What Women Need to Know About Their Pelvic Floor Health with Jessica Drummond

Hi, welcome to the Pelby Biz Podcast. Are you a pelvic health PT or ot struggling to start your own practice? This podcast helps pelvic health PTs and OTs get out of debt, gain the income they desire, be able to treat patients without insurance restraints, and learn how to create time freedom for yourself and your family. I'm your host, Dr. Kelly Alhui, founder of Ortho Pelvic Physical Therapy, Pelvic health Business Grower and Pelvi Biz. Over the last two years, I went from a solo entrepreneur to a seven person team in counting. I'm here to help provide a clear path to grow your pelvic health business as fast as possible so that you can gain the time freedom, decrease debt, increase income and live the life that you desire. Before we get started today, make sure you click the link in our bio to grab your ticket for Pelvi Biz.

Now let's get into today's episode. Welcome guys to Pelby Biz. I'm your host, Dr. Kelly Al Hui, here with Jessica. Here with Jessica. She is amazing. I'm super, super blessed to have her on here. I actually met her when I was in California with Julie Sartin and Susan Clinton was actually giving a presentation at the clinic and I was like, you gave a 30 minute presentation? I don't know if you remember this, but this is like four years ago. And she came on and gave us a 30 minute presentation.

I was like, who is this person?

Because I was so blown away by all your knowledge that you gave us and I was like, I have to know who she is. And I'm super, super excited to have you on here so you can share your knowledge. So Jessica, if you want to introduce yourself and kind of give us what you're about and any kind of books you've written, all that kind of stuff, that'd be great.

Okay, excellent. Thanks so much, Kelly for having me on here. My name is Jessica Drummond. I'm the founder and CEO of the Integrative Women's Health Institute and Outsmart Endometriosis. Gosh, I've been running this business for about 15 years now and we're constantly evolving business. Small business startup culture is like that and that's one of the good things about it, truly. I've written a few books. The two bestsellers were Outsmart Endometriosis and Clinician. To coach, our Integrative Women's Health Institute has trained a few thousand clinical physical therapists, health coaches, occupational therapists, physicians, nurse practitioners, acupuncturists, Massage therapists on and on fitness people in health and wellness. Coaching is our flagship program and we also have certificate programs in things like perimenopause and hormone health and things of that nature. We focus on women's and pelvic health and we have this the whole time. Then my clinical practice and our coaching practice is mostly focused on endometriosis and pelvic pain.

That's awesome. Yes. You're the guru. And endometriosis. And we all love learning from you. So it's awesome to watch you grow and just continue to grow this coaching program, which is amazing. So what really got you into the coaching side and how did you really combine, you know, the pelvic health and the coaching? Because not too many people are doing that in our field. And I feel like you are the go to person for this.

Yeah. So I started my career as a physical therapist. I worked for a few years in outpatient physical orthopedics and really honed my manual therapy skills. And then I began to specialize in pelvic health from a PT standpoint. And as you know, pelvic health is really just a subspecialty really of orthopedics when it comes to what we do as physical therapists. Although more and more there's a lot of nervous system, autonomic nervous system support and lifestyle medicine, but that wasn't really such a thing when I started to make the transition to coaching. We did a lot of manual therapy, a lot of pelvic floor rehab. Certainly that kind of safe space for women to talk about sexual trauma and the kind of impact to their life of chronic pelvic pain was always there from the beginning. And we did things from a nutrition standpoint like bladder diaries and stuff. But back when I was doing a lot of hands on pelvic pt, we were more in kind of the opioid era. So we didn't have nearly as much insight to the neurologic impact, well, the flexibility of the nervous system in healing pain. And so what happened was I got sick 20 years ago in the sense that I had, which is interesting. It's probably a little bit related to what I'm dealing with now. But my oldest daughter, who's just turned 18 and we're knee deep in college apps and all that now, when she was born, what I think happened to me was I had from my postpartum experience a reactivation of Epstein Barr. I had kind of like a chronic fatigue type of vague syndrome that no one really identified at the time. But later, as I moved to the field of functional medicine. I started to realize. Okay, I think that's probably what happened to me, you know, when I was in high school. I got mono when I was a senior and I was an athlete and I had to stop competing. And, you know, it kind of impacted beach week for me. Yeah, of course, stuff like that, which was fine. You know, and I was a senior and, you know, we were partying and.

Right.

So I have recovered from that just fine after, whatever, a couple weeks. But it did hit me at a few different times in that year. And then I didn't think about it again for. Well, I had my daughter when I was about 28, 29 years old. So 10 years later, I had this fatigue issue that again. Now that I know everything I know from a functional medicine standpoint, I think it was really the postpartum experience just kind of reactivated Epstein Barr. Now I had a perfectly healthy delivery with her, a great pregnancy, but she was the baby who. I'm so grateful. Now at 18, she's sleeping through the night. Right, right, right, exactly. I don't think she slept through the night for the first six years or so. So I was just tired. Right. But being postpartum and had some hormonal imbalances. But that's what kind of led me to the field of functional medicine, functional nutrition. And I started. I did some coaching training. Functional nutrition and health coaching are kind of two different things. Health coaching is really the skill set of helping people consistently implement health behavior changes that will work for anything. If you have physical therapy clients who aren't consistently doing exercise programs, health coaching skills is the secret sauce to making that happen. It's really the secret sauce to getting clients who are excited to do physical therapy into your practice. So it's really good from a business standpoint because you get really motivated clients, and then they stay motivated. You help them stay motivated, and they really take ownership of the experience. So whether you're a physician, a pt, an ot, whatever, you don't have to be a nutritionist to utilize health coaching skills.

Okay, that's good to know. That's a good. Yeah, that's good. Yeah.

It's very different. And then. But from a lifestyle standpoint, nutrition is generally helpful for everything. You know, if people are not eating a ton of inflammatory foods, if they're not stress eating, you know, if they have good lifestyle medicine strategies around things like sleep and mindfulness and all of that. So that's sort of the, like, lifestyle health behaviors that we also teach. And so we also Teach functional nutrition, which is kind of how to use nutrition as more of a healing modality for things like digestive issues and chronic pain. And that's also really valuable in physical and occupational therapy and medicine because we can use those day to day behavior changes to help actually people heal and need less rehab and need less medication and all of that. So for me it was an experience of utilizing those tools in my life to overcome fatigue and get really energized and healthy and had great fertility. I had another baby several years later, raised two kids, run a business. You need a ton of energy for that.

You need a lot of.

Right. Especially because my husband used to travel full time. So like the last, well, 18 years has been a lot of kind of going all out, which has been great. It's given me amazing opportunities. But as a kind of high performing person, it taught me how much my clients were really going to need from like an energy standpoint during the phase of life of raising kids and growing things and building stuff and you know, all of the work that that takes. I've loved all of it. But it's energy intensive. As you.

It is 100%. Yeah. I mean it takes, every day we talk about it is how can I build more energy to then make things thrive. If you don't have energy, you're not going anywhere. So it really sounds like based on your personal experience that this is what drove you to start to try to integrate this. Because we know as physical therapists as well it's very hard sometimes to have a patient compliant. And with this coaching that you're offering, it's. And I've taken your courses, they're fantastic. They have so much information in them, it's amazing. So with that is we can then start implementing these little lifestyle changes that actually can add up and make a huge impact.

Yeah. And more than that, the client gets really excited about their journey of healing because you're actually connecting it to things that they care about. Whether it's energy for raising their kids or energy for work or career development or training for an athletic event, whatever it is, we're really tying their health to what they want to do in their lives and then keeping them excited about that.

No, that's huge. I'm actually going through my own personal journey on this of getting myself fitter because I have to be fitter to, if that's even a word, to have energy to run everything that I run. Because I realize if I don't have this energy, it's not running 100% and.

That was a massive lesson that I learned this year.

Yeah.

And I'll, I'll give you all a bit of business advice from that standpoint. So 2020 was a fantastic year for us as much as we were deep in a global pandemic because we had been ahead of the curve for 15 years. So we were already doing everything digitally. My whole team was digital. We were able to teach this. We knew telehealth, we knew coaching. We knew how to build things that you could leverage, build things beyond any kind of constraints of I can only work in this state or that state, stuff like that. And we knew how to leverage technology. We knew how to do like, I was already doing tons of digital speaking and in person speaking, but I had certainly done a lot of digital speaking by then. We knew how to create stuff and launch it in a digital platform. So we were ahead of the curve and we were dealing with. So that was a lot of what we were teaching our professional students how to do that. And then our coaching clients, people struggling with endometriosis and pelvic pain themselves lost access to their regular care. Everything.

Right. I didn't think about that. Yes.

And we had a solution to at least manage their symptoms. And it coincided with a couple months after. So I published Outsmart Endometrists in January of 2020 and expected to go on a physical book tour, which never happened. Which that was fine. But we were ready to launch this larger group coaching program, say March of 2020, which I kind of put the brakes on and was like, I don't know if we're going to be able to do this, what's going to happen? So we ended up doing it as a beta launch later. We did a lot of one on one coaching, like high end one on one coaching to really learn from and go deep with people who were ready to make that commitment and was very successful. I worked like a crazy person in 2020, but it felt easier in a lot of ways because I was already set up. Like I didn't have to build a new team. I didn't have to do anything differently. I just worked more. I kind of captured all these different opportunities and I had the time to do it because I had done a ton of in person speaking from say 2020, 11ish to like 2020.

So I remember you hitting like every. I remember seeing you like always, everywhere. And that's how I found you, you know, that's. You came to speak in California and I mean, you're fantastic at it. Yeah, yeah.

Well. And from the beginning, when I first started, just kind of what happened was I was like, oh my gosh. This whole skill set of coaching and using lifestyle medicine, functional nutrition complements physical therapy so much because opioids were being taken away and we were dealing with chronic pelvic pain and our most complex clients kept plateauing. And I was like, we need different tools. And so I learned from my experience of the postpartum kind of hormone imbalance that if we can use other tools that are simpler, that are cheaper, that are readily available, sleep, mindfulness, lifestyle medicine, nutrition, different kinds of movement practices than exercise, nervous system, re education, and all of this has grown over the years. You say I keep learning. I do. Because more and more we're learning that these tools are available and exist. So now we're doing a lot of stuff with wearable technology and HRV tracking and whatever. We like to stay a little ahead of the curve because that always has us ready for when things happen. So bottom line is that year I didn't travel for the first time in like 10 years because it closed.

Right, right, right.

But before then, I took every opportunity to just. I was both teaching and also learning. Because especially like in 2011, we didn't have like, I remember the YouTube channel I had back then. Like, we didn't have iPhones.

Right.

You had to learn to like video edit. I had. I was in this like back porch with lighting kits. I mean, I was not. I was not like a film person. You know, I never, like, I was doing new shows at like 7am and local Connecticut news, like random stuff. I just learned it. Right, right, right. But I didn't know what I was doing. And it was more in my comfort zone because I'd been teaching since csm, like forever, 2000 or something. Right. So I had like 10 years of in person teaching experience. Video was a tougher leap for me because the tech was so bad and I wasn't like a video editor. So I just basically started saying yes to coming to teach anywhere that would host about 20 people. And actually when I was out in California that time, I was doing someone else's TV show.

I remember that. Yes.

Yeah. So, like, I would say yes to stuff that I didn't have to produce.

Right.

And so I literally flew all over the world, like little towns in rural Ireland, you know, la, London. I went to Melbourne one time, I went to China for a week. Like, I went anywhere they would have me.

Wow.

And it was great because the wonderful thing about that was not only was I having these opportunities Bigger and bigger opportunities to teach. But I also was with live audiences sometimes for like a whole conference or something. So I had the opportunity here what people were curious about. You know, I got a lot of real time feedback, but that all stopped in 2020. And so I had time because it's expensive and time consuming to travel every couple of weeks to a foreign country.

Right.

You do get a lot of miles out of it. Oh, my gosh. And if you ever get to go to Melbourne, do it. Because, like, I would love to.

I would love to.

Certain places are fantastic.

Yeah. One day I would love to. Yeah.

But bottom line is that we then, during the pandemic, were already positioned to pivot. All we had to do was have the energy to work, which we did. But then I got Covid in December of 2020, and this was pre vaccine. So I got bad Covid, not mild, post vaccine Omicron Covid, which, who knows if that's really mild. I think it depends on a lot of things. But it was surprising to me because the narrative even then was, if you're healthy, if you're under 65, you're going to be fine.

Like, I was very shocked when you came on. I mean, I really was. I was like, jessica has Covid. Like, I mean, I literally said that to myself when you put it on Facebook, I was like, there is no way. Way. Because you put it out there. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I hope she's okay. And then it's been a long journey for you that if you don't mind sharing, that'd be great. Like, how it's affected you.

Right. So I had pericarditis. Like, I got really sick. I was physically sick for months. And then I also have what's called long Covid. Now I'm starting to develop a clearer and clearer framework around that, and I'm hopeful that I'm kind of coming through it, but it's complicated and there's still a lot of questions, you know, And I was like, really? Healthy people are always like, were you stressed? Were you not eating well? No, I was literally doing like, peloton Beyonce with my daughter outside. Like, yeah. A week before, I was hiking ski mountains. You know, I was feeling good. It's interesting because unfortunately, one of the risk factors for Long Covid is working out four to seven times a week for an hour. The more fit you are, the more at risk you potentially are for this, which is unfortunate. Yeah. Fortunately, vaccines do seem to lower the likelihood, but not entirely. It's about 50% improvement. Also, viral load is another big risk factor. We're now finding out. Did I have a viral load? Who knows? I got it from my 18 year old who was in the house with us. But she was really good. Like, she had the mask. We were all masked, but we didn't have, like, air filters. We didn't have KN95. Like, this was December 2020. We didn't. We thought we were going to be sick for two weeks and then just chilling around the fire for Christmas. Right. She recovered fine, thank goodness.

That's really good.

And the rest of my family didn't get it, which is great, but, you know, mom has to take care of people, right? Exactly. I was in there occasionally. So viral load is a potential risk. And then the other thing is, oh, history of Epstein Barr virus, which is really interesting. So who knows? And so there's a lot we don't know about Long Covid. But the bottom line is I had a lot of tools, which I'm grateful for. I was very healthy before. So while it was a shock to me that I got this sick in many ways, like, it was really pretty traumatic, I do believe that that foundation of fitness and resilience and all of that has helped me to get as far as healthy as I am. Because I know a lot of people who are literally, you know, we're running marathons and are now in wheelchairs. Like, it's big difference in how it can impact people. And some of these people who I've learned from have had it for almost two years now.

Wow, that is crazy. That's crazy. And it's. And it's such a blessing that Jessica, you had your, you know, you had all these systems set up, like, because you're ahead of the curve. It seems to be like, hey, I didn't have. You didn't have to learn zoom like I did. You didn't have to know. Like, you have to learn all this stuff because you're already ahead of the curve. So as you're like, trying to heal or trying to discover new things. I think you went to, like Italy at one point, I saw, and you were trying to like, self discover, hey, what's really worked for me, what's not. And you can still have these systems running on the back end that you, if we're talking about, you know, a physical therapist, you don't have to be putting your hands and being present in that current location, you know, with someone, because you had all these systems on the back end.

Yeah. And so what I learned from that was I was doing still, while I didn't have my hands on, I do have all the flexibility I need. And I, you know, had a really strong financial year in December of 2020, but I worked so much and didn't really spend a lot of that money, thank goodness, because I needed it for when I was sick for a year and still am. So I would say I learned a couple of really important business lessons. For any changes when the world pivots, it's helpful to take a moment and make some educated predictions about where it's going to go versus trying to hold on to the way that you're comfortable with. You might be wrong, but if you don't let it rattle you, it's sort of like restaurants, right? If they were just like, no, we're going to keep our door, you know, I'm fighting this, we're keeping our door open. If you said, all right, this is how it's going. One of the restaurants that's been the strongest in our local area, like shortly after things kind of shut down, created this, like, family dinner pack. Okay. And so. And you could also buy a whole pitcher of margaritas with it, which is probably even smarter. But like, all of a sudden, all these people in your area are pivoting to working from home, but they have all their kids home and they have 17 jobs and they're also, their kids are, you know, and they're not allowed to leave the house and they're exhausted. What if you just package everything and make it easier for people to order? Right. So whether it's PT or like, you know, endo clients, our endo clients couldn't have surgery. All the surgeries were cancele. They couldn't go to in person. Pt, we had a coaching program that at least gave them all these tools for managing their symptoms, managing their stress, getting support in a virtual setting. So I think no matter what happens, and it's not always necessarily a shift to digital, sometimes it's just a shift in how you deliver your services in person or whatever. That's not really what the point is. But the point is when there's a major shift in either your industry, in the world, and your financial situation and your local area, how can you take a moment as a business leader and make some educated predictions about how things might go versus holding tight to the model, you know, and if you do that again, you might be wrong, but you're more likely to be slightly ahead of the curve, which will serve you well. And then the second key point is your physical Energy is really important to the health of your business. And so as much as you have control over that, do optimize it. You know, keep yourself physically healthy, get work in times, you know, plan and stick to times of rest. You really have to work on your own boundaries, which is very hard.

I think it's very hard.

It's very hard and sometimes you don't have control over that. So it is really important. If I had to do again, and I think we were well positioned, but we could have been even more well positioned if I had ever really thought about this in advance. Imagine you really can't work for a year, like right. Really, like hardly at all. Like maybe one day a week. What would that look like? How could you create some systems? I mean I'm the primary breadwinner for our family. You know, there's a lot of things. And so for. But this business was pretty mature. I had a really good trusted team. I had, you know, absolutely. You want to have an emergency fund? Fortunately, my husband and I have both been in business for ourselves by and large for the last. Well since Claire was born. So like around 2002, 2003. So we always have a year emergency fund. Wow, that's great. I feel like is important and we needed it at times this year also, as quickly as you can sort of set up investments, slash lines of, you know, just different ways to make income, whether that's rental properties or, you know, you and your spouse have different jobs or you know, investments or whatever, anything, nothing is really passive as I'm sure you know right now.

Right, right.

But having some varying streams of revenue does help you pivot if you, you know, from a financial situation. I think it's very difficult to completely hedge against your illness as a small business owner because there isn't really like insurance for this. We had a little bit of government support the first year, which wasn't really when we really needed it. There's no government support right now for if the business owner gets sick. Like there just isn't. You know, disability insurance is very hard to claim unless you. I don't know what it would take. So we stopped carrying that after a while. And I'm not sorry about that because it wouldn't have really helped us. But you do kind of want to self insure. What would you do? And I think as a business owner, once a year or something like that, it's good to assess. If I couldn't work really at all, what, what would I do? And so the thing that I've done In the last year, we had a lot of those emergency stuff available, which was helpful. But also I've started asking questions now that I have a stronger and stronger team. How can I do X? But who can do X? Well, how can I train them now to do this? So if you sit back and as a business owner and you think, what if I really couldn't do this? Or ultimately, what if I'm only running it? So my dad's a management consultant and he's helped me a lot over the years. And he said what management is, is getting work done through other people. I like it. And I like to say getting work done through other people. Well, like at the level of quality that you would do. Right. So you have to invest some time in training and follow up and, you know, and you have to really take care of your team the best you can. Great communication, great work environment. That's always going. We've had people who've worked with us for, you know, the whole time. The more you can do that is always going to be even more important than money. For. For most people, good environment, good support, flexibility. Our team is entirely women. They're entirely virtual. Some have chronic illnesses. A lot have kids. I never micromanage, like, what time they have to do anything. If they're productive, they get their stuff done. They're gonna do that. Yeah. And so that's the big question that I learned from some other people I've learned from who were business owners who either got chronic illnesses themselves or got things like cancer. You can't just kind of sell a business like this on a dime, Right?

That's true.

That's not a backup plan. A backup plan is who can do this. Get to the point where you're really the CEO. And then what if you even had to replace yourself? How would you just hire that person?

Yeah, this is great. This is great advice. Because so often not. I feel like we don't think about these. I don't. I mean, I personally haven't thought that much about it. Like, if I got sick, what would happen?

You know, I didn't either. I mean, you know, I mean, I just don't want to get sick.

Yeah, we just don't go there.

Yeah, I really thought, you know, we just. You just don't think about that.

But.

And I think being as healthy as possible is really important. But also, you could just get in a car accident or something. Like.

True.

You know, who knows? You just don't know what's going to happen. So having a plan and really Developing your team and trusting each other I think is really important. And that's kind of my next level of learning to work in a way that's even more sustainable. As Traci Share said years ago, she was talking about, like, always kind of thinking about her legacy, which I love that idea, but I never really thought. I was like, you know, I love this job. Like, I don't see myself retiring, if you will. Like, Right.

People say this a lot. That's so funny you bring this up. They do. They say, there's no way. I would never do this. I just love it.

Yeah, go ahead. And. And I really do. Like, why would I have to retire? I get to. For work, go, you know, scope out healing retreats in Italy or whatever. Like, I can do whatever I want in this company. And sometimes I get paid pretty well to do it, too. Like, why would I not do it? But maybe I can't, or maybe I change my mind or maybe, you know, like, one of my. My oldest is going to college this year and, you know, maybe I'll change my mind when my kids are out of the house. Like, who knows? So I think it's useful to start thinking about what is your exit strategy. Not so much even that you'll necessarily sell the company, because I don't think that's always the right answer. There's some real value to owning your own business. That's a solid investment asset, and you do get to pick and choose what you want to do with it. But what if you really wanted to take. Let's even forget about getting sick. What if you really wanted to just work two days a week or you wanted to take three months off? How would your practice run under those scenarios? And because more often than not, that's going to take a few years to create. But, you know, and we've had a lot of people come through our practice, our training, our business training and all that who do that deliberately for things like having a baby.

Right now, that's a big one in our field. Yes. Yeah.

And, you know, I kind of started this. My second one was born in the midst of it, but I don't know, I just had enough support that I didn't really have to stop working. I just sort of downshifted. But I think an evolution, especially for women business owners, is really like, would it look like. And I've helped a lot of our clients. Do our students do this? Especially in places like Europe, where it's much more normal to have a year off? What would that look like? Would your company still run if you were not fully in it or even in it at all? I think those are really important things to play with and it'll show you how much you really trust your team.

Right. I think those are huge, huge questions that no one's asking themselves, I can tell you that. And that probably a lot of people don't have answers to at this point in time, you know, and it's going to take a little pivoting and a little change to probably happen a little bit. You know, it's not like it's changed today, but, you know, really thinking about that and thinking, how can I, in the future, how can I make this actually work for me and not me really grinding it out every single day? How can. If something happens, how can I, you know, take a little bit of a step back?

Yeah.

I think these are massive questions.

Yeah. And, you know, so I would say, okay, it's right now, right. Right here, right now, give yourself a little challenge. Some of the people I've really studied on this topic who didn't even necessarily, like, maybe they were just a little burnt out or whatever, they just knew they liked their work, but they didn't necessarily want to sell the company, but they wanted the capacity to take that space. So challenge yourself. Say, like, one year from now, 18 months from now, I'm going to take a complete month off. What would have to happen? Fun experiment at least.

Yeah. My mind is going, like, every direction right now. How would I do this? Who would they contact for every problem that comes up, every 40 problems that come up a day? Who would they contact?

Who would they. Because you're not there, you have no Internet. Wow. In a different time zone, what would happen? Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, it's got me thinking. Wow. I don't know. So interesting. Well, this has been so great. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your experience about COVID and how as business owners, that we have to pivot and trying to be ahead of the curve like you have been, and just being kind of on the forefront of having different options in different ways for people to come into your world, whether or not you're physically there or whether or not you're virtually or your team has taken over. So I think this is a huge learning lesson and great questions to kind of send us off on, to make us think of, hey, how can we really have a business going that I'm not really deep in the trenches with? So I think. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you coming on to Pelv Biz.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, yeah. Jess, do you mind giving us, like, where people can find you and, you know, telling us about a little bit about your coaching and. And just give us all the deets.

Absolutely. So if you just have a question or want to reach out to us, probably the best place is Instagram at Integrative Women's Health. And then our website is integrativewomenshealthinstitute.com you can go there. There's a link right at the top to our course catalog, which will show you all of the different trainings and everything we do there. So that's probably the best way to be in touch. And if you just want to read the Clinician to Coach book, you can get a free book@clinictocoach.com or just DM me on Instagram. If that's the wrong link, I can't remember.

We'll get it there. We'll put it in the show notes too. So we got you.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Thanks, guys.

If you are ready to change your life, click the link in the show notes to get your ticket to Pelby Biz. Let's go.