EXPERT SERIES: Working Hard Isn’t Important, Cultivating Demand Is with Dr. Meghan Walker

Do you feel like you’re very busy, but with all the wrong things? You are constantly working to try and grow or improve your clinic or coaching business, but the weeks and months go by and you are faced with the reality that nothing is really changing. That is something today’s guest sees all the time and helps health entrepreneurs with completely transforming their lives and businesses to generate more revenue, feel fulfilled, and have the freedom they deserve.

Meghan Walker is a health expert, entrepreneur and health systems innovator. She’s also a former naturopathic doctor and an award-winning speaker having spoken on media outlets and stages around the world on subjects related to health, innovation, entrepreneurship, women’s health and leadership, her company Clinician Business Labs, helps clinicians scale and amplify their businesses and their impact.

I’m Joel Oliver, and this is Profits Through Podcasting. Megan, welcome in.

Yeah, I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

I always like to start with a little bit of a backstory, just to know where you came from and what got you. Here. You have your business clinician business labs. When did it start and why? Yeah,

Yeah. I call

how was my accidental.

so it’s not like I was sort of sitting there being like, oh, I’ve got this huge vision for what I want to. wanna build and create. I was, I was a clinician, I was a naturopathic doctor. And even preceding that, I had been an entrepreneur my whole life. I was fired from my first and only job, uh, that I had in the summer as a teenager. And I, I got my first taste of entrepreneurship when I came home. And I told my dad that I would no longer be working at the marina. And he said, well, what are your plans? ’cause you’re not gonna be sitting on the dock all summer. And I said, well, what? What has to be true for me to be able to sit on the dock? And get to earn money at the same time. So I accepted the challenge. He didn’t know he was throwing down, and I looked at it at the lake and I saw these little cottages on the islands and I had a little tin boat. And I went, I’m gonna make leaflets and I am going to, I’m gonna offer to be the cleaning lady to the people on the islands.

I can see how people on the mainland might be able to find someone in town. But if you’re on an island and you work so hard and you finally get up on the weekend, wouldn’t it be nice if your cottage was clean? So within two weeks, I had. roster of clients.

Nice.

The next summer I hired 11 of my friends to help support me and we did this exclusive focus niching

In

Islanders who wanted to clean their cottage.

So it was my

my first

into, oh

oh,

I can contribute and add service and, expertise to someone else’s life and get paid for it and, and have leverage. So I

experience.

at a really young age. I sat on the dock and had a beer with my dad and had watched all my friends out at all the cottages, and I went, uh, no matter what I do in my life, it needs to be. my vision and my contribution and the thing plus entrepreneurship, it was the vehicle with which I wanted to maneuver around the world. So I studied naturopathic medicine left,

So started clinic

And

um, similarly, I.

people who would reach out and they’d say, Megan, how are you guys making this?

How making this work? This is a really challenging. Business model and being young and and naive, we just kind of, we just kind of went for it

Constantly looking

constantly looking for

at

like

the fundamental business ideas that,

uh, we

uh, we had been to this

to this point

point in our life

and enough

people kept reaching out

to like pick our brain or go to lunch for coffee.

That we started this like monthly. Zoom call.

anyone was welcome.

come if you had a question, just like bring it. Uh, but it was way more efficient for me than than going out for lunches. And then everyone had the same problem. So we made our first online course and then everyone wanted to have

Have higher

discussions, so we launched our first. mastermind

discussion.

we

We, we just

of kept reading the room, like where were people having another layer of challenge and, and we would

design.

uh, we would design a solution to support them. So Clinician Business Labs really grew from my own experience. It was sort of a

Mother of.

’cause I didn’t have time. To meet with people, but it worked really strongly in alignment with what I wanted to do, which was really amplify the average person’s access to our system of medicine. And I fundamentally believe that when people have their health, they can change the world. And I really quickly realized in my own practice, like if I’m lucky, I’m gonna change the lives of 3000 people, which is amazing. But if I have like a 20

Your career span.

year career span. How do I get millions of people to have access to our systems of medicine? Like this was, this was the problem I really wanted to solve. So, uh, clinician Business labs became a gateway for me be to be able to work with more practitioners, help them create more sustainable practices so that everybody was reaching more people.

Love it. And it, yeah, that’s, uh, one of the greatest things about the time that we’re living in these days and the, the way we can get content out there is it’s so much more accessible. That’s really what I love about this space as well. Like there’s so much information. There’s so much. Many people that are empowered to go share it and then in turn so many lives that are improved by it.

So it’s great to hear that you’re motivated by that as well. And I was curious too, on the timeline, ’cause I know you, you had founded and sold your first business by 21. Was that the cleaning company or what? Which was that?

Yeah, we

We,

really significant roster of clients and. I realized that that was super valuable, so I kind of just put the word out that I was gonna sell it and I was able to, which paid for me to be able to go to a naturopathic school. So it was a really, it was like my first micro experience in selling a business.

Which also, once you start, once you start to taste that flavor of ice cream, that too becomes something that you

Able to.

able to strive towards again.

Absolutely. Yeah. Once you get that, that taste for entrepreneurship, if it’s something that you jive with and you like, it’s hard to ever, as you kind of explained, leave that or want to do anything else other than work for yourself,

And so I’m curious as well, what kind of led you to the naturopathic doctor field, having that taste of entrepreneurship?

Like what did you envision there or why were you drawn to, to learn about that?

Yeah, well when I was in high school, there was like two things. I was dead set on becoming. I had narrowed it down. I either wanted to be a fighter pilot. Or a litigator, which are basically, if you could pick two opposite professions from naturopathic medicine, those might rank at the top of the list.

And then I had my own health issue when I was in high school, and I went to see a naturopathic doctor and he asked me, which to this day is probably one of the most intelligent questions anybody ever asked me.

I had seen all sorts of different doctors, and he said to me, tell me about how your body has always and historically responded to stress. And I don’t know what my answer was, and it isn’t nearly as important as the quality of the question. But

What the question?

is realize, oh my gosh, like how smart is this to go completely upstream, not just be focused on the, on the symptoms and like, whack-a-mole, get rid of all of these pieces, but actually dress the root cause of the problem. And I became really fascinated, although I didn’t have the language to describe it, then I became really fascinated with how that kind of question. Could solve problems in complex systems. I got really interested in complex systems and so I’d always had sort of naturopathic medicine as something I was aware of.

I studied biology and ecology and, and like biology in itself is, is addressing complex systems. I got super fascinated in that. And then when it came time to kind of figuring out what I wanted to do with my degree, ’cause every degree needs to actually be leveraged with something practical. I revisited this idea of, of naturopathic medicine and applied and. went, and kind of the rest is, is history. And the beautiful thing about it was ’cause I just couldn’t shake the intelligence of the question. To me, naturopathic medicine is just a vehicle and a system to solve problems within a complex system. And what’s interesting is like I take the principles of naturopathic medicine when I’m trying to figure out something that’s going on, in our business or we’re trying to look at things.

We’re looking at economics. I look at it through the lens of naturopathic medicine. So to me it’s, it’s. is simply a vehicle for problem solving when we’re dealing with multiple factors. So I was always really fascinated with that and it was a clear route for me to be able to be an entrepreneur at the same time.

Okay, great. I do want to get into more of the business side of things.

That’s your, that’s your forte these days. So you talked about this, the stress and how that affects people’s lives and. Let’s address first practitioners out there who may not be aware of the fact that they could use some help or even know that help is available. Can you at a high level, give us a bit of an overview on that?

Like, people who come to work with you, what are they typically struggling with, and also the ones who don’t even know that you exist or that they need assistance from you. Like what’s, what are the problems that they might be experiencing?

Yeah. Thank you for that

Question. So here?

think it’s really important that we kind of compartmentalize the different types of businesses. So if you’re a clinic owner, that is a totally different business model than if you are an associate.

Mm-hmm.

And so if you’re the associate who comes to work in the practic. Most of the time, unless you are an employee, I think it’s really important to recognize you don’t have a job. You have a small business, you are self-employed, and you tap into the mothership of a clinic. That’s

That’s the first point.

that a lot of the individuals who kind of stumble across us on the associate side have come to realize the hard way.

Mm-hmm.

when we’re in school, there is a reward system that we are. Attuned to work with, and no one overtly tells us what that is. We’re just naturally trained to work hard. Follow the rubric of the assignment, put in the effort, and if you do a really good job and your spelling is all correct and it’s formatted properly and you, you check off all of the, the areas of the rubric, then you get your a plus. And if you like, add extra attachments, you, you might get even more recognition than that. But we were rewarded for following the rules. Handing in the thing on time and we graduated, and those of us who learned to master that game and master that set of rules, it is a very hard transition and it’s a very hard ending when you grab that diploma.

What people don’t realize is you actually are at the very forefront of your next game and

And.

that you play the second game, the game of entrepreneurship. Is an entirely different reward system than what you did in school. And so before we even talk about a clinic model for anybody who’s come through schooling, where your success is predicated on how well you can follow the rubric or how effectively you can complete a multiple choice exam, is a very hard transition training transition to go to play this new game where the reward system is on your ability to drive value to other people and cultivate demand. It has very little to do with how well you follow the rules, and it has very little to do with how hard you work.

And there’s an

state of disappointment that manifests for

extreme.

I’m

I’m working

hard to try to bring people in. I don’t understand why none of it’s working, because no one handed you the new rule sheet, which said you need to drive value to people and the ultimate milestone you’re trying to hit first. Demand

And the way.

that you earned your marks in the previous game actually have nothing to do with how we play this game here. And so once we start to shift that lens, people kind of open up with all of these different aha moments. But it’s really hard to be successful playing this new game when you keep trying to draw on the skills that you develop playing game number one.

So that’s kind of the first like milestone piece where people come to us, they’re super frustrated. but they’re really frustrated because they’ve been playing with the wrong rule book in terms of how they are successful. So we

You.

with both clinic owners and with associates. The difference with clinic owners is they carry way more risk. So associates can get frustrated that they, they don’t have a really great split in their clinic, or they’re not earning a little bit more, they

Don’t as much

But I think one of the things that’s really important to recognize, again, in the, in the context of this new game we’re playing, is that. The economy and the economics of this game favor the people who hold the greatest degree of risk. And clinic owners just have more skin in the game. They’ve got the overhead, they’ve got the brand, they are the

Space.

brand. They have a overhead regardless of whether or not you see patient like a clinic owner who offers you a split. Has offered you the most low risk way of deploying what you have learned in school. It’s actually the sweetest deal around, the things and the pressure points that a clinic owner has and how a clinic owner starts to make money and create leverage is again different than how an associate will do it.

So once we get into this new. This new playing field, individuals realize that, um, once they, they start to understand that the reward system is a little bit different, even if they don’t have the words to describe it, they quickly realize that they actually need a rule book. In order to navigate this in order to be successful, they have to start to understand some of the principles that will enable them to achieve first stability and then growth in this world.

So we have programming that

Oh.

Associates build leverage into their practice. Fill their practice. So our first milestone we’re trying to create for them is demand. ’cause demand opens up options for you and your career. And then for the clinic owners, we typically have five parameters that we are looking for.

But again, we first have to hit that milestone of demand in order to be able to open up some of those options for them. So it’s

It’s all.

them to see and handing them the new rules to the game, and then refining the skills that enable them to be successful. On this side of the diploma stage?

yeah, we see that frustration a lot, especially in this. Industry where people who got into health and wellness, whatever field they, they got into specifically, they love to help people, they want to change lives.

And then they’re faced with this, you know, oh, I have to figure out this business, or I have to do marketing, or I have to figure out how to make all this work. I don’t want to do that. And plus I’m working so hard at it and it doesn’t seem to work. Like you’re saying, the the rules, they don’t understand even what to do and it becomes very frustrating.

It is, it’s incredibly frustrating and once you

we figure it.

like I say to people, it’s such a blessing. You get to not only earn an income in this lifetime, good for you, but you get to do it while transforming people’s lives. Like I can’t actually think of a more blessed career. But the gap for just so many people is that they, they just don’t understand those rules of engagement.

Once you understand how to market, how to tell a story, how to share the passion that you have, probably around the dinner table when you’re talking to your family about functional medicine or naturopathic medicine or chiropractic, translate that into a message that speaks. To real people who are looking for your help.

Everything starts to click. It starts to get a little bit more fun. But I agree if no one, if no one tells you how to do that if no one has shared with you that we’re, like I said, playing a different game, it’s incredibly. incredibly frustrating, and where we retreat to, we retreat to doing the things that we feel really confident in, which is why we overindex our investment in doing more CE and more learning and like, what if I, if I just get one more credential, that’ll probably be the thing that opens the door to more people coming in.

But it’s not stacking more credentials over here. It’s just learning to play the game over, over here.

Yeah. Okay. So I think a good framework to, to touch on briefly would be each, it’s three programs that you’ve got, right?

Yeah,

We have

a variety of

a variety of different,

we have a variety of different programs. We kinda have some, some two different entry points,

okay.

both for clinic owners and for or associates.

Okay. Well if you, if you’re open to this, the first one that I kind of noted was the Club 44, because specifically one thing that stood out here was the, the busy work that you already mentioned. And then that’s, that’s in say the course description for practitioners who were like, they’re doing a lot of busy work, but nothing’s really going on.

And that’s a trap we can get stuck in is like, I’m doing all this stuff and you can even regress to. Well, that other, that thing seems too challenging. Let me just, like you said, I’ll go watch some more videos or learn some more. I’m doing something so you feel busy, but it’s not actually making a difference.

So you just speak a bit on that and kind of where that, that program helps with this. Yeah.

so Club 44 is, is what we call a marketing club and mastermind experience. It’s super accessible from a financial perspective, and it actually sits behind our core signature program for associates which is called the fill My Practice Accelerator.

mm-hmm. So.

if we back up where everyone’s worried about what do I market, what do I market and, and, or how do I market?

And I, I wanna stop them and go, wait a second. What are you marketing? And they go, what do you mean whatcha, are you marketing? I’m a naturopathic doctor. I’m an acupuncturist or functional medicine doc. I’m a chiropractor. Like, as if that is the thing they sell. And I say, well, okay, so you’re a, you’re a naturopathic doctor.

What, what do you sell them? Well, I have a, a two hour intake, or a one hour appointment, or a 30 minute appointment. And I was like, well, no wonder it’s hard to market that. Because the average consumer has absolutely no idea how to take this ingredient, which is 30 minutes of your time, and turn it into a transformational experience in their life. So if we back up, part of the reason the marketing is you’re having such a hard time with the marketing because we actually don’t have an offer. So the

Average person

pronounce naturopathic medicine yet, let

print

understand how it’s gonna transform their

understanding right.

we do in the film I Practice Accelerator is we take care of two components that are really essential to move forward. One, we help you design what we call a signature care system a methodology. So we take your training and education as a naturopathic doctor, and we help you choreograph a transformational experience for your patients. This works regardless of whether you work in a jurisdiction where you can package things out, or you work in a jurisdiction like I did in Ontario that is highly regulated where you have to pay every time you go. When I speak the language of transformation, I can then address the logistics of how you pay. So, so many people let the logistics determine what it is that they’re selling. I don’t sell you 30 minutes of my time. sell you access points to my strategic ability to move you from here to here. so I worked with entrepreneurs in my practice and they were like, what happens when I work with you? And I said, I take you from a place where you always feel behind the eight ball to a place where you feel like your brain and body is available to you. At a moment’s notice, I give you the unfair advantage in the room and they’re like, sign me up. Like how? How

How does that work for?

can get into the logistics.

So what I’m selling is an outcome. What I’m speaking to is an outcome. Now, suddenly people can understand the power of naturopathic medicine and we choreograph that experience. Some of the appointments might be 15 minutes, they might be 30. The time is completely irrelevant. So when we move somebody from selling their strategy to selling their time, it’s infinitely more valuable to their business for a number of different reasons.

One strategy’s just more expensive than selling your time is.

Mm-hmm.

Number two, when someone’s engaged in working with you towards a strategic outcome, they stick around with you longer in the North American market. In a cash-based practice where all you do is sell your time, the average naturopathic doctor maintains a a client for four visits before they lose them.

On average,

When we moved

having a strategic system of care, we see them for 12 plus visits.

Wow.

point here is not the economics. The key point here is you get better patient outcomes. you only see someone for four touchpoints, you might teach them what gluten-free bread looks like and that they shouldn’t go down the middle of the grocery store aisle.

But the second you’re not around to keep them motivated or their symptoms slip back, they’re going back to the same old pattern they did before when they were stressed out in their life. We need more touch points with people. So I designed my first signature care system. ’cause I was like, I’m just not maintaining the outcomes that I wanna deliver to my patients.

They’re, they’re leaving after four or five. Visits and they’re coming back in 18 months exactly where they started. So

Right.

needed to start to choreograph an experience. I needed to speak in the language of experience because I realized in the absence of that I was putting

All of the work

on my clients to try to understand what an naturopathic doctor

and, and

they didn’t have time. My ideal clients are busy

off running around.

lives. So the first thing we do inside the Fill My Practice Accelerator is we help you design your own signature care system. second thing that we do is we help create what we call a conversion event or an automated marketing system.

This is actually step two of how we address marketing with people. But

What.

does is it we help you design a signature talk that can be used as an evergreen webinar that can be used as a line live webinar. It is a tool to move people off of social media platforms, off of podcasts, off of YouTube, off of the live talk you gave at the health food store and into your world, and the training is there to shrink the sales cycle. So once we have people with something, they can sell a signature care system. Then we help them create this conversion event that shortens the sales cycle. Then we invite them to join us in Club 44, where we can talk about their whole marketing system. But we get the

The.

asset pieces. Done and outta the way we hand them all the tech, we hand them all the funnels, we hand all of those things to them pre-done so they can walk into club 44 with like all the ingredients now to do the little things to tweak the funnel.

So that’s where we sit with associates when we’re working with clinic owners. We help clinic owners optimize their business. We move their associates into the Fill my practice accelerator so that their associates have a lens towards retention. And then we help train their front desk admin so that they are able to speak to this transformational care model so that they know how to protect the owner’s time, like. We train their front desk team to support you as an entrepreneurial clinic owner, which is entirely different than how normal front desk people are trained, for example, coming out of like medical assistant school. So we’ve really tried to make sure that as we are training both the clinic owner and the associate, we’re helping to support and address their main pain points. We’re adding more leverage, we’re helping them to achieve demand, and ultimately we’re getting better patient outcomes and reaching more people.

Right. And that’s really what it comes down to is those outcomes. We want to see that, right? The data that you backed all this up with was fascinating because it’s so easy to fall into that just, okay, here’s the 60 minute appointment. No one even really knows what that could do for them.

If they don’t, if they’re not shown an outcome. Right. Their life could be changed.

Right,

Yeah.

We may we’re so immersed in it. That we think everyone knows what a naturopathic doctor would. Everyone, once you know I’m a naturopath, you should know exactly how I’ll change your life. People

Right.

clue. No clue. It’s like saying, do you understand how valuable an accountant is and all of the things they could do?

We have no idea the way that they could help

preserve

wealth or maximize your returns. We’re just like, Ugh. Counting. That sounds so interesting. Right? We don’t even dig in.

Mm-hmm. There’s just

I think one of the biggest. One of

biggest mistakes.

That we make, one of the, you know, like something we just need to kind of unlock and teach people is that your credentials are a vehicle in which you can deploy care, but they aren’t necessarily that transformational system themselves.

And it is way too much to assume that the average consumer knows exactly how you can support them in terms of transforming their, their lives. It’s a really big missing part of the conversation.

A great example too is just how you described your business and what you do. When we contrast, imagine if you just came here and said, I, I do 60 minute business consults. Versus everything that you’ve said so far. Like, how are we supposed to know?

Yeah. Yeah. It’s a really good point.

Something I’d like to just touch on a little bit more is, I know you’re a big proponent obviously of focusing your time on what’s most important. Could you just tell us a little about that? Like in terms of teams and systems,

’cause it can get very challenging if you’re not good at delegating or you don’t even know where to start. Can you speak a bit about that?

Yeah. Well, you

you know, all

of switch the lens, my lens on this. So maybe turn a little bit more to the, the clinic owners from this

this perspective.

the, the first thing I’ll, I’ll address is that, effectively delegating is a leadership skill, and if you don’t learn how to, to delegate effectively, you’re, gonna hit that ceiling of complexity in your life or in your, business.

Um, and

Most

us learn to delegate the very first time from a place of desperation where we

feel like

I

I just can’t take it anymore.

do all the things for everybody all the time. So we usually kind of hit that. We usually hit that wall, and I remember the first time that I hit that wall, I had this rule for myself when I saw patients on Wednesdays and I saw ’em for 12 hours.

I wouldn’t go home until I was done their files. And one night I was sitting in my office in downtown Toronto at 1130 at night, and I still had two more files to finish up and. I stopped and I printed off a diet diary and I look at the kind of give to my patients and I went and got it off big printer.

And I sat down and I said to myself, listen, here’s what’s gonna happen. You are gonna write down everything you do for the next week. Everything from charting to seeing patients, to dropping your kids off to doing the laundry. Like every task you do in your day, I want you to start to itemize it like it was a diet diary. And two colors are gonna, know, fill the page. Yellow are things actually anybody could do. And pink are the things with a very high standard. Only you can do.

Right.

And

And at that point, when I finish that up and I have

you have more

more than 12 hours

on here of other stuff, hire an assistant. Like figure out what the numbers are.

But you have to hire an assistant. You’ll never grow.

mm-hmm.

I

I looked at that.

sheet, I had over 28 hours that week where I did stuff that I did not need to be doing. And so that

That was the first time

okay, wait a second. You

you’re, you’re gonna die.

Or you’re never gonna grow unless you bring somebody else in.

So that was the very first time that I did that, and I used. That triage sheet as a way to start to define what I wanted that role to look like. But it required one that I had an understanding of what I needed to hang onto and what could be passed off to somebody else. And to do that effectively, I had to relinquish any remaining perfectionism that I was hanging onto. And I have. to label perfectionism as just a sophisticated form of procrastination and we use it to not

Not have to necessarily,

in the ring.

so.

relinquishing your perfectionistic standards across every element of your life is also a leadership skill. And it’s gonna be a prerequisite to moving to that next level. But a resource that I found really effective and helpful in doing this and understanding the numbers and knowing how much you can afford to spend on this. is the book Buy back Your Time by Dan Martell. It’s excellent. He’ll give you your buyback equation and he’ll just like hammer into you that you like, you, you

You have to handle.

off and most of your life, frankly could be handed off so that you are only doing the things that are driving revenue into your business.

Absolutely. Yeah. It’s a great book. Hi. Dan’s wife is actually a client of ours, Renee. So, um, I don’t really know him, but Oh, you know her. Okay.

know. Friendly. Well, she’s great.

Great. Yeah. Okay. So. I, I am glad you brought that up about how to actually identify these things in your life that are taking too much time that you don’t need to be doing.

When you were going through that process, were you finding hangups on things that you, you originally felt like, I have to do that, but when you really took a good look, you saw that okay, I don’t have to, like, was that a challenge? ’cause I know a lot of people do face that where they think, no, I couldn’t give that up.

I can’t relinquish that, but they actually could. They needed to.

Yeah, I

Think some easier for me

than I

I feel like it’s for.

For our clients, but I think my clients have enabled me to be more self-aware of that,

Mm-hmm.

pattern.

I realized really, like I’m pretty sure I left clinical medicine because I hated charting so much,

so much.

and it was the, it was such a, a thorn in my side and my quality of life to chart. To the degree I felt I needed to chart, given the regulatory environment in which I, I practiced. And so I probably spent more time there than I needed to. But ultimately, I think that was the thing that pushed me over the edge. Now, there’s tools that do the charting for you. They’re AI driven scribes that are, that are PITA compliant or HIPAA compliant in the state. And you, you don’t have to chart anymore. And what is shocking to me is when people are like, well, you know, I just feel like they probably won’t do as good a job. So I still write it all out. And

and I have those, those version.

my own life where I’m like, I still coach in that thing. ’cause if I, if I don’t show up, people aren’t gonna come. And I’m

Really?

realize like that that mindset is what has, has and keeps me playing small in certain areas of my life. That should be an area where you’re constantly pushing that frontier. It’s a personal state of self-awareness that allows me to recognize when I’m caught in it. But we have things we do in our lives and in our businesses. That we hang onto way too long because it’s satisfying some

Mm-hmm.

onto folding my kids’ laundry way too long because it somehow made me feel like a better mother for them. And when I handed that off and we have a, we have a house manager and she’s amazing.

When I handed that off to her and she, she took care of all the laundry and all the pieces. I actually had more time to hang out with my kids. I wasn’t like locked in the laundry room watching Netflix on my phone. I was like off hanging out with them. So I was like, man, there are things that I still do, and now I’m just constantly pruning that because they’re satisfying some sort of emotional need, or I’m procrastinating from stepping into the ring in another area.

So. is kind of one of those conversations that once you hear this, it’s gonna be hard to un unhear this,

Mm-hmm.

probably things that you are hanging onto because you are scared about what

What you.

to do or you’re gonna have to do, or the ring you’re gonna have to step into. If you’re not busy doing this thing, that actually you’ve moved so far, far beyond.

So this is the sign you’ve gotta let go of some of those things. You have to untether yourself from those tasks.

Right. It’s so important to acknowledge that, that fact and the idea of always being aware and assessing what you’re doing with your time, because there was an example I heard you give and you’re talking about say, getting in the best shape of your life one year, but then realize doing the exact same thing.

And just hoping for different results. Like, it just doesn’t make any sense. But that’s kind of where a lot of us will fall. Like, you know, you gotta really assess and figure out, okay, that’s not going to get me any different results anymore. What, what can I change here?

Yeah.

Yeah. And I, I feel like I can.

that all the time. So when we have certain areas and certain metrics in our own business, we’re like, this hasn’t grown.

Mm-hmm.

what are we doing? And sometimes we double down and I always, I, you know, I’ll say to my team, and I really say to myself, if I’m doubling down on something, it’s either ’cause I’ve been

Making the

before.

effort more

what I perceive to be harder,

harder or

strategic

more.

a bigger investment that I want to I want to avoid. Like if you haven’t gone pro in that particular area, like level up. But just grinding harder at something that’s not actually showing any strong outcome is definitely a red flag.

And I’ve those red flags for myself all the time.

Mm-hmm. Okay. So one of the things you mentioned early on was when you, or you were younger, you had a, an appointment with a naturopath, what was the question exactly, again, about the stress in your life.

It

How has

has your

your body always

historically responded to stress?

been? Okay. So you can tell me whether or not this ties in here, but I know you’re very passionate about helping health professionals find purpose, and you say that that’s one of the most important things that can be done to manage stress and promote longevity .

Can you talk about how that all ties in? Like how is that the case? How do you apply that to people and how does that tie back to that, that stress question?

Yeah, purpose is really interesting and it was an area that I started to focus a lot on inside my practice. So I almost exclusively worked with, high

perform.

So, uh, executives. I had a number of politicians in my, roster our patients and entrepreneurs, and I got super fascinated with those individuals.

And you know, sometimes I got outliers to that. But those categories of people, by and large, one of the things they had in common is they had a very strong sense of purpose. What they did, and I didn’t inadvertently ask about it, I was just aware of it. They would just share that piece. They were so passionate about this thing they were doing in the world, regardless of what it was, it served a, a really compelling purpose in their life. Then I, I started to see a cohort of patients I, I had acquired through referrals or other networks who were not necessarily as, I’m not meaning to generalize, but we’re not necessarily as dialed in in terms of their work was like their thing in the world. And I got started to get

Really fascinated.

What would, what would trip them up? I got really fascinated with the women who were working really hard and who played tennis and had community and all the things, and then their kids left and they like fell off a cliff emotionally. There was nothing we could do to bring them back. They maybe even still had great relationships with their kids.

And I, I started to dig into this and what I, I started to appreciate what the nuance here was, was how we ascribe. sense of purpose in our own own lives. And I use the example of sort of perimenopausal empty nesters because this was

Probably the.

uh, manifestation that I would see certainly inside my clinical practice, where people ascribed their purpose in the world to raising their kids. It was a really fascinating piece when their kids moved out as as they should. ’cause that’s the evolution. And even if they cognitively knew that, that was great, they, they just like, they really did feel lost. And so it was seeing a number of these clients where I really sort of delved into the research around purpose and the sense of purpose.

And in fact, even the decision. To look into understanding more about what your purpose is, satisfies the same physiological response and the physiological response and the physiological cascade is that when we are actually working in alignment with a sense of purpose, we actually see blunted cortisol levels.

In the body. So

Hmm. Think it’s hard work

even if the work is really stressful, we actually see a different hormonal profile

as a result.

the work that an individual is doing. And then when we delve deeper into the work, what we found is that when people are, are working in alignment with a sense of purpose, regardless again of those. those stress levels. We saw decreased incidents of heart attacks. We saw decreased incidents of cancer. We saw increased recovery with neurological conditions. We saw decreased levels of depression and anxiety. It was fascinating, like across the board, in almost every chronic disease marker, we saw reduced numbers when an individual was taking action in their life in alignment with purpose.

And so what started for me as a really clear. Conversation inside my clinical practice for just the nature of individuals who I was working with was something that I was able to just bring a lot of awareness to the work that I’m doing in my life. This isn’t about, oh, let’s build this really big online platform so everyone can make a lot of money. really stressful. If that was the lens and motivation. If this is what if we can distribute these incredibly powerful systems of medicine to a hundred million people around the

World.

well now I’m like super dug in and working in alignment with that, that mission. It doesn’t feel as stressful. It doesn’t feel. Like this constant grind ’cause I’m connecting to that other piece. So on a, on a sort of more esoteric level, when we’re working with our clients, we kind of have to pull them back there. When you are working in alignment with your purpose, you’re a little bit braver. You’re kind of willing to pick up the phone and do your Instagram live and talk about things.

And you, you are willing to step outside your comfort zone because it’s about something larger than you. So as much as we will talk tactically with our clients about what it is that they can do to. You know, increase their leads or drive more demand. I’m also really interested in like, reconnecting them with why they’re in this room in the first place.

Hmm.

that really is a catalyst for us to do more powerful versions of our work.

Right. Yeah. It’s so interesting to hear how that ties into this entrepreneurship side and life in general, rather. That’s one of the great things I like about naturopathic medicine, for example, just because, even when I go to a naturopath, I’m kind of thinking like, what supplements are you gonna recommend versus, you know, we think of a traditional doctor as more like, what drug are you gonna prescribe?

But then there’s these things like, you should go for a walk and you should be connected with your purpose, and you can back that up with data. Try this first. And, uh, you know, take that seriously.

It’s

really powerful, like.

I the. I don’t know. This wasn’t a badge of honor by any stretch, but it just inadvertently happened. The number of clients I had who eventually made the decision to leave the job that they were in, the golden handcuffs as it were. Because once you saw it, once you saw that like, oh gosh, I am completely working maybe towards someone else’s purpose, but like we are no longer working in alignment with the things that light my soul on fire, and you are one of the privileged, you who has the, has the insight or the awareness or the experiences that you, that enabled you to see that for yourself.

It is very hard to get up every day and go and do a job that is not congruent with that piece. But at the same time, this is why I stayed at practitioners. I like, I worked so hard to unlock their blocks related to money and, and get them to do brave things because it is a true privilege in this earthly existence to get, to earn an income and transform people’s lives.

Like there are so many people who would give everything up for that opportunity. But those two pieces in alignment, the, the earning and the contributing are what enabled us to cascade and grow. The two have to coexist together. For practitioners listening, when you can’t reconcile that you’ve been handed this huge gift, like do the work to get these two pieces working, in unity towards you because your capacity to impact and transform people’s lives is really unlimited.

Right, and I can see that possibility of say, falling off the wagon. Even if it’s say, a job you enjoy. You’re do, like we’re talking about you. You own a clinic and you’re really helping people, but you’re not making that connection. You can forget why you’re there. At a very high level, what are some initial tips you would give to people for connecting with that purpose?

Like what is your first recommendation when you explain that to them?

Yeah. When we talk about purpose, we kinda, we talk about it in, in a confluence of a few different areas. And there’s like, there’s really good writings on these pieces. Like the Japanese talk about Ikigai and the confluence of a few of these pieces. But the first thing is like. start to inventory and index things you love to do

Hmm.

things that just feel inherently easy to you.

So like, you know, do you love being out in, in nature? Do you love public speaking? Do you love just like sitting and holding space with people? Do like, just really start, and it can be random things. There doesn’t have to be a theme here, but like, what are things that you as a human, like just really, really enjoy? And then we sort of look at that next piece, which is what are some of the areas that you’re, you are really good at. So where do you have inherent skills? And a lot of times these things are hidden. These are things that you take for granted that other people find really hard. I, I use public speaking here as an example because some people are just inherently excellent, captivating speakers and they’re like, oh, it’s like never hard for me.

I’ve never had any training. It’s just the thing I, I do. Well, great. Like let’s put it inside that circle. Or maybe you’re a natural artist, like I can’t even draw. Stickman, no one even knows what that looks like. So like you probably have this inherent set of skills in a wide variety of ways. Stick them all in that circle. then we look in that third piece where we, we really start to look at how can those things we love to do and things we’re good at, where, where’s the overlap, where’s the Venn diagram with how those things can come together to assist others? Where can we leverage those skills and things you love for contribution? could be spending time on the PTA. That could be how you show up as a leader inside your home. That could be how you show up in business. That could, like, there’s so many ways that that could show up. How can we Venn diagram these towards contributing in the world? Where could you offer these skills up?

And then if we’re talking about this in the context of entrepreneurship, the fourth component of this Venn diagram is now, okay, well where could we monetize that? could we actually earn as a result of this confluence? And this is the subtle shift I would make for those parents in particular, is I’d say, okay, let’s actually break down this thing about your kids leaving.

And I, I talk about this with young parents too. of the. One of the things I really wanna get in front of is like making sure people’s kids don’t become their source of purpose. Like that is a tremendous amount of pressure. We’ve suddenly just placed on the kids. It’s having this more subtle nuance of understanding.

How did your unique skillset and the things that you can teach in the world, how did you get to have those manifest through your children? What kind of leadership skills did you impart? What kind of lessons about money or how to take care of your health did you impart to them? where can we contribute those next?

So really pulling the purpose out of that vertical and looking at where it can contribute into that next piece. That’s what gives this idea longevity. That’s how the purpose piece doesn’t die when we, when we lose a relationship or a partner or a kid or a job. It’s really recognizing what we brought to those experiences and that kind of broadens those elements for you a little bit more.

come across as a great coach ’cause you’ve. Got this wealth of knowledge, but then your ability to articulate it and actually make it actionable and understandable for people is, is fascinating.

So clearly, so much we can cover here, but I think this alone has been extremely valuable. One thing I always like to end on you’ve got, you know, it seems like you’ve got everything in order. You know the answer to everything, which is great, but. As entrepreneurs, there’s always some kind of either challenge we’re dealing with or at least a priority.

We’re kind of watching to see like what our next move is gonna be or what we need to be thinking about. What would you say is that for you these days?

Yeah,

Such a great question.

so exciting.

Um,

so

we, for a really.

long time in that, in that coaching realm, and what I’ve constantly has been my north star is how do we put these systems of medicine into more people’s hands? And so. next frontier and our next piece that we’re gonna be challenging is how do we leverage software?

How do we leverage ai? How do we leverage some of our existing network to, to really amplify the work that we’ve been doing and amplify the voice of, of integrative medicine into, uh, healthcare systems around the world. It’s sort of the next big thing. We’ve got some really exciting, elements that we’re gonna be rolling out in the fall of 2025.

So. of stay tuned for that. This is a new frontier for me, but it, I think it, it just feels like the next right step in terms of the work that we’re doing.

Sounds great. Yeah. You’ve got an event coming up in fall as well.

We do, we’ve brought back, after two years, we run a, a live event called Impact Lives. Because, and I shared this with you before we started the interview, we are moving as a family to Barcelona. This fall for at least the next two years. And so we’re gonna run this as a live virtual event, live from Barcelona. And it’s worth checking out because we have a, we have a strong reputation and we have a current plan. We give away epic prizes, to people who are there live pelotons and trips and all sorts of cool stuff. So if you’re a practitioner checkout impact lives, it’s a really fun time.

Okay, great. And that’s a virtual event so people can join from anywhere.

Yeah, absolutely.

So that was my next final question is where should people, if they want to perhaps work with you or learn more about what you’re up to, what’s the next best step for them to to do website, Instagram. Yeah.

Yeah, you

You can always check.

out at clinicianbusinesslabs.com, but you can pretty much guarantee that I’ll be in my dms on a daily basis. So if you have a question or you wanna learn more. on over to, uh, my Instagram, which is just Dr. Megan Walker, and if you DM me the word growth, uh, we’ll share a little bit more about what we’re up to.

Excellent. Okay. I’ll put all those links in the show notes as well. Uh, Megan, thanks so much for your time. This was great.

Such a pleasure. It was great being here. Thank you.