Are you tired of a stressful practice? It may not be your team, it may be you! How do you create a practice that you love again? Dr. Deb shares what it's like to revitalize a practice so that it thrives financially and gets your patients the results that they want.
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You're listening to the Functional Medicine Business Podcast featuring Dr. Deb, one of the most creative functional medicine business practitioners in her industry. She shares the wisdom and knowledge that she has gained over 25 years of functional medicine, a pioneer in functional medicine, scheduling, leadership and Practice Management. Dr. Deb has a wealth of knowledge and is eager to share to help functional medicine become more productive. And for the practitioners and patients to live better lives. Our podcast shares the good and the bad of our industry, because Dr. Deb knows the pain you live every day building a functional medicine practice with practical tools on how to manage money, taxes and patient care. She will discuss it all with you.
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I'm excited to have our conversation with you today, because we're going to talk about the difference between being a practitioner and being a business leader. How? How could those two things be so different? Right? Well, they are, you know, being a practitioner and being an expert in your field of practice is one thing, telling a patient what to do. And being confident in that and knowing your truth and knowing what you need to do? Well, you've trained your whole career for that you've gone to school, you've studied with the best, and you know what's right for your client or your patient. But being a business leader is completely different, especially when you're used to telling people what they should do. Oftentimes, as business leaders, we treat our employees the same way. We tell them what to do, we do not engage them. We don't teach them, we don't encourage them, we tell them what to do. And you know, as a business leader, I was no different. I am a great practitioner, I have wonderful intuition with my patients. And I could make an amazing relationship with people out of the gate. But my employees on the other side, well, that was completely different. And I was a completely different person. I was demanding. I thought it was my way or the highway. I thought everyone knew what I knew. Or at least everyone should know what I know. And if they didn't, well, what the hell was wrong with them. I expected everyone to be like me. And it took me many years to realize that was not the way to be a leader. Needless to say, I went through a lot of employees, somewhere my decision was to ask them to leave, or some of them, they chose to leave. So here's my mentor, who had employees that stayed with them for 20,30, even 40 years. And I couldn't keep an employee for two years. But I knew something was wrong. Should so I went to him and I said, What am I doing wrong as a leader? Why can't they just do their jobs? Why can't they just show up? Why can't they just do the flippin job the way they're supposed to? This isn't rocket science. It's not difficult. And he'd say to me, my employees got better when I learned how to meditate. And I thought, oh, hell without I can't meditate. What does that have to do with running a practice and keeping employees happy? Anyway?
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What I didn't hear in that conversation was him telling me that his ability to manage employees got better when he worked on himself instead of working on them. Oh, what a concept, right? And that was truly the difference. But I wouldn't learn that for many, many years after I had that conversation. I struggled. I hired people I hired the wrong people. I would feel sorry for people. So I would hire them. I would feel sorry for their situation, so I wouldn't let them go. And I finally got to the point where I said, I'm not hiring another person. Because I suck at picking employees. I suck at trying to figure out who's the best e...
