EP055: Upleveling Your Functional Medicine Practice with Dr. Peter Osborne

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 and 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.

Welcome everyone to Perfect Practice. I am Satchin Patel and today with me, I have a very near and dear friend and mentor, Dr. Peter Osborne. Today we're going to be discussing the state of affairs when it comes to functional medicine and how practitioners can maximize their success. I've been looking forward to this conversation for quite some time, Dr. Peter. So thank you for joining us today.

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. I love talking functional medicine and helping other docs get to that level of success.

Well, I know your time is limited today. You've got some amazing things going on with your family. You said your son is a senior and he's got to make some important decisions today. So I want to definitely honor your time. So I'm going to jump right in if that's okay with you, so that we can, you know, leverage your knowledge as much as possible during our conversation together. Is that all right with you?

Yeah, absolutely.

Let's do it. All right. So, you know, you and I have been working together for a few years now, and what never ceases to amaze me is how you continue to grow and how you continue to expand your mission and your message. And it's, you know, it's very inspiring as a follower and student of yours to see how you keep moving the needle for all of us. And one of the things that I visualize, and I'm kind of paraphrasing from my friend Andrew, is I see you as a snowplow, kind of that head snowplow, plowing that snow in the middle of the night. And then the other snowplows are following along and kind of making the path a little bit wider so all the other cars can follow behind. So I really wanted to acknowledge you and show my depth of gratitude for everything you've shared with me, everything you've shared with our community and the students that you mentor and, you know, the millions of lives that you're impacting with your online presence. And for those of you that are, you know, learning about Dr. Osborne for the first time, he's been helping me, you know, not only expand my practice, expand my influence, expand my mind, and really show me what it takes to be a functional medicine practitioner and really transform your community. So I have a great amount of respect for you. I don't want to call it a debt because I don't think that's the right word, but I love walking along your side and helping really move the needle for everybody. So thank you so much. I did want to make sure I said that because it's something that maybe you don't always hear, but you have been very influential in so many people's lives. So thank you again for. For being here and, you know, really showing us the path.

Well, you're welcome. And I would just like to reciprocate that by just saying thank you for just being a part of my life. I find it's much more richer and much more fulfilled when I can just offer what I have in my head and my knowledge and my experience. And to see somebody run with it and really expand on it and make it even greater is a gift in and of itself. So thank you for being such a great student and now such a great master of your craft.

Well, thank you. That means a lot to me. I appreciate that. So let's do this. I want to ask you because you've coached hundreds of people, and so I want to ask you, what is it that you feel is holding functional medicine practitioners back right now? What is it? I mean, it's probably more than one thing, but what are maybe the most common things that you see holding practitioners back?

Their own mindset. It's really where it begins. A lot of functional practitioners, you know, they spend a lot of time and a lot of effort getting an education, and they don't value themselves as much as they should. So a lot of times it starts from a loss of or a lack of value perception or self value. Not that they don't have self esteem. It's not the same thing. What I'm really referring to is if I charge for my hour, for example, my hour, somebody comes to see me is a $300 hour. But that's just where the value begins. There are a lot of practitioners that are 70 bucks or 50 bucks or 100 bucks an hour because they don't value what they know, and they don't think that the people around them are going to have value or hold value for that service. That's just one small example. But value perception plays a huge role in and plays a huge problem and is a big burden for many practitioners because what they charge, or they're scared to charge what they're worth because they don't know how valuable they actually are. Like the knowledge that all of you have listening tonight, if you took functional medicine training, you're saving lives and that's invaluable. And so you should have a price tag attached to your service that reflects that value. Now, that doesn't mean you've got to charge everybody $25,000 for an hour consult or for a package deal, but you should be able to make a very lucrative living to where you have good work life balance, where you have basically an overall scenario within your business, within your family, within your practice that keeps you healthy, right? And keeps you earning a good income because you deserve a good income. There's not a profession in the world or there's not a person in the world that doesn't think the term doctor and then think that person should be making a good income, right? So you should have that same reflection. Even if you're not a doctor, let's say you're a health coach, you're a functional nutritionist, or you're a naturopath, or you're. I didn't mean to say it because naturopaths are doctors. So no offense to you naturopaths, whether you're a chiropractor, whether you're a nurse practitioner, whether you're a physician assistant, it doesn't matter. You should charge what you're worth. And if you're saving lives, you're worth a lot of money. And so again, that doesn't mean you have to gouge or have price gouging with your, your clientele, but you should really, really look at what you're worth and you should put a price tag to that. And you should really think hard about that. Is one of the first lessons that I sit down with, with people is I actually make them like write out what it cost them. Not just in financial loss in terms of schooling, but I have them sit down and do the time map of, okay? How many hours did you spend going through college? How many hours did you spend did you spend going through extracurricular or postgraduate coursework? How many nights away from your family studying? How many trips, flying on an airplane, going across the pond, or going from state to state or going from lecture hall to lecture hall have you actually spent and invested in your knowledge? That's the value that's the value that it cost you. And if it cost you time, you should understand that time is the most precious resource that any of us have. It's the only non renewable resource in the world. And if you lose your time and if you give your time to getting your education, there should be a value attached to that. Don't minimize the time loss to your knowledge and don't minimize the experience gain that you have by applying that knowledge. So each year you should raise your prices as your experience grows so that again, they reflect your mastery of the topic of functional medicine and how you can deliver that to people and actually save their lives.

You know, super, super valuable. You know, I'm actually taking notes, so when you see me looking down, whoever's watching this video, I'm taking notes, as you should probably be too, as well. A lot of valuable nuggets that Dr. Osborne pointed out, and here's maybe one thing that I can add, if that's okay, is that it's not about how much you're worth necessarily, but how much is that patient's life worth? People will not pay you what you think you're worth. They'll pay you what they think they're worth. And sometimes we have to show the patient how valuable of an asset they are, you know, to their community, to their family, to their spouse, to their children, and get them to see the value in themselves. And when we can understand our value and the patient can understand their value, then there's going to be no problem exchanging resources and energy, which is money and time in this case. But if they don't see their value and we don't see our value, then it really creates a lose, lose. And I feel, And I know, Dr. Osborne, you agree with this as well, because I learned it from you, is that when people pay, they pay attention. And it's the people who pay attention that get results. And the people that get results become billboards, not only of our practice, but of our message that you can heal yourself and that propels the whole profession forward. But if you have a bunch of people that aren't compliant, they're not listening, they don't take the whole process seriously, then really the mission dies right there. And, and I know you've got a very, very big, hairy, audacious goal, as we call it, and that's to help not only millions of patients, but also tens of thousands of practitioners. And I think that what you said there is extremely important and everyone really needs to process that. You know, don't let the simplicity of this concept allow you to overlook it Because I feel that many people over complicate what it means to be successful. Success is actually really, really simple. If it was complex, then we wouldn't be able to dilute it. It's not. Success isn't easy, but it's simple. I guess that's the best way to frame it. So these are timeless pearls that Dr. Osborne is offering. So I just wanted to pause there for a second and acknowledge that because I think people are maybe waiting to hear something like extremely technical to think they're going to transform their practice. But understanding your worth and the client's worth is so valuable.

And I will just say on that note, when you are like when you're out there in your community teaching the message of functional medicine as part of your marketing arm to recruit people to come into your practice, a lot of doctors get really tied up in this right here. They get tied up in wanting to charge less or feeling like they have to do more because they're in a profession where we're supposed to give, we're supposed to give freely. But realize that when you give of yourself without reward, you're not. You're actually stealing from yourself and you're letting somebody else steal from you. You have to love yourself enough to charge what you're worth. So your self value is very intrinsic. Now, on another note, you also want to understand that when you're filtering your potential new clients and patients, some people are going to pay attention and some people are not going to pay attention. Like some people's time is right for functional medicine and some are not. And one of the best lessons I ever learned was don't be the pursuer, be the pursued. If you really want to have success in your practice, you can't be the ambulance tracer of functional medicine, chasing after people who maybe aren't ready to hear what you have to offer. There are a lot of people that need functional medicine, but there are not necessarily. It's not the same amount of people that want functional medicine. So you're a business. People spend money on things they want to achieve or things they want to purchase. So you have to make sure that when you're putting your message out there that you're using the message in such a way that you're recruiting people who are ready for you and not necessarily recruiting people who want to try this thing out for a little while and see what happens, because that's a waste of your time and that's a waste of their time. And so honor both of yourselves by not entertaining mediocrity within your practice and only ensuring that you recruit people who are actually a candidate for your care. And that that comes in many ways. If you want to give away free information, like put that in your funnels, implement your technology, create videos, create blog posts, the world can access those things for free. And you're doing the world a great service by offering the information that's in your head and immortalizing that into some type of digital medium that anyone, anywhere in the world can access 24, 7. But don't equate that to the people who are sitting across from you. Like, don't equate that free knowledge or what you're giving to the world as what you might equate to somebody who's there who's ready to pay for your services and ready to value themselves enough to honor the relationship you're going to embark upon.

No, I love that. Thank you. I very much appreciate and agree with everything that you just said there. So you touched on automation a little bit. You touched on immortalizing yourself. So let's talk about that a little bit more because I feel like that's something that practitioners might be overlooking a little bit as well. So what's your take on personalization versus automation?

You've got to do both and your automation needs to be personalized. And so when you're getting ready to craft automation, I would just say look at the redundancies within your practice that are blatantly obvious and somewhat painful for you. Not that you don't love what you do. But like, here's I'm going to give, I'm going to share an example that I experienced at a point in my practice. It was about year 10N and this was, you know, this was. I've been in practice now about 20 years. So this was really kind of at the verge of when automation really started to become popular. Because before that we didn't really have the technology. You had to have custom coders come in and build this whole thing out. And it cost you $100,000 to automate what you can do with a simple software program today. So I hit a point where I was talking about gluten so much in a one on one setting with my patients that I just, you know, I have to psych myself up for the next conversation because it's just like redundancy and redundancy. And it's not that I didn't feel fulfilled by sharing that knowledge, it's just that I didn't need to necessarily be present for 10 separate meetings with 10 separate people to talk about the exact same thing. So my first level of automation wasn't really automation, it was group classing. So we turned one appointment into 10 appointments into a conference room where we could talk about the same topic to a group of people instead of using a one on one scenario. And it didn't necessarily reduce my price structure to do that. So because the information was just as valuable and they still had the opportunity to ask questions. So we took that pain point and we didn't automate it, at least not at first. We basically grouped it, we just grouped it into a group meeting. Then from there I thought, well, why should I have to bring all these people into my office? Let's make it easier for them and let's, let's try digitizing the same content, only let's do it in such a way where we can actually add visuals and we can add imagery and we can add sound effects and we can add video into a presentation. It's more like almost like a movie about how to go gluten free and everything that you want to know about going gluten free. We created about an hour and 15 minute PowerPoint presentation with all the bells and whistles. And then we basically, instead of having 10 people come into the office, we'd sign them up for the webinar where they could register for the webinar. And at the end of the webinar, of course, they had the opportunity to ask any questions that they weren't clear about. So they were still getting me. But what they weren't getting is, and what I wasn't getting was 10 hours right of me in a separate one on one scenario. So basically what I did is I shaved 10 hours off my schedule and I added 10 minutes to the schedule. So in essence I got on at the end of a webinar that was prerecorded and spent 10 minutes or so answering the questions. Do kind of the last minute mop up from the knowledge and the education of the webinar. So what took me used to take me more than 10 hours. Because you know when you're in the room with a patient, a lot of times they'll keep you over. You know how that goes. Sometimes, you know, a 50 minute appointment will go 60 minutes or 65 or 70 minutes. And sometimes it needs to, it needs to go a little long depending on that person sitting across the desk from you. But what that did is it, is it made sure that the appointment would never go over. It was 75 minutes of controlled classroom lecture material that they absolutely needed to have it. I never forgot anything because I included everything in the webinar that needed to be included so I would never have an appointment structure where I missed. I missed talking about something or forgot talking about something with that individual because it was all prerecorded and we could control the information, and then they could always feel like it was personal because they were allowed to ask me questions at the end. So it was one of those things where we saved them a trip into the office. Right? We digitized the information to be more thorough in the delivery of that information. We saved them time. They didn't have to drive to and from the office. We saved myself time. So it was a win, win, win situation all the way across the board. But we also saved my staff time because now we don't have to have phone calls to 10 separate people to schedule appointments. Instead, we have a universal email that we can send out that says, this is the link to register to the webinar. Make sure that you go register right now. So it saved everybody a lot of time and a lot of resources, but it actually improved client satisfaction. Because when the webinar is done, here's the real beauty. You send them the replay. You send them a link to the replay. So now they have that immortalized knowledge. If they ever need to go back and access, hey, I'm not sure about this or I'm not sure about that, they can rewatch the webinar. So it also saves you time over the long haul, because now your staff's not being inundated with redundancies of questions because something wasn't covered or something was something you forgot to cover something. So now really, what that does is it exponentiates the amount of time that you save over time. It saves you time up front. All it takes is the investment of you creating something. For me, talking about gluten came easy. So PowerPoint, a couple of hours of preparation to really craft and create the PowerPoint. If something I've been doing for 10 years was quite easy to do. And so that initial work of putting in a good solid couple of hours has really allowed me at this point, because we've been doing it now for close to 10 years. Think of that in time savings per week, 10 hours per week, multiplied by 52 weeks a year multiplied by 10 years. What does that do? How many months of your life is that? Just saved me? And that's what I encourage all of you to do. You all have an Expertise or specialty. Maybe it's gluten, maybe it's something else, maybe it's autoimmunity, maybe it's neurological, whatever that is. You have a core curriculum that you teach each client or patient that comes through the door. And if you can immortalize that core curriculum, not only can you reduce the confusion, which is a valuable service to your clientele, because when you reduce their confusion, you increase their follow through and compliance. And I don't know about you, but when somebody's more compliant, they get better quicker. They become a bigger billboard, right? They're out there saying more and greater things about you and they gain your trust and you gain their trust. Like there's this dual mutual relationship of benefit. They're benefiting you because you feel good that you've been able to help them, but you're also earning an income for something you feel good about. And they feel good. And now they can go make a bigger income and a bigger impact in their own families, in their own world, because they're not struggling day to day just trying to keep their head above water now they're thriving in life and so they can enhance their lives and so many others lives around them. So think about that. When you're thinking about automation, think about that painful point that you are redundant in. And start with one thing. Don't get overwhelmed by I need to have Infusionsoft or ActiveCampaign or I need to be on GoToWebinar webinar jam. Don't let all that overwhelm you. Start with one aspect. Go ahead and automate it. Create a simple video of that automation and then hire the technology. Hire out the technology. Your job is not to become the tech expert. Like I understand the concept of what needs to happen from a tech perspective, but I am not the implementer in my office and really never, never really have been. And I don't encourage you all to go become web experts or webinar experts, you know, outsource that information. But nobody, you cannot outsource your brain. So you have to make sure that you put what's in your head into some type of immortalized version, preferably video, because your patients will prefer video when it comes to education. And then turn that loose to the tech people and then they can get it automated and they can get it set up for you. And that way you don't have that headache or that pain point anymore. And again, for every hour you save in a one on one meeting with somebody that didn't have to be spent in one on one that frees up your time to see one more new patient, one more new client. So think about that from a week to week perspective. If you save 10 hours a week, that's 10 new patients that you can see. And in the lifetime customer value of a patient, if we're really talking business here, I encourage you all to think about lifetime customer value because it's a metric that if you understand in your practice, then you'll know how better to engage with your marketing and establish what your return on investment will be. But in my office, the lifetime customer value of a compliant patient is well over $20,000. So when you look at that 10 hours of time saved that I have saved in a weekly basis, and you multiply that by the potential for 10 new patients, if I fill those 10 hours with new patients, what I'm actually getting out of that is a couple of hundred thousand dollars a week over a lifetime of years. And that's where, when you can leverage your time and your knowledge and your practice in such a way, that's when you can do amazing things because you can. Like me, I work three days a week and I won't work more. I won't work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I refuse to see people on Thursdays or Fridays because that's downtime for me to either think about more about what I'm doing in life and what I want to do with my family, or it's downtime for me to think about the business of my business, which is very important to have within your practice as well. So I know that was long, but I just feel like if you can dial in that automation, you can earn money, you can save money, you can save your staff, you can save your patients, you can create a lot of, a lot of solutions to the pain points of redundancy in your life. And redundancy is the killer. Because one more point here, the inside the box when we get comfortable is when we stop growing. So if you're being super repetitive in your practice, then you don't have time for you to grow your own thoughts or to grow in your own thoughts. So like, one of the things I'm also committed to on a weekly basis is research outside of the clinic. I like to do research at least five hours a week, reading journals, reading articles, learning more, and then coming back to the practice ready to apply that new information. So again, think of it as if you're in a place of redundancy where you're just being a broken record, repeating yourself. You're not growing. So Automation doesn't just allow you to do better with your patients, with your office. It also allows you to grow as a person.

This is. I'm actually taking notes, so my apologies. This is powerful, powerful information for all of you that are listening. I'd love to show us some love because Dr. Osborne threw down some epic gems there and actually posed a few questions for me. Because when you said that we want to think about the average lifetime value of our patients being tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, potentially even millions of dollars. Right? Because you never know how many people they might refer to you, and it's over the lifetime. I think a lot of people think they're kind of stuck in the thinking. I call it triple digit thinking. Right. So it basically means that they're stuck in the hundred dollar problems. And because they're stuck in the hundred dollar problems, they're not solving $100,000 problems. And so when did you have this kind of awakening? Because, you know, I find that for myself, there was kind of like a turning point that happened for me, and then I could see the light. But was there a turning point for you? Like, was there an event or a turning point where you realized, okay, this is what my time is worth. This is what the lifetime value of the customer is worth. And you were able to kind of think in a much different scale, Because I think that's where. That's where I was getting is when did you have this awakening of scale at the impact that you could have? Because I feel like a lot of practitioners don't realize the impact that they can have, and that's what's holding them back.

For me, really, the awakening came with the pain of redundancy. For any of you who have ever done any personality testing. I'm a fan of personality testing. I know you are too, Satchin. Colby testing told me a lot about myself. Predominantly, I'm a quick start. So if you're familiar with Colby, a quick start is basically in a nutshell. It's somebody who comes up with new ideas all the time, but does. Doesn't necessarily implement all those new ideas. So ideas are exploding in a person's brain day in and day out. And if you're so bogged down in redundant tasks that you're half. That you have to do in the nature of running your business, then you never have time to implement any of these great ideas. And it creates a state of depression, which is what it did for me. It created kind of a scenario where I was like, why am I sad? My life is Pretty good. My practice is successful and you know, but it was because I wasn't able to grow and expand the ideas that were coming into my head from that perspective. I really had that kind of aha. Epiphany, which was how can I implement more of my ideas? Because my ideas are life changing too. And I think if I can implement more of these, I can help more people. And so that's where it really happened for me. It was again, it was about 10 years ago. There was a lot of things that happened to me around the 10 year mark in production practice that were really quite aha. Or epiphanies, light bulb moments, whatever, however you want to, whatever you want to call them. But that was a big turning point for me because when I realized the power of scale and I realized the power of doing the work once right, and if the work was done right, if it was really thought through and done correctly and accurately and you didn't have to repeat it, and the idea of not having to be redundant and having that time to do more to me was just life changing.

I love that. It kind of reminds me of this idea of the entrepreneur mindset versus the employee mindset. And an employee is guaranteed to get paid for the hour that they spend doing something, but they're also guaranteed not to get paid for that hour ever again. Whereas an entrepreneur, the mindset shift that all of us should have. Watching this and listening to what Dr. Osborne is saying is that if you do something right, and let's say it takes you an hour, let's say it takes you 10 hours to do it, but you could get paid for those hours over and over and over again. That's how you scale your message, that's how you scale your influence and scale your impact. So if you want to have a big impact, I mean, you wouldn't be watching this if you didn't want to have a big impact. You'd be watching Netflix or binge watching something else. But you're here because you want to have an impact. And so what Dr. Osborne is saying is that you can do something right, Think it through, let the technology work for you. It's never been an easier time. You know, you said something earlier. You know, used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to design software that now, you know, a hundred dollar software can do for us, or even a couple hundred dollar software can do. You know, people, I hear people complaining about, you know, the soft costs of software and, you know, it's like maybe 200 or $300 a month. Depending on the size of somebody's list or, you know, what they're trying to do with the software. And I'm like, do you understand how much work goes into designing that software and making it do what it does for only $300 a month? Right. But again, triple digit thinking instead of six figure thinking, that's what lands people in trouble. And what we need is more practitioners who have that six figure thinking. And six figure thinking isn't six figures, just as in money, but six figures as in 600, six figures as in people. Right. So, you know, if you want to help hundreds of people, then, yeah, you can do that without automating anything and scaling. But if you want to help hundreds of thousands or millions of people, which is what the world needs right now is people to step up to the plate, to want to help that many people, because the work is quite extensive. And we're all going to have to work together using these principles that Dr. Osborne is laying out to make that kind of impact, you know, because not everyone can see Dr. Osborne, not everyone can see me, not everyone can see even the handful of practitioners that have stepped up to the plate. It's going to take all of us to really move the needle. I love what you're saying. And also, when we show up as the best version of ourselves, there's people who are looking to work with people like us. The type of person that will work with Dr. Osborne may not work with somebody else. We're not competing against each other, we're collaborating. And the right people will find us. Because I promise you, there is lots of people that will resonate with each of us that are on this presentation right now. And there's enough of them to keep us busy for a lifetime. So the work is vast and there'll never be a shortage of people in need of our services. And really, it's time for all of us to step into the plate and reclaim our time, reclaim our sanity. Because if we burn ourselves out and we're only helping a few hundred people, then we don't really have much to show for. But if we can avoid that burnout, avoid that frustration, get out of pain, which is the pain that we're trying to get our patients out of as well, then everyone wins. You know, the practitioner wins, the patients win, the community wins, your kids win, like everyone, everyone wins in a situation like this. So I really appreciate that. One thing I did want to say is a question that does come up for quite a few people. You is who am I? Right. So they See people who have influence like yourself, and they're like, well, I can't be that person. And of course the answer is, you don't. You're not supposed to be that person. You're supposed to be yourself. But where do, where do practitioners get stuck? You know, where are the, where do the mental blocks come from to, let's say, play small or, you know, be uncomfortable in front of a camera or not be willing to put themselves out there even though they have a powerful message to share? Is have you found that there's particular blocks that people have or certain things that prevent functional medicine doctors from taking action or any type of practitioner, really?

Yeah, I think for many, their block is that they're not in their power. Let me kind of define that. I love video like I wouldn't. Any other medium to me is not my power. Now I can write and I love to write too, but I, it takes a long time to write and I can say what I think a lot more eloquently and a lot greater speed than I can sit down and write a 10,000 word article. Like, I can pump out 10,000 words in an hour in a conversation a lot quicker than I can sit down and handcraft how I want to say that exactly right. And make sure that the grammar and the, everything else is correct. Because the grammar police, if you're doing a blog, you know what I'm talking about, they're going to come chirping if you miss a period or miss a space or accidentally have a typo, like, they come calling. So for me, it's being in my power, which for me is video. For you, it might be video. For you, it might be the blog posting, it might be podcasting. Like, maybe you're scared about your camera shy, but talking into a microphone, you're really strong in that way. So you've got to find where your power lies. Don't get so wrapped up in trying to have all of the mediums covered that you don't cover any of them greatly. Like anything that you choose to do, you should be choosing to do it because it makes a big impact. And so think about that in terms of your audience. Like, where do you perform the best? Where are you the most scared? Where would you feel like you would deliver the message in the least effective way? And don't worry about Instagram if social media is not your bag. Don't worry about doing a podcast if you love YouTube or don't worry about a podcast if, if you're a great blogger, like, start with one and do a really good job of it, because that's how you build a following. There's too many people trying to dip too many irons and too many fires, and they get distracted by all the little things, all the shiny new objects, and then they get distracted by which software should I use, which hosting company should I use. Like, all those millions of tech questions then come up and then you get analysis paralysis where you're overwhelmed by all the choices. Just like when you're sitting down with your patient for the first time and saying, I need you to go gluten free, and they're thinking like, like they're not hearing anything else. They're like, okay, no bread, no cake, no pizza, no, no pasta, no hamburger buns. Like, their mind is already paralyzed because that information is like short circuiting out their brain. So don't try to short circuit your brain by trying to do too many things that just because other people are doing them. So, like, I also believe in automating, like your ability to create contents. Because I love video content. I have a team now. And so when I do a video, when I do a YouTube video or live show, you know, I have a team that transcribes that show, then I have that transcription sent to a writer. That writer will then write a blog post based on the premise of my words. Not write a blog post for me about a topic, but write that post from my words, from my heart, because I want to speak in my language. I don't want to pay somebody to write a mediocre article, which is what a lot of people do. They pay SEO companies or pay other companies to write mediocre content, and they wonder why they can never get traction. You're going to get traction when you love what you do, when you're passionate, when you're in the medium that you're in, you just want to find what that medium is. And then you want to find and identify the unique process behind taking that medium and expounding on it. So for me, it's video to transcription to blog post. A tech guy can create the imagery and the pictures and all that other stuff. That's not important. The content is important. The power behind the content and the passion behind the content is what's really going to matter the most. And that's what people are going to resonate with, is, as you said a moment ago, like, we're not in competition with each other. I mean, if I had a fear set mentality, I would never have taken you under my wing. I would never have, like, supported you and what you were doing. But all I wanted to do is support you because I knew that if I helped you and you were helping other doctors and practitioners, that just meets my agenda all that much quicker, which is to get 100 million people who are chronically sick better. So you can't have the fear mindset about competition. You have to have the abundance mindset, and you have to get out there and find where your power is. So as a practitioner, what is that? That's another homework assignment. You can walk away from this, from this talk tonight, and you can just basically say, okay, where's my power? Where do I feel the most comfortable delivering my message and then live there, but create a team around that to make sure that you're hitting those other bases. But don't get bogged down in thinking that you have to have, like, a professional video studio, professional podcasting platform and all that. Like, find your power and stick with it and then magnify it.

I love this. I love this. This is such powerful information. And one thing I'll say is that this really has to click. And I see in the comments it's clicking for a lot of people. They're having those aha and light bulb moments. And you've got to actually make a decision, do you want to be successful or not? And if you want to be successful, then you have to follow the principles of success and the clues that success leaves behind. And, you know, we can use, as Dan Sullivan would say, we can use our past. Like, you have a lot of raw material in your past. I have a lot of raw material in my past. So you can use other people's past, including your own, to fast forward your future. And so what took Dr. Osborne 10 years? And I think it took me. I was only in practice for eight years when I hired you, so it took me eight years after you taught me this to really come to this revelation that it's really the stinking thinking that gets us into trouble. And, you know, everything is created twice, first in the mind and then in reality. And so the only difference between something existing or not is whether you open your eyes or not. So if you close your eyes, you can imagine whatever world it is that you want, right? When we open our eyes, that world is not there. But if we think of something long enough, we will burn that into existence. We will coagulate it into existence. And so it's important for us to stay focused. And that's one thing I wanted to make sure everyone was clear on is that you've got to be focused, you know, as quick starts. Dr. Osborne and I, if we were to, if you locked us in a room together, we would have a million ideas, but nothing would get done, right? So we're great at coming up with ideas. That's what quick starts do. But where quick starts struggle is implementing. And so we have to surround ourselves with many, many implementers. And I would bet the bar, and this is true for you as well, but when I outsourced all the different things that I was doing at one point, it took four people to replace me, right? So a lot of, so a lot of us, if we won the lottery, if many of you won the lottery tomorrow, you would probably, and let's say your business got a million dollar grant or funding, many of you would probably hire three people or four people to replace all the work that you're doing right now, and it probably still wouldn't get done. That's how big your mission is. So we do so much as entrepreneurs, we burn the candle at both ends and we kind of burn it in the middle as well. And that costs us, it costs us time, it costs us money, it costs us our health, it costs us our impact. So being able to really believe in your mission, that's what it first takes. It takes believing in the mission and knowing that the mission is big enough to actually hire people way before you burn out. That's another piece of advice that I learned from Dr. Osborne is you can't play small. If you're going to play small and you're going to wait till you burn out and then you're going to hire someone, you're in big trouble at that point. You have to believe in your vision and then understand, okay, you're going to have millions of ideas pouring out of you. And if you're a quick start, you have enough ideas to keep a whole army of people busy. And if those ideas are good, which I only encourage you to have is good ideas, if those ideas are good, they're gonna start monetizing and those team members are gonna start paying for themselves so much faster than you might think. So I know I threw a lot down there, but what would you say to the hiring process? Cause I think that's where a lot of people get stuck as well as solopreneurs. You know, not only are they trying to become website experts, you know, but they're all doing all these different things, but they're afraid to hire. What would you say to someone who's afraid to kind of Grow and expand it and hire that implementer for them.

I'd say you have a healthy fear you should have as a business owner, you should have a healthy fear about when to bring somebody on. Because there's two sides to that coin. One side is that if you wait too long to bring somebody on, it can hurt your business. You can hit a growing pain point where your business now starts to implode. And so people that aren't getting serviced based on your promise of what you're going to deliver because you don't have enough employees to kind of fulfill that promise, like that's one of the quickest ways to business self destruction. So it's kind of a balance. You have to judge it, you have to use your sense. And so part of that is knowing when to hire, and part of that is knowing when to put in a little bit more sweat equity yourself until it's time to hire. Because for some of you it might be okay, I can't afford a $40,000 salary for this person or that person right now, or I can't afford to hire for that position right now. So I'm going to continue to put in a little elbow grease and work a little bit more, knowing that I'm going to reach that goal and have that goal set in your mind. Like when do you make that decision to hire? You make that decision to hire somebody when you can afford to pay that salary or to pay that wage. And that by affording that, it doesn't bankrupt you or it doesn't put you in debt. Like that's very important. Don't take out debt to grow your business. Unless you're a type of business where you're looking for venture capitalists and you're really trying to scale your business in a very, very big way. Most of us aren't doing that. Most of us are trying to grow our practice and then try to expand upon that. And it's a stepping process. So don't think about bringing venture capitalists into your practice. You'll hate your life if you do that. But it's knowing when you can hire that person, when it won't put you in debt, but the time that person can save you will free up your time to allow you to be able to put more different types of work into your practice that will generate revenue. So think of it that way. What are you currently doing that you could pay somebody a wage so that it would free up more of your time so that you could make more money getting paid what you should be getting? Paid. Because if you're spending a lot of time doing the job of a videographer or the job of an IT person or the job of a web design person, in that regard, you're making anywhere from 20 to $50 an hour. And if you outsource it to the Philippines, you're making 10 bucks hour. But really you're not. Because if you outsource it to somewhere like in the Philippines, or you outsource it, there's a language barrier and there's a communication barrier that always gets in the way. And so it takes everything twice as long to do. When you get ready to hire, don't be scared to hire and pay good money for good quality people. I like to hire in house. I don't, I don't, I don't have any. There's no. First of all, I'm an American and I believe in America. I believe in taking care of Americans. Think of that what you will. I know you're in Canada, so. But I believe in supporting other Americans. And so I like to hire here because when I have an idea, I like to be able to shout out my door so that we can get time to implementation is just as valuable. So, like, if you have an idea that could be monetized and it takes you twice as long to get that idea to fruition, then you're losing money, you're leaving money on the table. But if you have a team around you that can support that idea and take away the time to implementation or at least minimize it, then that's, that's a good investment of your time. So when you're, again, when you're thinking about hiring somebody, how much time does it free up of your time to come up with better ideas? And how much time does that other person save you in terms of implementation? So if you're talking about a web design, how many of you have ever had a website where you're waiting for a week for a few small changes? Right? That's when I say time to implementation, that's really what I'm referring to. If you're waiting long periods of time, have simple changes done, and those simple changes can make a difference between how much revenue you're going to bring in in your practice, right? That can be a point of pain or a point of frustration. So wherever those points of pain and frustration are within your office and whatever that time to implementation is, that's when you really start thinking about, okay, do I need to hire this person? Do I need to bring in a new team member and Bring somebody on board. So I would encourage you to think about it in that way. Don't think about it as what it's.

Going to cost you.

Think about it as what it's going to cost you if you don't. So. But also don't put yourself into a position where you have to go into debt. Again, no debt to grow your practice. Because I can't tell you how many practices I've seen go out of business where they took out bank loans because they had a pipe dream and they didn't have a plan like they had a pipe dream. And it was a great dream, it was a great vision, but it wasn't planned out or thought out or there was no business savvy behind it. And so they just didn't. They weren't able to make it through the storm. Because a lot of businesses will go through a storm. Sometimes businesses come out of the gate and there's that, you know, that it's not like you're not like, going from, you know, spending money to, like, making millions of dollars a year. You might, you might, might take you several years to kind of build up clientele. It might take you several years to really get your name out there. It can all be expedited and you can speed that process up. If you have a great mentor, that's one of the best ways to speed up time. But you don't want to go into debt to try to do it, because if you go into enough debt, it can wreck you. So again, don't take on debt to hire new people. Usually your practice should be generating enough revenue before you make the decision. At that point, the decision becomes okay, because at the end of the day, you take home what you don't pay, an overhead and employee salary, right? So if you're willing to take. Let's just use the number, right? Let's say $40,000 because you want to hire a new IT person. Let's say that you're willing to take a personal, personal pay cut of $40,000 because you believe in yourself enough that if you free up your time to pursue other avenues of your office and practice, that you'll make that $40,000 up within the year. Like, if that's kind of where you're at in your own mind, then it's the right time to hire.

Great. That's really good advice. And I know you've got to run because we acknowledged earlier that you've got a very special family meeting today with your son and deciding his future. You know, we're trying to build a better future for them. And you know, here they are deciding what they're going to do. So I know you've got a very special event to go to. So what I would love to do is share, if we can, just a few moments on you. You've created a very special program video series for practitioners. Want to talk about that? I've shared a link in the comment section and also in the post where people can get registered for that. I'm going to get registered for that. I learned something new every time I speak with you and I would love for you to talk about that program and why you created it and who it's for.

Yeah, so this is, it's a simple training program. The whole purpose of creating it was to break down the barriers that many practitioners have in their own practice, in their own belief system and in their own life. And so part of these barriers have to do with how they spend their time and how they value their time. So it's a video training series and it's free of charge. But what it goes through is it goes through what I learned early on from one of my mentors called the 95. 5 rule. And that rule just teaches you where you need to be laser focused and it teaches you absolutely what not to be laser focused on. So, like, what are the shiny objects that are distracting you from success like that? One of the video training modules goes through that whole process and how to detect what you should be focused on. One of the other videos in the series discusses the power of tech automation. Like, I want you to understand the concept so that once you understand the concept really, really well, you can go from concept to application and you can make your life so much easier. Because I know if I can save all of you a ton of time that you're all going to be more successful in your practice. And then the third video in the series is on how to basically how to elevate your rock star status. When I say rock star status, what does that really mean? We don't want to be rock stars, but we want to be known and well known for what we do. I'm known as the gluten free warrior and it's done really well for me. But I achieved that through leverage. And so I talk about a number of the different leveraging strategies that any one of you can use because I did it very early on in practice and leveraged certain things and leveraged other people's expertise to really build a big platform really, really fast at a time when it was really, really, really challenging to build a big platform today. It's so much easier to do. So I share that in video number three. And then we close out the class with a webinar on what I call the 10 pillars of functional Medicine Success. And that's kind of, in a nutshell, what the series is about. And I'm just hoping that those of you who really want to expand on your practice and expand on your business, go through the course and just take great value from it, because that's what I'm looking to do. I'm just looking to put value into the world so that those of you who are out there that are in the position to save a life, do and save more than one, save thousands and maybe even hundreds of thousands of lives over the courses of your career. Because again, my ultimate goal, my ultimate mission, save 100 million lives. That's what I'm all about. Everything, every decision I make in my practice, in my business and my coaching programs boils down to, will it help me save 100 million lives of chronically degenerated sick people who are in this world, very, very confused about how to achieve and establish good health? So this training program is about reaching that goal for me, and it's about helping you help more people in the world.

I love it. I love it, I love it, I love it. And I'm so honored to be on this journey with you and whoever wants to come along. We're here to receive you with open arms and ultimately help as many people as possible. I love your abundance, mindset. I love the way you think. I love the way you share all this information so openly with all of us. And you know, I know that you want to be with your amazing family, so I'm going to let you go to honor your time. Because as you said, that's the one thing that no matter how much money we have, we can't buy. So I love you, my brother. Thank you so much. For those of you that want to get the. For all of you should get it. And if you want it, there's two links. There's one in the actual post itself, and then I post it in the comments, click on it, get registered, and. And I'm going to be in it, too. I'm going to register right now. Let's all learn together and let's all elevate our profession and our communities together. Thank you, Dr. Osborne. I appreciate you. And thanks for being here.

Yeah, thanks, Sachin. Love you too, brother.

Bye for now.

Bye. Bye.