Katie Garrott on the Fulfillment Formula, Evidence-Based Practice, and Building a Leveraged Practice

What does it actually take to feel fulfilled in practice? Not just busy, not just successful on paper, but genuinely fulfilled?

In this Meet Your Health Heroes segment, Ricky sits down with Katie, a functional nutritionist with a degree in functional medicine who built a thriving multi-practitioner clinic from the ground up, without any formal business training, and lived to tell the tale. Her story starts with a mother battling fibromyalgia, a personal health crisis abroad, and a deep conviction that there had to be a better way to help people.

What came out of years of trial, tears, and relentless curiosity is something she calls the Fulfillment Formula, a three-part framework that changed how she runs her practice and how she now trains other practitioners through her Functional Practitioner Academy.

This conversation is packed with practical wisdom you can use right away, whether you're in your first year of practice or your seventh.
In this episode you will learn:

• Why Katie created the Fulfillment Formula and the three pillars that define it
• How evidence-based tools like questionnaires changed the way her clients showed up and followed through
• Why connected client care is about changing the brain, not just getting results
• How Katie charted for 6 clients in under 15 minutes
• The systems (Trello, Slack, and a knowledge base with thousands of pages) that let her take two-week international vacations without checking in
• Her take on where natural healthcare is headed and why AI will never replace the practitioner who truly connects
• What she'd tell every new practitioner starting out today

This is one of those conversations where you realize that the best practitioners are never done learning and that the most powerful shift you can make is choosing to build with intention from day one.

Connect with Katie: 

https://fxpractitioner.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thefxpacademy/

https://www.facebook.com/thefxpacademy

https://www.youtube.com/@FxPractitioner

Get my book The Fulfilled Practitioner for FREE: www.rbrar.com/tfpbook

Follow me on instagram: @fulfilledpractitioner

Follow me on Facebook: @drrickybrar

Set up a strategy call with me here: Schedule Here

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Welcome back to the Filled Practitioner Podcast. Today we're doing our very special Meet Your Health Hero segment. This segment, we do our best to spotlight practitioners who are not just creating impact, but they're doing it with fulfillment, purpose, and authenticity. I've had the honor of meeting some of the most amazing practitioners in our space, and today's guest fits that mold perfectly. And these are people who are truly changing the world. And I want to make sure they don't stay a best kept secret much longer. So hey Katie, how's everything going today?

SPEAKER_03 2:04

Hi, Ricky. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm really excited to share some of the hard-earned lessons that I've had throughout my career as a practitioner.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Amazing, amazing. No, I'm I'm so honored to have you on, and I know we're I've connected with you a while ago, and uh I love what you're doing, and uh I love that, like myself, you're doing so many things to help others, not just from a client standpoint, but a practitioner standpoint as well. So I'd love for you to introduce yourself to the audience and let us know who you are and what do you do.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

Sure, yeah. So I am a functional nutritionist. Um so I actually got my degree in functional medicine and nutrition. And so I love having both of those pieces because the functional medicine gives me the ability to evaluate someone's systems, to know what dysfunctions they have, to figure out what their root causes are and what a good treatment plan would be. But then I also get to be in the nitty-gritty and helping them to make dietary changes and address their stress and improve their circadian rhythm. So I love having that combination. And our practice is just a functional medicine practice. So we don't have a niche. Um, our niche really is just that we are very true to the principles of functional medicine. Um so if you're you know someone who does things outside of that, then we might not be a good fit. But whatever health condition you have that you want to solve through you know evidence-based kind of systematic methods, then that's where your people amazing.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

So I didn't know that about you, and I I'd love to learn more. So I know you said you got a degree in functional medicine. What drew you into that space? What made you make that big decision?

SPEAKER_03 3:36

Yeah, so I I actually started getting interested in health when I was a child because my mom had fibromyalgia. And this was in the 90s and no one really knew what it was. Um, and so she would see practitioners that would give her recommendations that made her much worse. So we'd come, you know, she'd come home and we'd see her just be miserable, not be able to parent, not be able to get off the couch or in so much pain because she was doing the kinds of therapies that they were recommending or the medications. And said right away, I was like, oh, healthcare is horrible. You know, like I don't I don't like this system. I don't want to have to ever need this. And then we were like, okay, we want some alternative options, but we grew up poor in Detroit, and that was not really in the cards for us to go see like an alternative doctor. So I decided I'll be that alternative doctor because I'm a middle child. So I gotta keep the family together. So I started reading medical encyclopedias in middle school and signing up for Chris Cresser and Mark Hyman's newsletters in high school before they were ever part of a function medicine movement, um, and reading Jordan Rubin's book, and these things kind of just started to uh shape what I, you know, thought was maybe the path forward for how we can heal and how we can be healthy. And then I got sick myself in college. I traveled internationally and picked up parasites and bacteria of all kinds. I was in lots of different hospitals and came back with IBS and Hashimoto's, and my body was just kind of failing me at the young age of 20, which I know you can very much relate to. Um, and so I'm then you know was doing whatever the doctors recommended, and it was not making me better. And I still had severe IBS several years later and felt like I couldn't really function. Um, and that's when I was like, I need to figure this out for myself. So I did kind of figure that out for myself by just going and seeing a doctor and and you know, trying to um understand who are the people that you know do things outside of conventional medicine. And that's when I really kind of discovered there was this pathway towards under learning functional medicine itself because I didn't want to go be a dietitian, I didn't want to go back to school to be a doctor. Um, it's when I found out that you could actually get a degree in functional medicine, I signed up right away.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Wow, I just like I've been having flashbacks on like if I knew that you could get a degree in functional medicine, I don't think I would have gone in any other direction. So that's so powerful. And uh again, I learned so much about the practitioners I interview. I know I've known you for a short while, but I had no idea, and uh, it's not just a personal story, but one that was within your family. So it's interesting. My my mom was actually my first uh person I saw go through poor health, and she had Hashimoto's as well for close to 40 years, and uh, someone I saw just energy levels tank, digestion tank, and she just kind of turned into a shell of herself. So I know that could be such a powerful motivation, and it's funny, I've always kind of waited for someone to bring up that book, but uh Chris Cresser's book, Shout Out Chris Cresser, it was actually the first book that I picked up during Cairo school. I remember I think it was first year Cairo school, and it was my first exposure that there's tests out there that can tell you about the functional side and there's protocols out there, and I had no idea about all of this. So I I love the the origin story, and uh that's uh so inspiring. So uh I know when you were going through it, it probably doesn't seem like a positive event whatsoever, but when you reflect backwards, and I often encourage listeners to reflect backwards, it could be the most pivotal moment of your career, right?

SPEAKER_03 7:08

So absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

You found this world.

SPEAKER_03 7:13

I and I love that means you were a renegade as well, because you know, way back in the day, Chris Cressner was talking about how high cholesterol isn't as dangerous as it seems, and it's just very, you know, kind of um outside of the norm, but from a very researched and evidence standpoint. So I love that that's how you kind of got introduced as well. And and it for me, I I always joke that God has given me every ailment known to man because then it really changes like how deeply I go into what do we do about this and how well I can counsel um either a practitioner that I'm training or clients, you know, and how to improve it. And so I mean I've I've counted it up, I've had over like 24 diagnoses um over the years and and health issues. Um, and but I'm I'm healthy, I'm standing here well today, but it definitely um things come up, and then I'm like, all right, God, what I'm I'm ready. Like, what are we gonna learn? What do I need to change about the way I'm helping patients with this currently that I'm gonna be able to do better now that I've gone through this?

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Wow, so 24 diagnoses, and uh, I like that you have a very analytical mind, so you kind of see it as problem solution, problem solution, and and what do I have to learn next? And I love that so you remind me a lot of myself in the sense that um you are the practitioner's practitioner, and that's who you're also attracted to from uh an education standpoint as well, because like even this podcast, right? Even doing YouTube like you do or any sort of social media, like this is kind of secondary. We've had to almost like learn how to do this. It doesn't come natural. It might be for you, but for me, that like I love to have this conversation. But this is something that took me out of my conventional box as well. So I love that we are in an industry and a career where there's just never-ending learning, and it it's fun learning if you make it fun, right?

SPEAKER_03 9:02

Yes, yeah, it definitely is. It's not always fun, right, in that moment, but it is yeah, it's definitely very fun to be able to know that you're going to be so much better than you were, you know, a couple months ago. When I look back at my appointment notes when I have like a patient come back, you know, and it's even if it's just been a year, and I look back at those notes and I'm like, oh wow, like I can't believe I was doing that, you know. Like things change so quickly in this field.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Yeah, absolutely. Like you often reflect back, and you're like, I think of my first 10 patients all the time. And I'm like, with everything I knew at the time, I did really well. We we saw positive outcomes, but I'm like, I wish I could like take what I know now and go back in a time machine and re-see those people. So it just it never ends, right? And yeah, today's podcast, it's called the Fulfilled Practitioner Podcast. So I always put every single person on the spot, and I'd love to know what being a fulfilled practitioner mean to you.

SPEAKER_03 9:54

Yeah, I have thought deeply about this over the years because when I started my practice, it was because I I wanted to be able to treat my patients in the way that I felt was best, and the clinic that I was at before didn't really give me the freedom to do that. And so over time it just started to feel like I wasn't really living and aligned and with integrity because I wasn't doing something or recommending something that I thought could really help them. And so I started my practice just out of that like that need to be able to help patients with integrity, not out of some, you know, big goal to be a business owner or anything like that. And then it just took off, it just grew, um, you know, partly because I realized now because I had um already been doing uh social media and blogs. Um and I was really just doing it because when a patient would ask a question that I didn't want to repeat, I just wanted to be like, go look at this post. And so that's what I would do. I was like, okay, if I've said something over and over again and I I'm gonna have a lot of research to prove to people why I'm saying it, then I would go write it down and then I'd point patients to it. And but I realized that that actually was marketing after the fact, and it was helping people to find me when I started my own practice. Um, and then we also had the pandemic and people were really interested in their health during that time. So my practice just took off. And I, because I didn't have any training or any knowledge and that I hadn't really planned this, I was just kind of flying by the seat of my pants. And Ricky, I spent some years not fulfilled, let me tell you. It was really hard because I started hiring and having a group practice, and then having admin and having HR and accounting and all of these things that I didn't know anything about, and I really had no interest in. And so I was really stressed, and there were a lot of tears and there were a lot of hard nights, but I was so motivated because I knew if I had more people working in my practice, I was helping more people, and that's always what drives me is helping people to be able to live the quality of life that they desire. And so I would, I knew I had to figure it out. And so over the years, now that you know, the last couple of years, I really have felt very fulfilled as a practitioner and really stable and just, you know, really uh calm and grateful for the practice that I have. And so the way that you said, like I have a very analytical mind. And so I'm like, okay, what have I done that has changed and how can I capitalize on that and reinforce it so I can continue to feel more fulfilled and then save other practitioners the heartache that I went through. And so that through that process, I came up with the fulfillment formula. So it's like a Venn diagram, but with three pieces instead of two, because we're functional medicine, so we got to be more complex, right? And so the three parts in the fulfillment formula is the first one, which is the one that we're all most comfortable with, which is functional medicine knowledge. And so this is understanding, you know, root causes and diet and lifestyle and interventions. And there's always more we can do in this front, right? But being able to have a um a place that you can go that has your functional medicine knowledge that makes it really quick and easy, and you can just research things, that's what when you can feel more fulfilled in your knowledge. Um, because just having finished training and graduating, like that usually is not enough. Like it doesn't teach you how to actually work with a patient. And then the second one out of the three is connected client care. So this is client care that is based on a therapeutic relationship that's very strong in rapport, that works on mindset, that really leads to transformation, not just getting them results. Right. Because for me, a failure of what I've done with a patient would be I got them to reach all their goals. And then, you know, a year later or two years later, they're back in my office or someone else's office, being like, yeah, I did this program a while ago, it was great, but you know, as soon as I stopped it, things started coming back, and now I'm back where I was. Right? That's that's the failure to me. So I'm always thinking about how can we make this sustainable? The only way to really do that is you gotta change the brain, right? You gotta change what's going on in the mindset. Yeah, so that's connected client care. And then the third one is business optimization. And this is where Ricky shines, and this is where I learned a lot from him and a lot of others online in order to continually get better at this, because it is my weakest spot because I'm a practitioner, and that's we're gonna focus all my time and energy on those first two. But fortunately, when you do focus your time and energy the first two, you don't have to be as great with the third one because people will come because you'll get referrals. But business optimization is things like systems and efficiency and marketing. When you have all three of those, where you've got them, you know, a decent place, where you've got uh standard operating procedures and you know what you're gonna say, and you've you've got all of your uh knowledge written down where you can easily access it for any patient, and you're not having to start from scratch and research every case, um, you will start to have you'll get great results, you're gonna get referrals, and you're gonna have free time. Right? And that's what I realized. Those three things is what really makes me fulfilled.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

I love it. I need to like like steal that from you or pay you a royalty for that formula because as you know, that that's the title of my book, The Fulfilled Practitioner. And I there's so much overlap there. And what I love if as I was listening, and uh I I tend toward the analytical side as well, so I have a big analytical part to my mind, but on the disc scoring system, if you're familiar with it, I have a S, so I'm like really empathetic, really connected. Uh so I love to connect. So as I was looking at your story there and kind of seeing the parts move and how you came to this formula, I talk about it in my book, and I love that you started with the purest intention. So I always tell practitioners, choose the right intention, and you said it there where you're like, I didn't get into practice to like like start a business, right? Like that was not the reason for you to want to do a practice. There's a lot of easier businesses where you'll wait through the night and you won't be woken up at like 4 a.m. thinking about a client or a patient. Like that that's that's what we experience, right? But we love it. Uh, but you started with that, and then you built systems on top of it. And I I feel practitioners they don't think like that. So you have a question come in, it's immediate feedback for you that hey, I don't have an FAQ for this, I don't have a video for this, I don't have a blog I can send them for this. And that's how you create these systems. And I did uh a podcast a little while ago, and I joked, but I was sincere and and I truly meant it. Is like when people would talk about systems seven, eight, nine years ago, I would nod along and I'd be like, Oh, I know what you're talking about, but I had no idea what they were talking about. So this is what systems are essentially, like, even from a knowledge-based standpoint. I love that you said that. Like, you do need clinical knowledge. This is not an industry where you can just rely on what you learned in your one designation or one program. If you're not keeping up with it, you're missing out on things that are literally shortcuts for people to take to get better faster, more efficiently, more affordably, more practically. So you're building systems on top of that. And then I also love that you acknowledge that you don't have to be perfect in all of these things. So we often teach practitioners is you don't have to be an expert marketer, you don't need to know Facebook or meta ads inside out, but you should have a base understanding of these things so you know who to go to, where to go, where is that resource for me to learn this and move forward. So yeah, you don't need to know it all, but you need to you need to have that baseline understanding. So I love the formula. That's that's totally amazing.

SPEAKER_03 17:16

Yeah, and I I love that you know, we have um practitioners like yourself that have done the client care, that have you know worked with patients that knows what that's like, and then is also teaching how do you do technology, how do you create systems, how do you improve your marketing, um, because it's it just means so much more when you've got that that heartfelt, you know, you know you can trust where you're coming from and that it's going to it's going to make sense, it's gonna feel aligned when you follow through on those recommendations because it's coming from the same place that our hearts are coming from as practitioners.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Absolutely. And I feel like even in this like motivational world we live in, and there's always motivational quotes on social media, people say stuff all the time, and like and I always want to preface anything I say that kind of starts there and then elaborate on it. But we live in an era where technology has just expanded exponentially, and now we're in the era of AI. And if you don't think AI is gonna affect you, it already is and it will continue to. But the one thing that AI will never be able to recreate is authenticity. And that term authenticity is another one. Most practitioners just nod along to like, oh, I know what that means. But if you truly knew what authenticity means, you need to know that the information you're giving is up to date, it's genuine, it is in your client and patient's best interest, it is something that you know will help them move the needle forward, and it's coming from you, or else like this is how you make yourself irreplaceable. Is like why would you not just have an algorithm? They could just go to ChatGPT and turn it into an algorithm, right? Like fulfilled practitioners are not algorithms, they know that they have such an important role to coach people. So I love that, and I love that you're uh you're living your life by these guidelines and through this formula as well. That's an awesome share. What's uh what's giving you the most joy in your work right now?

SPEAKER_03 19:04

So I've I I I've already shared, you know, I love working with patients and getting them to their goals. So right now, giving me the most joy is teaching other practitioners to do that because it allows me to multiply myself, right? So if I at first I was like, I didn't really have a desire to work with practitioners. It came through hiring and you know, hiring and training over and over again because I've been um open as a business for seven years now. So we've had a few people come and go, and we also have you know currently have uh four practitioners, and so I've been able to, you know, train a dozen people over the years, and through that process, I was able to see when I trained them and then watched their work and you know, am looking over their patients, they're getting their patients very similar results to what I was getting them. And that was just like this amazing, you know, life old moment of like, oh my gosh, I can help so many more people. And so when I was doing that though, they were all telling me that they were like, I wish that the colleagues that from my program that I graduated from uh had these resources because I'm in forums with them or text, you know, threads, and they're saying that they're struggling, whether in different parts. You know, some of them are great at the connection component, but they just didn't have the knowledge of what do I actually do to help this patient, or they're great at both of those, but they just don't have the systems to be operating a business, so they're just drowning in constant admin work. And that over like two years was really tugging at my heart. And I was like, oh, I have all of these resources because I record everything so that we never have to come up with anything. We just copy and paste whatever we do. And I can't just let them sit here for us, you know, five practitioners CUs. And so by I was like, I'm just gonna kind of publish it and put it out. Sorry, that was my my water glass. I'm gonna I'm gonna publish it and put it out there, and I'm just gonna, you know, let people use it if they want to. But then as I started to do that, my heart started to grow of like, well, let me also share this with the practitioners. Let me also do this. And this could help them because if I can help practitioners to be more confident, to, you know, be more efficient, uh, to be more evidence-based, these things are going to help their patients so much more because I'm sure you've experienced this as well. And many practitioners listening, we get them, get patients into our office, and they've actually been burned by functional medicine. It's not just the conventional system. It's by seeing other practitioners who were calling themselves functional, but all they were doing was treating labs with supplements, um, or they were jumping into deep, harsh protocols that the patient wasn't ready for on many different levels, and they actually felt worse, they felt triggered, and and now they don't trust practitioners. And it's such a it just breaks my heart to see people who are already struggling now have even less hope about their ability to heal and have this big obstacle, which is trust. Because if you don't trust your practitioner, you could be giving, given the best protocols in the world that work uh on a physiological level, and you still won't heal because we have to have that mind-body connection. So research makes that really clear what you believe is going to impact how good you can feel. And so if we have clients that are starting to not really believe that functional medicine works or that their practitioner can guide them towards their goals, then it's gonna be really hard for them to ever reach them. So the more education I can do, and the more I have to, you know, I have to constantly learn myself too. So I'm like, I have all the answers, and hey, if you just listen to me, then like all of your patients will be amazing. I I'm on always learn, but I'm I'm already gonna do that anyway. So that's just who I am. And so I can um help more practitioners by sharing what I've already learned and then continuing to share what I continue to learn so that we can have less and less of those patients that you know do feel burned. Because I I've done that myself. Like I've worked with a client in a way that you know made them feel like they weren't getting the help they needed and now they had less hope. And that was the worst feeling in the world. And so I need to always be learning, you know, for each different and particular client, how can I uh better adjust and change in order to help them to uh you know not only see results but also feel really good about it.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Amazing, and that's so powerful and I think so under talked about is there's a right practitioner for the right client, and sometimes there's a mismatch, right? And that mismatch is going to create a situation where even if like on paper you recommended all the right things, it's just not going to happen. Like we know about the placebo effect, and then there's There's the no SIBO effect, right? Where there will actually be either no um no change or negative change, right? From any sort of intervention you provide them with. So that connection is so important, and that's where, like, I know early on in my career, that was my objective with every single person that I worked with, is that I always wanted to connect with them on a deeper level and kind of see where the psychology was, where their identity was, and kind of the language that they were speaking, and trying to find the quote unquote root cause within that, because that's often the first phenomenon to fall with health issues. So that's so powerful. And the one big thing that a lot of practitioners they either learn the hard way, and that's literally why me and you do what we do, is we're we're trying to prevent them from doing that, is like you could go to the bookstore and you could buy a book, and that book might be 20 bucks, 30 bucks, and you get to essentially get the entire life experience of somebody who probably spent 40-50 years writing that book, if not more. So that's one way to learn. But the issue with that is that information was most relevant at a certain time. So now information changes so quickly. So I think both of us probably might agree to this, but uh I always have this feeling that like I need to be doing more for the practitioners I work with. I need to be doing more, I need to be doing more. And that thought, like, it never leaves you. You just want to make sure you're giving them more and more and more and getting them up to speed. But we're in a very fast changing world, like we're not in something that has been done the exact same way for 30, 40 years, right? This isn't changing tires where all you need is like a torque gun, and like that hasn't changed yet, right? This is something that has so many moving parts, and we're also now dealing with people that have trauma and and other situations. So I know you mentioned uh probably a very hard lesson that you learned uh by this person you were trying to be the right fit for, but maybe it just didn't work. Uh is there a practice lesson that stands out to you in your career that that taught you a lot?

SPEAKER_03 25:27

Yes, yeah, that is exactly uh right. I have learned and I continue to learn because every patient is so different, how to match that patient's stage of readiness. And it's not just their mental readiness, because they, you know, mentally they can be like, yeah, I'm ready, like let's go, let's go for it, but to really match their holistic readiness, because if their nervous system isn't ready, then anything you do is probably gonna make them worse, right? So I we've learned like different assessment tools over the years of how to use questionnaires, um, how to use specific questions in our evaluation, how to see how they respond to just us a few initial changes. Like we start really small, we don't really start with like you know eight supplements and the you know and the most restrictive autoimmune diet or you know, that kind of stuff. Um and so we have you know learned to uh go slower, especially with patients that have a lot of symptoms. We use the medical symptom questionnaire from IFM. We've adapted it a little bit. Um but if they score 100 or above, that's a patient who does not feel safe. That's a patient whose limbic system is gonna be more activated because it doesn't know how well it's gonna survive because its systems have gone offline, right? So if the the body could heal itself and they could be better by changing their diet and doing some meditation, then they wouldn't reach a MSQ score of 100. So when we start to have patients with that or other stress-related conditions like POTS or interstitial cystitis or IBS or GERD, different things and migraines, um, that we might be like, okay, let's try to just kind of see how you respond because your body will tell us a little bit better, oftentimes, than your brain will, what you're actually ready for and what kind of pace we can go at, and so that we don't end up triggering you, and also how to just kind of phrase these things because it's so hard to talk to a patient about how, like, I think stress is an issue for you when in their mind is like, no, if you just kill the bug, everything's gonna be fine, you know, and so I don't I don't ever never want someone to feel invalidated. So sometimes it takes invalidating someone and them being upset, and then I'm always asking my patients if they did get upset. I mean, it's been a few years really since I've had like an upset patient really. And so I we learned these things fortunately in the first couple of years. Um, if we do have an upset patient, you know, sending them a message and being like, hey, I just you know, why don't I let you know, like I totally honor that I did something wrong here, I would love to learn more about it. If you want to help other patients not to get triggered this way, please let me know. And they'll oftentimes share with us, you know, what it is that we did that just kind of felt like this was too much, you didn't understand me, you weren't listening, or made me feel bad, and I wasn't doing enough, right? So it's sometimes really difficult to give feedback that's gonna allow them to grow, and then they might interpret that as they're not enough and they're failing.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

So that's so huge because uh you're not just taking information. I think a lot of times like there might be a one-off situation in a practice where maybe a practitioner does like get that courage because it's a tough question to ask, like, hey, can you give us feedback? What did we do differently? But you're someone who from the the short time I've known you, you seem to take information and really analyze it and turn it into an action step very, very quickly. So I have a giant i five for that. So I'm seeing the the evolution of your practice, and you mentioned seven years, so I'm sure it's evolved a lot from like year one to seven. And the one other thing I've learned about you is like you're you're extremely evidence-based. So even like discovering by number, like, hey, this is a person whose nervous system might not be in the right place. Um maybe we should take a different route around. A lot of people don't do that, and guess what? ChatGPT doesn't do that either. So when those people go and ask for algorithms and protocols and recommendations, like that's not being considered. Um how does uh how does evidence behind what you recommend impact the effectiveness of your practice?

SPEAKER_03 29:24

Oh man, it's so strong. And evidence can be in different ways. So, like two big categories of evidence is numbers, you know, having hard data like that, and then also having the research behind what you're recommending and what you're doing. So, when it comes to the data components, being able to say, for example, using a DNRS questionnaire, which is dynamic neural retraining system created by Annie Hopper, um, that questionnaire has been really effective for us to be able to identify those patients that are going to be hyper-reactive, and we need to really change everything about our approach, what we're recommending, as well as how we're speaking to them. And if they have a high score, it shows them that their nervous system is in overdrive. And so it provides that extra bit of, oh, you're not just, this is not just your opinion. This is not just one person saying, hey, I think this is what you've got going on, and I need to go get a second opinion or third. This is an actual evidence-based piece of, you know, test essentially, that's giving me a comparative number compared to healthy controls that really allows me to see how dysfunctional or how abnormal my system is. That creates instant buy-in. Like, oh, okay, I see this now, and we can tell them that we have this evidence from our own practice. When clients score this, this is usually what they need in order to get better. And if you don't do this, this is usually what's going to happen. So that those recommendations are taken so much more to heart, and the client is so much more likely to then do some things to work on that nervous system than they would have if you were just giving them your own personal insight. And likewise, when it comes to research, we have a knowledge base that we've created that has thousands and thousands of pages in it. So we've got information on every health condition and supplement and lab and what the research shows behind it. Because I don't want to give anything that is not going to get buy-in from the general population. Because if you, for example, if you give a client who's like, I'm into alternative stuff, you don't have to convince me of anything, just give me whatever you've got. But their husband at home is like, no, is this legit? And so there's this constant tension that I'm trying to heal this way, and my husband's not being supportive, he doesn't think I'm doing something that's even real, then that patient, again, is not going to really get the same results. They're not going to heal as well. So if we have evidence that can convince the doctor and the you know spouse that is doesn't think that functional alternative medicine is a valuable pathway, then now we can get buy-in from the whole team, from the whole group, and the patient can move forward in a way that feels like they're supported, and that's going to allow them to get better results. But then also in the client session itself, too, with that individual client, when you can say, hey, when someone did this activity, they uh stopped using blue light for two hours before bed, their you know, hormone, their growth hormone or melatonin or cortisol or insulin, whatever have you, decreased or increased by this percentage. Whereas if you have blue light 15 minutes before you go to bed, it had this effect. At those moments, clients go, oh wow. Right? When you have an emotional response, when there's novelty, I just learned something that is, you know, factual. And now my emotions are involved, and I'm like, oh, that's gonna get hardwired in. The client's really learning. Versus if you say, Hey, blue light's not good for you, wear these blue light blocking glasses and putting that in your notes. All right, next thing, right? It's gonna go in one ear and out the other. Clients not even gonna know what happened. You're lucky if they review their notes in between appointments, and if they do, they see that and they're like, Oh, yeah, I need to get those. Oh, okay, here's a text message just came in.

unknown 33:03

Right?

SPEAKER_03 33:04

And you meet with them and they haven't gotten anything. But if you have that moment where you tell them what the research showed and they're like, oh wow, that's crazy. I had no idea. Now it's something that's more internal that their bodies experience, and it's gonna be a lot easier for them to want to take action on it.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

Wow, I have to play with this tool, and I I have I wish, again, from a time machine uh machine perspective, I could go back in time and uh use this early on because that is a cautionary tale that every practitioner resonates with. And I can recall so many instances, especially if somebody's referred into you, they kind of have a picture of who you are and a like a pre-assumed bias of this person's gonna help me with supplements, especially you mentioned earlier. Like the term functional medicine is it's too big of an umbrella. You could say you went to 10 different functional medicine practitioners, it's a completely different experience, right? And some of them unfortunately are following the this for that model, so it's just with supplements and not medications. So I can think back and I'm like, there's so many times where I felt there was a lifestyle piece, somebody was burning the midnight oil, they were staying up far too late. Or if you called people out on their stress, they would normalize their stress and say, I'm not stressed, like this is just a I work 60, 70 hours a week, I barely sleep, I have no time to prepare my meals, but I'm not stressed. That's just that's just life. And I wish I had something evidence-based because when you would bring that up or call it out, like in the back of their head, this I've never been stated in these words, but it'd be like, Hey, be quiet, Mr. Supplement, man. Just give me the pill for it, right? Like, what do you know about my life? What do you know about stress? What do you know about blue light? And I'm not wearing these wacky glasses. And these are the thoughts people go through, right? And you're right, they come with their notebook, and the notebook is filled by the end of your program. But when you actually action audit it, how many of these steps did you actually action? They don't have enough skin in the game, they don't have enough motivation or inspiration or evidence, which is the key term here, to actually make that meaningful switch. So I I think this could be a massive, massive, massive resource for practitioners. And it's that first part of your uh fulfillment formula, right? It's yes you need that evidence-based clinical knowledge and something that grows with you. So, like I I again I can't wait to play around with it.

SPEAKER_03 35:19

Yeah, I I had a client who um has been through a lot of trauma uh throughout her childhood, really severe, significant things. She had seen a counselor, so she had done talk therapy. So she kind of thought, well, you know, mostly I understand what happened, why it happened, you know, what it does to me. I I kind of feel like I've gotten over it. But she really struggled with her weight and she struggled with emotional eating. And her weight was not just a result of emotional eating. She has a ton of inflammation and metabolic dysfunction all over the place. A big part of that is because of the state of her nervous system. Um, but she really wanted to lose weight, and she was so upset with herself that she was constantly self-sabotaging. And I was kind of telling her, hey, a big part of this is the limiting beliefs that we have, the way that we cope with stress, the things that we're storing that are changing your way your metabolism works. We need to address that. And it was kind of like a, yeah, I think I've kind of already done that. And also, but I want to lose weight. You know, I was like, why do you keep talking about my trauma? Like it's done, it's in the past, stop it. And so eventually I realized, okay, I need to give her, you know, some evidence, right? So I gave her the ACE questionnaire, adverse childhood experiences. She went home, filled it out. And when she came back to her next appointment, that was literally all we talked about for that entire 50-minute session. And a huge part of it was one, she's like, when I filled it out and I scored a nine out of 10, I sat there and sobbed. And I realized, oh, what I've been through needs a lot more than the counseling that I've, but than what I had. But then the real magic of it came, which is that I showed my husband. And my husband had never really understood, like, why am I depressed? Why can't I just get it together? Like, if I want to go, why don't I go pursue it? And he took the questionnaire and he scored a one out of 10. And he realized in that moment, oh, I do not understand what this person has been through. What they've been through is not anything like what I've ever experienced in my life. And it changed the dynamic of their marriage. And I mean, it's just I get goosebumps right now talking about it. So that sometimes those, you know, having some data, having questionnaires, or sometimes a test, uh, it really can be the thing that um just provides that that transformative shift that we need to become the person that we want to be.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Amazing. And what stood out to me there is when you compare it with labs, like a lot of people overrely on labs and for labs, but when you think about a lab, you provide the sample, but the analysis happens from the lab. Whereas when you fill out a questionnaire like this, it's literally you being pretty much, I don't want to say forced, but you're you're you're facing it head-on that what the question is asking you to explore that internally and actually put pen to paper, and then you get a quantification right after that with a score that you can then compare to family members and other people uh as well. It's so powerful. So I've I've always been such a fan of questionnaires because it creates a lot of skin in the game and it allows people to go introspective and actually explore these other areas that it's not just us preaching it to them, right? Yeah, people sometimes just like think that what we want for them is this ideal of health where they're doing ethically like a robot, but that's not true. Like, we want practical solutions for each and every person and what you can fit into your life without having to flip it upside down or become someone or move out into the middle of nowhere where there's no Wi-Fi signals. Uh yeah, so it's it's very, very practical. So I love that you're doing that, and it's uh it's so powerful. And this is somebody that like you can never get that from a lab test, right? Like, hey, this is a bug. And I I've put all my eggs in a bug basket before personally, uh, as well, and it didn't play out, but this is like where true health is found on these levels. So, like that person's walking through life, and there's no supplement that's getting around that, they're gonna be in permanent cell danger response and not. So, how many practitioners have beaten themselves up over someone that needed to explore that side to them? So so, so, so powerful. Uh, I what I I love, Katie, and as I'm we're getting further into the interview, is you've you've taught me so much. I've learned so much on this interview. I have to go back and study the notes and the transcript and look up all these uh questionnaires you did mention. And how do you continue learning and staying inspired without burning out? Like you're managing a practice, you're working with practitioners, and you're continuing to learn. Like, how do you do all that?

SPEAKER_03 39:38

Yeah, I I mean, I will say part of it is not just my own effort. I do have ADHD. So I am hardwired to multitask and to take in information constantly, and my brain works faster than the average person's. So I don't want to uh fool anyone by being like, I'm so great and I just work so hard. It is actually kind of like my natural resting state. It's a little bit of an advantage when it comes to this field and being a practitioner and being a business owner. Um, but because of that, I I mean I will learn all the time, whether I'm driving in the car, I am folding laundry, I'm in the shower, I might be listening to a summit, a podcast, an audiobook, a YouTube channel. And so I do have to put boundaries on that. Because if you were always in that state, then your nervous system is in an engaged state. I like to use my aura ring and it will track what my HRV and heart rate is. And an engaged state is higher up on the stress scale than a restorative state is, and that's gonna be more, you know, parasympathetic. And at the very top is stress, and that's sympathetic. And engaged is kind of knocking on the door of the stress section. And so you don't want to always be pushing your body into that state. It's actually not going to make you, you know, as great of a practitioner because you're not gonna have the connection component because connection happens in a little bit more of a parasympathetic state. And then you're also gonna, you know, your health is gonna suffer a little bit, you don't sleep as well. I'm just not able to, you know, go, go, go, go uh for 18, you know, or 16 hours and then just like stop and go to bed and then get all the deep and rim that I need, right? So I have to create some boundaries. So, and I also like to use my aura to check to see if I'm going past boundaries because, like you said, I'm more analytical. So that is one of my weaknesses, as I'm not as intuitive, um, I'm not as emotional. Those are things I have to work at, and that I always am trying to grow in. Um, and that my patients have taught me a lot about how to be better at those things. Um, but I still like to rely on my data to tell me what's going on in my body sometimes. And my data showed me that during the workday, I was sitting pretty high at a stress day for a lot of it. And so I had to learn how to take breaks between patients. Um, and even at my meal time, I don't, you know, fully take breaks. So I actually am only taking like a couple minutes in between patient sessions. I have technically 10 minutes. It usually ends up being five by the time I'm done with the patient stuff, and then I've got to prepare for the next one. And so I just, you know, stand up, look out the window, sit back down, or apply my essential oil, like something just really small. And that made a big difference, actually, in how drained I might feel by the end of the day, and also in my numbers on aura. Uh, same thing at lunchtime, just step outside when I let my dog out to go to the bathroom and go out with him and take a look at the sun, or stand by the window and take a look at the sun and just remind myself that I'm this little tiny person in this big vast world. Um, and then in the evenings, I do the same thing. So I have like an hour to two hours, so depending on what I feel I need that day, that is just total connection. So it's either going and meeting with a friend or spending time with my husband. We have dinner, we might watch a show, we walk the dog around the block and just talk and talk to neighbors. And it's just this time that I know is like I'm I'm really absorbing it. The the hard part is sometimes we are so um driven and have such a busy schedule that we take these moments because we have to, because our brain literally won't let us focus, but we're not doing it intentionally, and so we don't actually feel like we got restorative time because we kind of did it out of necessity and we're feeling guilty about it the whole time, so we didn't fully enjoy it and we weren't really in the moment because we're like, I know I shouldn't be watching this show right now, I know I shouldn't still be hanging out with my kids right now, I gotta get back to this project, and so we take that time, but we don't actually get the credit for it, so so we don't come back with the surplus, right? So I I take that time intentionally.

SPEAKER_01 43:35

Yeah, so there's some powerful terms you use there. So one is intention for sure. And then the other one that came to me as you're speaking is you've uh you've learned to cultivate a higher sense of self-awareness using data, but also intuition, and the fact that you did mention, like, hey, these are areas that I'm improving upon. People have taught me, patients have given me feedback, and like the fact that you're self-aware about these things, that's very, very powerful as well. And like you pretty much like that was me in a nutshell, and I'm undoing a lot of it myself and building more intention. But it's funny, like, anytime I would go for a walk, I'd have the headphones in, podcasts going, and then like I think back, and I'm like, the best and worst thing that ever happened was allowing any sort of audio or video file to go 2x speed or 3x speed. I love it. Yeah, that's what my brain's taking in information on all of the time. And sure enough, like you're it's always going, right? And I always used to think that even if I'm driving somewhere, if I'm not learning while I'm driving, like whether it's an audiobook or a podcast or something, uh, I'm wasting time. I had this like guilt, and it's only over the last couple of years where I'm like, you know what, let me just put on some of my favorite music and let's just like mellow out on the way there, give yourself those breaks. And even the mini breaks during the day, you're giving yourself practitioners don't give themselves permission to take those breaks. And like we have to practice what we preach, we have to be a living proof for our clients and patients. And if you can't do that, like it's uh it's very tough for you to calm someone's nervous system down when you're stressed out. And I truly believe people can feel that off of you, and like yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 45:05

Heart math institute has definitely proven that if you're within six to eight feet or so of someone, you are gonna be impacting their stress state by the kind of energy you're giving off. And if you're a practitioner listening to this and you can relate, but the idea of being more still or having more quiet time is just too much because that's where I was. Still have the phone with you, still take the headphones with you, whatever it is that you need to do, and then just see, right? So at first it'd be like, okay, I'm gonna go on. This walk or I'm gonna go on this run, and but I'm like, okay, I can't keep myself in constant learning and engaged mode. I it's really I should be just listening to nature, letting my thoughts do their thing. But that would just felt too scary, too overwhelming, and I would wouldn't want to do it, so then I would just plan on listening to the thing that I wanted to listen to. So instead, it was, you know, I'm gonna just start without having this. I've got my headphones in my pocket, I've got my my phone in my pocket, it's ready to go if I feel like I can't handle this anymore. But let me just try having some some silence or connection or just looking at nature or whatever it is. And 90% of the time I make it all the way home without having ever played it. So give yourself you don't have it doesn't have to be all or nothing, right? Give yourself that option, cave whenever it feels like you need to. At least you're making progress in the right direction.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

That's so healthy, right? It's uh it's not forcing change, it's uh going with the flow and and seeing what uh you need in that moment in time. So I love it. And I love that that's a system in itself that you do have where you you you don't just go cold turkey on it. It uh it is kind of step by step. So uh I'd love to just pick your brain about systems a little bit. Are there any systems or or rituals that keep your practice flowing smoothly?

SPEAKER_03 46:44

I love systems. I love efficiency to a fault. Every strength becomes a weakness when it's kind of unchecked, right? And so I'm always trying to check this the strength that I have on loving efficiency. So if anyone needs to find a way to save time and not repeat themselves, I am your girl. And that's what we do in our practice, and all of my staff, you know, always makes fun of me because of it. Um, so I just never want to um spend time doing something again that I, you know, I don't need to. So anytime I do something for the first time that I know I'm gonna be doing again, I'm taking that extra time. It might only take 10 minutes to do the task, but I'm spending 20 minutes on it because then I'm writing an SOP for it, uh, which is a standard operating procedure. And I might be recording a video on it if someone else is gonna be the one that's doing this task, and I'm thinking through what's gonna be the most efficient way to do it. If I'm responding to someone by email and I know I'm gonna get to ask that question again by email, I am copying and pasting that, putting it into my knowledge base, and I have it available to copy and paste back whenever I get that question again by email. Right? So that's that's what a system is. It's you know deciding what you're going to do in the future based on predetermined rules. It's that's going to save you time from not having to figure it out again in that moment. You get asked that question, you don't have to think, okay, what am I going to respond? You can just copy and paste. So it saves you brain energy. So you can use that, those thoughts for something else, but then it also saves you time. So SOPs is a huge one. We're always building them, we're always improving them. We have them for social media, we have them for client care, we have them for uh you know, admin task, whatever it is that we do at our practice. Um, I also love snippets, it's kind of like an SOP. So snippets are like auto text, like a smart phrase that you can put into your EHR or EMR. Um, hopefully, if you're using one. If not, you can just put them into a Google Drive Doc. And you can then just whenever you have that uh topic that you're gonna be talking about your client with or a lab that you're reviewing, you can add that snippet into the notes. Usually it's just one or two clicks, and you don't have to then write out those client notes. So I write out probably maybe a quarter or so of my client notes that is something that's new and fresh that I have to respond to something that they're dealing with, and the rest of it is a snippet that I go in and modify. I don't, they might not need this dose of a supplement, or they might not need to uh do all four of these sleep things because they're already doing two of them. So I delete two of the four that's in the snippets, but I it's something that we don't have to write, so it gives us more time to talk with a client, and it takes me about two minutes to finish my client notes after each session. So I spend a total in you know, I can see six clients in a day because we do one-hour appointments, and so I might spend six hours seeing patients that day, and I'm spending what 12 minutes doing charting. So those are absolutely vital if you don't have them. Make sure you have them for as much, many things as you can, and every month I'm adding at least one new one, and that I find myself okay, I'm gonna have to use this again. We also have just like the tech tools that you are, you know, probably an expert more than I am on this, but I use Trello for project management. It's free. I've never paid for it. I've used it with contractors and staff. It's so much better than sending anything by email. That's a task. You do not want to play the email game, right? That's just such the biggest time suck. So if I'm going to ask someone, my staff or contractor to complete something, I'm doing it in Trello. It's gonna be a card, it's going to have exact instructions for what to do. It'll have a checklist so that I know that the person's gonna do each of the things that I really want them to do. So I don't have to keep going back and forth. Hey, can you adjust this or do it this way? I don't think you saw this instruction. You don't lose an instruction if you have to check off every item to complete the task. And you can put a due date on there and then it gets moved to a pending or review column and eventually a done column. So there are no emails about that task getting done. You can easily track whether it's being done. You don't have to email someone like, hey, where are you? I'm completing this task. Right? So you save a lot of time with communication when you use a task management, uh, which I'll do for research, or hey, uh, this supplement just went out of stock. Can you find a backup for it that we can use in the future if this ever happens again? Or here's a new lab I heard about on a summit. Can you look into it? See if we should offer it, what are the steps? Those are some examples of what you might put on a task management. And finally, Slack. So Slack will also save you from having a lot of emails. So I use Slack to communicate with contractors as well as with my staff, and that way I can put a task out there because I might not know whose board to put it on and just say, hey, I need this done. Who volunteers? And the staff can see who's already written back, or uh-oh, it's been almost 24 hours, no one's written back. Okay, I should volunteer. And then I can easily assign them the task in Trello, or I can make an announcement all at one time. I'm not having to email each individual person, and I'm not gonna get emails back from them, and now I have threads I need to keep track of, right? So Slack also makes everything really easy. So my my staff and I, we really don't do anything hardly in email at all. If we have to communicate about a client, we have a group chat in our portal, and that way all people can see the answer. So if in a month another employee has another practitioner has a question that is very similar, they'd be like, Oh yeah, I saw her already give that answer to that a month ago, and now they're not asking me about it. So if you have a staff, if you have multiple people that do the same thing, do not have them ask questions or answer them singly. You should do that as a group so that you were not gonna get that repeat question back.

SPEAKER_01 52:35

That's so huge. And what I love about it is you you've built these systems brick by brick. So you built them where you needed them. And as I was kind of trying to categorize these systems in my own head, like when you think about it, something like the Trello board you're using that turns into a project manager. You've essentially replaced the need to hire a project manager and someone overseeing all the micro details. Uh, the fact that you record these SOPs and you have a database that you can go to and uh people you train can go to as well. Like that isn't built overnight. I I know that, and but if you build that awareness into your day that, hey, this is something I'm doing a lot, let me create an SOP around it, let me create some sort of automation or some sort of capture of the idea or what the steps should be. Like, just think about 30 days later, 60 days later, 90 days later. That database is going to look really, really good. And guess what? You'll have a lot more time in your schedule to continue building it out because you've saved that from all of the runaround and searching emails and threads that you have to do. So that's amazing. It's it's complex, but it's built on simplicity.

SPEAKER_03 53:40

So that's like music to my ears, and uh yes, and and because of that, I go on vacation for two weeks at a time, uh, usually each year to some international place with my husband. And I really don't have anything I need to do during those two weeks. My staff, any question that they have, any question that a client asks them, they go into our knowledge base and they find out what the answer is there. And if they don't do that, then I'm in the car on the way to the airport to go to our next country, and I can just, you know, copy the link to the answer in the knowledge base and paste it to them and have it an answer done in two seconds. Um that's you know, hey, here it is. But they kind of they know to really look before they ask me now. It took like a year, I gotta say, to for everyone to get familiar with using a knowledge base and using SOPs before coming straight to me. Um, and but now they have gotten really good at that. But it all just makes it so that I, you know, the practice kind of runs itself because the manager is the SOPs. It's not me. I don't have all the answers. The answers are written down, and so I can step away and do other things, whether it be vacation or working on Functional Practitioner Academy, which is my other business for helping to train other practitioners. I can do that for 20 hours of the week and and have my practice stay exactly the same, same amount of patients that are being seen, and you know, staff hours and everything that doesn't require my own effort.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

Amazing. And I think some of the practitioners listening were like, what? You take vacations? It's because of a lack of systems, right? So many people are tethered to their practices and they can't leave. They literally can't take a vacation, as crazy as that sounds. And um, I know when you uh mentioned the the charting shortcut, I think charting is a word that makes every practitioner just go, oh, like deep in the stomach. And yeah, if if you can create these systems that allow you to really save time on those repetitive tasks, things you're doing all of the time, and they they should be customized to you, that's just so amazing, and and a way for you to feel fulfilled. You can't feel fulfilled if you're just managing this bandwidth all the time of like the things on your to-do list and the things you forgot about and the things that are delayed. So I love that. And I'd love to ask you, kind of with the landscape that's changing and technology that's been just exponentially uh increasing, and now we have AI as well. What trends do you see shaping the future of natural healthcare? And how do you plan to stay up to date with them, evolve with them over time?

SPEAKER_03 56:08

Yep, so I think there's two two big trends that I see. So, one of course is the data side, right? And the tech. And that's what you are able to mentor me on is how all that's changing because it's so fast, and it is uh there's so many different options. So I am so grateful to have someone like you in the field who is keeping up with all of that and testing it out for all of us. Um, I think the especially when it comes to data, it's gonna be the synthesis of it. So, not so much providing data to clients, um, but it's gonna be more so being able to synthesize data from all kinds of different areas and say, here's the evidence, not from a questionnaire, not from a lab or only from those things. Here's the evidence from your own body. Because I have integrated your uh MSQ, your medical symptom questionnaire, the information from your intake form, the Dutch test results, and your aura data. And together it's painting this cohesive picture. Here's what your body's telling us. Right? And so now clients are going to be able to immediately take action, see the changes from it. You don't have to wait until you repeat labs in three months or six months to be able to see the change, they'll be able to see the change on a weekly basis and know, oh yeah, this is working because my heart rate has improved a little bit and my glucose has gone down a little, and whatever those little um shifts are going to be. So I think the more that we can use wearables and devices and trackers, and we can have uh access to software that's going to help to synthesize all this. Because if you're meeting with a client and they use AI, right? They're using AI at home, they're getting answers instantly. And you meet with a client and you're like, they ask you a question, you say, Oh, well, that you know, that would be related to what we found on your stool test results, and then you go into their labs folder and you click up, you know, you have to scroll through 15 test results, and then you pull up the stool, and then you have to go to page four, and you have to try to, right? And they're just sitting there and they're used to like, I mean immediately have an answer when I'm in asking AI, why am I sitting here waiting 60 seconds to get an answer from my practitioner that I'm paying for? Right? That's going to, over time, it's gonna become a bigger and bigger gap. And so we're gonna need to be able to get really fast answers and and use software that uh AI is gonna be able to synthesize all that for us so that we can just be like, oh yeah, let me just see. Did they have low adrenal function? And and then AI will be like, oh, their Dutch test showed this, right? A little uh chat message in their portal. So that data part is a big one. Did you want to say anything before I move on to the second one?

SPEAKER_01 58:32

No, I totally agree with you. I just what's going through my head is just for the practitioners that are listening, just imagine a client or patient, and imagine they have a perfect clone of themselves, and they go to a practice who's not leveraging this in their practice, and they go to a practice who is leveraging the AI and the tech, and they're able to get that answer. And oftentimes, like humans make errors, right? They they might miss something, they might not be able to connect the dot. Like, I don't like to use the word competition in the medical uh world or the functional medical world or anything like that, but like this client is going to get a much better experience and much better information to them because they're leveraging that technology. So continue. That was that was my question.

SPEAKER_03 59:10

And we're talking about technology that allows us to do our job better. We're not talking about technology that replaces us in any way. If we're because if you're using AI to be like, here's my client's test results, what treatment plan should I create for them? I really wholeheartedly do not believe in that. And and that is unfortunately something that is uh being uh provided to practitioners on a very like you know corporate level uh within the functional medicine space. And that is something that I uh just really feel is going to negatively impact the client's journey. Um, but we're using AI to make us you know smarter, better, faster, to be our way to gather data and to synthesize data, but it's not what makes the treatment decisions. Um we still are gonna need our brain, our connection with the client, our ability to determine that client's you know readiness on so many levels and how they're gonna perceive an intervention and talking with them about what they think would be best and all of those kinds of things that go into the treatment decisions. So the second one of what I see as trends coming up is I think in the past, if we wanted to be able to impact more people and make more money, we could create uh courses, we could create online assets that didn't require us to be present for them. We could create uh group programs that have a combination of uh live and then the online asset that we could charge really high amounts for because there wasn't anyone else doing it and it would provide a result that they couldn't get elsewhere. But now clients can so easily get information elsewhere, and AI can tell them what to do about their health. We know that there's always gonna be things that they shouldn't be doing, but the client doesn't know that. So they think that they are getting good answers from an AI that's really customized to them that would be better than a generic person from a generic online course. So I think if we want to be able to charge higher levels, it's gonna require things that AI can't provide. So things like concierge or done-for-you services, where it's we make the supplement order for you, we make the lab order for you, we make the blue black and glasses order for you. You know, it's we we're taking things off of your plate that you don't have to do. That's something that is still, you know, kind of unique for us that we can provide. I know there's AI agents that eventually are gonna be able to do some of these things, but we're probably a ways away from clients using that on a regular basis. So the more that you can have something done for the clients where they don't have to go figure it out, if you tell them, hey, I think you have an airway disorder, you should go have that checked out. Like the client has to do a lot of work to figure that out. And so the more that you can say, Hey, I think you might have an airway disorder, here's this ring that you can uh wear from this company that you can get it at this link right here, and it will track you for three days and it will tell you more about your sleep. And then here's this person that I have personally connected with in our town who can assess the data from that and give you more information on what would help, right? Or here's an app that you can use that's free for seven days and track what your snoring sounds like. If you can just give them the exact information and they know the exact step to take, that's gonna make you really valuable because AI might give them like five options, right? Like, hey, we're how do I learn more about this? And then there's gonna be this like nine-point list, and and how do you you know take action on that? So if you want to be able to charge more, I think you're gonna want to have to uh do more for the client, have more answers for them, make things easier for them to have completed, um, and have a little bit less of the generic advice of here's something that can help a population that they'd have to just learn on their own. That's gonna be good for content, for free things, but it's gonna be harder, I think, over time to have patients pay a lot for those things.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:05

No, absolutely. And it's uh there's things AI can't do for you, and AI is not gonna like do the do the sit-ups for you, right? It's not going to open the supplement bottle for you, at least until robotics become a thing. But it's uh it's something that uh all clients need is they need that point from point A to B condensed down into like the shortest actionable step possible for them to get ahead. And you're absolutely right, like that's what they're going to value. And the fact that you have this experience, that you've seen this play out in other clients, and you can pick up on the similarities, and then you're being guided by technology on top of that and AI on top of that, like that's the fulfillment formula at play, like to that. Yeah, so like in this uh today's uh talk that we've had here, like I'm I'm seeing like you have like 50 years of experience, condensed down the seven that we we gotta get you to like to apply for the next Amazon CEO or something. We'd love to just get like go back to the starting. Like, what advice would you give to somebody who's just starting out, a brand new practitioner? What message do you have for them?

SPEAKER_03 1:04:11

Yeah, so don't do it alone, you just don't need to nowadays. And I don't mean do it with AI. Um, I mean use others' experiences because it will make you go so much faster. And and I did the same thing in 2020, the first full year that I was in uh practice, I was listening to Satchin Patel on his Facebook Lives like every single day. And I had his uh book that was on how to start a practice and his checklist and all the things, and it it saved me. He had some things in there about what do you ask about when it comes to a lease? And I was able to ask those questions and I was like, oh, that was so helpful. And if I didn't know that, I would I would have had to backtrack and it would have, you know, made my life more difficult. So don't do it alone, meaning find others who have gone before you and have done it and have learned the hard way and learn from them doesn't mean you're gonna learn everything. You're still gonna make mistakes the hard way because you're doing things in your own unique way. We're also different. So you can't, you'll never have to worry about like, oh, well, then I'm just copying what this person did and I'm never gonna learn my own lessons. Trust me, the world's gonna give you lessons no matter how much copying you do. That's always gonna be there. So try to, um, whether it be through just listening to free content or enrolling in programs, obviously, you know from your own clients, right? If they just listen to your YouTube, they're not gonna change as much as if they enrolled in, you know, actually working with you as a client. And so, same thing when it comes to your business. I thought that um I would be able to be successful just because I knew how to work with clients. And I took a lot of heartache to learn that anything you want to be successful at, you actually have to study. You have to learn about it. And so when I started hiring people, just because I knew how to work with clients, I did not know I meant how to be a manager. I did not know how to be a good manager, and because of that, I had difficult relationships with my employees, and some of them quit, and I was so distraught. Like, why are they quitting? What is happening? And I it dawned on me what made me think that I would just naturally be a good manager is because I have people skills with clients. It is its own thing. I had to go and read books and listen to experts and take their programs to learn how to operate a practice where I was a manager and a business owner. And so anything that you want to be good at, whether it be social media or it be growing a practice where you're scaling and you have a team, or if you're just really good at dealing with your finances and knowing how to make more income in your practice, go learn from other experts and don't just try to figure out yourself because you think you're smart enough, or skills in one area will translate to another because that was not the case. And life is so much better now that I actually studied what it meant to manage people and to be a business owner.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:01

That's some of the best advice I've I've ever heard on the podcast, and uh I love it. And I I would be nowhere without the people that I've learned from and the mentors in my life. So that's uh where I was able to stand on the shoulder of giants, and I still, like you said, made those crazy mistakes that that like have completely rattled the way that you live, and uh that that's always guaranteed on the road. But uh what's really powerful there is it's the classical Dunning Krueger effect where the people that are first starting out they overestimate their ability. To know everything, right? So you you thought that your client skills would transfer to hiring employees, and it's a completely different world, right? And now you're an expert in many of those categories, I would say, but you probably underestimate your ability because you still err on the side of caution and you want to make sure that you dot every I, cross every T. So it's the same trajectory or the same journey we're on with different stories and different uh like inflection points and pivotal moments and downfalls and and all of that. So I love that, and that's such perfect advice. Katie, what's what's next for you? What's lighting you up right now?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:09

Oh, I am so on fire right now for helping other practitioners. So I I love getting to see because I've now trained some practitioners who are not part of my practice through the Functional Practitioner Academy. So this is the second business that I created in order to put this fulfillment formula into action and teaching other practitioners on how to implement it so we can all be more fulfilled as you have that similar value. And I've been able to help some of the members in that improve their confidence, improve their uh client results that they're getting, want to actually reach out to more people and successfully achieve getting clients by reaching out to people because they have this framework that they're operating from that they know whatever that client presents to me, I'm gonna be able to have an answer for. And you don't know that if in your first couple of years of practice or you're trying to work with some uh person in a niche that you don't normally see, you don't have that confidence and a client can pick up on that and it changes your ability to help them. So I'm just so excited to help more clients through helping practitioners make their businesses more efficient, uh, make their practice meaning, and practice means your work with a client. You can be an employee of a clinic and you still have a practice, right? You're your the medical director or your boss, they're not in charge of how you work with your client and what kind of results you get them. You are the only person responsible for that. So you have a practice, regardless if you're the one making the financial decisions. And so it don't don't kind of exclude yourself from this. You can always improve and grow and change and evolve and get even better client results when you look at it at having a practice as your individual work with clients. Um, and then of course it can expand out from there if you are the owner. And so I'm just so uh passionate about helping uh practitioners to get more evidence-based, to not be recommending things because they are so marketable or because they are trendy, but to really be recommending them because we have research showing that it works and to be more root cause-focused. And when I say root cause, I don't mean the result you see on a lab, because that was able to be there most of the time because of deeper, more upstream root causes. And you have to do both, right? So you have to address the most upstream root causes, like someone's beliefs, or their way that they live their life and how that impacts their circadian rhythm, or what diet they're eating, and you have to address the root causes that are effects of that, the bacterial overgrowth, or the toxic burden, or whatever it may be. So you have to address both. Fixing the upstream does not automatically fix the lower ones, but fixing the lower ones is not the deepest root cause. So I'm just, I think that the more we can help practitioners do that really deep hard work of addressing both from a place that's not going to drain them and allows them to have impact but also have a profitable practice, uh, the more clients are going to benefit from that. They're the ones in the end that really get to experience the positive effects of that. So that's what I'm really passionate and lit up about at this moment.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:30

Oh, I love it. And I know you're gonna you help a lot of practitioners right now, you're going to continue to help a lot of practitioners, and you're absolutely right. Too many people are focused on repairing the leak that's in the drywall and in the ceiling that you see above you. But the real root cause of that might be the the shingle that came loose on the roof, right? So you gotta address both. You can't just see one or keep repairing the same one. So it's such a powerful lesson, and just like that one lesson in itself will save somebody decades of trial and error. So I love it. Thank you so much for today. Uh, where can people go to learn more about you?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:05

Yeah, you can go to my website, fxpractitioner.com, and you can see we've got our you know social media there, Facebook, Instagram, we also have our YouTube there, and I have a ton of free resources. Again, I'm always thinking about what would I have wanted, you know. I started my practice nine years ago in terms of working at a clinic and then started my own business seven years ago. And I think what would have really helped me at those times, and paying for resources would not have helped me because I did not feel like at that time I just didn't know it was valuable to pay people for their lessons. And so I have a ton of free resources for anyone who just wants to um try and get started. And one of those that I love is the focus framework, and this is something that can help uh practitioners to feel more fulfilled because it will help you to focus on the right things. So it's a set of questions that you just ask yourself. I actually have it right here, I always have it right on my desk because I I've had this for like two years, but I still have to remind myself all the time is what I'm working on right now really what I need to be working on. Um, so I've got things like that that can just improve your practice as well as evidence-based resources and all kinds of other things.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:17

Amazing. Thank you so much. And for especially new practitioners, that is just so helpful because it's not something that they have to pay for and it's gonna help them start making an impact right away. Uh, so thank you, Katie. I love your energy, I love your passion, and it's an honor to be on this journey with you and serve clients and patients to the best of our abilities.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:37

Thank you so much. I'm so grateful to have had this conversation with you.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:41

Amazing. Well, take care, have a great rest of the day.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:43

You too.