the woo-woo goes, yeah. You're my kind of animal. You're my kind of fish. I really want to swim with you. I don't know anything about you, but there's something there. The same way you meet someone, you're like, ooh, nope, uh-uh, not a chance I'm gonna have lunch with that person. Why? You don't— you know as little about them as you do about the first person. And I think that as clinicians, clinically, when you are authentically you in your practice, you're going to naturally attract the people that go, I like you. Yeah. And I trust you. And I think you've got my back. And if that relationship doesn't exist, then they need to move. The patient needs to move on for the patient's sake. For the patient's sake, they need to find someone that they resonate with. Not because I need the money or because I need the fame or the notoriety. It doesn't matter. The patient is who is important. And we talked about this offline, like We often think about what we need. What do I want? What does my ego want? You know, what does my bank account need? What do— what kind of status do I need to have? And those things often elevate or become front and center over really serving the patients authentically and making sure that you are a good fit with the people that you serve.

Yeah. And I think that goes into Dr. Patrick Gentempo's last book, Your Stand Is Your Brand, right?

Yes.

It's putting that out there.

Such a good book.

Right.

And, um, I think it's so true because I asked my intake, anybody who calls me who already has either heard about me or they referred to me or whatever, however they find me, and I'm like, well, I need to ask you a few questions to make sure you're the right fit for me. Because I want both sides of us to say hell yes, not hell maybe. For me, hell maybe is the same as a hell no. So unless both of us say yes, and I did this a couple hours ago, couples counseling, and I'm like, well, let me just ask you a few other questions. Has there been in the last recent or any time in the past, any self-injuring behaviors or any hospitalization related to any mental health concerns? Because right away, automatically off the bat, that's a no for me. If they say, if they say yes to that, it's an automatic no, no matter how much they want to work with me, no matter how much they're willing to fork out the cash. Not happening. And I said that I can only— I'm really good at certain things and I'm really awful at other things. And I want to make sure that if I'm going to work with you, right, in all those things. So it's okay. And I think practitioners— and when I love that, when I heard Patrick, uh, talk about that, and I now have it on my website, on my homepage, where it says, if you're shopping around for the most affordable therapist, I'm not it.

Yeah, yeah. But there's something more. There's so much clarity, and I think people appreciate the clarity rather than the one-stop shop. You know, I'm, I'm a, I'm an acupuncturist and I can help anyone.

Correct.

People are going to glaze right over the top of that. But if you're very clear about who you are and equally is important, who you're not. In other words, who you serve and who you don't serve. All of a sudden, the chatter in someone's brain for having to make that decision, you know, whether you're coming at this, whether your listener is like a patient or a practitioner, when you come at it and you get clarity, all of a sudden the chatter goes away. And then our brains are free to make a choice. But too many voices, too many choices, And then we get paralyzed with indecision.

Absolutely. And that's the prequalification, right? Where I say, if you're going from practitioner to practitioner, you're not getting any of the help. And now you're multiple, right?

Yeah.

If you believe that integrative and mind-body modalities will help you solve the problem, right? In other words, I prequalify not just about the financials, because that sounds like a pretty asshole thing to say off the bat until you add the other things, right? In other words, I do believe, right? Do you believe in this? Do you believe in this? Do you believe in this? Do you believe in this? So do I. That's already a lockstep agreement that we're already on the same page to work.

Correct. Yep, correct.

100% agree with where you're at now. So as we wrap up, I want people to be able to find you because I know there's the side that if someone is interested from the integrative nutrition side, and if there's like, how can different populations work with you and connect with you at this point?

So one of the best ways that you can connect with me is you can— I'm on Facebook and Instagram. Instagram is probably my fave. But you can DM me on Instagram, and my handle is just @drrondanelson, R-O-N-D-A-N-E-L-S-O-N. So @drrondanelson. And you can always go to my website, ronda.nelson.com. You can just, if you want, just get on my mailing list. That's probably the best thing to do. And there's a link right at the top where you can jump right onto that mailing list and then connect, stay connected with me, because I really do love— I love supporting practitioners. That's really what I love doing is supporting people in the, in the caregiving environment. And I do take a few patients, but I, like you, I'm super selective. So they have to jump through a few hoops to be able to work with me. And that's just because I think at this age and having 20-plus years under my belt, I'm like, I really only want to work with people that make my heart happy, like, I, that I, I like. I, I really enjoy you as a person, and I, and I want to help you feel better. So I love working with like fertility and mamas and their babies and menopause and, you know, female dysfunction, like thyroid. Like, I love all of those things, and most of that involves women. And so that's kind of my thing. So, um, you know, if you're a patient and you want some help, I'm happy to help you, but I am— I'm pretty picky. It's hard to get through the hoops. So best if you're a practitioner, you just want to connect with me on Instagram or get on my mailing list at rhondanelson.com.

Awesome. And just again, like I said at the beginning, guys, Rhonda was one of the first workshops that I went to in the integrative nutritional world. And those who are going to see this episode on YouTube, it's right here. The Functional Blood Chemistry is right behind me. It is literally— I don't even have to turn around fully to grab it. It is right there. That binder comes out at least once a week. Literally, the pages are— I might have to have you email a PDF version of that.

Yes.

Thank you. But for my clients who are— those of you who are listening who are also my clients, and you know that, like, hey, have you gotten these numbers checked? This is the person that, you know, I really want to extend a lot of gratitude to for all this. And I really do know that you have a crazy schedule and I appreciate the time that you shared with us today.

It's just been a pleasure to be here. I love talking about this subject and I hope that it's really empowering for your listeners to feel like— I think the message I would leave is that whether you're a practitioner or you're a patient, You have the power to make the impact, whether it— you're as a practitioner, you can impact the patient, but as a patient, remember that you have the power to choose at who is going to impact you. So whether you're the giver or the receiver, in this case, you still have the choice. So to the patient, on the patient side, I would say make sure that whoever you choose to work with, that you really— your heart feels right. That just feels like, yes, this just feels like the right decision. They may not be the cheapest, and they may be, but it doesn't matter because at the end of the day, you have to know that it's the right thing for you. And that's the most important thing when you're choosing or working with a healthcare practitioner. Absolutely.

So that's right. So that, that pretty much wraps all of that up, right? It has to be— and everything we're talking about here is from your heart, from your passion. From your soul, whatever we're doing, whatever we're working with, wherever we're— whether it's relationships, professional, personal, it has to come from that place. So again, Rhonda, thank you again for hanging out today.

You're welcome. Thanks so much.

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