EP129: Timeless Practice and Personal Growth Concepts for Functional Medicine Practitioners

Perfect Practice

In this episode, Sachin interviews Dr. Peter Osborne, his first mentor. Sachin met Dr. Osborne in California at a conference Dr. Osborne was hosting, called Market Functional Medicine. Sachin went to the event after downloading a lead magnet e-booklet from Dr. Osborne on how to build your practice. Sachin learned about the conference from an email. That conference changed Sachin’s life. It was wonderful for Sachin to hear someone who was a few years ahead of where he wanted to be, so open and willing to share his knowledge, holding nothing back. Sachin got some wonderful advice that he immediately applied to make an instant difference in his practice.

Key Takeaways:

[2:51] Sachin welcomes Dr. Peter Osborne and thanks him for joining the podcast today. Sachin thanks him for being a great role model as a father, husband, practitioner, clinician, and entrepreneur. Sachin elaborates on the connections between being a clinical practitioner and running a business.

[4:23] How has Dr. Osborne found passion to keep tapping into and how has he continued doing it all these years? Dr. Osborne says the passion found him. It came from the lack of knowledge, empathy, and discernment that he saw in medicine in his exposure to medical environments while in chiropractic school.

[6:36] Functional medicine practitioners have to be great clinicians as well as great at business. Hospitals and medical doctors aren’t going to refer patients, so you have to understand business. Less than one percent of people will see a functional medicine practitioner. Let’s change that so we can help more people. Dr. Osborne is passionate about helping people.

[7:37] In Dr. Osborne’s view, if you’re not passionate about helping people you should leave the practice. The way to be successful is to love people and have great empathy, great concern; that you care, and that you’re going to do what it takes. You’re going to spend more than a 20-minute appointment with a person if they start crying and you need that time to help them.

[8:14] One of Dr. Osborne’s mentors taught him to help the people and the money will follow. If you go for the money, you’ll never be happy.

[10:01] It can be challenging to keep up with the literature. There is so much you can learn on the internet from others who have different expertise than you. Your patients have the same access to those interviews as you do. Dedicate time for study. Learn how to learn. Humbly understand that we don’t know what we don’t know. Continue to learn more. You’ll get better.

[11:52] Sachin talks about things he’s learned over the years, like breathwork. Dr. Osborne advises you to get really good at something first before you try to get really great at everything. Dr. Osborne is the master of gluten. That’s what people know about him. The biggest change in his clinical life was understanding that topic better than anyone else.

[13:21] After mastering gluten, Dr. Osborne broadened his horizons. He organizes his week into blocks. Monday through Wednesday is his clinical schedule. On those days, he is not studying extra. Thursdays and Fridays are filled with blocks dedicated to research, writing, interviews, running his business, thinking about his business, and his family, meditation, and exercise.

[14:02] It boils down to just being organized and having intent. Thinking about what it is that you want. So many people want to be successful but they don’t think about what needs to happen for that success to happen. Organization has to be a big part of your thought process. If it’s not, there are too many distractions and shiny objects that will pull you in.

[14:28] A mentor of Dr. Osborne, Craig Ballantyne, said “Stop it! You’re going in too many directions. Just stop. Think about the direction you need to be going. What is the one thing that you can do today that serves your clientele that will increase your revenue? Focus on that. Everything else is just a distraction.” Identify first what will grow your business and then do it.

[15:39] Once you identify the needle movers, structure your day around those priorities. Prioritizing what you do is as important as taking action. This good advice made Sachin think of things he is avoiding and the things that are distracting him! We all fall into traps if we don’t have systems to guide us. View your business as an entity that has needs, like a plant.

[17:25] Dr. Osborne sees certifications and additional degrees as shiny objects. You don’t need them for credibility. If you’re getting people better consistently, that is your credibility. Dr. Osborne has a DC license, but he practices under his pastoral license and nobody questions it. People are seeking a new model because medical doctors failed them. Focus on outcomes.

[21:27] How does Dr. Osborne stay so committed to the topic of gluten? Dr. Osborne attributes it to the outcome. Dr. Osborne states there’s no diet that helps people more than the gluten-free diet, done properly. Dr. Osborne can stay passionate about great outcomes. If you’re not helping people it shows up in your practice.

[23:19] To optimize time in his practice, Dr. Osborne automated the educational process about gluten. He switched from one-on-one meetings to a webinar with 20 people in a room. It’s a 90-minute webinar and for the last five minutes, Dr. Osborne answers questions live. That shaves 20 hours off his week for five minutes of questions.

[23:12] Learn. Do. Teach. So we learn something that excites in functional medicine, then apply it in our practices, and do it. And then, as we’re doing it, we’re teaching it to our patients. And that’s where mastery comes. Once you’re past the teaching aspect, anytime you can automate the process but still deliver the value of the education, use the technology to do it.

[24:45] Dr. Osborne explains how automation has made him so successful. He wanted his clients to get him, not a coach or nutritionist he hired to mimic him.

[25:26] Sachin cites a book written about Naval Ravikant. Naval talks about four levers you can pull in business: human capital, money capital, media, and code — taking your process and codifying it so it can be replicated in other clinics. The third and fourth levers are the most powerful ones. Sachin observes that Dr. Osborne is doing well with those two levers.

[27:22] Sachin suggests that if a practitioner has a six-month waiting list, the practitioner may be successful, but people are suffering unnecessarily for six months to be seen. If you have a waiting list, pull the levers of media and code to serve your clients sooner.

[27:57] Technology provides even more than a one-on-one session, Dr. Osborne points out. The clients get access to a recorded question and answer session, with five minutes of live questions at the end, and also have access to the replay of the session. The spouse can also watch the replay. It also saves your staff from being asked a lot of questions.

[29:05] In functional medicine, you’re delivering educational value to people so that they can spread their wings and fly. You’re trying to fire your patients. No other medical model has that in mind, but we do because we want them to get better. If we educate them, they can fly. Part of that education is staff time. Now, staff can refer patients to your recordings to answer questions.

[31:39] Besides the degrees and diplomas, functional medicine practitioners might be distracted by things that they shouldn’t be focused on. If you’re new, think of every way that you can leverage yourself as being your first priority and not an afterthought. If you don’t have staff, things like maintenance that shouldn’t take your attention distract you from your clients.

[32:46] If Dr. Osborne could do one thing over, earlier in his practice, it would be to leverage himself better. Have time in your schedule when you can think about your business, how you can improve it, and how you can leverage yourself. That’s what’s going to save your resources of time, money, and relationships. The website is the leverage piece. It houses your content.

[33:55] The more you spend that time leveraging yourself to serve your communities, the easier it gets. At first, it’s a lot of work. Dr. Osborne has over 1,500 videos and over 1,000 blog posts online. Those took time to write and produce. With these leveraged, your business seasonally gets better and richer as a result of higher service.

[34:51] Dr. Osborne warns against relying on AI to give you informative, reliable articles. He has tested it a lot. It made up false references, after very specific instructions about the article. Every footnote, every time, was fake. Remember, your brain is your number one asset. Outsourcing your brain to an artificial source to emulate what you could put together will “dummify” you.

[36:56] A false source can certainly damage your reputation. Business is about reputation management. Don’t rely on AI for your business. You could destroy your reputation. Do your own work. Jim Rohn says you can’t have someone do your pushups for you. Dr. Osborne will use AI for the framework of an article, then turn it over to a writer to research it and fill it in.

[40:07] Dr. Osborne recommends you navigate and find your strengths. He is good with video and ad-lib, so he would rather make videos than spend hours researching and writing blogs.

[40:55] Dr. Osborne reveals his current work on an affiliate program for healthcare providers to use his DNA testing services through Gluten Free Society, his hub. Your clients and patients can be DNA tested for both gluten sensitivity and celiac disease. He offers DNA interpretation. Affiliates can order DNA tests, be reimbursed, and have them accessible to their clientele.

[41:34] Gluten Free Society is also offering very accurate food sensitivity testing. Within the next half year, they are looking to launch an intracellular nutrition deficiency test direct for affiliates. Providing these core services to affiliate practitioners is an expansion of their competencies.

[42:37] If Dr. Osborne had to start again from nothing, the first thing he would do would be to hire Sachin as a mentor, someone who’s doing it and has it figured out. Dr. Osborne spent his first two years in practice eating his ego. He made a lot of costly mistakes. The first mentor he hired doubled his revenue in the first year. Time is of the essence. Make money early and invest it.

[43:55] Dr. Osborne, before hiring a mentor, invested over $50K in a nutrition supplement company, with a partner. It failed. There was no market for the supplement it produced because it didn’t solve a pain point.

[47:35] Dr. Osborne advises practitioners in the insurance model to leave it. Walk away, giving your patients into the hands of other doctors that can do a good job taking care of them. The year Dr. Osborne got out of insurance he tripled his revenue, seeing half the clientele. People are looking for your service and they will pay cash for it.

[49:02] The third thing Dr. Osborne would do, starting over, would be to leverage himself a lot sooner. He would have hired a lot sooner. He and his wife, practicing together, went too long without bringing in help. Leverage yourself first with technology, then with people. That will exponentially help your freedom to work on your business and grow it. Run the math.

[53:39] Sachin paraphrases their mutual friend, Joe Polish, about HALF. HALF is the hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating things that you hate doing, that somebody else will love doing.

[54:04] Sachin thanks Dr. Peter Osborne for his generosity over the years. Sachin always looks forward to their conversations because he gives such great advice.

[54:37] Dr. Osborne thanks Sachin for having him on the podcast and thanks the audience.

Mentioned in this episode

Perfect Practice Live

Dr. Peter Osborne

No Grain, No Pain

Jeffrey Bland

Jim Rohn

Craig Ballantyne

Brian Tracy

Naval Ravikant

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness, by Eric Jorgensen

AI

Gluten-Free Society

Joe Polish

More about your host Sachin Patel

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Books by Sachin Patel:

Perfect Practice: How to Build a Successful Functional Medical Business, Attract Your Ideal Patients, Serve Your Community, and Get Paid What You’re Worth

The Motivation Molecule: The Biological Secrets To Eliminate Procrastination, Skyrocket Productivity, and Get Sh!t Done