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Balancing Hormones and Business Success with Dr. Deb Matthew · 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.
• 0:36
  Tom Jackobs: Today, our brilliant guest is the delightful Dr.
• 0:39
  Tom Jackobs: Deb Matthew, America's happy hormone doctor, a bestselling author, international speaker, and a super mom of four boys.
• 0:49
  Tom Jackobs: I cannot believe that.
• 0:51
  Tom Jackobs: Deb transformed her tumultuous journey with hormones into a heart led mission.
• 0:56
  Tom Jackobs: So join us as she shares her inspiring insights from the world of wellness and buckle up for a ride filled with wisdom, wit, and a sprinkle of hormonal happiness.
• 1:06
  Tom Jackobs: Welcome to the show, Deb.
• 1:07
  Dr Deb Matthew: So great to be here.
• 1:09
  Tom Jackobs: I'm so excited to chat with you.
• 1:11
  Tom Jackobs: We've known each other for a long time.
• 1:14
  Tom Jackobs: We've had conversations in the past, but it's always just a real delight to get somebody that you know, and you like on the show and to share that wisdom with the rest of the audience.
• 1:24
  Tom Jackobs: So I'm excited to dive into this.
• 1:27
  Tom Jackobs: But of course, the first question I always like to ask is what's your definition of a heart led business?
• 1:34
  Dr Deb Matthew: What really comes to mind when you ask this question is one of my important mentors in my life is Patrick Hannaway, who is an integrative medicine family practice physician, who was one of the people who helped start the functional medicine program at Cleveland Clinic.
• 1:48
  Dr Deb Matthew: And his quote that I love is, the best way to care for your patient is to care for your patient.
• 1:56
  Dr Deb Matthew: And so I feel like for a heart-led business, what that means is that you always have your patient, your customer's best interests at heart.
• 2:05
  Dr Deb Matthew: And when you really do that, when people feel that you care, they will respond to that.
• 2:12
  Dr Deb Matthew: People will, come back for more.
• 2:15
  Dr Deb Matthew: There's so much to say about when you care for somebody.
• 2:18
  Dr Deb Matthew: That's an important part of the healing process when people really feel like you care.
• 2:22
  Dr Deb Matthew: And so to me, that's really the bulk of it is we want to care more about our patient than we do about our bottom line.
• 2:30
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, no, I love that.
• 2:32
  Tom Jackobs: And it mimics the old quote.
• 2:34
  Tom Jackobs: Um, nobody really cares what you know until they know how much you care, which I love.
• 2:40
  Tom Jackobs: That's just a great way to live and to have a heart led business as well.
• 2:44
  Dr Deb Matthew: Another quote that I love is Dr.
• 2:46
  Dr Deb Matthew: Frank Sinatra is a cardiologist, an integrative cardiologist.
• 2:50
  Dr Deb Matthew: So of course he's talking about, hearts and healing your heart.
• 2:54
  Dr Deb Matthew: And he talks about how love is one of the most important healing things that we have.
• 3:02
  Dr Deb Matthew: And so the same idea, right?
• 3:04
  Dr Deb Matthew: The more that you show your patient that you care, the better outcomes they're going to have.
• 3:08
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 3:08
  Tom Jackobs: And I think that's been shown over and over again, especially like infants.
• 3:13
  Tom Jackobs: that are in the NICU.
• 3:14
  Tom Jackobs: They need to be held and touched and things like that.
• 3:17
  Tom Jackobs: And their healing becomes so much better.
• 3:19
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 3:20
  Dr Deb Matthew: More
• 3:20
  Tom Jackobs: it's amazing.
• 3:22
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 3:22
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 3:23
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:25
  Tom Jackobs: So tell us a little bit about you and your heart-led business.
• 3:30
  Dr Deb Matthew: Yeah.
• 3:30
  Dr Deb Matthew: Originally I was just a regular old doctor and was having my own health journey.
• 3:39
  Dr Deb Matthew: I was exhausted all the time.
• 3:41
  Dr Deb Matthew: Like napping was my favorite hobby and I was always exhausted.
• 3:46
  Dr Deb Matthew: I was always cold.
• 3:48
  Dr Deb Matthew: I used to carry a sweater with me everywhere I went, even in the summer in North Carolina.
• 3:52
  Dr Deb Matthew: Because at air conditioned restaurants and movie theaters, I would just shiver uncontrollably.
• 3:56
  Dr Deb Matthew: And I was always struggling with my weight, and these things have been going on for so many years that I didn't even Know that there could be different.
• 4:03
  Dr Deb Matthew: I just thought I was a cold natured person who needed way more sleep than everybody else.
• 4:07
  Dr Deb Matthew: And twice when I was in medical school, the doctors that I was training with looked at my throat and said, your thyroid's enlarged.
• 4:14
  Dr Deb Matthew: You should go get it checked.
• 4:15
  Dr Deb Matthew: But I'd go get it checked and the doctor would tell me that the labs are normal.
• 4:19
  Dr Deb Matthew: And that's what we're trained.
• 4:20
  Dr Deb Matthew: If your labs are normal, then you have to be fine.
• 4:22
  Dr Deb Matthew: Maybe you're depressed, maybe you're lazy, but it's not your thyroid.
• 4:27
  Dr Deb Matthew: And eventually things got even worse and I started to get anxious.
• 4:31
  Dr Deb Matthew: I was waking up in the middle of the night with panic attacks for no apparent reason.
• 4:36
  Dr Deb Matthew: And I was so irritable.
• 4:38
  Dr Deb Matthew: I was shrieking at my kids over the stupidest little things.
• 4:43
  Dr Deb Matthew: And then I felt like the worst mom ever.
• 4:46
  Dr Deb Matthew: I felt so guilty for just always flying off the handle.
• 4:49
  Dr Deb Matthew: And my poor husband is the one that really had to put up with the majority of my wicked witch of the west impersonation.
• 4:56
  Dr Deb Matthew: He used to actually call from the car on the way home from work because he could tell by the tone of my voice whether it was safe to come home or whether he needed to put on a suit of armor before he walked in the door for his own protection.
• 5:07
  Tom Jackobs: Oh my gosh.
• 5:08
  Dr Deb Matthew: I knew that how I was feeling was not normal.
• 5:11
  Dr Deb Matthew: I knew that this wasn't me, but nothing in my medical training helped me understand what was going on.
• 5:16
  Dr Deb Matthew: It was just so confusing.
• 5:18
  Dr Deb Matthew: And what really changed everything for me is my husband gave me a book that was written by Suzanne Somers.
• 5:26
  Dr Deb Matthew: And you remember Suzanne Somers, right?
• 5:28
  Dr Deb Matthew: She was the ditzy blonde in Three's Company and the Thighmaster Lady and not the person that I wanted to take my medical advice from.
• 5:37
  Dr Deb Matthew: Yeah.
• 5:37
  Dr Deb Matthew: But he gave me this book, and I looked at it and said you've got to be kidding me.
• 5:42
  Dr Deb Matthew: And he looked at me and said, Honey, we've got to do something.
• 5:48
  Dr Deb Matthew: And so I read the book, and it was a book about women's hormones.
• 5:51
  Dr Deb Matthew: It was called The Sexy Years.
• 5:53
  Dr Deb Matthew: When I read about the women in the book who were just like me, they were all a hot mess, and then how much better they felt when they got their hormones balanced.
• 6:01
  Dr Deb Matthew: It allowed me to open my mind and really understand what was going on.
• 6:06
  Dr Deb Matthew: I, by that point, had been diagnosed with hypothyroidism.
• 6:09
  Dr Deb Matthew: It had taken 10 years for my thyroid labs to go out of range, but at this point I'd already been on the standard thyroid medicine for 10 years and I didn't feel any better.
• 6:16
  Dr Deb Matthew: I was also going through starting perimenopause, but I had no idea.
• 6:20
  Dr Deb Matthew: I was in my late 30s.
• 6:20
  Dr Deb Matthew: Who's thinking about menopause when you're in your 30s?
• 6:23
  Dr Deb Matthew: But that's why I was irritable and anxious and not sleeping.
• 6:26
  Dr Deb Matthew: So once I understood what was going on, I was able to find solutions and get my hormones back in balance.
• 6:33
  Dr Deb Matthew: I got my energy back, my kids got their mom back, my husband got his wife back, and I got my life back.
• 6:40
  Dr Deb Matthew: But I couldn't go back to just writing prescriptions all day long every day because that didn't make any sense anymore.
• 6:46
  Dr Deb Matthew: So I went and completely retrained, learned about this new way of actually getting to the root cause of why people aren't feeling well.
• 6:54
  Dr Deb Matthew: And for the last now almost 20 years, I've helped men and women get their hormones back in balance so that they can get well, get off a lot of those prescription medicines and love the way they feel.
• 7:07
  Tom Jackobs: Wow.
• 7:08
  Tom Jackobs: What a journey.
• 7:10
  Tom Jackobs: And so it was more than 10 years from
• 7:13
  Dr Deb Matthew: Yeah.
• 7:14
  Dr Deb Matthew: It was really, If I look back to when I first started having the symptoms of being cold and tired, et cetera, it was about 10 years before I got diagnosed and 10 years before my labs went far enough out of kilter, but then another whole 10 years before I really got resolution.
• 7:29
  Dr Deb Matthew: So really I had symptoms for 20 years before I finally felt good.
• 7:32
  Dr Deb Matthew: I'm on a mission to help women especially, but men too, to not suffer unnecessarily for two decades with symptoms that are unnecessary.
• 7:42
  Dr Deb Matthew: My story is not rare.
• 7:43
  Dr Deb Matthew: My story is actually really common.
• 7:44
  Dr Deb Matthew: There are so many people out there who don't feel good and they go to their doctor to complain.
• 7:49
  Dr Deb Matthew: And they've got their laundry list of symptoms.
• 7:52
  Dr Deb Matthew: They're irritable, they're bloated, they can't sleep, they can't remember why they walked in the room, and they get blown off.
• 7:57
  Dr Deb Matthew: They're told it's just your age, this is normal here's your antidepressant or your sleeping pill, or you just have to get through this.
• 8:04
  Dr Deb Matthew: And we're not taken seriously and it's not okay.
• 8:07
  Dr Deb Matthew: And things have to change.
• 8:09
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:10
  Tom Jackobs: So you're in traditional medicine and then transitioned to functional medicine.
• 8:17
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 8:17
  Tom Jackobs: So what was that transition like for you?
• 8:20
  Dr Deb Matthew: It was a bumpy ride.
• 8:21
  Dr Deb Matthew: When I first opened my practice, I really, I had never had any desire to be in business or to own my own practice.
• 8:28
  Dr Deb Matthew: I just wanted to help people.
• 8:30
  Dr Deb Matthew: But once I, I learned this new approach, I really felt an obligation to do this.
• 8:37
  Dr Deb Matthew: And I remember the moment too, when I was learning about it I went and shadowed some other practitioners, as part of my learning.
• 8:43
  Dr Deb Matthew: And one of the people that I shadowed was Dr.
• 8:45
  Dr Deb Matthew: Pam Smith, who is somebody who's lectured for many years at A4M.
• 8:49
  Dr Deb Matthew: She's trained a lot of the other practitioners who practice this way.
• 8:52
  Dr Deb Matthew: And I remember sitting in her office one day in Michigan, in Detroit, women would come in, it was their first time ever, coming in to see her, and they would come in and they would be crying, and they'd have a towel in their purse to for the hot flashes to wipe their face, or they'd have a little fan or something.
• 9:07
  Dr Deb Matthew: They were just a hot mess.
• 9:09
  Dr Deb Matthew: They'd be boo hooing and, But then I would see the women coming in who'd now been coming for a couple of months and they were telling their stories of how they felt so much better.
• 9:17
  Dr Deb Matthew: And then there'd be the women who'd been her patient for many years coming in and they felt great and they were so grateful and as I'm sitting there listening to all their stories and seeing all their transformations, what's going through my head is now that I know what I know, how can I not?
• 9:31
  Dr Deb Matthew: It's terrifying to open your own practice and start something, a whole different way of practicing medicine.
• 9:37
  Dr Deb Matthew: But that was the moment that day sitting in her office in Detroit where I realized I have to do this.
• 9:42
  Dr Deb Matthew: This is, there's no other choice.
• 9:43
  Dr Deb Matthew: I feel an obligation to help other women.
• 9:46
  Dr Deb Matthew: So I opened the practice.
• 9:48
  Dr Deb Matthew: We saw the first patient January 27th of 2007.
• 9:53
  Dr Deb Matthew: And I started off with great hopes and vision and I was going to make an impact in the world.
• 10:02
  Dr Deb Matthew: But the one piece That I had under I was I didn't quite have all figured out is this whole idea that I knew nothing about How to have a business.
• 10:13
  Dr Deb Matthew: I knew absolutely nothing about how to be a boss or hire people or, I didn't know what a profit and loss report files.
• 10:22
  Dr Deb Matthew: Literally five years into the business, somebody said, can I do whatever about your PNL report?
• 10:27
  Dr Deb Matthew: And I'm like, what's that?
• 10:29
  Dr Deb Matthew: I have no idea what that is.
• 10:30
  Dr Deb Matthew: Started off Gamebusters, but I will never forget the night a year later.
• 10:36
  Dr Deb Matthew: It was a Thursday night at nine o'clock, January of 2008.
• 10:42
  Dr Deb Matthew: My husband and I are sitting across from each other at the kitchen table.
• 10:46
  Dr Deb Matthew: We've put the kids to bed.
• 10:48
  Dr Deb Matthew: I've got my laptop open in front of me.
• 10:50
  Dr Deb Matthew: There's a stack of bills beside it.
• 10:52
  Dr Deb Matthew: And we're just staring at each other across the table.
• 10:55
  Dr Deb Matthew: We're not saying anything because truthfully, we just don't even know what to say.
• 10:59
  Dr Deb Matthew: Like we've just done the math and figured out that at this point owe the bank a million dollars.
• 11:07
  Dr Deb Matthew: The business is failing like really failing.
• 11:10
  Dr Deb Matthew: have no idea how to do anything differently.
• 11:15
  Dr Deb Matthew: I don't know if we're going to go bankrupt or we're going to lose our house.
• 11:20
  Dr Deb Matthew: And what I did know is that I loved what I was doing.
• 11:25
  Dr Deb Matthew: My patients were getting better.
• 11:26
  Dr Deb Matthew: They're referring their friends and family.
• 11:28
  Dr Deb Matthew: Like the medicine part of the business was awesome.
• 11:31
  Dr Deb Matthew: It's just the business part of the business.
• 11:33
  Dr Deb Matthew: Was clearly not.
• 11:35
  Dr Deb Matthew: And we had to make a decision in that moment.
• 11:38
  Dr Deb Matthew: And what I decided is that I loved what I was doing.
• 11:41
  Dr Deb Matthew: I really believed in practicing medicine this way.
• 11:44
  Dr Deb Matthew: And so I decided that I was going to keep on going at least to pay off, we had this big debt to the bank.
• 11:53
  Dr Deb Matthew: I had four more years on my lease.
• 11:55
  Dr Deb Matthew: My husband's Took an outside job to help pay the bills.
• 11:58
  Dr Deb Matthew: I took an outside job as a medical director for a med spa, to have some money coming in and I kept on going and gradually over time, the business sort of grew, but it took me seven years.
• 12:14
  Dr Deb Matthew: to pay off that debt.
• 12:16
  Dr Deb Matthew: And so for seven years, I didn't pay myself.
• 12:20
  Tom Jackobs: Oh.
• 12:21
  Dr Deb Matthew: My 401k and that was it.
• 12:23
  Dr Deb Matthew: All the rest of the money just went towards running the business and paying off the debt.
• 12:28
  Dr Deb Matthew: And by the time I got to the seven year mark, I remember the day that last bank, loan payment got paid.
• 12:36
  Dr Deb Matthew: And I would have thought, I was anticipating that it was going to be this moment of euphoria.
• 12:42
  Dr Deb Matthew: And when I saw the notice come in that, the payment went through and I knew it was the last payment, I had this moment of like, hooray, we did it.
• 12:50
  Dr Deb Matthew: And it lasted literally for just a moment because then the door to my office.
• 12:54
  Dr Deb Matthew: And one of my employees came running in tears.
• 12:58
  Dr Deb Matthew: She's all upset because so and so on the, another staff person said something to her and, they're going at it like kindergarten.
• 13:04
  Dr Deb Matthew: And I was so exhausted because all I did was work.
• 13:10
  Dr Deb Matthew: I was.
• 13:11
  Dr Deb Matthew: Going, seeing patients from the moment I walked in the door, I would fly out of the door at about 3.
• 13:16
  Dr Deb Matthew: 30 to try to rush home to get to my kids.
• 13:19
  Dr Deb Matthew: I had these four boys, they all played soccer.
• 13:20
  Dr Deb Matthew: So then I transitioned to job number two, which was professional chauffeur.
• 13:25
  Dr Deb Matthew: And I just had to get all these different kids to all their different soccer practices, preferably with two shoes each.
• 13:30
  Dr Deb Matthew: And then by the time I get home and get the kids to bed, then I had to chart until about 11 o'clock at night to get caught back up again so that I'd be ready for the next day.
• 13:38
  Dr Deb Matthew: So was miserable.
• 13:40
  Dr Deb Matthew: Felt trapped at this point.
• 13:43
  Dr Deb Matthew: Like in the beginning I kept on going because I loved what I was doing.
• 13:47
  Dr Deb Matthew: now, seven years later, I didn't love what I was doing.
• 13:50
  Dr Deb Matthew: I wasn't living authentically.
• 13:51
  Dr Deb Matthew: I was telling my patients all day, every day, you need to take care of yourself.
• 13:55
  Dr Deb Matthew: You need to exercise and meditate and eat healthy.
• 13:58
  Dr Deb Matthew: And here I am eating chicken nuggets in the card of the soccer practice, like stress to the wazoo.
• 14:03
  Dr Deb Matthew: And that didn't feel good, but again.
• 14:06
  Dr Deb Matthew: I didn't know what to do.
• 14:08
  Dr Deb Matthew: The only way that I knew to make more money, like to keep the practice afloat, was to see more patients.
• 14:15
  Dr Deb Matthew: And there was no way that I could I was so maxed out already.
• 14:20
  Dr Deb Matthew: And so once again.
• 14:20
  Dr Deb Matthew: Even more than that, I felt really ashamed.
• 14:24
  Dr Deb Matthew: Like I was so embarrassed.
• 14:27
  Dr Deb Matthew: I did not want anybody to know just what a big failure I was.
• 14:33
  Dr Deb Matthew: Because to the outside, here I'm lecturing in Dubai and Bali and I'm, speaking.
• 14:39
  Dr Deb Matthew: I was, I'm one of the oral board examiners for the A4A.
• 14:42
  Dr Deb Matthew: I'm like, I'm doing all these things that to the outside, it looks like I'm successful.
• 14:48
  Dr Deb Matthew: My practice is busy.
• 14:49
  Dr Deb Matthew: So it looks like I'm successful, but I'm the one that knows that, I'm not, and I'm unhappy.
• 14:59
  Dr Deb Matthew: that's really a burden to carry that shame of knowing that you're a fraud.
• 15:05
  Tom Jackobs: .Yeah.
• 15:06
  Tom Jackobs: Wow.
• 15:07
  Tom Jackobs: So seven years, you're basically working for the bank.
• 15:10
  Tom Jackobs: And so your transition out of working at a practice, somebody else's practice, right?
• 15:17
  Tom Jackobs: Making a regular paycheck.
• 15:19
  Tom Jackobs: And then,
• 15:19
  Dr Deb Matthew: I worked at a public, at the public health department
• 15:22
  Tom Jackobs: oh, two mornings
• 15:22
  Dr Deb Matthew: a week while I had little children.
• 15:25
  Dr Deb Matthew: That was my prior job
• 15:26
  Tom Jackobs: Oh, okay.
• 15:27
  Tom Jackobs: Wow.
• 15:28
  Tom Jackobs: Okay.
• 15:29
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 15:29
  Tom Jackobs: And in medical school, they didn't train you anything about PNLs or accounting or marketing.
• 15:35
  Dr Deb Matthew: or yeah, nothing.
• 15:37
  Tom Jackobs: So seven years, was it just grinded out for seven years?
• 15:41
  Tom Jackobs: And you're like, I'm just going to figure this out and I'm going to pay off the bank.
• 15:46
  Tom Jackobs: Or did you get some help?
• 15:48
  Dr Deb Matthew: So here's my mantras as I kept going.
• 15:51
  Dr Deb Matthew: One of them was, it's better to be a good person than a good business person.
• 15:56
  Dr Deb Matthew: And I was helping people, so that felt good to be helping my patients get better, and the fact that I was not really being compensated for it, at least I was helping people.
• 16:06
  Dr Deb Matthew: Because my husband had a real job I could, if I was the breadwinner for the family, we would have had to close years and years ago, right?
• 16:13
  Dr Deb Matthew: But it would, I felt occasionally, I would get criticized for having a cash practice because I opened in 2007.
• 16:21
  Dr Deb Matthew: Nobody really had cash practices way back then.
• 16:23
  Dr Deb Matthew: But if I was ever criticized that I was just trying to take people's money, at least it made me feel better to know I wasn't benefiting financially at all from any of this.
• 16:31
  Dr Deb Matthew: So that helped my conscience to feel better.
• 16:34
  Dr Deb Matthew: But I kept telling myself that in the beginning, you just have to work hard and in the end, it's all going to work out.
• 16:40
  Dr Deb Matthew: And on year one, that made sense.
• 16:43
  Dr Deb Matthew: And on year two, it still made sense by year seven.
• 16:46
  Dr Deb Matthew: Like I was over it, right?
• 16:48
  Dr Deb Matthew: Clearly there's nowhere to go from here.
• 16:50
  Dr Deb Matthew: I can't see more patients.
• 16:51
  Dr Deb Matthew: And what happens with a lot of businesses is not just mine is as you get busier and you have more patients, you would think you'd be more profitable, but your expenses go up.
• 17:02
  Dr Deb Matthew: You have to hire more people and you need more space.
• 17:05
  Dr Deb Matthew: And, so you just.
• 17:06
  Dr Deb Matthew: You're working harder and harder, but you're just like treading water.
• 17:10
  Dr Deb Matthew: And I just, I was not able to get ahead.
• 17:12
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 17:13
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 17:14
  Tom Jackobs: Nothing fixes bad margins in any business.
• 17:17
  Tom Jackobs: It's the only thing that fixes bad margins is better margins are getting that fix, and bringing in more than what you're spending.
• 17:25
  Tom Jackobs: And so how did you finally figure that?
• 17:28
  Tom Jackobs: Before we get into that, what's interesting is so many heart centered people that I speak with, business owners, they go through a very similar transition where It's like, Oh, I'm giving, giving.
• 17:41
  Tom Jackobs: And I love to give.
• 17:42
  Tom Jackobs: And then at some point it's I can't give any more.
• 17:45
  Tom Jackobs: This is because it's been taking so much.
• 17:48
  Dr Deb Matthew: Yeah.
• 17:49
  Tom Jackobs: the more that heart led business owners and want to be heart led business owners, or that want to go into business, you need to realize this and take Deb's story to heart.
• 18:00
  Tom Jackobs: Please, that you have to take care.
• 18:04
  Tom Jackobs: Don't take, yeah, don't take seven years.
• 18:05
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 18:06
  Dr Deb Matthew: I remember a moment towards the end of the seven year mark, my sister came to visit.
• 18:12
  Dr Deb Matthew: It was over my birthday week.
• 18:14
  Dr Deb Matthew: And so I'm working all day and like by working all day, no bathroom breaks, no lunch breaks.
• 18:19
  Dr Deb Matthew: Like I'm always an hour behind.
• 18:21
  Dr Deb Matthew: Like I'm just drowning in patience.
• 18:24
  Dr Deb Matthew: Busting out to try to look after all the kids and make sure everybody's been fed and nobody's bleeding.
• 18:29
  Dr Deb Matthew: And if nobody's bleeding and there's no lizards loose in the house, I felt like it was a successful day at home.
• 18:35
  Dr Deb Matthew: At the end of the week, it's time for her to go.
• 18:37
  Dr Deb Matthew: And I found this shirt folded up on the counter that was unsimilar to me.
• 18:42
  Dr Deb Matthew: And so I said to her I handed her this shirt and I said, Oh, don't forget your shirt, right?
• 18:47
  Dr Deb Matthew: It must be hers.
• 18:48
  Dr Deb Matthew: Cause I've never seen it before.
• 18:49
  Dr Deb Matthew: And she looked at me with this really strange look and she said that's the shirt that I gave you for your birthday present.
• 18:57
  Dr Deb Matthew: And I had been so just stressed and maxed out that I don't, I didn't even remember.
• 19:06
  Dr Deb Matthew: Opening this present and this shirt like I was so mortified first of all that like I didn't even register it but to me that was a sign that I was way over stretched And what else was I not even registering on the day to day because I was just so overtaxed.
• 19:27
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 19:28
  Dr Deb Matthew: I'm still mortified by that.
• 19:30
  Dr Deb Matthew: I still have the shirt It reminds me all the time.
• 19:33
  Tom Jackobs: Wow.
• 19:33
  Tom Jackobs: What a reminder too.
• 19:35
  Tom Jackobs: So how did you fix it?
• 19:37
  Tom Jackobs: Cause clearly you're back in business.
• 19:39
  Tom Jackobs: You're thriving of course.
• 19:41
  Tom Jackobs: Awesome.
• 19:43
  Tom Jackobs: Phyllis.
• 19:44
  Tom Jackobs: Everybody needs a friend like Phyllis.
• 19:45
  Tom Jackobs: So my friend Phyllis Okerecki is a doctor, that does functional medicine like this.
• 19:50
  Tom Jackobs: And she and I are both examiners at the A4M.
• 19:52
  Tom Jackobs: So whenever we go to these conferences we end up, spending time together doing these, proctors for these exams or examiners for the oral exams.
• 20:00
  Tom Jackobs: And she is a signer upper.
• 20:03
  Tom Jackobs: I'm a signer upper too.
• 20:03
  Tom Jackobs: Okay.
• 20:04
  Tom Jackobs: But Phyllis goes first.
• 20:05
  Tom Jackobs: She signs up for all the things and then she comes back and tells me which ones weren't worth the money, which ones were really awesome.
• 20:12
  Tom Jackobs: And she's never led me astray yet.
• 20:14
  Tom Jackobs: And I, in fact, I just saw her in December this past year.
• 20:18
  Tom Jackobs: She's still giving me advice.
• 20:20
  Tom Jackobs: So on this particular occasion, so it's the spring conference in 2014, we were in Florida and she said that she signed up with this practice coaching company.
• 20:32
  Tom Jackobs: And that it was really helping her and she thought that it would help me too.
• 20:36
  Tom Jackobs: And I went and talked to them and what they did was they literally flew me down to San Antonio, Texas, and spent the day explaining how it was all going to work.
• 20:46
  Tom Jackobs: And.
• 20:47
  Tom Jackobs: They, they said how much it was, and it turns out that the monthly charge for that coaching program was literally exactly the same amount as what I had been paying for my bank loan.
• 20:59
  Tom Jackobs: The last bank loan got paid off in May of 2014.
• 21:03
  Tom Jackobs: And so in June of 2014, I got paid off.
• 21:06
  Tom Jackobs: I signed up for this coaching program and it seemed like serendipity, right?
• 21:09
  Tom Jackobs: Like it was meant to be, I was already used to paying that.
• 21:11
  Tom Jackobs: So I just slid it on over into here.
• 21:13
  Tom Jackobs: But what happened when I got business coaching is that I learned about all the things that I didn't know I didn't know.
• 21:20
  Tom Jackobs: And I think that's such an important thing for us medical practitioners to know is.
• 21:26
  Tom Jackobs: There's so much out there to know that we don't even just like this whole P and L, right?
• 21:32
  Tom Jackobs: There's so much that we just have no clue and we're smart people.
• 21:36
  Tom Jackobs: We can learn, but we have to know that there's something to learn in order to learn it.
• 21:41
  Tom Jackobs: I learned.
• 21:43
  Tom Jackobs: I learned how to talk to patients about money without feeling like a car salesman.
• 21:49
  Tom Jackobs: I learned how to treat my team so that they would actually do what I wanted them to do.
• 21:54
  Tom Jackobs: Because before that, oh my gosh, it was like Lord of the Flies in my office.
• 21:57
  Tom Jackobs: Nobody did anything that I wanted and all I did was come home and I'd complain to my husband and my sister and my mom and anybody who would listen to me about how my employees are never doing what I wanted them to do.
• 22:08
  Tom Jackobs: And I didn't realize that the problem that.
• 22:11
  Tom Jackobs: The boss.
• 22:12
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 22:13
  Tom Jackobs: but so I learned so many things and the business turned around right away.
• 22:17
  Tom Jackobs: So within three months we became profitable really within the first month we turned a profit but within three months we became a profitable business and it's not stopped growing since then.
• 22:26
  Tom Jackobs: That was 2014.
• 22:27
  Tom Jackobs: It's been a decade.
• 22:29
  Tom Jackobs: And because I had a really good experience with working with that initial coaching company, I kept on.
• 22:37
  Tom Jackobs: Following Phyllis's lead and signing up for more things.
• 22:39
  Tom Jackobs: So I learned copywriting and public speaking and all kinds of different leadership that has completely transformed everything.
• 22:49
  Tom Jackobs: And in 2021 I had another sort of seven years after starting with the coaching company.
• 22:57
  Tom Jackobs: I had another sort of epiphany that.
• 23:01
  Tom Jackobs: I was ready to turn the practice over to the team.
• 23:04
  Tom Jackobs: Like I wanted to have a self managing company where I didn't have to be the one that made all the decisions.
• 23:09
  Tom Jackobs: And so over the last three years, I've been working on that.
• 23:12
  Tom Jackobs: And at this point the practice doesn't need me anymore.
• 23:15
  Tom Jackobs: I have a team that is great at looking after the patients.
• 23:19
  Tom Jackobs: To be honest, sometimes I feel like they do a much better job than I do.
• 23:22
  Tom Jackobs: I have a management team that can run all the day to day.
• 23:26
  Tom Jackobs: So I'm not really needed.
• 23:28
  Tom Jackobs: I'm not in the day to day running of the practice anymore, and that allows me to focus on growth and vision and where can the practice go next.
• 23:38
  Tom Jackobs: It also allows me to be outside of the practice to help spread the word, to help more people know that there's a different way that they can get healthy.
• 23:47
  Tom Jackobs: They don't have to just rely on their doctor to prescribe a pill, which we all know isn't really going to fix this.
• 23:51
  Tom Jackobs: the problems.
• 23:52
  Tom Jackobs: And it also allows me to help other practitioners to get their practices going because I really feel that the way that I can have the most impact is not to sit one on one across the table with one person and explain why sugar is bad for them.
• 24:04
  Tom Jackobs: It's to help hundreds of other practitioners sit across the table to help thousands of other patients to learn how to become healthy.
• 24:14
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 24:15
  Tom Jackobs: That is so powerful too.
• 24:16
  Tom Jackobs: Just, and I liked the analogy of the payment being the same to the bank as it was to the coaching company
• 24:24
  Dr Deb Matthew: It seemed like serendipity.
• 24:26
  Tom Jackobs: at the ROI was completely different.
• 24:30
  Tom Jackobs: I spoke to an accountant once early on in my business where same situation kept growing, but profit was deteriorating even faster than the growth was happening as I was going in the exact opposite direction.
• 24:42
  Tom Jackobs: And I was like, asking an accountant, a professional, what should I do?
• 24:47
  Tom Jackobs: And she was like, I don't know, make more money.
• 24:49
  Tom Jackobs: I'm like, Oh wow, thank you so much.
• 24:51
  Tom Jackobs: That's great advice.
• 24:53
  Dr Deb Matthew: If only.
• 24:54
  Tom Jackobs: So what piece of advice would you give to a new entrepreneur?
• 25:01
  Tom Jackobs: That's a heart-led business owner that wants to follow their passion and start a business that's heart-led
• 25:07
  Dr Deb Matthew: I've never heard the phrase entrepreneur, but I love that because it's really true.
• 25:11
  Dr Deb Matthew: Like we want to help people and start a business and provide our families, et cetera.
• 25:17
  Dr Deb Matthew: But, If you are a medical practitioner, unless like you've grown up in a family full of entrepreneurs or you've had some kind of prior career, like we don't know.
• 25:26
  Dr Deb Matthew: And not only do we not know, but it's almost like in medical school, they keep us away from that.
• 25:30
  Dr Deb Matthew: And so we've, we have nothing to do with how much things cost.
• 25:34
  Dr Deb Matthew: Most of the time we don't even know how much things cost.
• 25:36
  Dr Deb Matthew: And if it's not paid for, it's the insurance company's fault.
• 25:39
  Dr Deb Matthew: We can band with our patient to be outraged at the insurance company but we're so separated from it.
• 25:45
  Dr Deb Matthew: I think that if anybody's going to start a business, whether you're a medical professional or not, I really feel like we all need some help with learning how to do it.
• 25:55
  Dr Deb Matthew: So some kind of coaching mentorship, somebody to guide us in how to do it because it is so expensive not to do that.
• 26:06
  Dr Deb Matthew: Like whatever it costs to have a mentor, it costs 10 times more not to have a mentor.
• 26:12
  Dr Deb Matthew: Ask me how I know because of all the mistakes, like The equipment that we buy that costs us a gajillion dollars that sits, holding dust in the closet because we can't sell those services or, in the the thing that really killed me when I opened my practice is I had such imposter syndrome.
• 26:30
  Dr Deb Matthew: Like when I first did my training, I initially was a pediatrician.
• 26:34
  Dr Deb Matthew: And so I went from being a pediatrician to doing menopause management, there's a big disconnect there and my husband before we started, he's the smart one in the family and he was saying while we're waiting to get our office open, start treating people like, rent some space in the back of a gym or in a compounding pharmacy, just get some experience and get started, earning some money while we're going.
• 26:56
  Dr Deb Matthew: But I couldn't do that because I just felt a pediatrician in the back of the gym prescribing hormones.
• 27:01
  Dr Deb Matthew: That's just like way too creepy.
• 27:03
  Dr Deb Matthew: It just, and I couldn't do it.
• 27:05
  Dr Deb Matthew: I felt like I needed this big fancy office around me to make me look like I knew what I was doing.
• 27:11
  Dr Deb Matthew: Cause I didn't feel like I knew what I was doing.
• 27:13
  Dr Deb Matthew: And so we invested all this money into upfitting this beautiful office, but then I had to pay for all of that.
• 27:20
  Dr Deb Matthew: And that's what really crushed me.
• 27:22
  Dr Deb Matthew: So had I had some Advice from somebody who knew what they were doing.
• 27:27
  Dr Deb Matthew: They would have said, don't invest all this money into like especially a leased space because every year the lease went up, I was drowning in, paying for the lease.
• 27:38
  Dr Deb Matthew: And when I moved, all that money that I spent on the outfit was just completely down the drain.
• 27:45
  Dr Deb Matthew: I couldn't take the flooring with me.
• 27:46
  Dr Deb Matthew: We had these beautiful bamboo floors and, I, it just, It was not a good business decision.
• 27:53
  Dr Deb Matthew: So I think that anybody who wants to start, if you're starting a new type of medicine, if you're doing functional medicine or starting an aesthetics practice or whatever you're doing, just that you need the medical education to know how to practice medicine that way.
• 28:06
  Dr Deb Matthew: You need some kind of this business support education.
• 28:09
  Dr Deb Matthew: Like just don't be crazy and start without it.
• 28:13
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 28:13
  Tom Jackobs: The cost.
• 28:15
  Tom Jackobs: You just think about the interest alone that you paid on that million dollar loan like that.
• 28:20
  Dr Deb Matthew: think about it.
• 28:20
  Dr Deb Matthew: I don't want to think about it.
• 28:23
  Dr Deb Matthew: We had to, we put in money from our, um, life saving, we took it out of our 401k, like we had to top it up just to pay the payments.
• 28:34
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 28:35
  Tom Jackobs: So the investment in business coaching is well worth it when it's the right business coaching.
• 28:40
  Tom Jackobs: And definitely you need to do the due diligence to find the right coaches, of course.
• 28:45
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 28:45
  Tom Jackobs: So Deb, this was amazing.
• 28:47
  Tom Jackobs: And what great stories that you shared and.
• 28:50
  Tom Jackobs: Cautionary tales as well to, to the audience.
• 28:54
  Tom Jackobs: So how can people find out more about you and the work that you're doing?
• 28:57
  Dr Deb Matthew: My practice is Signature Wellness the website signaturewellness.
• 29:00
  Dr Deb Matthew: org.
• 29:01
  Dr Deb Matthew: And I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina.
• 29:04
  Dr Deb Matthew: So we see patients in the Carolinas, but I have people flying in from across the country to come in at least one time to establish care.
• 29:11
  Dr Deb Matthew: And then we can do telehealth after that.
• 29:14
  Dr Deb Matthew: For the coaching part of this I don't really have an online presence.
• 29:19
  Dr Deb Matthew: I don't market it.
• 29:20
  Dr Deb Matthew: It's just all word of mouth.
• 29:23
  Dr Deb Matthew: and the best way if somebody's interested to learn more about that is just to email me at drmatthew at signaturewellness.
• 29:29
  Dr Deb Matthew: org.
• 29:29
  Dr Deb Matthew: There's two T's in Matthew and no S.
• 29:32
  Dr Deb Matthew: Drmatthew at signaturewellness.
• 29:33
  Dr Deb Matthew: org and I'm happy to share information.
• 29:36
  Tom Jackobs: That's great.
• 29:37
  Tom Jackobs: That's very generous of you as well.
• 29:39
  Tom Jackobs: And we'll link all that up into the show notes.
• 29:41
  Tom Jackobs: So that'll make it easy for everybody to find.
• 29:43
  Tom Jackobs: So Deb, thank you again so much for coming on the show.
• 29:46
  Tom Jackobs: I really appreciate your time and your wisdom.
• 29:49
  Tom Jackobs: So thank you.
• 29:50
  Dr Deb Matthew: You're so welcome.
• 29:51
  Tom Jackobs: And to our show listeners, thank you for watching the show today.
• 29:54
  Tom Jackobs: We really do appreciate it.
• 29:55
  Tom Jackobs: And like I said, make sure you're checking out what Deb is doing, and we're going to put all of that down into the show notes and do take her up on that offer.
• 30:03
  Tom Jackobs: If you're considering a million dollar build out of your new practice.
• 30:07
  Tom Jackobs: You might want to talk to Deb first.
• 30:09
  Tom Jackobs: Don't do it.
• 30:09
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, definitely don't do that.
• 30:11
  Tom Jackobs: And if you could do us a solid favor, and that is to give the show a rating and review, I certainly would appreciate it.
• 30:18
  Tom Jackobs: And I know those people that are looking for heart led content out on the internet, they would appreciate it as well.
• 30:23
  Tom Jackobs: So until next time, lead with your heart.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: You've been listening to the Heart Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.