Mastering Practice Growth: Key Strategies Revealed With Dr. Jessica Drummond

Hello, my friends, and welcome to Perfect Practice. Today we have a very special guest, somebody who I know you're going to love her story, you're going to love what she has to share, and she has been through a heck of a time over the last few years in relationship to her health, which we'll talk about. And also she's going to share about how her business has not only overcome the challenges that she personally went through, but how it's thriving. And so with me, I have none other than Dr. Jessica Drummond. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule. I'm so excited to dive into this. I know you and I have had a few different conversations over the years. I've been following your story, following some of the ups and downs that you've been through, and I'm excited to unpack that a little bit today. And I know we're going to give practitioners who are listening a lot of hope from our conversation today. So once again, welcome to our podcast and thank you for sharing and being here to be a beacon of light for others.

Thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure.

Well, why don't we get to some of the juicy details of how you got into the health space and what makes you so passionate as somebody who wears, you know, many degrees under their belt. You're a physical therapist, you're a certified clinical nutritionist, and you also have your doctorate in clinical nutrition, where you help people not only with, you know, their food and, and. But you also help them with other aspects of their health. So where. Where does that passion to learn and to serve others start from?

Well, I started my career as a physical therapist. So I graduated from physical therapy school back in 19. In the 1900s, in 1999. And as my daughter would say, and, you know, I always thought I would go into sports medicine. And that's where I started because I was an athlete as a kid. And honestly, I've been an athlete my entire life. And I think that mindset, even when there were a few health challenges of my own through my life, that made it difficult for me to be physically an act, an athlete. I've always had an athlete mindset. And I just enjoy sports and exercise and being around people who like that kind of thing. And so that's how I started my career in outpatient orthopedics. And then I quickly got very interested in women's health, which in physical therapy is essentially a specialty of orthopedics, in that you're working with pelvic health, you're working with women who have injuries related to pregnancy and breast cancer and pelvic pain chronic, and then also kind of the overlay of complex chronic conditions like endometriosis or interstitial cystitis or vulvodynia, some of these things that have a lot of chronic pain. And physical therapy was one solution. But when I was relatively early in my career, like within the first decade or so, I realized that physical therapy was not the complete answer to some of those more complex conditions. And so that's when I dove in and learned more about health coaching and clinical nutrition and functional nutrition and really taking a more integrative perspective. And so that has, has served me well because when, you know, we were dealing with complex chronic illness, which is mostly what I do in my practice now, most of what I do now in my work is actually educate professionals. But I do have a small practice and we have some kind of client level programs, people who are dealing with those health issues themselves that we will be relaunching in the fall. And so we do work directly with people struggling with complex illness. And I think for me, it's the idea that when you come at a complex condition with that holistic mindset and it's really led by the client and all the things that they can do, that's what gets me excited. Because at the end of the day, we just simply don't have a lot of quick fix magic wand solutions for complex chronic illnesses. Like endometriosis is a really great example of that.

All right, thank you for sharing that. You started the Integrative Women's Health Institute and as a CEO and a founder, I'm curious how your athletic background translated into entrepreneurship. Do you find any correlation there? I know mindset is a big part of athletics. You know, overcoming obstacles and challenges and pushing through. I'm curious if you feel like your athletic background also helped you and supported you as an entrepreneur.

Yeah, you know, I think having an athlete mindset is the. Is the only is has supported me in everything, not just my work. But the downside to it is that I constantly have to remind myself and practice like taking real rest and recovery, which is hard for me. But in terms of successfully navigating entrepreneurship. Absolutely. Because I really never set out to be an entrepreneur. It's just that about the, just after the first decade of my career. So around 2006 ish, to like 2010, I was in a transition period where I had my first daughter. She was born in 2003. And my. We moved a lot because my husband was a consultant. And we just kind of followed him around to his clients, more or less for the first like, decade of our marriage. And so working in clinical medicine, like in a hospital or a clinic, I just sort of had to step start, you know, keep restarting. And so I started my practice, not really with an intentional decision to become an entrepreneur. I just, you know, was trying to create something that I could do from anywhere. But at the time, you know, we didn't really like, you should see my early YouTube videos and stuff. Like, we didn't even really. I don't think I even had an iPhone. So, like, we didn't have a lot of tools to do this kind of digital telehealth. But, you know, it was possible at some level. And the reason I, I figured that out is because in one of the homes that we lived in, we had built like this beautiful reclaimed wood space. I was envisioning all these like, yoga, like retreats and stuff up there. And. But I offered my clients to either come to that space or just do telehealth. And all of them were in the same city as me. I was living in Houston, Texas at the time, and not a single person ever came to that beautiful office. They all preferred doing telehealth because then they could just call me. You know, they didn't have to take time commuting and all of that, so it was better for them. And so I think my athlete mindset has just been two things. Flexible and curious and then also persistent because as you well know, I'm sure it. This gets challenging sometimes, but if you just keep doing does, you know, you do overcome the obstacles. It's when you kind of give up that you don't.

You got to put in the reps, as they say. I'm reading. I'm reading a book right now called Arete, and it's by Brian Johnson. If you haven't read it, I think you would enjoy it. And it's like, it's about a thousand Pages and there's 451 lessons in it. So each, each lesson is like one or two, maybe three pages. And one of them, they talk about the. There's an art teacher and students have two ways that they can get an A. They can either do £50 of pottery and. And then the, the teacher chooses their, their best piece of art, or they get one piece of pottery that they get to create and they get to submit that in for their grade. And the students that got the that did the 50 pounds of pottery, got the best, created the best final product because they had put in the reps. And I think that athletics is much like that. Right? We got to put in the reps. And I think business is like that as well. We have to, you know, pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off when we need to and keep moving forward because we understand what the end mission and vision is. And with that being said, I'm curious. Did you have any entrepreneurial mentors in your life? Perhaps family members or your parents or, you know, people around you? Like, what inspired you to kind of take the bull by the horns and start your own business?

Honestly, no, like I said, it was really not done intentionally. I just thought, well, let me try to help people in a different way than knew was possible within conventional medicine, because that's what I did for the first, you know, third of my career or so. And then a couple things happened. You know, I did have other mentors over time, but when I was living in Connecticut, the first time I met a woman named Fabian Frederickson, who was a marketing teacher essentially. And she kind of opened my eyes to the idea of digital marketing and online education. And I, as you can probably see from behind me, I have done. I'm interested in education. I love the community of college and college towns and like the experience of deepening one's education. And I always did professional education. My first boss or my second boss and my first boss in women's health in that hospital had me when I was like two years out of school giving large national lectures and taking students. And so this idea that we could reach students beyond just sort of like a university community or a hospital, you know, weekend course was very interesting to me. So. But no, I mean, in my, like, you know, childhood and my life, I really went through a very traditional public education path and I went to college and graduate school and, you know, I really expected to have a pretty straightforward clinical career. So it, it really was a, a big difference for me. I, I don't actually. I do have one cousin who has been an entrepreneur, and my dad has helped him a lot with that and he's helped me a lot. He had, he had a long corporate career, which was, which was entrepreneurial in its own way. But no, it really has been just something through meeting other kinds of mentors and honestly just trying it. I do think the thing I get from my background is my parents really supported my education, paid for most of my schooling. I had some student debt, but not buckets of student debt. That people have now. And so I always had a safety net. It's easier to be entrepreneurial when, you know, you have some financial cushion. And, you know, it wasn't a lot at the beginning, but it was enough to be able to take risks. And I think that's really important. And I always had this clinical skill set that if need be, I could always go back to work. I mean, at this point, it would take a lot for me to ever do something like that, but I would. I would have many ideas before that. But, you know, it is still nice to have a sort of plan B to allow yourself to be more risk taking.

Yeah, I think. I think you bring up something really important because safety is one of our most essential needs. Right? Safety, shelter and food. And so a lot of times people don't take risks because they may not think that they have those things and resources and safety net available to them, but when they start kind of doing an inventory, they realize that they do. And a lot of it may require them to just ask themselves, what's the absolute worst case scenario? Like, how many steps am I away from being completely homeless and out on the streets? And when we start doing an inventory of that, the likelihood of that happening for most people is like, very, very little. Right. And the worst case scenario, as you mentioned for yourself, is I could always go back to doing what I was doing. And so it's good to have that safety net. And while you may never have to tap into it, it's good to know that other people are there to support you and see you win. I'm curious as to when you started out, were there ever any challenges that you came up against that you had to really work through? What were some of those early years in building your business?

Yeah, I think in the very beginning, it was adaptation to technology. And I would say that I never did a ton of that. Like, as quickly as I could, I hired people to help me with that. Even now, like, you know, we're just launching a podcast ourselves, and I hired a podcast producer. Like, there are certain things that are just not my free square, as they say, or, like, expertise. But in the very beginning, you know, I was working out of this little office in a tiny rental house, and literally there was not even heat back there. So this, like, little heater, and I just put a camera on a tripod. And the way I've learned in my business is when there were obstacles and I didn't know how to do something, I would do it and get feedback. I think what makes Gets people stuck. Is. Is trying to figure, like thinking through how to do it, learning about how to do it, ruminating about how to do it, when the reality is, for much of the things that are kind of have been obstacles in my journey, that what. What was the most valuable thing to do was to try something and then see if it worked. And most of the time, even when I first met JJ Virgin who introduced us, I was building our first, like the first large scale digital version of our women's health coach certification. And I. So she essentially, she and the people I was working with around her encouraged me to sell it first and then build it, which I did. I had built it a bit because I had taught it live. And the other thing I did was I, early on, in about 2015ish, kind of between 2015 and 2018, maybe even a bit earlier than that, I said yes to speaking anywhere that would have me. Because when I was talking about functional medicine and functional nutrition and integrative medicine in a lot of pretty traditional hospital settings, I was speaking at like the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London and like the Women's Hospital of Texas in Houston, like all of these kind of established clinics and places. But I had, I had already been teaching a lot among women's and pelvic health physical therapists. So I had a lot of friends who trusted that I knew what I was doing. Though most of them thought I was kind of crazy for thinking that even nutrition and basic lifestyle things could make such a difference. But they trusted me because I had that. First of all, I had these letters behind my name, which sometimes is valuable, and they knew me already. I was teaching on other topics, at least some of them. And then that connected me to a broader network. And so for that first few five years or whatever where I was really launching the larger scale global programs, I would just go talk about them literally anywhere in the world that invited me to speak, that had more than like 20 people. I went all over the place. And so I think the, you know, we talk about athlete mindset and I think what, how I overcame obstacles in the beginning was just taking action. And that does require doing a lot of things that you look stupid doing, like being on the News and filming YouTube videos and, you know, speaking in front of audiences who would heckle the heck out of me. Like, they didn't think any of this made a lot of sense, but I just didn't care because I knew that what I was talking about was helpful for patients because I had seen it with my own Eyes. And also I had experienced it at some level. And so it just. I think that for me has been really the. The nugget of what has kept me navigating any challenges through this journey.

Yeah, I think that's such a valuable lesson and something worth double clicking on for people who are listening to this. Because, you know, early on, we're going to face ridicule. Sometimes it's that own inner voice. Sometimes it's going to be the people around us. Sometimes it's going to be our colleagues. Right. Because maybe they're stuck in their ways, and sometimes our light scares them. And our ability to kind of transcend our letters and our roles and our traditional titles might scare them because it might call them to do something bigger, and they're not ready to do that. And it's like crabs in a bucket. Right. They're trying to hold others back instead of becoming curious about, hey, what else is out there? What other capacity can I help my clients? And, you know, it takes a certain type of person to be able to push through that. So thank you for. For not losing faith in yourself and believing in yourself, which I think is a key missing ingredient for a lot of people who are just starting out. Because, you know, it's not easy. Like, I don't think anyone will tell you and I. I don't think you'll say this, that it's easy to start a business. It takes persistence. It takes diligence. It takes belief. It takes doing the reps. It takes. You know, sometimes we're going to look silly and we're going to do things that we might look back at, and maybe you do this as well. But I look back at videos I recorded from, like, eight years ago, and I kind of cringe. I'm like, that was me. Like, you know, and what I was saying may not. May not change today, because I think that you and I both provide timeless wisdom. But maybe how I said it or how I looked or how I articulated it, you know, makes people feel like, oh, my God, like, I can't believe that was me. But it's also, I can't believe that was me. And here I am now, and here you are now just being persistent and really believing that we can create a better world with the vision that we have in our minds. And my friend Alex Charfen says that entrepreneurs are the only people that create positive change. We're the only ones that ever have and ever will because we see a different world than one that exists. And we're crazy enough to kind of bring it into fruition and make it a reality for ourselves, but then all the positive influence and lives that will touch as a result of, you know, that persistence and passion that we have. So thank you for pushing through and, and, and being a role model and an example to, you know, me and our listeners as well. You know, before we started recording, we, we talked about something that I think is, is very important. And I had a, I had a conversation earlier today with an investment banker and, and somebody in, you know, who goes around and buys people's practices. Not the minds for sale. But, you know, I asked him what do investors look for in a business when they're purchasing it? And he said there's three key things and you might know this already, but for our listeners it might be helpful. First is ebitda, which is essentially profit. The second one is how much the founder is involved in the day to day operations of the business and making it successful. And the third One is the SOPs, which is the standard operating procedures. And one of the things that I think a lot of us were or challenged by over these last few years has been, you know, kind of this pandemic challenged and stressed our businesses in different ways, particularly in your business. I know that you had a, you had a run in with COVID and that led to, you know, a series of long haul symptoms and things like that. And that's really what, what drove, you know, really connected me to you in the sense that I'm like, man, she's going through this, but she's so persistent, she's learning, she's sharing. And I'm so grateful for some of the things I've learned from you, but tell me how that impacted your business and maybe there's a lesson in there on, you know, how we can remove ourselves from our business and make it keep working. Because not only does that, you know, give us a safety net to know that our business doesn't depend on us, but it also increases the value of our business as well.

Yeah, well, and first of all, I'd just like to thank you for the time you volunteered and helped with some of my specific health recovery and breath work. And that was really valuable. So thank you for that.

My pleasure.

Yeah. You know, one thing that. So the pandemic was very interesting for our business. So in, in 2020, we actually had a great year. Great year. Absolutely. And that was because we were ahead of the curve. And you might have felt the same way. You know, my colleagues, who I'm still very close to and connected with in the world of physical therapy and women's health and pelvic health, physical therapy specifically, but other, other areas, orthopedics and so forth, were, were in trouble because their practices, their in person practices were shut down or, you know, temporarily shut down or whatever and, or just people, you know, were not really safe to be in person for various reasons. And so we were quickly pivot and educate people on telehealth because we had, gosh, a decade of experience in telehealth by that point. So one of the things that's great about small business from a profitability standpoint is if you're, you're creative and you're constantly challenging, you're constantly looking for opportunities, sometimes you're a little bit ahead of the curve, which can help you take advantage of shifts. Now other times those shifts aren't so great for your business. Such as my colleagues who run small private practices. You know, they're also entrepreneurs and that shift was challenging for them, but they were also willing to adapt really quickly and some of them grew whole new, you know, lines of service. And it was really, really valuable in the long run. But in the short term it was hard for us. The short term was great. But then In December of 2020, I got personally got Covid, which as a functional nutrition practitioner and all this stuff I wasn't afraid of at all. I was like, I had all my stuff, I was like, I've got vitamin D. I'm so strong, I'm in great shape. I was like about the fittest I had ever been. And shockingly to me, I got super sick. I couldn't walk down my own street. I could barely shower for months. And then I had more long haul stuff. Even to this day, I mean, it's still something that I manage four years later, almost four years later, and I've done, you know, pretty much everything which cost, number one, it cost a lot of money. So that was something that I was grateful that I had, you know, had some cushion from our 2020 financial experience. But two, two things happen when it comes to work in terms of my return to work. So running this company, I do have a small team. Small but mighty, as we always say, and not super small. We have about 20 people now total, including our faculty. And they really stepped up and it was a different team. Our whole company's been a bit reorganized since that time, but they really stepped up. Our students stepped up, you know, and I was grateful to have work because sometimes when you're recovering from a complex chronic illness, it's really important to be tethered to reality, if that makes sense. Like, part of the healing is staying contributory, even if it's in very small ways. So I was grateful. Like, I one time worked with a patient who was a male physician, cancer doctor, and he was really, really sick, but he was able to, like, see patients, like, five hours a week. And that was so valuable for his recovery because there's a sense of purpose in the work sometimes. So I was able to keep that sense of purpose because I, you know, if I had a really bad night of intense pain or my oxygen sats were super low or whatever, I could literally, like, walk down the hall and breathe and then take an hour and help someone else. And the systems and structure for our company had to be ironclad. And they were not at that point. Now, they were pretty good. And our team worked really hard, and we were a fully remote team. And so not all of us were ever really affected by Covid or anything like that at the same time, from a health standpoint. So what I did was I brought in a fractional CEO, and he's still with us today, and we kind of reorganize our team a bit, and we have a leadership team now. And then when I got the opportunity in early 2023 as a part of my long Covid recovery, Yale, which is the hospital near, has a long Covid recovery center. And, you know, it's one of the clinicians I've used for my own or one of the resources I've used for my own healing. I've worked with probably 12 different doctors, but that group is one of them. And they referred me for hyperbaric therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which was really key to my more complete recovery. But it required that I basically take two months off because I was there for hours every day for 40, you know, 40 sessions straight in a row. And so I said to my team, I'm like, look, I'm going to be gone for like, two months. I don't know if I'm going to be able to. How I'm going to feel, how much I'm going to be able to do. And I wasn't fully out for two months, but I was more or less out for two months. And we had that at that point, you know, in those intervening two years, built all the structure, all the systems to really have everything running without me at all. And that was so valuable because we were able to maintain our profitability, we were able to maintain our revenue generation, we were able to maintain supporting our students and our clients. And now this year, we've gone even further and we're working on exactly how to scale our strongest programs. And what's been so great about that for me is, is that, number one, I got to kind of hand pick, like, what are our strongest programs? What do we really want to keep doing? And then we have a very clear path to what are the goals we have to hit, to hit that kind of ideal EBITDA for our, you know, profitability, for our company to be even stronger with or without me. Because now, you know, when you go from being, like, literally at the peak of health to, like, the. A week later almost dying, you. You kind of like, think about your business as a resource for your family, if they were to need it, and you weren't there. And so we've really doubled down into the things that I'm really good at creating and building and optimizing. And then the team taking that and. And, you know, as you said, the SOPs, anyone with the appropriate scale, of course, being able to take that and, and scale it and continue the mission, not only for the sake of the work, although I actually think that's an important piece of it too. Like, not a lot of other people are training women's health professionals all over the globe to be able to think so integratively. And we know we have a dearth of quality women's healthcare. Right. So I feel like this work is very important to the evolution of the healthcare system, but also as an asset that I've worked very hard on for 15 years, that should anything happen to me, my family would at least be able to recoup some of that effort. And then ultimately, hopefully, I don't just die suddenly, you know, then. Then myself and my husband will be able to have something out of the work because it has been, you know, 15 years of pretty intense work.

You know, you. Thank you for sharing, by the way, and thank you for sharing online this story and the journey that you've been through. And it's quite, quite striking because, you know, you're at your peak of health and then something comes along and kind of feels like it pulls a rug from underneath us. But thankfully you had, you know, the right relationships, the right foresight, the right team to support you and hold space for you so that you could go through your recovery and, and wishing you a full and complete recovery. As. As I know sometimes these things can take some time and seems like you're doing a ton better, which is awesome. Yeah, I I know that maybe it's, maybe it's another interview, but I, I'd love for you to share because some people might be listening to this and maybe they have patients that have gone through long haul symptoms or have long haul symptoms or maybe practitioners. What were maybe like your top three to five things that you would recommend that people can, and we'll let them go down the rabbit hole. But what are the top three to five things that you would encourage people to investigate?

So if someone has long haul, the key I think is figuring out what kind of long haul, if you will, because there are a number of underlying causes. So that's one thing. And then from there, you know, like I said, there isn't really sort of a protocol of what to explore, but very common. So the number one most common symptom is fatigue, which I never really had because from day one I was supporting my mitochondria. So I think that's going to be pretty valuable for almost any long hauler. And then the second is thinking of oxygen as a nutrient. So hyperbaric oxygen therapy, of course, is one key thing, and it was for me. There are other things too. The other way that people, that we don't exactly know why people with long haul can't get oxygen into their organs and muscles. And that's what limits our exercise tolerance. But it's probably, we need some support like hyperbaric or, and, or dealing with like capillary micro clotting. So there are lots of ways to deal with that. So mitochondria micro clotting. And then I would say probably just, you know, it's possible that you're dealing with organ damage, but, and it's, it's even more likely, and this could be both that you're dealing with a shift, some kind of irritation to the immune system, either chronic viral reservoirs or some kind of like hit to the immune system that has triggered something like mast cell activation syndrome. But those are some of the most common and key things I would say.

Thank you. Thank you for sharing. I know that a lot of people are affected by this. And one thing I've learned over the years is that knowledge isn't immunity. So it's important that just like you were leading up to this, taking really good care of your health because we just never know what's around the corner for us. And sometimes it could be a pandemic, sometimes it could be an injury, sometimes it could be a family emergency where we have to look after somebody else. And I think there's an important lesson there for everyone to kind of really look at their business and if it could function without them, if they had to take a short term leave of absence to tend to their own health or the health of a family member or any crisis or emergency situation. And it's, you know, it's an important thing for people to, to assess and evaluate. I know that, you know, when I traveled to Italy for three weeks last year and you know, I had, I was, thankfully I was able to still work while I was there. And, and the Italian time time zone is about five hours ahead from Eastern time zone. And so it wasn't too bad to be able to continue with the business. But I do have, I don't want to call it a fear, but an uncertainty that surrounds me not being present. So this is certainly something that I need to investigate and evaluate and make sure that this baby that I've created is now an adult, I guess, but make sure that they're taken care of and it has the tools and resources that it needs to function independently of me. And even if we don't, we don't have to be sick or be in a crisis situation to want to step away from our business or take some time off and enjoy ourselves and you know, sail the seven seas if we wanted to. I mean, we don't have to have a reason that is a crisis situation. It could be a positive thing that we're, that we're exploring as well. So thank you for sharing that and appreciate, you know, appreciate your candor and, and your transparency and all the breadcrumbs that you've left for those of us that may be caught in that situation. I know there's a lot that you've learned and a lot, a lot of things that you researched, you know, to, to go through the therapies and modalities that you did.

Yeah, for sure. And absolutely. I think you know these businesses because you really do create it out of thin air, if you will. You can create it in any way that you want. And it's so valuable to, from the beginning start to think about that, like, what are the pieces of it that could you needing to be fully present, even if it's a little bit at a time because it builds it into something that then you can, you can keep expanding, you can build new things and you can, as you said, like, this doesn't have to be about a crisis. I think even better that you sometimes I think what I've learned in the last four years is that also me stepping away from the business For a couple of weeks or even a couple of months, you know, almost fully or sometimes fully fully. Like I never really took a lot of full vacations up until 2020. Like I always had my computer with me. But now, you know, I'm going to see my parents for a week in April and I'm just not going to work at all. I don't even know. I might even just leave all of my computer and everything here because, you know, my daughter is now in College. I'm turning 50 in a month. Like you begin to realize like the attention and presence, which is the one of the main reasons I started this business. And it's also given me that, you know, from the time I've had it long enough that from the time that I've been doing this, my kids have mostly grown up. They're teenagers and one my oldest is 20 and I've been very present with them. I've been home, I've been able to be flexible with my work, which is great. And now that next level is complete presence. And sometimes that's just one three day weekend a month or something like that. But really intentionally creating time where you're actually not working. Because those of us who are digital entrepreneurs are really good at taking our work to Italy. But wouldn't it be awesome to just leave your computer and not even take it to Italy? So three weeks should be, you know, it's hard. I mean, I definitely have done the exact same thing. And the, the longer I do this, the older I get, the older my kids and parents get. I really think just one week at a time. That disconnection, it does two things. It brings presence to your most important people. And it also, I've had more ideas, like even more ideas and even more energy I suppose to bring back to the business when I have had that true rest.

Yeah, it, you know, I don't know if you knew this or not, but I'll share. I just came back a couple weeks ago now from three days in the backcountry wilderness and it was so magical and it's amazing. Like three days felt like a month because time stands still. You know, we're fully present. There's no new information coming in. There's no laptop. Right. There's, you're off the grid, so there's no cell phone signals. You can take pictures with your phone, but you're not like logging into Facebook or anything. And I do agree, like having those three day weekends now and then could be a great stepping stone for a lot of people. Who are afraid to fully unplug from their business. But then, you know, that. That kind of forces us to ask the right questions of, like, what would it look like if I took four days off and disconnected or five days off and six days off? And I remember there was a time I went to India a few years ago, and my business actually ran better while I was gone. And when I came back, I was like, maybe. Maybe I shouldn't be here. Maybe I should just, like, take a year off and see what happens and, And. And experiment with that. But that's such a great point that, you know, as we, as we mature and as we get older, we start realizing what's important. And I think a true business is one that doesn't rely on you and is one that, you know, benefits when you're there, but doesn't rely on you to exist. And it's kind of like, like raising children, right? It's like, in the beginning, we need to be there for them, and especially when they're newborns, we have to attend to every need that they have. But then the goal isn't to. To be there for them in that capacity for the rest of your life. You want them to grow up and be independent and, you know, benefit from your time when you're there, but not necessarily be 100 dependent on you being there for them to thrive. So I like to equate a business to a child. You know, I had a conversation the other day with somebody. They're like, you know, how. How much time do I need to invest in this to get this off the ground? I'm like, if you've had children, that's a good metaphor because in the beginning, you're going to have to, like, tend to every need. And then over time, if you build it right, and just like, if you raise your kids right, they're going to become, you know, beautifully independent of you, and they're going to benefit from you being around, but not necessarily require you to be there. So wonderful to see that, you know, over the last few years, the impetus was created for you to build a business that, you know, solves for those needs. And, and, you know, I think Covid was like, a really important turning point. The pandemic, or whatever we want to call it, was a. An important turning point for a lot of businesses. Like, some businesses, like, just really took off and they were ahead of the curve. I. I feel like that's what happened for our business, because we were a little bit ahead of the curve there, and it was like A blessing in disguise. And some businesses that were strictly physical in nature, you know, I think they, you know, they took a bit of a hit. And, you know, thankfully now things are opening back up, so the playing field is leveled. And I think that's an opportunity for all of us to kind of assess what would happen if there's another crisis, whether it's personal or whether it's, you know, you know, you know, more global in nature. Does our business stand up to the litmus test of surviving, you know, whatever comes its way and, and I'm glad that yours has, and I know you've built a stronger business as a result of that.

Yeah. And I think very simply, you know, the thing that I most learned is that we can't, we don't, we can kind of stress test the business, if you will, but we don't really know what the next stressor will be. And so that's where kind of circling back to that athlete mindset, that's where the flexibility comes in. That's where the willingness to try crazy things when, you know, if things shift. I think that's what makes really true entrepreneurs survive over the long term is because they're not like, they almost think of, we, we almost think of these stressors as just an interesting new challenge for our creativity. And rather than like, oh, no, you know, it's all over for me, it's kind of like, look, we're always going to do the best that we can and I can't control everything. So. But the more creative I am and the more strong the business's foundation is, then the healthier it will be, just like any human.

Amazing. You know, one of the things you mentioned was one of our fellow or mutual mentors, JJ, VA and I always like to, you know, in the interviews that I do, certainly, I know that mentorship is important. I know you've mentioned how important mentorship has been for you. Are there any other mentors that you'd like to give a shout out to that have been influential for you?

I would say a colleague of mine who wasn't a direct mentor to me, but did reach out to kind of help when I was in this spot. His name is Greg Todd, as I said, Fabian Frederickson. And then honestly, my dad, because even though he's not an entrepreneur himself, he's been in the world of business and he was, he helped my cousin quite a bit. And I think just having that sounding board and being willing to kind of step in and, and help in whatever way, even though, like, this really isn't his expertise. He's worked, like, in the airline industry partner primarily. But just having my dad as like, a person who I could talk about things with, and then my. My team actually doing things in a way, and my team through this whole process. Different people have been part of my team through this whole process, but kind of always just putting our heads together and being like, okay, what could we do here? So that's probably been my. My best mentorship. And really, you know, I go to a lot of conferences and I just listen. You know, it's been somet. Sometimes it's just books, Sometimes it's just a podcast episode here or there. Sometimes it's just chatting with my colleagues. For a while, I was in sort of a little just friend group mastermind, if you were Will. It wasn't formal with Trudy Scott and Magdalena was Lackey and Isabella Wentz and a few people that I met through JJ years ago. So just having those sounding board colleagues, because it is. Can be lonely compared to, like, working in a hospital where you're kind of with your colleagues every day. Everybody's kind of working together with the same client caseload or patient caseload. So I. I think that while not all of my mentors have been formal, I've just found mentorship through also just being friends with people who are doing the same thing.

I love that. It's. There's a word in Sanskrit called satsang, and sat means truth, and sung is fellowship. So I feel like we all need that fellowship of truth seekers and. And people who are not only seeking the truth, but willing to tell us the truth so that we can improve and enhance how we show up in the world. I see a lot of books behind you, so I'm going to ask you one more question. Okay. Which is what's on what's on your nightstand right now? Or what are you reading right now? And. And I'd love to know how it's impacted you.

Well, I've just started reading a book, a fiction book about the Panama Canal, so I don't know. That's a new one. I would say one of my most impactful books through this, this past four years was a beautiful book called Wintering by Catherine May. And it's just a beautiful book about the fact that sometimes life is really hard. And the. The metaphor she uses is literally the winter and cold swimming and things like that. And it's just a beautifully written book about navigating that. And there's one other book that helped me kind of navigate living with a chronic illness after really never experiencing something quite like this called Between Two Worlds. I don't remember the woman's, the author's name of that, but she was a woman who had cancer and then recovered. And it's very interesting, too, to kind of of shift what it's changed my. Both of these, these works have changed my definition of health and disease, if you will, and seeing it much more on a continuum because defining healthy is so elusive, and then defining sick can be somewhat elusive, too. So we don't really have to call ourselves one or the other, no matter what stage of health we're in. And same thing with life being hard or easy. You can have a easy part of your day and a hard part of your day. It's never really that life is hard or easy. So both of those really challenge my ideas around the continuum of those things.

Wonderful. You know, it's spring right now, depending on when somebody's listening to this. It's Approaching Spring here, 2024 in Toronto, and you can see the leaves starting to bud on the. On the tips of the trees, which is an exciting time, one of my favorite times of the year. It's an opportunity to witness nature coming from the winter season into the season of spring and growth. And, you know, Jim Rohn talks about this. He talks about the seasonality in life. And after every single winter, there does come a spring. And after spring comes a summer, and after summer comes the fall, and after falling comes a winter. And. And I think if we have the right gear and preparation, we can navigate the different seasons as they come up in our day, in our week, in our month, in our quarter, and in our year. So what a great lesson and thank you for sharing your insights today. It's been such a blessing to connect with you in this capacity. Hopefully I'll see you at Mind Share or at an upcoming event in this coming year or even sooner than that. And thank you again for, you know, for dropping some amazing nuggets of wisdom. I know how busy your schedule is, so this time for me has been very valuable and I hope for our listeners has been very insightful and valuable as well. Jessica, where can we send people if they. Oh, my pleasure. Where can we send people if they want to learn more information about the work that you're doing?

So our main website is integrative womenshealthinstitute.com we're on Instagram at Integrative Women's Health. And we just launched a new podcast, Integrative Women's Health Podcast So those are probably the best places to find us.

Amazing. I will be sure to post all that information in the notes. And again, thank you for taking time out of your day. And here's to continued health, happiness and wholeness to you and your family and those around you.

Thank you. You too, for sure.