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Mind Bending Neurological Insights with Dr. Kenneth Sharlin · The Heart-Led Business Show

• 0:01
  Speaker: Welcome to the Heart Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love.
• 0:09
  Speaker: Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second.
• 0:20
  Speaker: From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism.
• 0:29
  Speaker: So buckle up and let's go.
• 0:31
  Speaker: Let your heart guide your business journey.
• 0:39
  Tom Jackobs: Well, ladies and gents, fasten your seatbelts.
• 0:42
  Tom Jackobs: We're about to embark on a brain tastic quest with the neurology Nobel himself, Dr.
• 0:47
  Tom Jackobs: Kenneth Sharlin.
• 0:48
  Tom Jackobs: This brainy buff built a business bubbling with heart.
• 0:51
  Tom Jackobs: A marvelous medical mission molding minds in Ozark, Missouri.
• 0:55
  Tom Jackobs: We're diving deep into his journey on today's episode of the Heart Led Business Show.
• 1:00
  Tom Jackobs: So stay tuned for some cognitive cocktails of charisma.
• 1:03
  Tom Jackobs: So welcome to the show, Dr.
• 1:05
  Tom Jackobs: Sharlin.
• 1:05
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Thank You.
• 1:06
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: That is the most poply introduction I`ve ever received.
• 1:09
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Thankyou so much.
• 1:11
  Tom Jackobs: You're welcome.
• 1:11
  Tom Jackobs: We need to get those brains, like expanding.
• 1:14
  Tom Jackobs: I know you're the expert on that but first, before we get into that, tell us what's your definition of a heart led business.
• 1:20
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Well, as you pointed out, I am a neurologist.
• 1:23
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I own what we are about to sort of slightly rebrand as Shoreline Neurology and Neuroscience Institute to bring all of the different parts of our entities together.
• 1:34
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: But it, and it is in some senses.
• 1:37
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: A medical clinic, but it really is a lot more than that.
• 1:40
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So to answer your question as succinctly as possible, I think we almost have to step back and look at what the state of health care looks like in the United States.
• 1:48
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And there's tremendous amount of dissatisfaction.
• 1:51
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: There's a burnout among doctors, there's dissatisfaction with the 3rd party payers, the insurance companies, many more doctors are actually leaving the profession than entering it.
• 2:02
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: A lot of Patients, really clients, we are clients to our own health care system, are very unhappy and you can see that, of course, in Google reviews and other places where people leave their experience of going to the doctor or accessing the health care system in other ways.
• 2:18
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: One of the important phrases that has really come about, with changes to medicine in the 21st century is patient centered care.
• 2:27
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And I think in many ways, patient centered care, as opposed to disease centered care, really answers your question about a heart centered business.
• 2:37
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: In the sense that I, as a doctor, I'm a neurologist, so I see conditions like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis.
• 2:44
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Of course, I have to understand these conditions.
• 2:47
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I have to be able to diagnose, if you will.
• 2:50
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And the diagnosis, at least initially, is disease centered.
• 2:54
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: But my goal in Hanging the Shingle is to move away from all of these things I've just mentioned and to create a business around the idea that at the end of the day, it's the patient, their narrative, their unique story, if you will, that brings them in and that my goal is to help them understand, not just, you know, the diagnosis and what drug I'm going to give them, because frankly, I don't always treat with drugs.
• 3:20
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Sometimes I do, of course but to really, truly understand that narrative as to how did I get here?
• 3:26
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: How did this happen?
• 3:27
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And what's keeping me on that trajectory?
• 3:30
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So to do that, we have to return to the unique narrative that is the patient, and at the center of the narrative, certainly, is that heartfelt experience.
• 3:39
  Tom Jackobs: That's quite a mission, especially the condition that the healthcare system is in right now in the U.
• 3:45
  Tom Jackobs: S.
• 3:45
  Tom Jackobs: So, by putting the patient first, if you're a traditional doctor in the traditional insurance model, does that, can that even happen?
• 3:53
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I think it is challenging for doctors who are exclusively in the traditional insurance model, but I'll be happy in a moment to offer a few suggestions, perhaps if you do have some doctors listening that want to introduce some of these strategies into their practice.
• 4:07
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: What we've tried to do here is actually provide a hybrid service.
• 4:12
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Because in the end, this is a service industry, right?
• 4:16
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And so, service industry really means that you're buying someone's expertise and you're buying their time.
• 4:23
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And too often we hear the cliche, well, I went to the doctor, they spent five minutes with me, they didn't examine me, I had an opportunity to ask one question or no questions at all.
• 4:34
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Maybe sometimes, I know of a local clinic where It's a specialty clinic and the patients go there for the first time and they don't even see the doctor for goodness sake.
• 4:42
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So it is true that time truly is money.
• 4:46
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Money is what keeps all of our doors open.
• 4:48
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And so we do charge for our services, but we try to make sure that people experience, again, heartfelt, experience that value.
• 4:57
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So at the end of the day, whether they're paying by check or credit card or whatever it is, they know that It has been worth their investment.
• 5:05
  Tom Jackobs: And I think that's true for any business, especially heart led and service based businesses tend to be a little bit higher on the heart led scale or tend to be more heart led businesses that are service based.
• 5:15
  Tom Jackobs: With that, and you early on you'd spoke about the Google reviews and I'm sure like doctors in that traditional insurance model aren't used to having to manage now Google reviews on top of everything else that's going on in terms of just getting that feedback about, are you heart centered?
• 5:34
  Tom Jackobs: Are you really?
• 5:35
  Tom Jackobs: On my side and my advocate for my own health.
• 5:38
  Tom Jackobs: And that's hard to see.
• 5:40
  Tom Jackobs: And I'm really glad that you're on the show today too, because I think just in our interactions over the last couple of years, you know, just seeing your practice and the types of transformations that you're able to have because of that hybrid model, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're able to get really great results with people that probably, if they went the traditional route, probably would still be suffering with many of these really awful
• 6:05
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: diseases..
• 6:05
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Yeah, Actually had some very spectacular results and it's sort of been bang lately in terms of some big announcements that I'm looking forward to putting out there.
• 6:15
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Maybe with your help, hopefully, do some press releases, but we are very proud.
• 6:19
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We work with complex chronic diseases.
• 6:21
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Affecting the brain.
• 6:22
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And as early as 2018, my group published a paper called Reversal of Cognitive Decline, 100 patients.
• 6:29
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: These were not exclusively our patients, but about a third were with all the other authors contributing five here, ten here.
• 6:36
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We had over 35 patients in that case series, but it was the largest case series ever published where we use therapeutic lifestyle medicine strategies to improve cognitive functioning in people who had Alzheimer's disease.
• 6:49
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And bottom line is it worked in a disease where people would say there's nothing that you can do about it.
• 6:54
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And that's in fact, a tagline of the Alzheimer's association.
• 6:57
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We were showing that no, in fact, you can improve cognitive function when we pay attention to some key things that are well within our control.
• 7:06
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So we've continued that type of work, and we see that with Parkinson's, we see it with multiple sclerosis, and we've even seen it with as devastating a diseases.
• 7:15
  Tom Jackobs: Wow.
• 7:16
  Tom Jackobs: That, I mean, that's really great news.
• 7:17
  Tom Jackobs: And so what percentage of that is lifestyle and kind of outside of what you know, insurance would necessarily pay for?
• 7:24
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Tossed about, so I can't take credit for it, that genetics sort of load the gun, but lifestyle and environment pull the trigger.
• 7:31
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And that is absolutely true.
• 7:33
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And again, what we really try to do is provide evidence based medicine.
• 7:37
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So I realize there are many sort of versions of holistic practices out there but.
• 7:42
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We want to reassure folks that everything we're doing is based on peer reviewed published literature.
• 7:47
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: It's just that, unfortunately, not you know, as it were, the industry is usually, what, 10 or 15 years behind.
• 7:54
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: But even someone as well known in the area of lifestyle medicine as Dr.
• 7:58
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Dean Ornish, one of the founders and pioneers of lifestyle medicine, whose work has been shown to reverse everything from prostate cancer to heart disease recently published his own case series showing that this type of approach can reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.
• 8:14
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: What is particularly exciting though, Tom, is that and again, I wish I were the first, but in a way, I'm glad I'm the second here that we are now able to show that not only can we improve symptoms, but we can reverse pathology.
• 8:28
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And Dr.
• 8:29
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Richard Isaacson, who formerly was head of the Cornell Alzheimer's disease prevention center in New York city, and then moved to be closer to his brother, who's Stuart Isaacson, who's a big Parkinson's expert at Florida Atlantic University.
• 8:45
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: He was all over the news in the last couple of months with a case that he was involved with.
• 8:50
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Now, these are what we call N of 1.
• 8:52
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: These are individuals, of course, but he used a test that we were very involved in validating called the Pressivity AD2 test, and that's a blood test to actually identify whether someone has the biological markers, the changes in the brain, that are associated with Alzheimer's disease.
• 9:11
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Now, this test primarily has been used diagnostically, but what Dr.
• 9:15
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Isaacson showed is it can actually be used to track progress over time.
• 9:20
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So it's a very simple test, I mean there's complexities of course, but understanding that basically you have a score of 0 to 100, where greater than 45 is consistent with the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.
• 9:34
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And then when you get into the high you know, like 90s range, what we call the test probability, meaning how accurate the test is.
• 9:41
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: It's already about 86 percent accurate.
• 9:44
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: When you get into those 90s, you're about a 96 percent accuracy rate.
• 9:48
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: You can actually show the number, what's called an amyloid probability score, or APS, go down and down.
• 9:56
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And down and what Dr Isaacson showed is that his patient who followed this type of plan that we use very similarly in our institute can actually reverse their Alzheimer's.
• 10:07
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We now have the 2nd case report not published yet, but what I love about it is we can sit around all day and say, ah, you know, I have a magic wand and I reverse Alzheimer's disease.
• 10:19
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And that's of course, you know.
• 10:20
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: That's a lot of hot air, but at any rate what we're so proud of is, and this one was all, I don't, I want to really kind of almost fully admit that this was almost by accident, except that the patient really was in our brain tune up program, our branded program.
• 10:36
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: But she initially came in, concerns over cognitive decline.
• 10:40
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: She had the blood test confirming the diagnosis.
• 10:43
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: She initiated the program.
• 10:45
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Within about five months, there was an unrelated reason that she needed to have a spinal fluid test.
• 10:50
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And her husband said, while we're doing that, what would be your thought about rechecking those biological markers?
• 10:55
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And yeah, sure, why not?
• 10:56
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: That'd be interesting.
• 10:57
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So let's do that.
• 10:58
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And she was doing well.
• 10:59
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Her scores were going up anyway, so we knew she was doing well, but You know, there's this whole concept of sort of resilience and plasticity, and are we sort of tapping into our brain's potential, or are we actually reversing the disease?
• 11:12
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Well, her follow up spinal fluid test.
• 11:14
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Basically was negative.
• 11:15
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And I said, wow, okay I'm shocked.
• 11:18
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And so, I said, well, how would you feel about repeating the blood test as kind of a confirmation?
• 11:23
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And in fact we did, and her probability score, remember, 0 to 100, started at 95, and on repeat it was 50.
• 11:31
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Which is just five points above the negative.
• 11:35
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So, and consistent with what the spinal fluid showed, which showed that she had dramatically improved her biomarker status.
• 11:42
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Although there was a touch of evidence that she still had a little bit of the amyloid protein, but another protein called tau, which is a marker of nerve cell destruction, had actually gone down to the normal range.
• 11:59
  Tom Jackobs: Oh, wow.
• 11:59
  Tom Jackobs: That's amazing.
• 12:00
  Tom Jackobs: I mean, that's giving people tons of hope as well.
• 12:03
  Tom Jackobs: That's, awesome.
• 12:03
  Tom Jackobs: So, let's shift gears a little bit and let's talk about you and what inspired you to go into neurology and open a business, a hybrid business of all things.
• 12:14
  Tom Jackobs: And you know, tell us about that journey for you.
• 12:16
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Well, as you can already tell, I'm a little long winded, so I won't go through that.
• 12:19
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And there's always longer stories, but I'll try to give you a few interesting points.
• 12:24
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I'm a I guess a second generation American, where my father was born in the United States.
• 12:31
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: His name is David Sharlin, and he's now a happily retired pediatrician in Mercer County, New Jersey, that his father was named Hiller, and my grandfather, Hiller Sharlin H.
• 12:42
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: M.
• 12:42
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: as he was called in business, I recently found out, actually he came across the ocean through Ellis Island at a very young age, accompanied by his grandfather.
• 12:52
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Really, his grandfather came to the U S first established a business, which was a baby carriage business and trend to New Jersey.
• 12:59
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And then brought his family over to the land of hope, of course.
• 13:05
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And he raised his family.
• 13:07
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Ultimately, this as my grandfather became a young man this was about the time of the Great Depression, and the baby carriage business was morphed, if you will, into a lighting company, a local retail fixture company.
• 13:20
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And then my grandfather, who took it over, and it also survived the Depression, it became known Sharlin Light Corporation of America with Brighten Your Nights with Sharlin Lights as the motto.
• 13:33
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So I suppose entrepreneurialism was always in my blood.
• 13:36
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I was very close to my grandfather.
• 13:38
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: He's certainly a role model.
• 13:39
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: But my father's also a physician, so I was influenced by him.
• 13:43
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And then I was influenced by other things, like I was not a science nerd.
• 13:47
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I was actually a book nerd.
• 13:48
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And I loved to read.
• 13:50
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: That's why I liked your Charles Dickens esque introduction.
• 13:54
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And eventually read a book by the great neurologist, now deceased, Dr.
• 13:59
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Oliver Sacks.
• 14:00
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And he wrote a book called The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
• 14:04
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And at that moment, I saw a way to weave narrative and story into science and the application of all of those principles into the practice of medicine.
• 14:15
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And I felt that neurology really sort of Bent my imagination with how we as human beings really experience and perceive the world.
• 14:25
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And I thought that was the right way for me to bring all of these interests together.
• 14:31
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So I Went to medical school, graduated from Emory University, ultimately trained at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and joined a private practice where I thought, this is it.
• 14:40
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I'm gonna be an entrepreneur, and I'm gonna be a neurologist.
• 14:43
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And I did learn a lot to the credit of the doctor that hired me, but ultimately that practice wasn't a good fit, and I moved to the Southwest Missouri area, where unfortunately, well, for better or worse, these are our life narratives, got rather entrenched as an employed physician, which is where, of course, a lot of the burnout is.
• 15:01
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Fast forward, eventually getting interested in the application of lifestyle through my own pursuits and triathlon and marathons and knowing that, you know, you don't just one day go and complete an Ironman Triathlon, you have to think about sleep and nutrition and movement and all of those things.
• 15:19
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And so I was changing my body, my health, but I was going to the office and giving people drugs to take care of the side effects of other drugs and watching them, you know, swirl the drain.
• 15:29
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So that's kind of how it evolved.
• 15:31
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And I just knew it at a certain point that all of this had to stop.
• 15:34
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: It had to change.
• 15:35
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And I left my place of employment and started Sharlan Health and Neurology.
• 15:39
  Tom Jackobs: Awesome.
• 15:40
  Tom Jackobs: And how long have you had the business?
• 15:42
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We opened our doors in November 2015.
• 15:44
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: That's when things started.
• 15:46
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We launched our brain tune up program within about a month.
• 15:49
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I was in that process.
• 15:50
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I'd become certified in functional medicine through the Institute for Functional Medicine.
• 15:55
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So all the pieces started to come together and then very quickly the business grew and we added clinical research, on site imaging, regenerative medicine.
• 16:05
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: A whole host.
• 16:05
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We have Charlotte Health Neuro Fitness.
• 16:08
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We have seven entities in all.
• 16:09
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I even managed to squeeze out a Amazon best selling book in the interim.
• 16:14
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So, with all of those, it became clear that it was confusing to the consumer, and we needed to bring it together under one roof.
• 16:22
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: It is already under one roof, but we needed to rename the entity or rebrand the entity into the institute.
• 16:28
  Tom Jackobs: I like that new brand branding as well.
• 16:30
  Tom Jackobs: That really brings together the clinical, but also the more research based that things that you do as well.
• 16:37
  Tom Jackobs: So that's good.
• 16:38
  Tom Jackobs: I mean, it resonates resonates with me anyway.
• 16:40
  Tom Jackobs: sounds good.
• 16:41
  Tom Jackobs: So in, starting the business, I'm sure it wasn't all rainbows and butterflies throughout.
• 16:45
  Tom Jackobs: So creating a heart led business.
• 16:47
  Tom Jackobs: It could be a little bit different than a profit led business from time to time.
• 16:50
  Tom Jackobs: So what type of pleasant surprises and some not so pleasant surprises came up in those early days, or even now, as it might happen by leading with your heart versus just focusing on profit and seeing as many patients as possible and just being.
• 17:04
  Tom Jackobs: basically a pill mill
• 17:05
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: of course.
• 17:06
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Well, probably like 95 percent of other physicians, we're not educated in sales and marketing.
• 17:12
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: In fact, sales sort of, you know, probably not to your eye, and I hope we get to talk about that, but to the non inexperienced, let's just put it that way, non indoctrinated physician sort of feels yucky, right?
• 17:25
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: It feels like the used car salesman.
• 17:27
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And so we of course have to wrap our brains around the narrative because in the end, if, you know, if you're an entrepreneur and you're not generating income for your business, I mean, you might have investors, but eventually your investors are going to start tapping the table saying where's the, you know, where's the profit because you can't pay your bills.
• 17:45
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I got to pay you, Tom.
• 17:46
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I mean, I got to pay you.
• 17:47
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So, that, that can be a problem.
• 17:49
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: But as you know, in this, at the center of a heartfelt business, it really at the center of all entrepreneurialism and all businesses, ideally, and certainly the ones that survive is the fact that we are bringing value to our customers.
• 18:01
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And we start thinking about value and I couldn't agree, you know, heart led is what you may feel, but heart led is what I do, right?
• 18:09
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So when I enter the room with that heart led business perspective as a physician, as an integrated medicine doctor, as a researcher, people feel that, they know that, and of course we make decisions with our hearts more often than with our heads, and so when they feel that, and they know that, that's where the magic starts to happen.
• 18:29
  Tom Jackobs: Absolutely.
• 18:30
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 18:30
  Tom Jackobs: When you can automatically tell when a salesperson or a non salesperson, but somebody that's selling you something is uncomfortable with that whole sales experience or is only interested in themselves, it really does come through.
• 18:45
  Tom Jackobs: And when you lead with your heart, and that's, I mean, the subject of my book, right, Selling with Heart, is all about changing that perspective about who you're talking to.
• 18:54
  Tom Jackobs: You're not there to sell somebody something, but rather, you're there to see if you can help them solve a problem.
• 18:59
  Tom Jackobs: And by shifting that perspective, it opens up that prospect and sitting in front of you to say, yeah, I don't know, like if you can help me and I don't know if I can help you.
• 19:10
  Tom Jackobs: And it becomes this almost like a brainstorming session to see if you both can help each other, which is really a beautiful thing.
• 19:17
  Tom Jackobs: Is that similar to how you approach your sales?
• 19:20
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: A hundred percent.
• 19:21
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: It, it, you know, and the complexities of what we do from kind of a sales perspective, it's almost like, maybe you don't speak French and you know, decide to go to the Olympics, which may not be the best analogy'cause it's probably plenty of people who speak English at such an international event.
• 19:36
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: But my point is that it.
• 19:38
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We have this sort of language of medicine that we expect.
• 19:41
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I go to the doctor does tests, they make a diagnosis, they give me medicine or refer me to a surgeon eventually I get a bill, I might have a co pay, I might have a deductible, but the reality is I sort of feel like someone else is taking responsibility for the business aspect and that is the third party payer.
• 20:02
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So, to shift thinking and say, wait a minute you're charging me for this?
• 20:07
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: You know, that there's a fee involved that I have to, you know?
• 20:10
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So you have to bring people into the fold.
• 20:12
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: As you know, in many aspects of business, we have to provide what we would call sort of pre education.
• 20:18
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We have to get out there through social media.
• 20:21
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: through blogging, through podcasts and without any strings attached.
• 20:25
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We're not in here to sell anybody anything.
• 20:27
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We have to provide information because in the end, this is really a trans theoretical engagement where people go from this wasn't even in my sphere.
• 20:37
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I did, I had no idea this existed to that's kind of interesting to, you know what?
• 20:41
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I'm, I could do, you know, give that some serious thought to engaging and then no, I'm going to do it.
• 20:46
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I've got the plane tickets.
• 20:48
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I've got, you know, the hotel room because people come from all over the world to our clinic to I'm here.
• 20:53
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I'm ready to go.
• 20:54
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Let's do this.
• 20:55
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We're starting.
• 20:56
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Right.
• 20:56
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And that's a process that you have to take people through very often.
• 21:00
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Yeah,
• 21:00
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, and that's a much longer process than if somebody's sick, goes to a clinic, gets some pills and then goes home and somewhat recovers, right?
• 21:09
  Tom Jackobs: Because it's a sick model versus a health model.
• 21:12
  Tom Jackobs: And so how long do you think it takes to pre educate somebody before they're able to fully, like on average shift their thinking from sick to health model?
• 21:21
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Of course, the answer is, it depends and pain points are a reality for all of us.
• 21:26
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: What makes us ultimately pivot and make the decision if you talk to Kaylee Maggard, my functional medicine coordinator and chief operations officer, you, of course, you know extremely well, she would say that our Parkinson's patients tend to have kind of a longer conversion process because a lot of times you could be pretty functional with Parkinson's, and so they don't necessarily feel the urgency.
• 21:50
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: On the other hand, if you have an Alzheimer's or an ALS diagnosis that may be a much more urgent sense that we've got to do something.
• 21:58
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And I do have the good fortune of not only working with someone like yourself and putting out all that information for folks.
• 22:05
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: But I have a few close colleagues who have very large mailing lists, very large reaches, and don't actually directly work with patients.
• 22:13
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So when people reach out to them, very often they're saying, Sharlin is the man, go see him.
• 22:18
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And that would include my friend Dr.
• 22:19
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Terry Walls.
• 22:20
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Where my work over the years off and on with Dr.
• 22:23
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Dale Bredesen who have huge spheres of influence in Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis.
• 22:29
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So again it does depend and some people really grew up in families where, by the way, I'm not against chiropractors or anything when I say this, but you know, their families would typically go to more holistic practitioners like chiropractors or naturopaths or whatever.
• 22:44
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So that line of thinking is perhaps more intuitive to them to come see me cause they always did this sort of thing.
• 22:51
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: But for the person who's never been in, in sort of exposed to these principles, it is a longer journey.
• 22:56
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, for sure.
• 22:57
  Tom Jackobs: And so that makes it tough as a heart led business to then really run the business and make a profit in doing it.
• 23:05
  Tom Jackobs: But let's, speaking of profit, a lot of heart led business owners.
• 23:09
  Tom Jackobs: Fear or afraid of making a profit as appearing too greedy or not following their heart, what type of advice would you give to somebody that might be struggling with, you know, being able to make money in their business, in their heart led business and being okay with the fact that you're making money doing it.
• 23:27
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Well, I think first of all, you have to ask what is that money actually doing for you?
• 23:31
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So, you know, I started this business nine years ago.
• 23:34
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I'll turn 60 this December.
• 23:36
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: My children are grown up.
• 23:37
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Everybody's through college and often their own lives, right?
• 23:41
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So it's just my wife and I are various pets that we have in our home.
• 23:45
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: You know, so I've had my opportunity as a physician to earn.
• 23:51
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Fairly, you know, a typical we don't need to get into numbers, but what you might typically see for a neurologist.
• 23:57
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So for me, even that, that money, that income is not what I'm putting in the bank.
• 24:03
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I mean, of course I have to have, I have to earn a living, I have to eat, I have to pay my mortgage payment, things like that, but it's not.
• 24:09
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: You know, beyond that sort of scraping the icing off the cake, so to speak, from my business to load up my bank account is definitely not the goal.
• 24:19
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: The goal is very business centered.
• 24:21
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: It's very focused on what my vision is, what I want to accomplish here.
• 24:26
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And so, you know, reinvestment saying, you know, when we're profitable.
• 24:31
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: It's opportunities to grow, it's opportunities to improve, it's opportunities to explore new service lines.
• 24:38
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So I really, by not putting myself at the center of all that, it's easy because I know that I need the income to do all of those things for my business and ultimately for the people that I serve.
• 24:52
  Tom Jackobs: I think that's worth repeating as well.
• 24:54
  Tom Jackobs: So putting yourself and not putting yourself at the center of the business, but rather as part of the business, if I understood you properly and putting the people that are working for you and the people that are coming to see you as a service, putting them as the center can help you.
• 25:11
  Tom Jackobs: Then reinvest in that business and help more people and scale and grow and ultimately create this spiral effect of you know, helping and scaling tons and tons of people that need the help, which is really a very heart led when it comes to it, because you are helping more people so that I love that advice.
• 25:26
  Tom Jackobs: Thank you for sharing that with the audience.
• 25:28
  Tom Jackobs: There are other doctors on here that are listening that might be struggling with going from a traditional insurance model to, you know, cash pay or more of a functional medicine or integrative medicine type of model and knowing that it is possible to do that.
• 25:43
  Tom Jackobs: I think it's great and you're a good example of somebody that's been able to do that.
• 25:46
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: They can explore everything from the sort of the growing concierge model that allows them to spend more time with patients, or if they're going to stick.
• 25:53
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: still within the traditional medical third party payer model, they can bill for time and they can include some of the lifestyle medicine information.
• 26:03
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I had a doctor call me who's fairly fresh out of residency, a gynecological surgeon.
• 26:09
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So she deals with breast cancer, uterine cancer, things like that.
• 26:13
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And since, you know, I'm deep in debt I'm employed.
• 26:16
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So I don't have as much flexibility deep in debt, because medical school is very expensive these.
• 26:20
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I just, you know, I need something sort of to, you know, sort of that mind, body, spirit.
• 26:25
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: I need something to grasp on to that.
• 26:27
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: fulfills me beyond knowing that I've, you know, removed the pathology, so to speak.
• 26:33
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And that's, of course, important.
• 26:35
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And I said, you know, for example and this is another classic sort of entrepreneurial tip that we're all aware of it's that get good at one thing, you know, and I said, you could, for example, educate your patients on breathwork.
• 26:51
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Because the data, the science behind breathing, something as simple as balancing your nervous system through breath work, has been shown to improve surgical outcomes and cancer outcomes dramatically.
• 27:06
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And if you can take five minutes and just be with your patient, and breathe with them, and show them how to do it, and put your hand on their heart, or have them, and put their own hand on their heart while they're doing this and then make sure that they understand some very basic principles of how they can incorporate this and practice this.
• 27:23
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: It will change their lives.
• 27:24
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Something as simple as just breathing.
• 27:26
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: So it can be done and it doesn't have to cost anything.
• 27:30
  Tom Jackobs: Oh, that's, great.
• 27:30
  Tom Jackobs: That's really cool.
• 27:31
  Tom Jackobs: That's good.
• 27:32
  Tom Jackobs: Good advice and a good use of five minutes of the doctor's time with the patient as well to add that more value.
• 27:39
  Tom Jackobs: Dr.
• 27:39
  Tom Jackobs: Shirelin, thank you so much for being on the show, but before we in the show, how can people learn more about you and the clinic and the, I'm sorry, the institute and everything
• 27:49
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Well, we are launching a URL that is charlainstitute.
• 27:53
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: com, but until then, we have functionalmedicine.
• 27:58
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: doctor.
• 27:58
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Of course, doctor is spelled out.
• 28:00
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And that is our main clinic website.
• 28:03
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: We have a lot of other offerings for people looking for research and regenerative medicine.
• 28:08
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: But if they start at functionalmedicine.
• 28:10
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: doctor, of course, all the other entities are connected and they'll be able to find their way around.
• 28:16
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: And they can, if they wish, sign up online and schedule a complimentary telephone call with my team so we can learn more about them and see if there's a way that we can help.
• 28:27
  Tom Jackobs: Awsome.
• 28:28
  Tom Jackobs: Thanks for sharing that and we`ll link that up show notes as well.
• 28:32
  Tom Jackobs: And again, thank you so much for taking your time today.
• 28:35
  Tom Jackobs: I really appreciate the stories and the advice that you shared.
• 28:38
  Tom Jackobs: I learned some new things about you and that your grandfather came over through Ellis Island.
• 28:43
  Tom Jackobs: My grandfather did that as well from different country.
• 28:46
  Tom Jackobs: It came from Syria, but all the way over through Ellis Island.
• 28:49
  Tom Jackobs: So it's nice to get that cool connection there
• 28:51
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: wonderful.
• 28:51
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Well, thank you for having me.
• 28:52
  Dr.Kenneth Sharlin: Thank you for having me.
• 28:53
  Tom Jackobs: Absolutely.
• 28:54
  Tom Jackobs: And to our show listeners and those watching on YouTube as well.
• 28:57
  Tom Jackobs: Thank you so much for watching today's episode.
• 29:00
  Tom Jackobs: And we really do appreciate it.
• 29:01
  Tom Jackobs: Make sure you're checking out everything that Dr.
• 29:04
  Tom Jackobs: Sharlin is doing.
• 29:04
  Tom Jackobs: And we've provided all of that down in the show notes.
• 29:07
  Tom Jackobs: So make sure you check that out.
• 29:08
  Tom Jackobs: And I know all of our show guests really like it when you connect with them on social media.
• 29:13
  Tom Jackobs: So make sure you're doing that as well.
• 29:14
  Tom Jackobs: And if you could do me a solid favor, if you liked this episode, share it out to some friends and family members that could use the advice that was shared on today's show.
• 29:23
  Tom Jackobs: And until next time.
• 29:24
  Tom Jackobs: Lead with your heart.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: You've been listening to the Heart Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.