EP026: Naturopathic Entrepreneurs with Meghan Walker

Welcome to the Perfect Practice podcast where we share the most innovative strategies to help you build a successful functional medicine business, attract your ideal patients, serve your community, and get paid what you're worth. Each episode is packed with practical steps that you can take to immediately grow your influence and serve more people. Our mission is to share golden nuggets from successful practitioners, technology experts and innovators from around the world. Your host, Sachin Patel, is a functional medicine success coach, international speaker and best selling author. He's calling in all his favors to bring this information to you so you can create your Perfect Practice.

Hey everyone, this is Sachin Patel. Welcome to a very special and exciting episode of Perfect Practice. Today I have a dear friend and I want to call her a colleague. I guess we're colleagues in entrepreneurship. She's a naturopathic doctor, total badass, founder of many, many businesses which we'll get into today. Today I'm super excited to interview my dear friend, Megan Walker. Megan, welcome to Perfect Practice. It is so awesome to have you here.

Thanks, Sachin. I'm so excited to be here.

Well, first things first, for those of the listeners that may not be familiar with your story, I'd like to, you know, maybe if you could take us through, you know, a little bit more about you, you know, what journey you've been through, what got you into naturopathic college and what then enabled you to catapult your career as not only a naturopathic doctor but also a practice coach. You're involved in bigger and bigger events, which we'll talk about a little bit later. But why don't we start with your story? Like, what is your big why? Why do you continue to push the envelope and continue to push the naturopathic profession forward?

Yeah, for sure. I'll give you the short version of the story, but I'm fundamentally driven by this idea that when people are, well, they can change the world. And it's an observation that has become more and more sophisticated as I've gotten older and I have more life experience. But when I was young, there was two things that I wanted to be. I wanted to be a litigator or I wanted to be a fighter pilot. And eventually I wanted to either of those paths. I really wanted to be prime minister, which I still haven't ruled out, but I was really adamant on these two paths and I was really involved in school and I finally hit a wall with my health, as many of us have, in terms of entering into these professions. And I had some minor surgery when I was in high school and I was really sick following and no one could figure it out. And finally someone said I should go see this naturopathic doctor in Ottawa. And I went to see him and his name was Don Warren and he's just a lovely man, he's still in practice. And, and he said to me, he's like, megan, we're going to talk about the last two weeks and what's gone on, but can you just explain to me how your body has always responded to stress? And it was this moment where everything shifted for me because it was such an intelligent question. And everything prior to that in my life had been reactive. And it had always been about amplifying and revering systems that were, that were exciting and reactive. Fighter pilots are somewhat reactive, right? Litigators are reactive. There's something about both of those careers. And this just struck me as such an intelligent way of being able to look at a problem because the reactive solutions hadn't worked. And so I actually don't even remember what.

He.

Wasn'T really important. What was important was I came out of my experience working with Dr. Warren. And one, I got better right away. And two, I was, I was highly committed to now solving all problems from this upstream perspective. And so fast forward, I went into, I did an undergraduate in reproductive physiology and then studied naturopathic medicine because it was really the only profession that I understood at that time that was committed to dealing with health from an upstream capacity. And for me now, on the other side, I emerged and built a practice and we built this large integrative practice. And I sold it six years ago because I was really committed to looking at how we got access for more people to an upstream system of medicine. So I loved working in my clinic and I loved having the flow of patients that we had. And I went, okay, great, we can have 3 to 10,000 people through here a year. But what about all my incredible colleagues? Because more and more colleagues were like, ah, you know, I'm great in clinic, I can't get anyone through my door. And to me, this was such a tragedy because they were such incredibly talented clinicians. And so really my work on the clinician side started with small groups of practitioners who are like, can we just get together and can we talk about creating systems? And then we created a program, and then we created a bigger program. And then every time we would run those programs, we would just listen to people, listen where they were running into challenges. And if we had an opportunity or a system to provide solution, then we just started to do that. As most businesses do. And so now I really split my time between my work with patients and my work with patients is predominantly working with entrepreneurs. In the middle of all that, I worked as the. And held a position as the CEO of a digital media startup. And part of that role had the opportunity to audit over 3,000 practices across North America. And so we got this really incredible inside look as to what was working from a systemic perspective for companies and businesses and clinics and where people were hitting challenges. And so I really got interested in particular female entrepreneurs and the health challenges that they were having as they were trying to build their practice. And I was like, oh, I got a solution over here. And then equally committed to practitioners who were doing incredible work at serving people's health in an upstream capacity and looking at how we could serve them in a bigger manner. And so here we are in this sort of intertwined offering, but almost exclusively looking with entrepreneurs on both sides. That was a really long answer. I'm sorry, Sachin.

No, that was perfect. It really helps everyone understand the drive, because entrepreneurs, there's something that wakes them up every morning, something that pulls them out of bed every single day. And it's important to really align with that. You've worked with thousands of practitioners, you've audited thousands of practices, as you've mentioned, and you've probably studied not only failure, but of course you've studied success. So, you know, speaking to that, what do you find are some of the biggest challenges for practitioners? I mean, you have people that are very skilled at what they do. They're very competently educated through the school system. They graduate with passion and fire, and they're ready to change the world. But what is it that's stopping them from doing that? Because you, you know, I'm fascinated by this as well as a coach, and, you know, I really want to understand what your data and what your experience can shed on this particular topic.

Yeah, I think there's a few things, and some are really practical issues that arise. I mean, we have a collectively functional medicine, Cairos, mds. There's a lot of women in these particular fields, and often we're graduating at an age where we're like, whoa, launching my business and I'm launching my family. And there's a lot of prioritization and strategy that has to go into how you're going to balance those two. So I think that's a really practical thing that a lot of people are confronted with when they first graduate. But perhaps more esoterically, I think that what happens is and we talked about this at the beginning. When someone graduates from business school, we don't expect that they have sufficient skills to step out and simultaneously become a doctor. And I think the same thing happens when we graduate from any of these medical programs. As we step out and we're like, okay, listen, I just dropped a huge amount of money. I'm ready to go. I'm highly credentialed. That should be good enough. And it's not. Because what we have is this incredible offering to help people's health. But we don't actually have a framework and system upon which we can deliver that. We don't have a vehicle to deliver that. And. And that's not difficult to do, but it does require some strategic attention in terms of how you are going to set that up. So I think, you know, first and foremost, there's a lot of people just jump right in, they're ready to go, and they're kind of like, kind of deserve for this to work out, and they expect that it does. And they miss that creation of that vehicle that enables them to deliver that care. So that's one thing that we tend to see over and again. And the other thing that I'm consistently surprised by, and I know you talk a lot about this process as well, is people graduate and what they market to the world is not that they're going to change people's lives, not that they're offering a transformation, but what they market to the world is the list of services that they can deliver. And I just don't think that's what consumers are looking for. They're not looking for a list of services. They're looking for this transformational process. And so one of the things we would see consistently on all of these websites and the thing that distinguished the individuals who had this consistent flow of clients versus individuals who are like, I don't understand why no one's coming to see me is that no one's coming to see them. Websites or the websites that they listed, all 85 conditions that that practitioner could possibly ever treat. And the problem with that is when people are looking for health and health care, they want the best person in that particular field. And a consumer, I understand how you can do this, but a consumer does not understand how you are an expert in acne and IBS at the same time. I mean, it's intuitive to you and I as functional practitioners, why we are experts in both of those things. But the people you are appealing to don't think you know much about either one. And it's kind of like going to a restaurant that specializes in sushi and Italian food at the same time. You're not going to go there, you're going to go to the sushi restaurant or you're going to go to the Italian restaurant, you're not going to go to the one that serves both, because we kind of just assume they're not going to be very good at either. And the same thing happens with health, only in this case, I think it's more important to people. And so it's one of those things we just tend to see. And I talk a lot about it, and I'm sure you talk about a lot about it in your own capacity, but it's really meeting consumers, not what the practitioner want, but out in the world and really being able to make that distinction.

Yeah. And that's super relevant because as functional medicine practitioners, anyone who's watching this, and even my calls earlier today were geared towards how do you narrow down what you do so that you can be perceived as the right choice for that individual? Because, you know, in medicine, for example, if somebody wants to specialize in pediatrics, then that's all they do, and they're almost pigeonholed into doing that. Or if they want to do GI health, then they go into gastroenterology or if they want to do neurology. So they're almost, you know, they're literally forced to do that. It becomes very clear to the person that they're seeing a specialist in this particular field of expertise. But the challenge with functional medicine is because we realize that everything's connected and that if you do help somebody with their gut, you're going to help their skin, you're going to help their brain, you're going to help many facets of their life. But I think what ends up happening is people cast such a broad net hoping that anyone and everyone comes to them. From a messaging standpoint, when you market to everyone, you're essentially marketing to no one. So that's great insight. Thanks for sharing that.

I'm going to add one thing there, Sachin, because I think. I think people hear that over and over again, that marketing message. They're like, I get it. But it feels like this massive risk to step beyond that chasm. And I think that's one of the things that I see as a differentiator between people who are just doing really well and they get it, is they've been willing to just listen to those people who have gone before them who are like, you gotta let go. And you Gotta trust. But as you start to focus your marketing message, you're gonna have more people come into your practice. I think trusting the people who walk that path before you and have experienced success, because they've been able to do that, you've got to listen. And the people who listen are the ones we're seeing amplify so much faster.

Yeah. And what might help some of you that are sitting on the fence about that or afraid of taking that plunge is that just go look at any specialist office and call them and find out how long it takes to get an appointment. Right. It takes months to get in to see these people, and it's because they are perceived and they are really experts in that topic, and that's all they do. And, you know, one of the things that, especially in the world of digital marketing, you know, how many different funnels are you going to create? Like, how many different landing pages and email automations and segmentations are you going to create? You know, it's impossible to do that. So I think that, you know, finding that one thing is super, super important, but maybe we can talk about how to identify what that one thing is. Like. I know you work a lot with entrepreneurs and high performers. I would imagine that, you know, you wanted to work with these people because they're very much like yourself and you understand them. But is there, besides, you know, working with people just like yourself or similar to you, is there a formula that people can use that you found consistently that works in identifying who that ideal audience is?

Yeah, I mean, we have a broader formula that we end up using with clinicians. But I was like, first and foremost, you've got to love and be passionate about the population that you are, that you are speaking to. And so just because you think it might be a good business model to deal with weight loss doesn't mean you're going to want to get up every day and actually address that with people. You really have to want to get out of bed every day. And then the second piece is you have to identify a problem. Like, you have to really solve a problem. And, you know, I have a lot of practitioners and they're like, I want to have just a general family practice. And I'm like, that's amazing. What problem are you solving for the general family? And they're kind of like, well, I just. And they don't have an answer for that. And I think Entrepreneurship 101 is what is the solution that you are bringing to the table and what's the density of value that exists in that solution. So when I'm working with high performers and entrepreneurs, we are like, I had someone in last week and she's just about to close her second round of funding. It was series B funding. They're looking at like $30 million for their company and she needed to be on and she was exhausted and tired. But like, we gave her really great short term solutions and then we have a longer term plan for her because if she goes down, the company goes down. There's a lot riding on that. And so for her, it's massive ROI on working together and sticking to the plan. And I almost think of that as a triangle. You're going to work with the elite high performers at the top or at the bottom. The other groups of people who really want assistance are where we're looking at conditions, we're looking at autoimmune conditions, we're looking at cancer, we're looking at Lyme disease, we're looking at very specific clinical problems where people are really willing to commit and engage in the restoration of their health. And when you're in the middle of that triangle, when you're just kind of like, oh, I'm just there to help people if they need help, you're not solving a specific problem. You really have to look at the audience, anything compelling for them as the first order of business in terms of where you go, I don't think it is sufficient anymore to say, I just do women's health. Can't just do women's health. You gotta solve a problem for women. And when you start to solve a problem and create conversation around the problem that you want to solve, then you start to intrigue the consumer and you start to intrigue your audience.

Yeah. And you know, one of the things that, you know, we talk about, and this is from Joe Polish, is you've got to enter the conversation that's going on in the customer's mind. I was speaking with a client today and he wanted to help people in the capacity of longevity. That's a pretty hot topic right now with things like the prolonged fasting diet and anti aging medicine and stem cells and regenerative medicine. So there's a lot of people like Dave Asprey that are kind of pushing this longevity envelope. And so there's a lot of interest in that. But I don't think anyone wakes up in the morning saying, man, I just want to live longer. There is a problem that they're trying to solve. And the only way to know if a longevity program works is when you die. Right. So the outcomes are a little bit difficult to measure, if you will. So you know that that's very important for people to recognize is really, you know, entering the conversation that the patient is having in their head. And if you can enter that conversation, tell a story, compel that person and draw them in, then you're much more likely to be successful. And any problem that we put out there, there are literally thousands of people that have that problem and it's unresolved. Right. So no matter what niche you go in, no matter how deep or segmented you get into that niche, there's going to be, you know, more people than you know what to do with that are suffering with it. So part of it is just, you know, not having that scarcity mindset. And unfortunately there's an abundance of people who are unwell these days. So there's no, there'll never be a shortage, I don't think in our lifetime, at least the shortage of sick people.

No. And when you target your message in on an audience and you solve a particular problem for those people who are still like, ah, I don't want to get pigeonholed, I'm like, go deep in the beginning and you can go broad in the end. You can pull in one particular audience. And then when you transform someone's health and they say to you, can my husband come in and see you? You can say, yeah, you know what, I am super passionate about solving these autoimmune conditions. I reserve a small portion of my practice as a general practice so I can serve the families of individuals like you. And so that enables you to create diversity. But you've got to start narrow and go broad. You can't go broad and expect to have the success attributed to people who are willing to go narrow.

All right, so speaking of success, I know that this is an area that you're really passionate about and that is really helping students who are coming out of school, you know, bright eyed and bushy tailed, who are super passionate and, you know, very obviously well educated. You've recognized a major deficiency in our school system, which is they don't teach any business classes. At least I know they did in chiropractic school. And from what I understand in naturopathic school, that's an area that, you know, gets very limited attention. I don't know why, I don't know what the premise is, because I would imagine that they want really successful practitioners out there who are rocking it so that skyrockets enrollment and, you know, people going through the process. But you've created a solution for that. And I'd love to dive into that a little bit more. So if anyone who's, you know, fresh out of school or within the first 18 months of graduating, there's a formula that you've put together that can really help those people. So let's talk about that for a minute.

Yeah. So we have a foundational business program called the First 18. And the vision for this program was really that we provide foundational business knowledge and the basics and the frameworks for you to get from that place where you're like, I got my license, what do I do to go from there through that first 18 months of practice? So how do we set up a 36 month financial plan? How do we create onboarding funnels? How do we create operational plans within your business? How do we put all of those pieces in place for you so that you have this really strong foundation for growth? And I was really passionate about this because I was looking around at my colleagues and I. And it was a, it's a total generalization. But there were, there were colleagues who came out and a lot of them had had conversations with family, maybe they've been involved in family businesses or whatnot, and they started to go to practice. And I found that there was a real disparity between individuals who had had that exposure and individuals who hadn't. And for the most part, the people who had been exposed to that were my male colleagues. And 80% of my graduating class was 50 female. And I was really fortunate when growing up in that My parents were divorced and I lived with my dad and my mom. But I spent a lot of time in my dad. And he said, you know what, there's two things that aren't going to happen for you. One, you'll never learn entrepreneurship in school. And two, I think in particular, as a woman, no one's going to talk to you about, they're not going to talk to you about money. So I'm going to talk to you about both. And so starting at a young age, my allowance was directly aligned to my acquisition of business knowledge. And so my dad would give me a book and he'd be like, we're gonna read it. And when I think that you know enough about what's going on, your allowance is going to increase accordingly. And I have to do other stuff too. But. And so he laid this foundation. We talked business. I had stocks I had to get up. This is back when you, like, you'd read the stocks in the newspaper and I'd have to read Those every day. And I had. I could tell you what they were, but doesn't matter. I would go and I would look at those every morning. And. And so he really just had this sort of concurrent education around entrepreneurship. And nine times out of 10, he would tell me that my business idea that I had wasn't going to work, and he would take me through why. And then one time out of 10, they would. And he'd be like, let's do it. Let's go and explore it. Let's see if it would play out. And so that opportunity, when I was young, completely crafted where I wanted to go. And so even as I graduated as a naturopathic doctor, I was like, I'm an entrepreneur first, and I'm a naturopathic doctor second. I applied the naturopathic philosophies to how I want to build businesses. But it is so ingrained in me that about sharing it, I kind of felt like it was a responsibility to share it, because I really, truly believe in the power of the medicine that we are all delivering. And so if we can get people strongly positioned through that first 18 months, two years, three years of their practice, now they can build what they want to build. Now they can take that passion that they have for their profession or for their capacity for contribution, and it doesn't fizzle away. They really have a strong platform upon which they can grow. So the program is really. I say it's foundational, and we initially marketed it just to new grads. And then we have more and more experienced practitioners reaching out, saying, I feel like I do not have good foundations. Can I participate? And so we have practitioners right from the first month they graduate through 10 years out who are just looking for really strong business foundations. And it's actually been a ton of fun to deliver.

Yeah. And as kind of auditing member of your community, you've got an awesome tribe, and it's just excellent what you've put together and the resources that you've compiled and the guest speakers that you bring on board. So it's. It's. I wish I had this when I graduated, because we didn't even have like, Facebook groups or any social media or any of these things. So there's never been, you know, from a technology standpoint, there's never been a better time to facilitate this type of learning and curate, you know, the expertise that you've been able to. One thing I did want to talk about, because I know there's certain elements of passion that are involved in this, but as an entrepreneur, we're always kind of pushing the boundaries, right? We're always pushing the boundaries of what's possible. And sometimes not to say that that can get some of us in trouble, but sometimes the laws and regulations don't necessarily permit us to do things, even if it's in the best interest of the patient and the practice, which ultimately is what we want. Right. We want practices where the practitioner succeeds, the patient succeeds, and of course, the community at large succeeds. So what are some of the regulatory roadblocks that maybe someone like yourself who's. Who's kind of pushing the envelope a little bit, has encountered?

Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's everything from basic marketing things where you can't include social proof, so you can't have testimonials, you can't have a Facebook page where people can leave reviews. And so when we have consumers who are used to being able to assess the validity of an offering based on some, what are, I would say now are social norms in terms of products and services, when we can engage in that, I think that becomes a challenge for a lot of practitioners. But, I mean, I do encourage my regulated practitioners to stick to the rules, like, it's not worth losing your license over these things. And you've got to be creative in terms of how you get around them. Creating an online program is an incredible way of being able to reach thousands of people, but there's very specific ways that you have to put an online program together if you are a regulated naturopathic doctor, for example. And that's not just, I'm in Ontario, that's not just in Ontario, but we see that in regulatory jurisdictions across North America because we're all regulated provincially or by. Or by state. And so a huge amount of our processes are working with practitioners who are like, listen, I'm regulated, I'm creative, I want to offer a bigger offering. And so we work in our coaching programs, we work with, within context of the regulatory frameworks of wherever they happen to be. But it's the basic social proof things and creating an effective online offering that end up being two really big roadblocks to regulated practitioners.

Have you ever been able to figure out why that's the case? I would imagine that you would want that, right?

Yeah. You want it. I mean, I kind of get. I get both sides. I think one of the challenges for a regulator is one, you don't inherently have entrepreneurs sitting at that. That table. And they have created regulations that have this lens of, well, everyone just wants to scale a clinical practice, which I just Think is a. Is a false assumption, but part of it is they do not know how to police. If I was offering an online program and someone was taking all of my advice at face value and like, oh, she's a doctor, she knows, and we missed something because we're delivering a general program, I just don't think they know how to police that. And I think there's lots of solutions that we could bring to the table, but I actually don't think it's their priority to brainstorm how we create solutions for the small percentage of people who want to really get outside the box. So I suspect it's going to be an ongoing challenge in progressively regulated jurisdictions, because I don't think it's the priority of a regulator to look at how they can have us be more entrepreneurial. I think they're challenged enough and their budgets are, are sufficiently constrained that they're like, we just got to stick to people who are doing procedural work in clinical practices. So I don't see those pieces changing anytime soon. But what I do see happening is new technology coming to the table that enable us to come back and deliver care and programming in entirely scalable and innovative ways. And because regulations, these aren't cut and dry rules, rules are open for interpretation. So if you are interpreting how to keep a patient safe and you're able to leverage new pieces of technology to deliver innovative programs, I think that's where we're going to be able to push a little bit more give and take in the future. I'm kind of excited about what that might mean for us.

Yeah, that's awesome. So I wanted to talk about a couple things. One, I wanted to talk about a term that you've coined called anthropology. I did want to talk about that and maybe we could talk a little bit about your podcast. But you've also got some pretty amazing events coming up, which I'm looking forward to attending, and we could talk about that as well. So first, let's start with anthropology. Define that for us.

Yeah. So entrepreneur is the steady and amplification of entrepreneur. And ironically, that term came to me when I was out for a run while attending the Bulletproof conference. I was like, ah, that's totally it. Because I love and I don't think entrepreneurs are just people who are out building their own businesses. I'm literally staring at the towers of downtown Toronto right now. And I think entrepreneurs are hidden everywhere. These are innovative thinkers and go getters and people who are on a mission. And so my community within Entrepreneur, we have the Anthropology podcast and our clinic anthropology performance labs, we focus almost exclusively on female entrepreneurs. And how do we optimize the health and wellness of female entrepreneurs? Because I think the biohacking and all the tools that come to the table for health performance, they're a lot of the time driven by men and we have unique needs and we've got different hormone profiles and so they don't always apply the same way. And I'm just super excited about giving women a different leg up. So we say with entropology that we're optimized on performance of badass women and we focus on brain, body balance and business in the podcast.

Awesome. And as a practitioner, I know you're practicing one day a week. Is there a particular type of person that you, I know you like working with entrepreneurs, but that's within entrepreneurs. Is there a particular subset of female entrepreneurs or particular businesses that you're really passionate about or particular types of individuals that you're passionate about helping or supporting?

Yeah, you know, I really love working with women who, when we sit down together, have a very clear sense of their purpose. And this is almost entirely the opposite of what you and I spoke about earlier in this interview where we're like, you gotta solve a specific problem. But for me, when people are mission driven and they are trying to accelerate or invoke their purpose in really specific ways, often with with my population, in businesses, when that is interrupted by something going wrong in their health, they are willing to do anything to get it back on track. And so I ask everyone who comes into our practice to clearly outline what their purpose is. And some people, their eyes light up and I'm like, that is not why I'm here. And other people, they're like, ah, this is the mission that I'm aligned to. So those mission driven individuals, we have a process in terms of our onboarding where we can really identify and pull that out for people. That is my ideal, that's my ideal patient. And I have a team of incredible colleagues who work with other subsets of the entrepreneurial population. But when you know where you are going, we're going to get along really well.

So what are some of the health challenges that these entrepreneurs are facing? Is there a common golden thread that you see amongst all of them?

Yeah, I see a lot of anxiety, I see a lot of adrenal fatigue. I see a lot of. Because there's adrenal fatigue, we usually end up seeing some element of thyroid dysregulation. Always kind of like you burn out those, those adrenals and then, then the thyroid is the next to go and then we tend to see a hormonal cascade and dysregulation behind that. So I end up doing a lot of work with hormones. It's a bias of mine. My degree is in reproductive physiology, so I tend to see things through that, that particular lens. But I think for a lot of women where they're first starting to feel the pushback of their health, it's that they've never felt as anxious before or they've never felt as tired and they've always had tools to be able to manage that fatigue and suddenly they can't do it. And so that ends up being the first tipping point for a lot of individuals when they come through our door because it's getting in the way of their purpose.

Yeah. When the coffee stops working, they come see you.

Right, right.

You know, I love working with entrepreneurs, as do you, because, you know, we're both, you know, very mission and purpose driven and it's very relatable with those individuals. And I know if something takes me off purpose, whether it's a health challenge or whether it's an emotional challenge or whether it's a physical challenge, you know, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get back on board. Now, one of the things that you're doing also to again, you're a solo entrepreneur, so you're always up leveling. Like every time I talk to you, it's super exciting because there's always something new and exciting that you're working on and you've actually got an event coming up which I wanted to talk about as well. Maybe you can tell us a little bit more about that and who it's for. And for those of you that are listening, you know who's a good fit to attend this event.

Yeah. So a month today we have an event taking place and it's called Impact Lives. And Impact Lives is a live three day event taking place in downtown Toronto. And our core audience for that are credentialed practitioners, so NDs, functional medicine practitioners, nutritionists, RMTs, health coaches, chiros. I could keep going. I don't want to miss anyone. Psychotherapists, but individuals who are really, they're tired of just delivering in a one on one model or they're tired of fighting for every client who doesn't comes through the door or they're just really curious and intrigued about how they can actually up level their business and their capacity for contribution. And so I love attending events, as you know, that's where we always end up seeing each other. It's not in Toronto, but like in some far off land. But I love it for a few reasons. One, there's often really fantastic information that comes into play. There's incredible communities of individual. But the other thing I always do when I go to events is I usually tack on a day at the end and I always stay a day later for implementation because I don't want to just go and hear a whole bunch of new ideas and then not have the time and space to implement them. So we're doing three things that impact lives. We're really focusing on the cultivation of community. As part of that event, we've got some incredible keynote speakers who I've asked them to balance mindset and practical implementable tools for practitioners. And then we have optional implementation sessions and so we're running those throughout the course of the conference. And so if you want to start a podcast, great. I brought in my podcast team and they're going to tell you everything you need to know to launch your podcast. You want to build your first funnel? Great. We brought in our team. They're going to teach you everything that you need to know technology wise to build in that funnel. And then we've got systems on the back end of our platform where if you need ongoing help, you can access that ongoing help. It's just part of being a member of our community. So, you know, I think we've got a little bit for everyone, but I think everyone reaches a point in their business where they're like, I just want a little bit more. I want to be able to bring my own creative juices to the table. And we wanted to create some framework and some inspiration and some mindset pieces to help people get there.

Okay, amazing. So I'll be sure to share a special link where people can register for that. And can you give us the date?

Yeah. So we have a launch party and a really cool panel. We're going to announce some more details on, on the, on the Thursday night which is October 25th and then we're full day on October 26th and we're at the Globe and Mail center in downtown Toronto on King Street. And then on Saturday we're going to go from about 8am to 2pm so we'll be done midday. So we've got a little bit of balance of family time for people over the course of the. Over the course of the weekend. So 25, 26 and 27 of October.

Nice. That's awesome. And you threw this in There. So I'm going to ask you about this because you've got a family and always wondering how you balance attending all these events and having your family taken care of. So for practitioners who are listening and do have family members as well, how do you find that family work? Entrepreneurial balance? Because you've got a lot on your plate. You don't just run a practice, you're coaching practitioners, you're putting on live events, traveling to other events. I know you just came back from an event. So what's the secret there?

I mean, listen, I don't think there's one. I don't think there is one secret. And Laurie Kennedy and I talk about this all the time where you feel like you're succeeding at one and you're failing at the other. And so that guilt of balance is something that I feel like I actually, I just have to confront that every single day. I speak really openly. I have three daughters, so seven, five and two. And I speak really openly about them, that this is a family business. And so as part of it being a family business, we all have responsibilities that we bring to the table. And so I talk to them a lot about the things that we're creating and why we're creating them. So they understand I'm not just, I'm not just leaving them, but it's part of something bigger and they get really excited about that. So that's part of the conversation that happens at home. And I won't lie, I have an incredibly supportive husband. And so if he, if I say I have this event and I think it's gonna be really valuable to attend, he's like, no problem at that. I've got it. And he really does, he's got it. So I mean, we've got a tribe of people on our back end that help make it happen. And the one thing I would never ever say is that I am self made because I am not. There is this massive team of people, literally sometimes it's a massive team just to take care of my three kids just so I could get to the airport. So it's constantly, it's constantly a juggle. But I really am committed to the purpose and the vision of what it is that we are doing. And so I try to be really solution oriented around how we create that balance. But I don't have meetings before 9:30 in the morning. I never do. I don't want to feel rushed and not present with my kids in the morning. And I have control over my schedule in the evening. And so for me, having that element of freedom and not feeling like I have to do things for someone else, that takes me away from my family. I just bring a different energy to the table. So it works for us.

Yeah. And I know that every time I send you an email, I get an autoresponder. So you've built up this kind of. Well, it's great, right? Like, it's awesome to be able to do that. And you give people options on, hey, how to get a solution or answer faster than, you know, if they needed an emergency contact, for example. So, you know, some practitioners are afraid to do that, and I'll admit that I'm a little bit afraid to do that because I don't know what the other person is going to think. Was there any resistance in setting something like that up for you? Initially.

There was a little bit, but what I actually found is I just couldn't service people anymore. And I remember Brene Brown talking about this notion of boundaries, and she's like, you know, your boundaries are really extended when you just can't bring your authentic self to the table anymore. So I remember our first podcast, Waver Dead. You're like, I really welcome email. And you had this really loving perspective on it because you're like, it's speaking to what we're. We're growing. And I was like, for about six months, I tried to love my email, but I couldn't. I actually just had a ton of resentment around the fact that I was trying to execute on something. And then I would get this unexpected flood of questions from wherever for no apparent reason. And so I couldn't, actually, I couldn't hang out in my inbox from an authentic place anymore. And so my patients know if they need me, they can reach out to a team member and they'll always find me and I'll get back to them. So I'm actually more responsive and more lovely and more kind in the replies that I deliver because things have been. Have been. Have been triaged. So I actually feel okay about it because I know that I'm just a nicer person as a result of those.

I'm happy and honored because I always get a response from you. So thank you for eventually always replying. Yeah, no, that's awesome. And, you know, speaking of team, like, for people who are looking to help create this business of theirs, where do people start with hiring someone? What's that tipping point where you realize, okay, I can't do this all on my own and I need to bring somebody on because I feel like, even though practitioners that I coach, I have a pretty big team and everything's nicely delegated and everyone's got their responsibilities. Then I coach people and they're trying to do everything that I do by themselves, right? Probably naturopaths and people that you coach that are trying to do everything that you do by themselves, and they're like, burning out and things are. They start projects and they never quite finish them. What advice can you give to somebody who needs to do that but just hasn't just convinced themselves that they can't do everything? Where do you go with someone like that?

Yeah, well, I mean, I always quote Brendan Bouchard on this, and I'll get it wrong, but he was like, your busy work is not your life's work. And every time I hear him say that, I'm like, I could delegate more because it's so true. You could spend your whole day applying emails and setting up all those things. And honestly, I think you should probably do that in the beginning because you don't likely have the cash flow to support the outsourcing of all of those. Those pieces. But, you know, I'll often say we talk about this in the first 18, actually. I want you to start to track what you do on a daily basis and the things that go into your agenda virtually or on paper. And I want you to color code it. And so the stuff that is uniquely yours that you have to do gets highlighted in yellow. And then stuff that is busy work, replying to emails or doing canva or doing whatever that could actually be handed to someone else, I want you to color code that in a different color. And for the most part with new practitioners, I say once you get to a point where 12 hours of your week, and this is new practitioners, 12 hours of your week is now spent doing busy work. Now's probably a good time to find someone who can slowly start to take over those tasks. And the other thing is, I'll pick another color for people who are stuck doing tasks where they hate doing it. And so we all have those things in our business where, like, I'm the best person for it, and I'm actually pretty good at it, but I circle around it for days because it's not what I actually want to do. That's another one that you really just. You just need to flag as something that when you are able to, you need to outsource that because energy comes from all areas. It's not just your supplements and your food, it's the activities that you engage in. And so you just take things off your plate that aren't servicing you and that aren't fueling your mission because they will drag you down, they'll exhaust you over the long term. So we use a color coding system in terms of how we get people to that point. And when we're working with people, we have a sense of, like, what their budget might be for that and what kind of cash flow they need to support that piece. But I often will use the 12 hour limit as just a benchmark for people. If you're spending more than 12 hours of your week doing busy work, you need to be doing what you're really great at and driving business into your business.

Yeah, absolutely. That's super, super important. And I feel a lot of people get stuck, right? And they burn out when they're not bringing the right team members on board and they're stuck in this idea that they're the best at it when there could be somebody way better at what they're doing than themselves. Have you ever done the half versus elf exercise? Are you familiar with that?

No.

So this is, I'll give you a great tip that's really helped me and it's kind of, it's in alignment with what we're talking about. So half stands for hard, annoying, lame and frustrating, and elf stands for easy, lucrative and fun. So I'm borrowing this from my friend Joe Polish. And every quarter, I actually have my entire team do this exercise so we can find out what in their day or task list is hard, annoying, lame, and frustration frustrating. It could be a project they're working on. It could be a person in their life. It could be a team member. It's never really a team member, but it could be a team member. It could be me. I hope it's never me. But they list all these things and then we list the things that are easy, lucrative and fun. And then what we do is we kind of look at their roles and identify, hey, if I move you here, then you're going to be doing things that are easy, lucrative and fun. And believe it or not, if you're listening to this, that the stuff that you find hard, annoying, lame and frustrating, other people find easy, lucrative and fun. And so what we do is we review this, you know, every quarter and we sit down as a team and then anything that pops up that nobody else finds easy, lucrative and fun, we then parse out to vendors. So we have our vendors take over those tasks because they're obviously, you know, it's easy, lucrative and fun. For them. And it's way cheaper than hiring someone. And when I say cheaper, it's intellectually and mentally and energetically cheaper to hire an expert than it is to try to train someone and get them to do the things that you want them to do and learn on your dime and your time. So, you know, that's kind of a methodology that we've been using. And it was really interesting because when I assigned this task to my clients, a lot of the things that they've been doing that are hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating, the moment they write it down, there's something magical that the universe starts doing and it starts finding solutions for them.

That's great.

They've been so convinced that they've got to do these things and no one else because they don't like them or because they find them annoying. Other people are going to find them annoying. But, you know, take accounting, for example. That would be my half. That would be super hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating for me. But there's people that spend their entire life doing this. Right. And they love it. They love when the numbers balance and all that good stuff. So maybe that, you know, for those listening, that could be a really easy exercise for them. And just articulating the things that you find frustrating sets in motion the reticular activating system and the universe to start conspiring to find a solution for you.

Yeah, I love that. And it's timely. I do a coaching program called Strategic Coach, and I'm heading there tomorrow, and we're talking about how to bring your team into play. So I know Joe Polish and Dan Sullivan are good friends. So maybe tomorrow the universe is going to hit me on the head with this once again. So your timing is perfect.

Nice. Nice. I've got Dan on my bucket list, so it's exciting to see that you're working with him. I'm not surprised that you're working with them. That's awesome.

Yeah, I'm excited.

Cool. Well, Megan, this has been super awesome. I appreciate your time and your energy and your continued innovation, and I love the inspiration that you provide for me, but also the profession as well. So keep doing what you're doing. Keep doing. You keep. I'm going to try to get as many people to attend this event as possible because I know it's going to be badass just like you, and it's going to be amazing. Do you want to talk about some of the speakers that are going to be there?

Yeah, I mean, we've got some pretty incredible people. Susan Hobson's, coming in in the morning and she's an NLP performance coach, so she's going to be talking about mindset. We have Dave Ruel coming in from Moncton and he's talking about optimizing systems and time management. The man basically creates time for you. He's amazing. Mary Shores is coming up from the U.S. mary is a trainer with Hay House and she's talking to everyone about how to write a book proposal that a publisher is actually going to read. And she's running an implementation session. And Joy McCarthy is here. She's joining me live on stage. And then we've got Dan Kalish and James Maskel and Joseph Moscara and Alex Keller from Fullscript, and we've got a whole slew of people and they're going to be doing some live coaching from stage. So we've got. We've got a pretty incredible lineup of people who are doing some pretty badass things.

Yeah, it's super, super exciting. So, once again, thank you so much.

Thank you.

I wish you continued success and I look forward to seeing you in person. And this time it'll actually be in Toronto.

Right, finally, right? Yeah, absolutely. We got to showcase this amazing city.

Yeah. So thanks again and have an amazing rest of your day.