Latest / The MillionaireByMorning‘s Podcast / Challenges of the healthcare system faced as an entrepreneur
Transcript
- Rashad Thirlkill: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the Millionaire by Morning Podcast, where we explore the stories, strategies, and mindset shifts that help people create more success, freedom, and impact in their second act. Today's conversation is especially important because sometimes the biggest wake-up call in life isn't a business failure or a career setback. It's your own body telling you that the way you've been living can't continue. My guest today is Amy Mooborn. Founder of Living Simpler, a TEDx speaker, bestselling author, certified level one and two integrative health practitioner, certified life coach, and host of the Living Simpler podcast. Amy has a remarkable story. She survived a stroke at just 29 years old, and nearly two decades later experienced another major health crisis that forced her to completely re-examine not only her health, but the way she was living her life. Today, Amy helps high-achieving women stop guessing about their health and start understanding the signals their bodies have been sending sending them. She helps women connect the dots behind things like exhaustion, brain fog, stubborn weight, poor sleep, craving, stress, and recovery. And perhaps most importantly, she helps make holistic health practical without turning wellness into another full-time job. Amy, welcome to Millionaire by Morning. I'm really glad. You're yeah. Amy Mewborn: Thanks, Rashad. I'm thrilled to be here. Rashad Thirlkill: So awesome. We're really going to get into something that's very important and that's health. We don't get to talk about that a lot on this show. So I really want to just kind of jump straight into it and ⁓ let the listeners, you know, go on your journey. So first and foremost, ⁓ you had a stroke at only 29 years old. Can you take us back to that period of your life and what was happening in your life before the stroke? Amy Mewborn: Yeah. Go ahead. Rashad Thirlkill: And what did that experience teach you about how you were living? Amy Mewborn: Yeah, so I was in finance. I spent 15 years in finance. I had climbed my way up the corporate ladder. I had what everyone would have believed was my absolute dream job. I had six figure salary. I had a four-day work week, five weeks of vacation a year. I had really done a great job. And one of the things that I saw in my practice in finance, we had 35 very high net worth families. ⁓ Average net worth of between 10 and 40 million dollars-ish. And a lot of these people that had built these amazing businesses were often really suffering in their 50s, 60s, and beyond in their health. And I think back to one couple in particular where they were about 65 years old. They had recently retired and each had extreme health problems to the degree that they had a full-time caregiver and had to add an elevator to the outside of their home so they would be able to get through their own home. And I've seen this over and over and over again with a lot of us who are super, super high achieving. We just put our heads down, we do the work, we do what everyone expects of us, and we do it often very, very well until all of a sudden our bodies are like, No, we're we're done now, you know? And so for me, I I was in finance, I loved what I was doing, and I also was really passionate about fitness. I had just completed a Pilates certification. I was in the absolute best shape of my life. And that morning I got up, I went for a run, I did a Pilates workout, and I was standing in the middle middle of the container store with my sister-in-law, and everything went black. And I couldn't hold up my body. I leaned back against a table and my phone started to ring and I just kind of pushed it toward her. I'm like, I can't see this. Who's calling? And a few moments later, my husband walked up and I put my head on his chest and I just crumbled. And it was myself, my sister-in-law, my brother, and my husband. They put me in the car and I'm driving along. They're taking me to the emergency room. And I'm saying to them over and over again, just take me home. I'm like a computer. I need to reboot. And, you know, everyone's laughing. And we get to the emergency room and I'm talking to the woman in triage and she's like, what have you taken? you're you're acting like you're high. And I'm like, I've never smoked a cigarette in my life. I I barely drink. I I've never taken a drug. I I don't know what's going on. And my husband's like, well, while we were in the container store, her face started to droop and everything. And so then they immediately started working me up for a stroke protocol. And again, the thing about being a super, super high performer is that we often just keep doing what we've always done. And so for me, they they found that I had had a stroke. I had the the like clotting in the brain where they could actually see the scar tissue had materialized within just a few hours. And they kept me in the hospital for four days. They released me on Wednesday night at about eight o'clock. And the next morning at 7 a.m., I was sitting at my office back in my finance career. And I just think I'm so indicative of so many of us that have just been programmed to do the really hard things and to do it really well until all of a sudden our bodies are just like, no, we really need you to slow down. Rashad Thirlkill: That's that's saying something. That's saying a lot. You were back at work. Amy Mewborn: Yeah. Yeah. And so fortunately I had I said I had just done my Pilates certification. I went back to a Pilates instructor as a private client and they rebuilt my left side. But it's crazy to me looking back at just how warped it kind of was of me to leave the hospital and immediately just be like, ⁓ well, people expect me to be sitting at my desk the next day. So that's what I'm gonna go do. And I just I Rashad Thirlkill: That is Amy Mewborn: I was always raised to be a good girl and I'm an Enneagram three, ⁓ you know, the achiever, the girl that just wants to go, go, go, do, do, do, until all of a sudden the body's like, No, we just can't do it anymore. Rashad Thirlkill: Do you think that it is in human nature it's it's just in human nature to be able to Well, you are you already have the personality. So maybe you're a personality A type of person. You are a go getter, a hustler type of person. But is it do you think it's society and the hustle culture that has us thinking in the mindset of I need to be back in the office at seven AM the next day? Amy Mewborn: So I'm very grateful to report that I think that the hustle culture is starting to slow down a little bit. I think that we had this extreme period of time where everything was like boss babe. And Gary V was like, you could put out 300 pieces of content every day and just go and rise and grind and all the things. And you know, God bless him. He's done an amazing job. He's built one heck of a business. And I turned 50 this year, and that is not my goal anymore. You know, for me, after I left finance, I opened two San Diego Fitness Studios. I've helped women launch studios. And I built my two studios to just about a million dollars. And it was an amazing time and it was an exhausting time. And you know, again, I think that we We have to realize that the hustle that maybe we were programmed or encouraged to live in may not necessarily be the best thing for us. And I'm really now all about getting back to basics. Rashad Thirlkill: Right. I'm I'm with you on that. I think I think earlier, earlier when you're younger, success means something totally different. Amy Mewborn: I completely agree. Nowadays it's all about my peace. You know, first thing in the morning, I get up and I go out for a walk. I love to come home and have my morning coffee and I have a journal that I'll take outside and sit by the pool. And I'm up at about five, but I don't actually dive into my workday right away. I do a lot of personal health care. Stuff before I actually get into sitting down at a computer. And I will tell you that we have a proprietary process called our signals method. And our first one is the first S of signals is sleep. And my sleep, I protect it like I would probably protect a firstborn. And we don't have kids, but I will say that one day without a great night's sleep, I can be okay. Two or three days, I'm starting to like literally lose my mind. And there's a lot of studies that show that once you've gone two or three nights without sleep, you actually are almost like you're drunk, where your body is just that impaired. And our brains are cleaning out our lymphatic system and our gymphatic system at night while we're sleeping. And if you aren't sleeping, then your body is not doing the repairs in the middle of the night to help you be your best person. Rashad Thirlkill: Sleep is very important. Amy Mewborn: It is my number one. And I I've spent at this point 21 years in fitness. And I would have always told you that fitness was probably a number one. And I would put that behind sleep. And I would put that now behind food. And I would put that behind stress. And it's fascinating to me that my own mind has changed and grown so much after seeing. Rashad Thirlkill: Yeah. Amy Mewborn: so many clients that are just like me that whether they're women, whether they're men, they're super high achieving and they've done all of these amazing things. And they wake up one day and their body is just it's broken because we've been sitting at a computer all day and we've been staring at a screen all day. And all of the things that we're doing that our bodies were never meant to do. Rashad Thirlkill: Yeah, definitely. ⁓ wow. The effect of society, right? So Amy, let me ask you this. Amy Mewborn: Modern Rashad Thirlkill: Okay, that was really early in life that this happened to you, right? So you you're about to be 50. After that 29, 29 year old had this had the stroke. Have you lived with like I guess PTSD based on that one episode kind of walking around worrying, will this happen again? I need to do this so it doesn't happen again. And just it's been a dark cloud over you. Would you say that? Amy Mewborn: Honestly, it was the exact opposite for me. ⁓ I I felt so fortunate to have recovered as well as I did. And so honestly, I probably felt maybe a little bit invincible. And I maybe took that a little too far in that ⁓ over the past few years, with everything going on in the world and in health, I maybe didn't give. Rashad Thirlkill: Got it. Amy Mewborn: things, the credence that they should have had. And so for me, I ended up going and I rented an Airbnb in Miami. And on my second day in the Airbnb in Miami, I saw mold around the Airbnb. And I started coughing uncontrollably and I couldn't sleep through the night because I was coughing all night long. My fingers swelled up so much that I couldn't get rings on or off. I couldn't get my shoes on or off. And so I had this immediate response to the the mold that was there in the Airbnb. And I since then I've heard many, many stories and many studies about how toxic mold is for our cells and for our immune system. But at the time, I never even worried about it. I called the Airbnb people. I sent photos. I'm like, look, here's this is going on. They're like, do you want us to come out and, you know, clean it, remediate it, or whatever? I'm like, I'm only here for a few days. It's fine. Don't worry about it. It's not a big deal. I didn't make a big deal out of it until then all of a sudden I had a chronic cough for another eight months. And I couldn't breathe. I couldn't go to fitness classes. And I'm a fitness girl. And I couldn't live my life. And so doctors kept sending me from doctor to doctor. I went to neurologists, cardiologists, primary primary care people, endocrinologists, all of the people. And every single time they just handed me another set of pills and they're like, we don't know what's going on, but here, take this. And ultimately, when you start to have things that are chronic and they can't find them in the labs. They start treating you kind of like you're just crazy. And so it becomes this like self-fulfilling prophecy where none of them really dug deep. And so for me, fortunately, I've been an entrepreneur. I look at life as if Mike and I, my husband and I really want to do something, we figure out how to pay for it. And then we'll just work a little harder to make sure it all gets. made up and it's lovely to be able to be an entrepreneur and go and kind of print money sometimes. But for me, I ended up paying a functional medicine practitioner thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for both the labs and then the protocols to be able to clear up the mold. And unfortunately it had been it had gone on so long that it ended up creating an autoimmune trigger that then created another cascade of issues. And I ended up in the ICU on my 48th birthday with my brain swollen and I was again having stroke symptoms. And everyone took me to the hospital thinking I was having a second stroke and it wasn't a stroke. It was that my blood pressure had gotten to be 268 over 186. And normal is 120 over 80. Rashad Thirlkill: Wow. Amy Mewborn: So again, you know, you just when you are a high performer, you often just get up and you do the things until your body tells you you just can't anymore. And that's what I've done my whole life. And had it not happened the second time, I probably would have continued down that path. At this point now, my health actually comes before my business. And I never in a million years would have told you that I thought that was ever gonna happen. Rashad Thirlkill: Right. And you know, the I think the sad part about it all is you kind of mentioned the healthcare system. And I think that you have to you have to f fraction in that you really don't have we don't have the same health care that will look after your well being. Amy Mewborn: ⁓ goodness, no. I read an article ⁓ today, yesterday, that United Healthcare, ⁓ they made I think $2.6 billion so far this year, and they have denied 36% of all claims. So record profits and things that doctors felt were necessary medical treatments have been denied by insurance to be able to get them paid for. And that is criminal. For what people are paying for basic health insurance nowadays, to not be able to have something covered is just criminal. Rashad Thirlkill: It is. It is. And and ⁓ man, that's a that is a topic for a different day. Actually it's not. Actually it's not because we get we have to dive into something. And it's it's funny that you said it's either pills or they think you're crazy. Because my wife never taken a drug in her life. She don't like to take ibuprofen, but she's been dealing with, which is something I'm going to dive into here in a second. Amy Mewborn: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Rashad Thirlkill: ⁓ perimenopause. So for the women that's becoming, you know, 50, 50 years old, this is like something new. So she's experiencing something she's never experienced before. And so ⁓ anxiety, I think, that she was saying that, you know, was bothering her. And she went to the doctor and they gave her this prescription. And she took one of the pills and was sleep. She didn't know what was the matter with her for two whole days. Amy Mewborn: Yep. Yes. Rashad Thirlkill: Off of this one pill. And you can't function. You can't function that way. Amy Mewborn: Well, and the problem is I think that our healthcare system has become so fragmented. If you have an issue and you start at your primary care physician, they send you to, for me, a cardiologist, then a neurologist, and then an endocrinologist, and then maybe an OBGYN about the menopause and all of this and Every single medical professional is looking at it from their little silo. And so they're not necessarily taking into consideration the whole person. And it's the whole person that's actually sitting there in front of them asking for help. And I think to like my grandmother who passed away this year, she was probably on 25 medications. And it's a situation where you know the first domino starts to fall and a doctor gives you a prescription, and then that drug has five side effects. And so you need three more drugs to counteract those side effects. And it just it begins this cascade of problems. And for women, up until really probably the past two years. No one's been having the conversations for us about perimenopause and menopause. And I've just I have so many friends in this industry that tell stories about what it was like coming through the medical system when no one had paid attention to that kind of education for all of us as women, and so you know what you're What your wife is going through is very, very normal. And the statistic is that 80% of autoimmune disease is diagnosed in women. So the question is: what's going on that is causing that for all of us? And part of it is that we believe it's hormonal, part of it is. The environmental factors, we're putting all kinds of toxins on our skin and our body and our hair and in our homes and all of these things. But also, as women, we're carrying so much. And I tell my husband this all the time. He he has no concept of the fact that all day long my brain is literally calculating all the things that need to get handled. And he went and got on a plane yesterday and He's like, ⁓ yeah, I just walked right in and I I got my boarding pass and I did all these things. But yet for me, I've been thinking through that for three days. And I'm like, okay, we've got to check in, we've got to make sure we have this and we've got to make sure we have that. And we're just we're walking around carrying so much that by the time we end up in a doctor's office with what a doctor views as anxiety, it's really just, man, we are holding on by our fingernails. trying to get by some days and make sure that our families and our friends and our businesses and our employees and all of them are all taken care of too. Rashad Thirlkill: Yeah, definitely. I get it. I mean I'm here and ⁓ what The the way that you know that it is the way that I know that it's so real is because all of the women of our age group, so my sister and their friends and ever so everyone's going through the same thing at the same time. So so we we we get it like the men, we get it and we see it is live in action, we see it and ⁓ it is. Sometimes it comes off as I'm sorry, I forgot all about that, I had brain fire. you know, I'm just worried about so much. And ⁓ like you said, I've been thinking about this for the last three days. I'm just moving, moving, moving. So yeah, we're s we're seeing it pan out in real time and we can tell that it's a real thing. So, you know, I I don't Amy Mewborn: This is where we're grateful, I think, for things like Instagram because, you know, I can't imagine what it was like for my mother or my grandmother to go through all of that and not talk about it and not have other people posting all over that, ⁓ yeah, you know, I woke up this morning with hot flashes and had to change my clothes and and all of these things. Yeah. It just Rashad Thirlkill: Yeah. So so Amy, do you have an outlet for ⁓ you are a life coach. You're you're a ⁓ coach for women. So is this included? Is this something that's included in your program or what does it look like to work with you within your program? Do you touch on these subjects? Amy Mewborn: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Again, our signals method. So we start with sleep and the last S is all about self. And the N is all about nervous system. And the reason is that you can go and you can eat super well. You can go and work out. But if you have gotten lost in the process or your stress level is so high that you can't cope anymore and you are living in a constant state of fight or flight. No matter what you do for food, no matter what you do for working out, none of it's gonna work. You're still gonna hold on to inflammation, you're still going to hold on to blood sugar. All of the things and how our bodies function won't function properly without actually dealing with the nervous system and the identity pieces, because those are who we are. So yeah, ⁓ we have we have a program called the Collective. And it is a monthly membership where it's designed to give women, ⁓ women primarily 40, 50, 60-ish, the a place to come and ask questions about their physical health. We include lab reviews with our annual membership. We include life coaching, all of that as part of the program. And It's really, I think, meant to be a place where women don't feel like we're all by ourselves anymore, especially us high achieving women that just get up and do the thing. Rashad Thirlkill: Got it. Okay. So the Living Simpler philosophy, what does Living Simpler actually mean to you? And what doesn't it mean? Amy Mewborn: Yeah. Yeah. So I love my technology. I'm here with you on a computer. There are a lot of things about my life. And my husband and I were talking about this out laying in our pool over the weekend. We have Sonas speakers, you know, we have smart televisions. And we live in a very wired and wireless world. And that's not simpler, but At the same time, that is a piece of our quality of life that we genuinely enjoy. And it's something that we will continue to keep and have in our life. However, we have pulled out almost all chemicals that we use for cleaning around the home, and we've gone to organic chemicals. I use very, very clean beauty products. We eat almost exclusively whole foods. I love to be in my garden. And I was a girl that had a black thumb for many, many, many years. And now it's one of my favorite things to just go out and turn on a podcast or some music and be in the garden. So for me, living simpler is about identifying the things that I can live healthier without having to change my quality of life. I'm not going to give anyone my computer. I'm not going to give anyone my smartphone. But I am gonna give someone my laundry detergent. Rashad Thirlkill: Like it. I like it. You know. The olden days don't so I know you said you can't imagine not being able to tell others about what you're going through and the cell phone and everything. But you know, I kind of grew up around horses. I'm from Texas. And a lot of the times ⁓ we would just be around the animals. And we were in the city, but where we kept the horses, we would be outside. And it was just It was ⁓ like you're you're kind of explaining it was a way to live simple. Amy Mewborn: My great-grandmothers, yeah. I had all four great-grandmothers. The first one passed away when she was 98 years old. And all of them lived on farms and would go and break the necks of the chickens that they were gonna come in and fry for the family. You know, they ate fried food that was fried in beef fats, and they went and picked. Rashad Thirlkill: And I think that's the way to go. Amy Mewborn: All of their produce and it didn't have pesticides and all of the chemicals on it. If you've ever seen photos, old hospitals used to wheel the patients out onto the roof so they could get sunlight. And it was actually a protocol for their healing. And now we stay in under artificial lights. And we don't see sunlight sometimes all day, other than through the window, which has been filtered, and we're not getting the real full spectrum UV rays. So I will tell you, I do love my technology, and I think that a lot of us are really yearning for something that is a little bit simpler. We turn all of our lights off in our house. Rashad Thirlkill: Right. Amy Mewborn: Probably somewhere in the neighborhood of like 730 at night. And we have amber lights that mimic more like a candlelight look instead of all of our overhead fluorescence and LED lights. Because there are again have been a lot of studies showing that all of the light actually affects our quality of sleep. It affects how our brain processes information. So it's really important to my husband and I, and bless his heart, he's he's going along with it because it's really important to me. But it's really important to have to put ourselves in an environment of healing as much as possible. And so everything's off so that way our brains start getting ready to go to bed. And I am literally the little Rashad Thirlkill: Right. Amy Mewborn: child at nine o'clock at night who is like blinking and rubbing her eyes because at between nine and nine thirty that is my bedtime. And we went, we we live in Vegas. And so we went out to a concert and saw Guns N' Roses the other night. And they didn't come on until like 8 40 at night. And I'm looking at my husband, I'm like, ⁓ man, this is gonna be a long night. And at 11 30 we're still walking back to the car. And i it was painful. So yeah, I'm Rashad Thirlkill: Yeah, I I get it. I've been there. I get it. We do day parties now. If it's yeah, if it's something at night, even when I come to Vegas, I love coming to Vegas. Even when I come to Vegas, we just I'm like you with the sleep. This I hey, vacationing to me, I I can sleep on vacation and be all right with it. Amy Mewborn: I love that. You know, the punishment that they used to give us when we were five, that's now like our our dream. You can't go out to a party? Okay, great. I I I have to go to bed early. Great. Let's go. Rashad Thirlkill: Right. Our favorite thing. Right. That's our favorite thing now. Okay, Amy, I'm going to move you into ⁓ the rapid fire section. All right. So you can have ⁓ you can answer this with one word or a short sentence. Okay. success is blank. Amy Mewborn: Yeah. Peace. Rashad Thirlkill: Health is blank. Amy Mewborn: Essential. Rashad Thirlkill: The biggest misconception women have about wellness is Amy Mewborn: It has to be complicated. Rashad Thirlkill: One habit you wish every woman over forty would develop is Amy Mewborn: Step out in the sun first thing in the morning. Rashad Thirlkill: One thing high achievers need to stop glorifying is that Amy Mewborn: Hustle culture. Rashad Thirlkill: Your body is always the Amy Mewborn: Speaking to you, sending signals. Rashad Thirlkill: The best investment a woman can make is Amy Mewborn: Great bed. Rashad Thirlkill: Living simpler means Amy Mewborn: Slowing down. Rashad Thirlkill: Those are great answers. Those are really great answers. I tried to get a viral moment out of that section. So, Amy, if you could sit across the table from the woman you were before your first stroke, the woman who was busy, ambitious, and probably doing what she thought she was supposed to do, what would you tell her today? Amy Mewborn: Thank you. Your boss does not really care about you or your health. You are a number and you are a producer. And if you do not look out for your own health, everyone will take everything that they can get from you, often at the expense of your health. Rashad Thirlkill: Great answer. Great answer. And your boss wants a Ferrari out of you. So okay, where can people learn more about you, your work, your book, and living simple? Amy Mewborn: It's a little jaded, but Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I'm most active on Instagram at Amy Muborn and it's Amazon Mary, E W B O R N. And you can reach the website at living dash simpler dot com. And we do a seven ⁓ we do a seven dollar trial for the collective for any woman that would want to join us there. And so that's living dash simpler dot com forward slash trial. Rashad Thirlkill: Okay. All right. So Amy, I want to thank you for coming on today. I'm definitely going to have my wife to watch this episode. And I I like I say, I am I'm going through it with her. I I so I I see what's happening. And ⁓ I know that more women need to have an outlet. So I want to commend you on giving these women an outlet. Amy Mewborn: Thank you. I think I think when we become entrepreneurs, we bring to the world the things that we wish had been there for us. Rashad Thirlkill: Definitely, definitely. They ⁓ as a marketer myself, I know ⁓ when someone cannot start a business, the number one rule is start the business that's that you were for you 10 years ago. So that's 100%. Well, thanks again. And to anyone that's out there listening, give Amy a follow. This is a very ⁓ important conversation to have, and I want you guys to remember the Amy Mewborn: Yeah, absolutely. Rashad Thirlkill: As always, keep making moves, make money, and make meaningful memories. Until next time, we'll see you later.