EP057: Evolving Your Functional Medicine Practice with Dr. Buddy Touchinsky

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'm excited because today I get to interview a friend and a colleague, Dr. Buddy Ticinski. He's going to be discussing with us his journey into functional medicine and some amazing recent revelations that he's had in figuring out how he's going to help even more people with his powerful message and of course, his powerful knowledge. So welcome Buddy. Thanks for being here today.

Thanks for having me on Satchin. It's been a great journey, much of it together, and I am really excited to share that with the viewers.

Awesome. So for those people that may not know you or maybe haven't watched our other interviews together, I'd love for you to share a little bit more about yourself, how you got started and what drew you into functional medicine and and then we'll take it from there and dive right into your practice.

So to go way, way back, when I was a kid, the chiropractor I knew is actually my uncle, he was chiropractor, so he did the kind of the traditional chiropractic adjustments, but he also did a lot with helping people with their diet and lifestyle and nutritional supplements. And so in my mind that's what I thought a chiropractor did. And then I went to chiropractic college and, and that the school I ended up going to was more of the traditional chiropractic, just adjustments only. So that was fine and I was excited about that. I actually ended up transferring for various reasons when we met first as classmates and that school was a little bit more broad, but still we didn't get a lot into the dietary, lifestyle advice, nutritional supplements, but it was always something that I was interested in. So I got out of school just trying to get really good at solving that chronic low back pain and neck pain and headaches and migraines and I think I did a pretty good job at that. But then I started to get a little more frustrated over the years because people are coming in with back pain, but then they're also complaining of things like acid reflux and irritable bowel syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome and kind of all of that kind of lifestyle, chronic disease type of stuff. And I knew, based on some of my education that I got in chiropractic college, where we got that foundation of the basic sciences, anatomy and physiology, that I could do a little more than what their conventional providers were doing for them. So I started going out and trying to learn as much as I could. That eventually led me to what we now know as functional medicine. Back then it might have been integrative medicine or whatever it was called. And then I started going down that rabbit hole and I started finding out about various providers that have been doing this for years, people like Jeffrey Bland and Alex Vasquez. And so I started diving that material, and that interested me even more. So eventually, after kind of stumbling along for about five or six years on my own, just trying to pick up bits and pieces from where I could, I saw this gentleman, Sachin Patel, on the screen on his videos, sharing a lot of contents and sharing it freely and being just really just giving his knowledge away freely. You're giving your knowledge away freely and just helping educate the community, whether it was aimed at other practitioners or the general population. And I really like that because, I don't know, I like the idea of just being that go to person for health and wellness information and not being like a beta switch type of thing where you give them a little information but withhold it. So your message and your, I guess your kind of strategy or philosophy around sharing the message really resonated with me. And then joined the mentorship program and it was onward and upward from there. Awesome.

So, you know, we went to school together for those of you that are watching this video. And Buddy and I actually, we knew each other, but we didn't really hang out. And it's amazing how we've kind of, you know, become close friends even though we're not in direct proximity with each other because of our values and that alignment. And the reason I bring that up is because we didn't know what our values were. We didn't express ourselves through our values when we were much younger. But as we mature and we get older, we realize how important our values are. And as we express our values and other people take notice. And the reason I bring this up is because this is how you want to get your message out there into the world. Right? So this is a perfect case study of stick to your Values. And those people that align with your values will be drawn into those values. And then you can work on creating a better world together, because your values are alignment with one another. So this is a beautiful example of just that. So I appreciate you sharing that, and I look forward to a blossoming friendship for the rest of our lives. You know, and I really love what you've done in terms of bringing functional medicine into your town and into your community and reaching out and helping as many people as you can. But I also know that you've come up against a ceiling in terms of how many people you can help, because there's only so many hours in the day. So now, just before we started recording, we were strategizing and discussing how you can reach more people and how you can influence and impact more people in your community locally, but also across the state and across the country and across the globe. So I'd love to talk a little bit more about the progression of your practice. So as a chiropractor, you were providing structural care. Now you started implementing functional medicine. So maybe you can talk about that. And let's also talk about the next evolution of your practice.

Yeah. So one of the things that I struggled with in my chiropractic practice was that people were coming to see me as a chiropractor for neck and back pain. And when I start talking about other concepts like their diet, lifestyle, how their diet can affect their joint muscle pain, I think it muddied the waters a little bit. So it's kind of almost like switching what they. Where I was at in there in their headspace? So it's like I'm coming here for back pain and he's telling me to go gluten free. What's the deal with that? Why is he asking me if I have ibs? I mean, I do, but why is he asking me that when I'm coming in with weight, neck pain and joint pain and migraines? So I think it was hard for people to make the connection there. So instead of swimming upstream and kind of fighting that current for a while, I just decided to kind of separate my practice. And I know there's a lot of people in our mentorship group that are chiropractors and probably some acupuncturists as well, that have a traditional chiropractic acupuncture practice. And we love that. I mean, we got into that for a reason, and now we're trying to start moving the functional medicine. So how do you make that work and combine. Combining it may Work for some people. It didn't work for me. So what I usually just, I start the conversation with chiropractic patients, but then I say, you know what? If you wanted to continue this conversation, join my free Facebook group. We talk about this stuff all the time. Start learning more information there. I can send you a video or two on this topic that I. That I've recorded in the past. You can schedule a free consult and we can do a session where we decide if things, something different is right for your particular problem. So separating the practices has really helped. It's still a challenge because I'm still splitting my time where I have to go from chiropractic mode to perhaps functional medicine mode. And I try to reduce that difficulty by blocking out whole days for just functional medicine or whole half days for functional medicine. So that certainly helps. But I think the next iteration of my practice is probably going to be continuing to reduce my chiropractic hours or hiring another chiropractor. So that's where I'm at now. And the way I see patients is I've tried a la carte in the past. I've tried, like I said, kind of melding chiropractic and functional medicine, where I just do a test for a chiropractic patient and trying to address their health issues based on that single test. But what has worked best for me was adopting your model at Living Proof Institute and going to more of the program packages. So now I get someone that's all in. We can do the testing that we need to do, and the person's fully committed. We're fully committed to them, and we know that we're going to have them for the next, say, six to eight months. And because of that, outcomes have just gone really, really well. When we went from having the occasional good outcome if the person was motivated enough to stick with it, to most of our people, all but a handful. I mean, if I saw 100 functional medicine patients the past two or three years, I can count three that I can think of that I can kind of look in the mirror and say, like, well, we just didn't help that person as much as I would have liked to. But the rest, fully committed. And it's gone really well since I changed to that model.

So you would certainly say that commitment is a big part of their success.

Yes. And you hate to say this, but the money is commitment to a lot of people. And without that, they weren't all in. I mean, I tried to reduce the barrier of entry and charge a couple Hundred dollars to do an intake. And I was hesitant to do some of the testing because of headspace stuff and kind of financial stuff in my own head. And so I guess I wasn't as committed either in that case. And certainly the patient wasn't because it was easy to just commit a couple hundred bucks and then get really motivated. Then the shine wears off. Three or four weeks later, it gets tough because now they're into the dietary changes and they've gotten through maybe the initial big improvements or like it happens to many of us, life happens and they get distracted and the next thing you know, I don't hear from them again and. And they kind of fall by the wayside. But yeah, that commitment is huge.

You know, that commitment from both sides is something that's very important. Right. Because when somebody pays you in advance, you know that they're committed. You know they're going to show up, you know they're going to take action or at least they're more, much more likely to fully commit because there are people that don't, even with, even with the financial commitment. But the majority of people are going to be far more committed. But it's, you know, all that to say that it also increases your commitment to that person, but also the capability of committing to the person in the future as well. So as a business, it becomes much easier, at least in my opinion, because your cash flow positioning changes. It allows you to hire people to help you and support you, pay your staff what they're worth. You can focus on what you need to focus on, which is serving and helping people instead of chasing people down for their appointments and such, and you get better outcomes, which then leads to more referrals, which then leads to more time servicing and helping people. So you're at that point now where you're getting referrals, you're getting great results. And as we were talking about earlier, now you're wanting to help even more people. So tell us about this journey that's yet to come. I know that this is something that's, you know, something you've been thinking about for quite some time and now you're going to take some action steps on it. But I'd love to like to hear what you have to say and your thought process around it.

Sure. So, yeah, even though things are going well with functional medicine patients and getting patients in their program, on a decent month, we might see five. Let's say we have a really great month. We see 10 new patients in the program. And at that, it's like And I talked to a lot of newer functional medicine practitioners or recently converted practitioners and they think like more than three is like crazy. And you get busy and you put a lot of time and effort. So it's like you've talked about in some of your previous talks, that it's not scalable when things are that complex. And functional medicine cases kind of by nature are complex. And that's where unfortunately we're seeing as a last resort for a lot of people, they've been everywhere else, they have complex, complicated problems, or it could be a simple problem which lifestyle or diet. But that is a fairly difficult problem to overcome because there's a lot of psychological things and habits and past trauma and all sorts of things that go into just getting a person to change their diet. So because it's complex, because it's a lot of one on one, a lot of touch points, it isn't scalable. It eats up a lot of the practitioner's time. And I know myself like I had a month where I started eight new patients, relatively short period of time. And I got so bogged down in just helping those new patients and onboarding them and getting them up to speed that I couldn't do what I really love to do, which is create. And I like creating content. I like doing videos, I like sharing things with people, I like doing talks. And it's not something I was always really good at or enjoyed, but now I do enjoy that stuff. And then I realized, okay, I'm kind of stuck in the grind and I don't, I love working with those patients. But now there's all these other people out here that I wish I could be helping and communicating with. So I'm toying around with and I have just begun the process of designing something, having more of a subscription or group based program where one, I can reach way more people, it's scalable. And two, it's going to be a lower price point because we can try to teach or try to promote our value all we want. But for some people, they just because it is so different than traditional medicine, especially in an insurance based model, there's going to be this certain segment of people. And this was in my own headspace prior to three or four years ago, before I started with a mentorship group. There's a headspace there where it's like, I know that seems good, my friend had great results. But it's so unusual from what we're used to. It's like, I just don't think I'm going to do it or I won't do it, or I don't want to do it, I don't know what the, what the deal is, but they just won't. And then of course, we have those people that are truly in a rough spot where I've had a couple of these the past few months, where they have a major IBS or major health problems. So they, they missed work, they've lost jobs, but they can't get jobs because they can't show up to work every day. And it kind of becomes chasing their tail where they can't get the help they need. So I feel like it can be a win, win situation where I can create content, I can work with people, we can do groups, we can keep the price point lower, we can provide ongoing support and then everyone wins. And then if they need a higher level of help and then they're ready to commit, they can commit to the full program.

You know, that makes a ton of sense. I know that this is still new. We're still kind of seeing how we can move this agenda forward to serve more people and really capture back some of our time, not only with ourselves, so that we can continue to grow and evolve ourselves, but with our families and, and also to travel and have some of the other freedoms that I feel that all practitioners should have. So I love how there's this intersection of technology and knowledge and need that's coming up and you're able to help way more people than you ever would be able to help one on one in a way that really leverages your time well, but also allows you to create a library of data. Right. To be able to share and to continue to leverage for years to come. And I know that the lifestyle principles and the health principles that you teach are so timeless versus being trendy, that it's going to be information that will be usable for years and years and years to come. So I love the direction that you're taking with this. It's got to be exciting, but nerve wracking at the same time, I'm sure.

Yeah, it's more exciting to be honest, because again, I got kind of stuck back in the grind again where it's like I'm just was frustrated because I always wanted to kind of get the message out there to more people. It's like, how can I do this? I know I can't grow more than what I'm kind of hitting that ceiling where I can't grow any further. But there was really no blueprint out there for something like this. And maybe there's people doing it. I haven't seen it. But then once I got this idea, it's like, okay, maybe this can work and maybe we can work with it and it won't be for everyone. But it doesn't have to be for everyone. I know it's going to help a lot of people and it's going to be right for them. And like you said, technology is great. And, and one thing that's really struck a chord last time we spoke a couple weeks ago was you could sit down with one patient for one hour, and now you've helped that one patient. It's taken one hour of your time. So if you want to help 10 patients that week, 10 hours of your time. Or we can do something like on a group call where we're helping one person in the group work through a problem that probably a thousand other people have. And then that call is recorded and archived and 1000 people can watch that call. That takes an hour. Now you have a thousand hours worth of work and productivity and helping people instead of just that one on one. So I really like the idea of that.

Yeah, there's never been an easier time for us to leverage. And, you know, just speaking of technology, just so practitioners listening to this realize how easy it is, what are some of the technological tools that, like, you know, that you're using? What are the things that would be required to run this business real easy?

I've started up a few businesses now and really for probably less than a thousand bucks, and that includes the computer. You can have all the tools that you need, maybe a little more with some of the software. But a microphone, I mean, a decent microphone you can get, nice ones are $80, but you can go as low as 20 and get a nice desktop microphone. I think I might have spent like 20 bucks for this one. And hopefully I sound pretty good. Webcam I have, it's an HD webcam from Logitech. That's probably under a hundred bucks as well. And then we have, you have your computer, which you probably have anyway, your smartphone, and then some software. Like half the software I use is free. Like Loom, for instance. It's on screen recording. You don't have to process or save the video or do anything with it other than hit record, screen share or video. You can video and screen share at once and then record. And then when you hit stop, it pops up as a link and you just embed the link in an email or a message and then you have that recording. Now, I don't use that for any private health information, for stuff like that, I'll use something like Camtasia to screen record. And if I have any documents that has their private health data, I will use a PDF editor to redact their personal information. And actually the one I use is free. It's Infix Infix and you just do the find, like the find and replace option. But there's find and redact and just copy and paste their name and their date of birth and anything else like addresses and it just blacks them out. You save it saves it with a watermark, but who cares? You're only sending it to the patient. It's only a small watermark in the corner. And then save that in Camtasia saves as the MP4 and then I'll upload that either to Vimeo since everything's redacted, it's not a big deal or I'll embed it right into my ehr for them to watch later. So yeah, really you just need some sort of video editor, some sort of PDF editor so you can redact personal health info if you want to do that. Loom and the computer microphone and a camera, that's about it.

So you can help more people. It costs way less. I mean these are one time costs, many of them, right? You're not buying a computer every month. The software, you know, if depending on what software you end up using, it's usually a one time fee or there might be a small recurring every month. But the operating costs of a business like this are. I don't think you really get any lower than that. And the opportunity to reach people is exponential. So it's like this perfect storm, if you will, or perfect opportunity rather for us to really leverage our time and knowledge and information very, very wisely. And I'm excited for what's to come for you, man, I really am. And I'm excited for anyone who's listening to this because I hope this inspires you to take some action. If there's something that you're sitting on that needs to come out of you, or if there's a voice that you're suppressing that needs to come out of you, then think about it. There's a great opportunity right now for you to reach many, many people very affordably. And this is something that can be implemented part time because it's not a huge consumption of your time in order to implement a very scalable approach like this. So there's really no time excuse, there's no technology excuse, there's no cost Excuse. If this is the way of the future, which we both believe is, then it's our obligation to start serving and reaching out to your community in a way that's scalable, that helps people. And I know Buddy and I both have the same philosophy, which is to keep people out of our practice as much as we can and to give them the right information so that it's not the information that saves their life, but it's the information that improves the quality of life wherever they are right now. And when they do come and see us, then their baseline is so much higher than the average person that they get better results and more efficient results working within our practice. Anything else you want to add to that?

I just want to go back to what you said earlier in the introduction, like how we met years ago, and I think we were in a couple study groups together, but I was transferring to college, so I was only there for a short period of time before we went off the cliff clinic again, or we went out to clinic and then we were reintroduced, so to speak. But it was only because you were putting yourself out there. You were sharing your knowledge, you were sharing your vision, your mission with the universe, I guess with at least the Facebook. So I would have never. I would have never kind of learned about what you're doing or how you're doing things. And I wouldn't be practicing the way I am today if you didn't do that. And I guess one thing I would say to everyone out there, especially since it's going to be mostly functional, as practitioners, we sometimes forget how much we know more than the average person. And we're following people, we're following experts. And a lot of this stuff is common knowledge. Like, even things like gluten. I'm still just shocked when I get someone that I say, well, you know about gluten, right? And they're like, what's gluten? So you realize, like, well, heck, we have all this knowledge and I think we're obligated to share that with as many people as we can. And I just want to say, like, prior to three years ago, video doing stuff like this horrible, terrible anxiety, I couldn't organize my thoughts. I was just, I'll share this because this is kind of the epitome of what I'm talking about. A company hired me to do some, I guess some health promotion stuff maybe a year or two before I got hooked up with Sachin again. And living proof. All I had to do was submit a 1 minute intro video about myself. It was after work one day and I kept telling my wife, I'll be home in a few minutes. So, long story short, for two and a half hours, I sat there trying to record a one minute video to send so that they could put it up on their website just to introduce their experts. And I still don't have it done. I said, I'm done. I was so frustrated. I had my phone, I had to try, recorded I don't know how many times, and then I finally just went home. I did it the next day real quick. It was, it was. I didn't go back and watch it again because I was so just. I hate, hate to watch myself. But when I kind of regrouped and then got involved with the mentorship program and saw what you were doing and saw, okay, we have to get ourselves out there, we just have to do it. I just forced myself to do it. And the best way to do it was live. And in a live interview, because you don't have time to think, you're just reacting, you're just responding to the questions. And. And then I just committed to. I'm going to do a live every week for the entire year, pretty much without fail. So every Wednesday at 7 o', clock, I did my own little mini podcast, my Facebook live, inside my private group. And you get better at it, you get comfortable with it, then you can start creating some videos and it just gets better and better from there. So I know a lot of people, even our mentorship group, I don't see them doing videos or anything like that. And a few of them are struggling. And I said that at 1. I said, well, how many videos are you doing? Or what are you doing for video? And they said, they're not. This person laughed because I did one of those emojis where like the big eyes, like what? Because I've had conversations with them and they're awesome and they're super knowledgeable. Like, you need to start getting out there and doing this stuff. So I think we're obligated to get the information out there. We have a lot of work to do. Every day I walk out my office and they just started building it last year. It's probably what amounts to a $60 million hospital. And I'm like, man, if all that money, resources put into something like that, we have a lot of work to do to try to keep people from needing something like that. We need to do it. You just get good at it. Do it, do it, do it and you'll get better.

Thank you, man. I appreciate you. I appreciate everything that you're doing. I appreciate your courage and your willingness to share and really elevate this community. Because we need more people like you, more people like those of you that are listening, that are ready to take action and save lives. I mean, that's really what we're put on this planet to do, is to add light into other people's lives. And the earlier we can do that in people's journey, the better world we can create. But if we're later in that person's journey, then we probably have the tools that can help this person as long as they're not too far gone. So the sooner we can start reaching people, the better off we're all going to be. And I know Buddy and I are both working towards a health care model that we would want for our kids, which is as little healthcare as possible. Right. And really it's about self care and self love. And you know, I know Buddy, you're a role model for your family and your community and I want to acknowledge you for that and I appreciate you for leading the way by example.

Thank you. Well, I've had some good mentors and you amongst the top of those, top of that list. So appreciate all you've done for me and being a role model yourself for all of us practitioners.

Thank you, my brother. Have an amazing rest of your day.

Thank you.