Episode 2: What is FMBI?

Functional Medicine Business Institute is an exclusive company that helps practitioners who want to start or grow a functional or integrative medical practice. We focus on what it takes to build a successful brick-and-mortar practice, not just a virtual practice. As practitioners, we spend a lot of money training to heal others, but medical training doesn't teach us business. FMBI helps you structure and grow your business so that you can earn the money you deserve.

You're listening to the Functional Medicine Business Podcast featuring Dr. Deb, one of the most creative functional medicine business practitioners in her industry. She shares the wisdom and knowledge that she has gained over 25 years of functional medicine, a pioneer in functional medicine, scheduling, leadership and Practice Management. Dr. Deb has a wealth of knowledge and is eager to share to help functional medicine become more productive, and for the practitioners and patients to live better lives. Our podcast shares the good and the bad of our industry because Dr. Deb knows the pain you live every day building a functional medicine practice with practical tools on how to manage money, taxes and patient care, she will discuss it all with you.

So what is actual "functional medicine", we call it FM for short. And some people will actually call this integrative medicine as well. But a functional medicine approach is a system of biology based on an approach that focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of disease. Each symptom or different diagnosis may be one of many contributing to the illnesses of the individual. Functional Medicine model evolved from the insights and perspectives of a small group of influential thought leaders who realize the importance of an individualized approach to disease. Looking at this, from a cause and effect standpoint, they looked at research from a nutritional science genomic and epigenetic background. And these thought leaders found ways to apply these new advances in the clinical setting to address root causes, using low-risk interventions that modified molecular and or cellular systems to reverse disease. So as we look at functional medicine, we can be a variety of practitioners that are implementing the functional medicine model, right? You can be a nurse practitioner, a do an MD, an ND a health coach, a nutritionist, there's a whole host of titles we can use to implement the functional medicine practices or the functional medicine lifestyle. And basically, what we're all trying to do as thought leaders is to teach people this functional medicine model, so that we can help them grow. And we can help them thrive in their life, and be the best person that they can be for as long as they can possibly be, right? So that's really what functional medicine is. 

Now, on this podcast, what we talk about is not just "What is functional medicine?", and "What can we do clinically?" But what do we do from the business side of things? Where is the business implementation process that happens, so that we can actually create a business out of functional medicine. And there's a whole host of people doing amazing things these days. We have people that have a brick-and-mortar practice, we have people that have a telemedicine or a virtual practice. We have high ticket, low ticket coaching, group. I mean, there's just when I started out, the only thing there was a brick and mortar that dates me quite a bit. Now we have all of these amazing tools of things that we can do to help us deliver our messages. Not to mention, we have courses that we can do online and we have podcasts like this, and we have YouTube videos. We have Facebook lives that we can do. It is so different today than it was 20 years ago when I started. When I started there was one way to get your message to people and that was to lecture in front of them and market to them and bring them all together and hope that some of those people became your clients. And today we can hop on a Facebook Live and that message will stay in perpetuity. And it goes on and on and on. And yes, we hope that we get clients from it. If we don't we know we've impacted lives because every person who sees that post, every person who sees that video is going to gain something out of it. And I think that we're living in such an amazing time today that allows us this opportunity to spread the message and spread the word, and educate people from so many different angles. Sometimes, though, I will say it can be a little overwhelming, right? Do I become an Instagram Expert? Or a YouTube expert? Do I become a Facebook expert? Or do I get on summits? Do I start a podcast? Oh, my God, I'm overwhelmed, right?

It's that shiny object syndrome that we all get, like, there's so many different places that we can go to. But what is the one that we choose? And here's what I would say to you, your message is so important that it doesn't matter how you get it out there, just so that you get it out there. Pick one, don't pick all of them. Pick one angle. If you love to do videos, do YouTube. That is an underutilized market. Honestly, it really is. If you like to send your message out, but you don't want to be seen, do a podcast and posted it on social. If you just like to write, do blogs, people are forgetting about blogs, and blogs are everywhere. And people do read them. And it's important to have them, you know, we take our podcasts and we transcribe them, because people do like to read them. They don't always want to listen, although I will tell you know, it's different today than it was even five years ago, more people want to consume it by listening than reading. So if you can do something by audio or video, it gets listened to a little bit more but blogs are still amazing. And blogs are great for search engine optimization. And we've forgotten about search engine optimization, because we're busy over here making landing pages, the landing pages don't get SEO, and SEO is what gets us ranked in Google. So it's important for you to share your message about functional medicine, share what you're an expert at, share what you are passionate about. And get yourself out there. You don't have to have a million followers, you can have five followers. Five followers will grow to 50 followers, which will eventually grow to 100, and so on and so on. But in order for you to be successful, people have to know you are there, they have to know you exist. And they have to know what your expertise is. And if you don't put that out into the world, no one will ever know what that is. So define who you are in the world of functional medicine. Are you a thyroid expert? Are you an autoimmune expert? Are you a hormone guru? Are you a chronic illness specialist? Do you treat chronic infection? Who are you in the world of functional medicine. Then define who your ideal client is, who is the client you love to work with? The ones that you get lit up by when you see them come in your practice. And you could work with them all day long, and it doesn't feel like work. That's your ideal client. Define that. And then take those two pieces of your expertise and your ideal client. And now take that and spread that out to the world. Whether it's YouTube, or Instagram, or podcasts or blogging, or lecturing on summits. Take that and get it out to the world. So that you can feel your practice. And your practice can be a brick and mortar. It can be a virtual practice. It can be a hybrid of both brick and mortar and virtual. That's what my practice is. That's what my practice has always been. And then you can have a practice that defines who you are and what you do. And not because the practice to find you. But because you decided to define the practice. It's very different when you define the practice versus your practice defining you. If you let your practice define you. You're going to find yourself doing things you don't love. But if you turn that around, and you take control of your practice, now you're doing something you love every single day. And once you have that you have a passion for what you do, we can create a business that's we're selling out of that. And we can do that all day long for you. So what I want you to do is sit down and write out. What do you love to do? Who are the clients you love to work with? And what is it that you what platform Do you love to work off of video, audio writing. And then once you've identified all those things, I want you to post in our FMBI group, what those things are, and how you're going to get them out to the world. That's how we make impact.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others. post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest from me. You can follow me on Facebook at FMBI, join our free group where we support one another and share our struggles. Thanks again. And I'll see you next time.