Ep #11: Evolve & Thrive or Die Tryin’

Dr. Nicole:
This is the Integrative Entrepreneur Podcast, where it’s not what you do, but how you do it. This is a podcast for entrepreneurs brought to you by entrepreneurs. We have been building a multi-million dollar healthcare business for over 10 years, and we have weaved together some of the best information for the people that are doing the best work in the business. This includes Dr. Demartini, who is a master in human behavior, to Verne Harnish, who has created the methodologies of scaling up that has scaled many, many of the best businesses that we all know of. We want you to not only have a business that you love, but also a life that you love. 

Welcome back to another episode of the Integrative Entrepreneur Podcast. I am Dr. Nicole, and we are here with-

Dr. Nick:
Dr. Nick. 

Dr. Nicole:
So we’ve been playing with our slogan for this podcast, and we think we’re changing it up guys. I think we’re rolling with pretty much the quote that Dr. Nick drops in every single podcast episode. So do you care to announce?

Dr. Nick:
Oh, and I stole it from you, so I can’t really take all the credit. But Dr. Nicole is like, “What’s our tagline? What’s our slogan?” I was like, “It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.” 

Dr. Nicole:
Well, clearly the other one wasn’t sticking if I couldn’t remember it. So we’re rolling with, it’s not about what you do, but it’s about how you do it.

Dr. Nick:
Which rolls in to what we’re talking about today, is constantly evolving.

Dr. Nicole:
A hundred percent. So a couple of months ago, oh gosh, I guess it’s almost a year ago now, we did a webinar at the peak of the pandemic, and it was evolve or die, very intense episode. But it was extremely important, because this wasn’t necessarily just my opinion, but it was something that really came to the forefront of so many things that I’ve learned and read through following people like Keith Cunningham and Jim Collins, Jim Collins is the author of Good to Great, Built to Last. And these were books that I remember reading when we decided to open a business, and there were aspects that obviously were very relevant in those early stages of business, but there are aspects that are not overly clear. I think it’s just because you don’t have the experience yet. 

You’re just in this mindset of, “Well, I just got to get things going.” Let alone be in the mindset to create a company that is going to be the best of the best of the best in its industry. And especially early on, as brand new entrepreneurs that maybe have not been entrepreneurs in the past or come from a family of entrepreneurs, we’re just like, “I just want to get my product out there and I want to make some money. And I want to be able to get this off the ground.” And you obviously want to provide a great service, but your mind is, I think, in a million different places, and you’re just trying to get the ball rolling.

Dr. Nick:
No, a hundred percent. And when you’re starting out, it’s like you’re fighting to keep the doors open most of the time. And when you see that every single action that you take is jumping forward, a reactive decision. So it’s really not healthy or in the best health for the business, as well as yourself, to be functioning in that cycle. So it’s really about focusing on how to clearly and most efficiently evolve.

Dr. Nicole:
And that’s the thing, is the biggest thing to have in your business is clarity. And when you are reactive or you are making decisions out of that place, very often you’re making decisions that are throwing you backwards, or completely derailing from the why and the mission of the company, because you’re in that survival mode. And there are many businesses, and even students that we’ve had come through IGI, that their businesses are very comfortable. Things are going pretty good, and they don’t really always understand when I start probing questions of, “How are you making your business resilient? How are you diversifying your business? What would happen if social media was gone tomorrow? What would happen?” And a lot of times they’re like, “I never really thought about that.” 

I go, “Because unfortunately, you haven’t been posed with a situation that is a threat to your business yet.” Because it’s inevitable that there is going to be a threat, and maybe that’s just a competitor, but you have to be… You don’t want to expect the worst, but you need to be prepared for anything. And you also need to understand is that when you take the steps to think bigger about your business and make it pandemic proof or make it foolproof, is that you’re actually setting yourself apart in your industry. And that’s not just because you have the best ads on the market, and you’re all over social media, and you have great retargeting, it’s because people are going out and talking about your business, and they’re talking about it in a way that, “Why would you go anywhere else? You have to go to this place.” 

And it’s because everything that you’re doing is one step ahead of your industry or your competition, and people feel that. It’s not that you have to parade around with T-shirts saying how awesome you are, it’s just people acknowledge the ability for a business to have a big vision, and to also stay in integrity with that vision.

Dr. Nick:
I mean, when you start out just jumping back, if you’re focusing on keeping the doors open, if you’re focused on money, you’re not focusing on service. And if you’re not focusing on serving, you’re not growing. Which comes back to that evil c-word that you said earlier, comfortability. 

Dr. Nicole:
Comfortability. Nick likes to make his own words sometimes. That might be a word, but I think it’s just comfort. 

Dr. Nick:
I’m going to stay with comfortability. It’s definitely not a word. 

Dr. Nicole:
What was the other word you made up the other day?

Dr. Nick:
I make words up every single day. 

Dr. Nicole:
I don’t even know what it was, but we were just like, “Uh-huh (affirmative).”

Dr. Nick:
So when you’re comfortable, you’re… I mean, it’s a shitty mindset, because when you start out and you’re under so much stress and you’re just like, “I can’t wait until I’m uncomfortable and I can take a breath.” But when you realize-

Dr. Nicole:
That’s a fantasy, but we’ll get into that later.

Dr. Nick:
Comfortability is the death of growth, it’s the death of evolving. Because when we’re comfortable, we’re not challenging ourselves. I mean, it’s easily put… You can see it on exercise, you go out and you get in great shape, but then you become comfortable with it, you’re not going to continue taking the actions, the workouts, the pain that you put yourself through to look good, to be in great shape, and running a business is very similar. So if you get to a point and you’re comfortable, you’re going to start going backwards instead of continually going forwards. Which on a previous podcast, I talked about success and how I don’t use the word success in my vocabulary, because in my mind once you achieve success, there’s nothing else. That’s the end all be all. So I don’t think I’m ever going to be successful, because I always want to continue to grow and to continue to evolve and to continue to have more, continue to be more, and just continue to do more. 

Dr. Nicole:
But I think it’s like taking the step back and also defining both success and comfort. Because one thing that I want to make really, really clear is that this is not about you having to constantly be sacrificing yourself and not have quality of life to run a business, that’s definitely not what we’re describing when we’re saying don’t get comfortable, but it’s really about always continuing to grow yourself. But also make those tweaks and modifications and growth choices in your business, to make it better and better, so that you can stay ahead of the curve and be resilient in the market, and not have to live in fear that anything or anyone could take out your business tomorrow. 

And I think that’s a really important delineation, is that this doesn’t mean that as the business owner and the entrepreneur that you need to suffer, because unfortunately one of our other podcasts is, are you in a toxic relationship with your business? Are you addicted to the stress hormones of running a business? And I know that that’s many individuals and it was… I will speak for myself, it was a hundred percent me. I didn’t know how to relax at all. So I definitely want to make it known that actually when you are in that more calm place and you’re thinking more clearly, because you have that quality of personal life, you actually are so much more strategic about the growth, the automation, the refinement of your business.

Dr. Nick:
No, and that’s a win-win relationship. When you talk about you serving yourself, you serving the business, the business serving itself, the business serving you, is being able to be strategic and be able to set those standards and those guidelines to be able to have both entities serving each other. And yeah, it’s like, it’s not always going to be comfortable, and you could argue the difference between comfortable and content. Don’t ever be comfortable, because that’s going to take away from the challenges that are going to lead you to growth, but you can be content with where you’re at. So verbiage is a big thing that I’m always evaluating to be able to use, because energy flows where attention goes. And to be able to set up that attention to be able to serve yourself, because so many times we’re just not conscious and when we’re not conscious, we’re reactive. So it’s always about asking those really specific questions to be able to give us those awesome returns on our thoughts, to be able to allow us to make quality decisions. And then foremost crush that with action.

Dr. Nicole:
So piggybacking off of what you’re saying, is I have an awesome quote from Keith Cunningham here. And this was something that just really stood out to me when I was reading his book Road to Less Stupid. And it’s really just everything we’re talking about, but the quote goes, “The value of planning is the clarity of being able to explain your strategy and blueprint, to increase your level of financial success in the current environment.” which is very different from being able to explain how the current environment has impacted your level of financial success. One is planning and then the other one is justification. So when you’re talking about the best and most successful entrepreneurs out there, and I’m talking about not only do they have success in their business, but they also do maintain a healthy, balanced, personal life, and that they are not consumed by only business, business, business, and they sacrifice everything on the personal side.

Is that they’re constantly thinking ahead, thinking outside the box and having a very broad lens vision, in order to make sure that they are making the best decisions possible. And Keith Cunningham, one of the biggest things that he talks about in his books is, thinking time. And if you don’t carve out the time to just clear your mind and think, there’s no possible way that you’re going to be forward-thinking as this quote describes. Is you’re, again, going back to what Nick said, is you’re just constantly reactive to the environment, or you’re justifying how the environment has impacted your business. And I will say with the pandemic, there was no option to fail, there was no option to shut our doors. And I understand that we were essential in the type of business that we were in, in health care, but we took a major opportunity to pivot.

And it wasn’t just succumbing to the circumstances. And I’ll give you a great story because you could say, “Oh well, that was easy for you because you were essential and you didn’t have to close your doors.” But good friends of ours that run a restaurant in Asbury Park, New Jersey, they opened a speakeasy. It’s a bar, that wasn’t open and it wasn’t going to be open for probably a really long time. 

Dr. Nick:
Well, and they just dumped a bunch of money into it doing the renovation [crosstalk 00:12:44].

Dr. Nicole:
Renovations, everything else. And they only really had a summer that they were open, so they were definitely not in the green when it comes to the amount of money that goes into the creation. So they pretty much decided to pivot immediately, they didn’t sit around and say, “Oh my gosh, we’re screwed. This place is never going to open. We’re going to run out of money, and our livelihood is taken.” They literally got online and started doing virtual cocktail classes. And it sounded like even an odd concept to us. I was like, “Well, I guess people are home, they’re bored, they’re stressed, so probably could work out really well.” But it ended up becoming this great success because it was getting families that were all over the world, they were coming together on this virtual class, and they were learning how to make these cocktails, and they were having fun, and they were having conversation. And then it turned into corporate events and they’re killing it, literally killing it. 

And I don’t think that they’re going to actually go back to business as usual. And I think it was just such an inspirational story that they didn’t miss a beat. And I found that a lot of restaurants, bars, they closed for a period of time. They didn’t do takeout, they didn’t do any of that, which they had the ability to do. And I think that they were just like, “This is bad. This is bad. This is bad. And we’re just going to shut our doors.” And the restaurants that pivoted and said, “I’m going to just really leverage the online ordering and the deliveries and et cetera.” And then them creating this online cocktail class, it’s just amazing to see what has come out of it and I honestly think their business model is better, because it’s more scalable.

Dr. Nick:
It’s definitely more scalable. And I mean, you take it down to the foundation of it, it’s like so many businesses and as well as individuals during that time, their focus was on the finances, on the money. And I mean, you have to know where you’re at in life. You have to have those objective data points to be like, “This is a smart decision, or a bad decision.” But it’s like their mindset was on service, “How can I continue to serve?” And when your mindset’s on that, you’re always going to have the effects of, guess what, money coming in too. Because you’re caring enough about people to be able to give them a service to help their lives be more enjoyable, be more better, be more healthy. You fill in the blank depending on your service that you’re giving to the world. 

But they quickly saw that. When you have a “small speakeasy” that holds max 25 people, and then you go online and you can reach thousands and thousands and thousands of people, and you can reach corporations and do whole on events. And they tapped into literally a market that is where we are right now. We’re in the digital age, we’re in the information age. And to be able to give people so much more than they could even experience going into their speakeasy, it’s a pretty awesome concept, and congrats to them to be able to have the heart and the passion, really the inspiration to be able to continue to give. 

Dr. Nicole:
Well, I think what you said is huge, because it’s really across many industries is, you have to evolve with the times and you can’t be just closed minded or ignorant to what is changing in the times. And we are in a digital age, it’s very easy to sit here and say that certain industries it doesn’t apply to. And you could easily even say that in the healthcare industry, but there are individuals that are still doing paper based files. And that can seem like, “Oh well, it’s too much work to move everything online.” But the amount of… Time is money, people. And if you haven’t figured that out yet, you’re going to have a rude awakening. But if you’re a doctor and you’re still writing everything down, you are completely capped with the amount of patients that you can see in a day, because how much of your time is getting taken up by doing these paper-based files, opposed to having a computer system that can speed the process up. 

In addition to that is, how much money are you spending paying on the square footage that’s holding those files. And this is the same thing in restaurants. Restaurants, there’s still places that they’re writing down. And at the end of the day or the end of the shift, when the individual has to give the check and it’s paper written and calculated with a calculator, how many errors is that resulting in that is coming down to the bottom line of cash collected that night? So we have to always be asking ourselves better questions on, “What is working in our business? What is not working in our business? What is a cashflow sucker? What’s eating up our cashflow? What is eating up our time, which is eating up our cashflow?” And I actually have a whole list of questions that I provided during the webinar that we did almost a year ago. 

And it’s not even just about those modifications, but in hard times, and I’m not necessarily talking about a pandemic, I’m just talking about when times get a little tough in the business is, who steps up and who steps down when it comes to your employees? Who’s stepping up of like, “Okay, what could we do? How can we help? What needs to happen? How do we need to change? How do we need to pivot?” And there’s other people that just completely back into a corner and are just like, “No, no, no, no. That’s not my job.” And we have to start acknowledging that, because it really comes down to, do you have a team of A-players, B-players, C-players, or worse? And a lot of times we get started in business and we have a set of employees that fit the culture then, or fit the business model then. And as you grow and evolve, you have to understand that there are going to be certain people that are not going to grow and evolve with the business. 

Dr. Nick:
Yes. One of my favorite laws that governs the universe, every aspect of creation is, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So when we are growing, the only way we can grow is if we’re equal and obsolete losing. So I’ve talked about previous podcasts about literally the executives, the CEO, the owners, to be able to sit back, have that thinking time that Dr. Nicole was talking about, to be able to intellectually be able to see and create the losses that they want to create in order to actually reverse engineer and have the growth that you want to have. So that way we can see the pain points that’s going to be there. The goal is to have a team of A-players, but sometimes we also confuse A-players with all stars. And all stars are a different caliber than a team of A-players. 

And it’s like, any team that goes to a championship in sports and it’s going to win, the team is A-players, but you can only have a small percentage of those A-players be all stars that want to step up and have a light shine on them. You don’t want to have the people that are going into the corner, that go from A to B to C, that drop down, but we need to be able to see possibilities so we can step in and have, just like in sports, we have somebody to come in and take their place. So it’s always about trying to be adaptable and be resilient and be able to set up so many different systems in place, to be able to help you to constantly evolve through having very intentional losses. Really it’s one of my things, is talking about anytime we build up we have to destruct, we have to break down.

So we’ll see it in ourselves. Just taking a quick side jump from business to our mental health, but anytime that we’re living the big head and we think that we’re the best, we either have negative self-talk to bring us back down, or somebody who will come into our life very quickly negatively, to bring us back down. So it’s always about, if you’re running a business, just like you’re running your life. It’s always about being clear headed and balanced as possible so that you can make those intelligent decisions to serve yourself. 

Dr. Nicole:
Yeah. And just a side note on the conversation of all stars is, to be clear on that is, you definitely are going to have people on your team that are going to step up in a really big capacity, but you have to always delineate between the person that is stepping up for their own personal gain, or stepping up to do what is best for the business and what is best for the customer. So there is a very specific thing that you have to consider with that, because being humble and removing as much ego out of your business as possible is one of the only things that’s going to allow it to succeed. If you have a bunch of individuals that they’re really functioning to do things because it’s in their best interest, and not necessarily considering what’s best for the business, you have a different set of problems on your hands.

So making sure to keep that in mind, and don’t confuse what an A-player really is. So another big thing as well, is we get very busy in our businesses and we don’t always take a step back or take a moment to truly look at the feedback, but also look at the data in relation to what we’re offering. And if it’s a program, if it’s a product. And you have to be able to do that, because you might be giving a ton of time, attention, and resources, to something that is really actually not benefiting your business. And I’ve also found in our business, we have had many employees, and especially employees as they’re newer to the business, they would come in and make suggestions on, “Oh, we should run this program. And we should really have a program that for this population. We should have a lower tiered program that is more cost-effective for other people.” 

And they were great suggestions, but the question we always had to come back to is, is this in integrity with the overall mission and why of the company, or are we going to start moving away from what we know is best, in order to provide an accommodating price point or a program that’s an easier entry. And this was a conversation that we had at one of our retreats, because we felt like there was a lot of suggestions coming through. And being able to actually break down data and analytics to say like, “Hey, this program is working well, and let me tell you why. This program is not working well, let me tell you why.” But in addition to the suggestions that are being provided, is let’s lay out a couple of different scenarios. Just because in our brick and mortar functional medicine business, one of the things is that we do things very uniquely, and we know what needs to be done from a diagnostic standpoint, to truly, truly get answers. 

But that price point is higher than the industry average. So we had many individuals that would say, “Oh, it would be great if you had something that was cheaper and maybe it had less.” I was like, “Okay. Well, let me give you the scenario of what’s going to happen, because we’ve been there, we’ve done it. You bring someone in, okay, it’s a more friendly cost bracket for them. And now we exclude out X, Y, and Z tests. And then this individual starts to get frustrated because now they’re trying to heal based on their limited diagnostics, but we easily missed things because we didn’t do what we know is best. And now they’re frustrated. And now they’re even more pissed because they’re three months in and they’ve spent X dollars, and they’re not getting the results that they expected.”

So I was like, “You have to be true to what you know is best, and whatever that price point looks like for your business. Because as soon as you start getting away from what you know is best, that’s when you start to compromise the patient experience. And then that patient experience trickles down into your employees, because if you have a bunch of disgruntled patients, customers, clients, guess who has to deal with it? Your team.” 

Dr. Nick:
And it always comes back to your why. It’s like, why have you created the business? What are you trying to serve? What are you trying to produce? What are you trying to give? It’s like, you look at Porsche, they’re not making Hondas and selling Honda’s, it’s like they make high quality cars with crazy German machinery to go through and give an amazing experience. So it’s like, they’re not going to cut costs just because they can have a lower price point to be able to allow people to have a better experience, but not the best experience. So it’s really about going back to your why, and looking at, if you want to bring something in, it’s like opportunities are a big aspect of evolving, but not every opportunity that you get is going to be in alignment with your business and your why. 

So it’s always being able to not have that emotional, “Yes, let’s reach more people. We can have a quick high profit.” But that short-term pleasure is going to create longterm pain for you and your business, because you’re outside of your why. So it’s always about being conscious of making the best decisions that’s in alignment with the highest values of your business. 

Dr. Nicole:
And circling back to the whole topic of this, is being able to evolve your business is… I was in a coaching program and I felt that the coaching program was always so focused on sales and focused on new customers, new customers, new customers. And things that we have learned from back when we were in school, which we did not learn a lot of business by the way. But I just remember one thing in particular was a very in-depth Excel spreadsheet, and it was something that we were given by one of our practitioners in order to start to map out the numbers to open a practice. And there was specific section that was all about new patients. What are you going to charge them? How long do they go through their process to become a new patient, et cetera, et cetera? 

Okay. This is the income that you would be looking at. But then there was a different section about keeping clients. So after they embark on working with you, what is income look like if you were to retain those clients? And it was significantly more opposed to having a ton of new people coming through your door. So it was always about retention. So the question that I ask you to really challenge you is, what if you shifted your focus from new customers to just keeping your current customers so happy, that their mindset is, “Why would I ever go somewhere else?” And you can sit here and say, “Oh, they might go somewhere cheaper.” But if you’re providing the best service, the best product, the best experience, they don’t want to go anywhere else. 

Dr. Nick:
No. And if you take the time to figure out why they’re even purchasing your product or your service, that’s loving them, that’s taking the time to understand their needs and why they’re coming through. And that’s a big part of evolving is that, you’re constantly looking at your best clients, their feedback, getting those data points to make the service of the product on your side constantly better. So the big part of evolving is actually listening and hearing the needs and the wants of your best clients. Never take advice from somebody that’s not a paying customer, that’s the dumbest idea ever. So it’s about getting foundationally clear, always jumping back into your why, what’s most valuable to you, to the business, and then growing on top of that. So that’s when evolution becomes really like a game, it becomes a lot of fun. It doesn’t become so stressful that it’s a deadline that I have to achieve this, it’s more of look what I get to do. And that’s when evolution occurs at a lot faster rate.

Dr. Nicole:
And going back to our slogan and our theme, and something that I feel like has been on repeat is, it’s not always about what you do, but how you do it. So giving you guys an example here is, think about your own experience with going out to dinner. And imagine going to a place that is so known for having one of the best chefs in the city or some of the best food in the industry. So you have this amazing meal with top quality food, but your waiter is terrible. So you’re not going to walk away from that experience saying, “Yeah, it was actually really good. Our waiter sucked, but yeah, it was good. I’ll go back.” You’re not going to go back.

The food could have been absolutely amazing, and the entire kitchen staff was holding up their end of the bargain, but you had a waiter that was having a bad day. And if anything, that is going to trump the negative experience, because there’s a lot of people that were like, “You know what? The food was mediocre, but we had such a good experience, and our waiter went above and beyond. We made small talk, he made jokes. We literally just had so much fun that I would a hundred percent go back.” So you have to really always keep in mind your client experience, because if you go into business with the idea of how can I maximize the client experience, then all the little things that happen on a day to day, because yes, things happen. You forget things, you forgot to follow up, the email didn’t go through, the zoom link didn’t work. 

And all of those things are going to dissipate and never be a make or break for your client, because your client knows that you have all of the other areas covered, and you’re always doing what’s best for them with integrity. 

Dr. Nick:
So wrapping this up. I want to pick Dr. Nicole’s brain on one more aspect of evolution. So we’ve looked at evolution I’d say more microscopically so far, but looking at the bigger picture, is that when we’re going to evolve a business, we can only evolve the business as much as our container can hold, honestly. It’s like we can’t grow a business bigger than we can grow ourselves. So when we look at that, it’s looking at evolution in a slightly different way, because sometimes we’re constantly trying to put so much focus on the fuel, but really all we need to do is take the brakes off of our own personal lives to allow, not only ourselves, but our businesses to really flourish and start evolving. So would you want to talk a little bit about that? 

Dr. Nicole:
Well, I’m almost like, “Where to start?” Just because I a hundred percent agree, because I know that there were many-

Dr. Nick:
We’ve broken through many glass ceilings. 

Dr. Nicole:
Yes. There’s been many times that I just felt like a problem solver. It’s funny because we have this saying of, are you the chief problem solver in your business? You’re supposed to be the CEO of your business, and helping to be that visionary and execute and be a leader and grow the leaders underneath you. And I just felt like there were so many periods of time that I was literally just running around putting out fires, which is the worst feeling ever. But it’s also because I was not putting any time into myself to be a better leader, because I was stuck in the day-to-day operations.

I think that this is the biggest thing that has come out of the pandemic for us, and this is how we’ve been able to get the institute off the ground. This is how we’ve been able to double our revenue in our business. We are currently in South Carolina, we’ve been here for over a month. Our business is doing better without us being there. And we are growing tremendously as leaders. And this feels so good than just saying, “Oh, the business makes money.” And that happened because the business was doing fine, but there were so many questions that we had to ask ourselves. Because what happened was, most of our employees stayed home, because they were scared, I totally get it. They didn’t want to bring the virus home to family, friends, relatives, et cetera. 

So Nick, myself and Dr. Phil buckled down and continued to see the same amount of volume in the business with 13 less employees. And it was just a moment that I was like, “We are employees for our business. We are not business owners, we are employees.” And we literally are in a toxic relationship with our business. We are not leading anyone, because we don’t have time to. And we are not even allowing our team to meet their maximum potential, because we have to have our hand in everything. And we, not micromanage, but nobody had the authority to make a decision without bringing it to Nick or I. And we just made this very, very bold decision to say, “We’re done. We’re going to truly run our business and be leaders and be visionaries, and to evolve ourselves.” 

And even Nick was scared. Because I remember I looked at him and I was like, “I can’t do this anymore. I cannot have this business run like this for one more day.” And I said, “The only way that I can truly be the CEO, is if I literally cut my schedule by two thirds.” And he was like, “Oh gosh.”

Dr. Nick:
I was looking at numbers, not service, and I was scared.

Dr. Nicole:
Yeah. So guys, don’t look at us and say, “Wow, look at all these things you’ve been able to do.” There has been moments of being very scared. There have been things that we have done that haven’t worked. There have been things that have worked, but you have to understand is you have to have a process, and you have have a mentor. Because the reason we were able to do this is through the scaling of methodologies. Hence, I’m so passionate about it that I’ve become a scaling up coach. And now this is something that we’re living and breathing it. It has completely transformed our business, and it has now transformed many businesses that have worked with us through the institute. 

So this is something that you can’t just wing it, you can’t just figure it out or manifest or put your feet in the sand and it’ll come to you. Yes, there’s aspects of manifestation, there’s aspects of thinking time, there’s aspects of getting grounded. But there’s aspects of using methodologies that actually work.

Dr. Nick:
Oh, a hundred percent. And I think what allowed us to go through the process so smoothly, honestly, I mean, don’t get me wrong there’s like highs and lows to it. But when you look at it through a bird’s eye view, it was so smooth because we had the systems of scaling up, which really is tried and true results. Every single huge business in the world uses concepts of the scaling up. But at the same time looking at that, if the individual’s container isn’t big enough, it doesn’t matter if you have the best tools of the best. So it’s about also going through and restructuring, breaking down those glass ceilings, those limiting beliefs, every single aspect that’s not allowing yourself to be able to “be more”.

Dr. Nicole:
It’s the only way you can lead other people. And that’s something that you have to understand is that, it is your job as the CEO and the business owner, to be the best that you can be and give yourself the time to grow, think, clear your mind, and continue to evolve yourself as a leader, because it is your job to lead. Don’t think like, “Oh, I’m just going to spend the money. I’m going to have the really high paid COO come in.” And they’re an adult, they have a lot of experience in their industry, and I don’t need to babysit them. I’m doing air quotes right now. No, that is shit a mindset. You need to understand that it is your job as the business owner and the CEO. You might not be calling yourself the CEO, but you need to be the CEO of your business.

And when I read Keith Cunningham’s book and he said, “The five things you cannot delegate as a CEO.” I cried, because I was like, “I’m not doing any of that.” And I’m expecting this business to work, and I’m not doing any of it. And then I’m getting upset when things are not working out or things are not getting where they should be. And I’m putting these things on other people, that it is not their job. It is not their job to be the visionary of the company, it is not their job to be the leader of the boat, the leader of all of it. I now have leaders underneath me, but I’m their leader, and that is my job. And there’s no way that I could do that if I was just running around with my head cut off, hamster on the wheel, don’t sleep, eat like shit. Don’t read a book or don’t do anything to preserve myself. 

So if you’re that person that your cup is, I don’t want to say half empty, it’s empty, because I know that many of you are in that place of just being so unbelievably taxed, that your business is not going to move ahead. And you’re not going to be resilient to be a company, that it’s going to potentially even outlive yourself or even live past the next decade.

Dr. Nick:
Oh, a hundred percent. And one of the best things that I think that allowed us to do that, is that human behavior part of just the Demartini method and all the other methods that I use into helping literally grow your mindset. So as we grow the mindset, we can allow to be able to make different choices. Because until we change our beliefs on how we run ourselves, we can’t make a change. And we can make a short-term change like a diet, but as soon as that diet’s over, we go back to our old unhealthy habits. So it’s really about first changing our belief systems that create and dictate all of our life decisions, choices, and actions, to be able to make better, clear decisions that’s congruent with the values, the purpose, the why of the business, as well as myself. And then using very intelligent systems through scaling up, that’s just, I think a match made in heaven. 

Dr. Nicole:
But also too, it’s the integrative medicine piece too. And this is something that we are very passionate about bringing into the coaching space, is because for myself personally, doing a lot of the human behavior work with you, I almost did it in tears because I didn’t feel that my mind was strong enough to do the deeper work early on. And part of it was because of what was happening from a physiological perspective. I ended up having a lot of things that I didn’t know. I had a lot of gastrointestinal issues, I had a lot of neurotransmitter imbalances. I was literally running on fumes because I was running on adrenaline for so many years between working in the restaurant industry, school was school probably one of the most unhealthy things ever. Literally going to school 12 hours a day then going into clinic and everything else. 

But there was just so much that was depleted in my body that was not really allowing me to function at my best, which like working on those layers, that was layer number one, and then working on the mindset, the human behavior piece. And all of those steps then brought us to the scaling up methodology, which at that time when it finally came into our lives, we were ready for it. So I think that that’s huge, is being able to understand that every single one of you are very different, and your starting place is probably different than ours, as well as your friend who runs a business. And it’s really figuring out where are the kinks in the chain for you that are making the biggest impact on your business? And what do we need to do to build that stronger foundation, to then build upon that foundation? 

That’s what’s really cool about when we work with people, is we’re taking you through this diagnostic process, with yourself as the CEO, as the business owner, but we’re also taking your leadership team, your management team, even if it’s a small team, taking them through rigorous assessments to really understand, “Okay, what do you not see in your business? What are the blind spots? And where are the cracks in the foundation?” So that we could really, really help to repair that. 

Dr. Nick:
Yeah. I mean, when you’re making huge changes like this and going in and setting up all those new systems, that’s a lot of energy output. Anytime you make a change, you’re using up more energy than “when you are comfortable”. So it’s really about not what you do, but how you do it. So set up your life so you can have more energy, so you can give more energy.

Dr. Nicole:
A hundred percent. All right, guys. Well, we hope you enjoyed this episode. Obviously you could tell we’re very passionate about it, because it’s really just being able to have a business that you love, and also to make sure that you are not completely sacrificing your personal life, your personal values in order to have this business. Because you could easily say to yourself, “Oh, well. I’m going to work my butt off for three years, four years, five years, and then I’ll get to this point and things will change.” I will tell you is, it’s not how it works. You have to be extremely clear, extremely intentional, and you have to take those action steps to get there. So definitely check out the Integrative Growth Institute if you’re looking for more information, if you want to hop on a call with one of our coaches, we welcome you to do that. And we hope to see you on the next episode. 

Dr. Nick:
Love you guys. You’ve reached the end of another episode of the Integrative Entrepreneur Podcast. Connect with us at integrativegrowthinstitute.com. Don’t forget to sign up to our newsletter to receive our free materials. See you at the next episode.

Dr. Nicole:
If you love today’s episode of Integrative Entrepreneur Podcast, please head over to iTunes, subscribe, rate, and leave us a review. It is very much appreciated. Thank you.