Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Hey Victors. Welcome to this week's victory show. If this is the first time you're joining us, I'm Travis Cody, best selling author of 16 books. And I've had the privilege of helping hundreds of business consultants, founders and entrepreneurs write and publish their own best selling books. And in that journey, I've discovered a really fascinating pattern. A lot of businesses hit a plateau revenue wise, usually around a million bucks, and they struggle to break through that. So on this show, I sit down with some of the world's most successful CEOs, leaders and business owners to uncover the strategies they use to overcome those plateaus and scale their business to new heights. And more importantly, how you can do the same. So get ready for some deep insights and actionable takeaways that you can have and implement in your life and business starting today.
Today's guest is a leader in the world of holistic healthcare. Someone who is not only treating patients, but he's transforming lives. Chris Jackman is a nurse practitioner and the chief operating officer at Carolina Holistic Medicine where he plays a pivotal role in growing the practice and expanding their revolutionary Priority Health Academy and helping patients achieve optimal health every single day. With three years at CHM and a deep passion for functional medicine, Chris works alongside founder Dr. JP Salidi to bring a patient first approach to healing. One that prioritizes the root causes over quick fixes. His expertise and leadership have helped shape Carolina Holistic Medicine into a trusted resource for those seeking a more personalized, integrative path to wellness. So we're going to have someone here who not only runs operations, but he's also working hands on hands with patients. He sees both sides of that. Chris is dedicated to making holistic healthcare more accessible and effective. So, Chris, thank you so much for being here today. I am, I'm so excited for our conversation. Holistic medicine and functional medicine in Western society, we hear a little bit about that, but we're really not sure kind of what does that actually even mean? Right. So I, I want to get into that in a minute, but let's, let's talk a little bit about your journey because you, you actually started in education, correct?
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Travis. It's a pleasure to be on with you. Yeah, I, I got out of high school and went into teaching. That was kind of going to be my first passion. I wanted to teach, I wanted to coach. So got into that. I taught for two years and at that two year mark thought I kind of had to make a decision. Is this something I'm Going to do the rest of my life or should I kind of pivot while I'm still young? Decided to pivot and got into nursing and that kind of that. Nursing, different roles. I worked in icu, I worked in operating room, I worked in cardiac surgery and eventually kind of got me to where I am today.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a, that's a bit of a, bit of a mix. I'm so curious about stories just from the operating room that takes a certain, takes a certain person to be there. So was there anything in particular that had you create the pivot specifically into nursing? I mean, from coaching to nurse, that's kind of a big jump.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So I guess the realistic answer is not, not the one that everybody wants to hear. But it was, it was a job, it was a good job. You know, in teaching. Jobs were scarce. This was 2007, 2008. Economy wasn't great at the time. You could graduate as a nurse and get a job in a second. They were looking for nurses everywhere. So my, I had family members that were nurses. So I knew the role, I was comfortable with it. I went into a kind of not really knowing what I was going to do. Started in the ICU as a nurse, got a job right away, and then kind of started finding my passion in the operating room. And that's where I got to there. So, yeah, that, you know, not a sexy answer, but that's kind of where, where I want.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: No. Well, that's the thing though, right? You, you end up taking something because it seems like a good job and then it fundamentally changes your life and you, you realize a passion for something you didn't even know was there. So now you're a nurse practitioner today. Correct?
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: So let's explain because everybody who's listening may not know that what the difference between a nurse and a nurse practitioner is. So can you walk us through that?
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So a nurse is your everyday nurse. You know, typically what you know of a nurse in the hospital, the person that's at your bedside all the time brings you your medications, you know, checks your blood pressure, helps you with, you know, your day to day activities. Nurse practitioner would be an advanced practice registered nurse. So you go back to school, you get your master's degree or your doctorate, and now you can function as what they call a mid level, one step below a doctor, where you can diagnose illnesses, you can prescribe medications, you can treat patients just as basically as a doctor would in many states. You need a doctor to be, you know, attached to you.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: You Know, you're under the doctor's license and umbrella, right?
[00:04:30] Speaker A: But, but you can function as an independent practitioner and treat people and prescribe medications just as any other doctor provider would.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Wow. So was there anything in particular in your career that led you to going that much further with what you were doing?
[00:04:45] Speaker A: So what happened was I was working in the operating room and I was a nurse assisting with cardiac surgery team. And it got to the point where I had been there so long and helping them so long that they were having me do more and more for them. And at a certain point you can only do more and more but get paid the same until you're like, I should just get that degree and actually get paid for what I'm doing. So that's what kind of got me into going in to be a nurse practitioner was I knew if I, I, I'm already doing the test, I'm already doing the assisting, I might as well get paid the, the salary that I was.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: There a point where everybody in the OR room and you said this, I'm going to be a nurse practitioner. And they're like, oh shoot, he figured it out and now we got to pay him.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: They people have been telling me for a few years, they're like, why don't you just go back and get your nurse practitioner degree and you can actually do this for a living. So I was being pushed by several people and at work, my wife, you know, a lot of people saying, you're already ready for this job. Just get the degree and make it official. So that's what I did.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: That's fantastic. So is your wife a nurse too?
[00:05:49] Speaker A: She's not, no. She was a assistant store manager at a Kohl's. So she is in retail.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: So completely different. Which is a good thing. You can only talk about medicine so much at all right now.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: So now you're doing functional medicine, holistic medicine. So how do, how do we then again pivot from being, you know, in the OR into functional medicine? Because those ones very western medicine and one's a little more integrative. So again, was there an experience that led you to saying, hey, I want to try something else?
[00:06:15] Speaker A: So my sister in law, she lives in California, she has multiple sclerosis and she uses a holistic medicine practitioner a lot and she keeps her, her disease under control really well with holistic medicine and functional medicine and does really well. So I kind of known about it, but I always thought that's something that they do on California, you know, that's.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: Not something that we the hippie California thing, right?
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So I didn't. I knew of it, but that was about it. We made the move from Cleveland, Ohio, to Charleston, South Carolina, purely for lifestyle, just to get out of the cold of Cleveland into the beachy weather of Charleston. And when I came to Charleston, I kind of thought, I really don't want to go back into the operating room and be stuck at the hospital all the time. I want to have some options where I can come home at a normal time, see my kids, go to the beach, be present a little more. When you're in the operating room, you're on call all the time. You're in the operating room all the time. You don't have a lot of social life. So I met Dr. Saleeby through LinkedIn, actually just randomly met him and sent him a message and said, hey, I'd like to shadow you. Holistic medicine. And it's something that I know of, but I don't really know much about. So I shadowed him for a couple days, and this guy just blew my mind. He was the smartest guy I've ever met. He was great at what he did. He was down to earth. His patients loved him. He found root cause problems for things that I thought could never be treated. Um, and it just, like, took me over, and I was like, this is something that I really want to learn more about. So I took some courses that he had offered, and, you know, he had kind of had the basic plan for the Priority Health Academy. And after I took those courses, it's one of those things where it just came easy, like it made sense. It snapped in my head, and I was like, you know what? I really get this. So he offered me a job in his Charleston office. At the time, we were just operating, really out of the Merle Zenlight office. And he offered me a job to kind of start up the Charleston office. I took it, and it's blown up, and it's now even more successful than our, you know, an original office. The Merle's on that office.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: So walk me through a little bit about what's the difference between functional medicine and holistic medicine? Because I have heard functional medicine before, but I never. I've never really known what that means.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Yeah, so holistic medicine really means that you do everything naturally. All the treatments are natural. You're using supplements and herbals, and you're. You're doing lifestyle changes and all that kind of stuff. Functional medicine is kind of like, you have one foot in Western medicine, you have one foot in Eastern Medicine. So you do as much as you can to treat root cause problems, and you do as much as you can to use natural forms to treat people. But we also dip into the Western medicine world, and we still use antibiotics, and we still use thyroid medication. We still use, you know, hormone treatments, bioidentical hormones. So it's kind of a mix. To me, the best mix between medicine, you know, nothing is off limits. We take the best from Western medicine, the best from Eastern medicine, and we kind of combine them into one full way to treat you holistically, to get you better from inside out.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Wow, I love that. So was there any sort of big insights you had? Having spent so much time in the Western medicine world, that when you started learning about functional, Is there one or two things that really took you aback about that?
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Yeah, the first thing was how ingrained everybody like we were in Western medicine to the pharmaceutical companies. A lot of the data and a lot of things we were doing in the operating room and cardiac surgery and the ICU were all really came from pharmaceutical companies telling us this is what you should do. And when you step out into the functional medicine world and holistic world and you realize there's actually other options, you don't have to do things this one way. And that's one of the best things I think we give patients is if someone comes in with a problem, I have six, seven, eight different options to treat this. And we talk about all the options and from as natural as possible to the prescription option. And I tell them, these are all your options. These are the side effects and benefits of all of them. And we try to figure out what's best fit for that patient. So that was one big thing, is like, it's not just one way to do things based on what the pharmaceutical companies tell you. The second thing I really learned was that we spent a lot of time just treating chronic illness by just covering up symptoms. And what we really try to do is figure out, well, why do you have those chronic symptoms? What's the root cause problem? Is it autoimmune disease? Is it high toxic burden? Is it viral load? Is it lifestyle? We try to figure out what is it in your life that's causing your body to have stress, and how can we reduce that stress level on your body, get your inflammation down and make your immune system work the way it should? And that's really how you get good health, is by getting people's body to function correctly as opposed to just suppressing symptoms of illness.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: So was there a time when your sister was working with Ms. And telling you what she was doing with her holistic and functional medicine guy, where your Western training was like, come on.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, it's still kind of like, okay, I, I'm sure to you that's helping, but, you know, it's. It's not realistic. And there were times I was working in this cardiac surgery where patients would come in and they'd say, you know, one of my friends gave me this. This gel or this balm, and they told me to rub it on my skin and it'll heal my chest faster. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, don't. Don't put any of this stuff on your skin. Like, that's, you know, that's voodoo stuff. Like, that stuff doesn't work. And, and that's what I mean. Like, it's so ingrained into you that there's only one way to do something. And then when you step out and you find all these really be things that can help people and. And heal people that God put on our earth for us to use, and we just ignore it. It's really enlightening to see, like, what you can do and how creative you can be.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: I love your journey. The fact that you started so heavily influenced by western medicine and slowly kind of started to explore others. So you, you know, because I. I've talked to holistic practitioners that don't know much about Western medicine at all. Right. So then you have the western medicine guys going like, those guys are quacks. And then they're guys going like, these guys are poisoning you. So I like the fact that you're. That you're like, you've got both viewpoints now, and it's all about the options, which is. Which is fantastic. You know, I would say that Western medicine's a great place. You know, if you're in a serious accident. That's where I want to. This is where I want to be. But in terms of preventative, it's like you said, everything in the Western medicine, it's all. It feels to me to be very reactionary. It's not preventing anything. It's like you wait until something shows up and then they go, oh, we can now treat that instead of going, but what if you could prevent that? So I love that you guys have sort of found the both. All right, so. So you want to work with Dr. Shalibi. The clinic was. You had one clinic, there was, what, a few employees? So what. What did that. When you started Working with him. How did the. The. The clinic start to grow from there? And what did you guys do specifically to. To grow it?
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Yeah, so the first thing we did is, is. Is he had his set up in the Myrtle beach area and that was established, and he was continuing to keep that growing and stabilized. I started in the Charleston office and basically started from scratch. I mean, there were days where I was seeing two patients a day and kind of like twiddling my thumbs the rest of time trying to find work to do and things to do. And I spent a lot of time going around to different, you know, acupuncture, chiropractors, gyms, health spas, and just kind of putting up flyers letting people know we're around. And once people find out we're there, they got interested, started building up. A lot of new patient were coming in. So my first year, I was seeing almost exclusively new patients every single day. So it was very busy. And you're trying to kind of. I was still learning, you know, like, I was still new to this, so I was still learning and trying to treat all these people with these complex issues. And as Charleston built, we had to start hiring staff for the Charleston office. Then we hired a secretary, then we hired a nurse, and then another nurse, and then we hired a membership secretary, you know, someone to take care of memberships. And then we had, you know, turnover. You know, all of a sudden a nurse leaves and you're like, having to rehire. So it just built really fast. Within a year, we went from having, you know, a handful of employees to having 15, 16, 17 employees very quickly. Oh, we almost grew too fast. I always say the two things that can kill a business, right, is being too slow or being too busy. So we were growing so rapidly that it was, like, hard to catch up. Patients were saying, hey, like, we can't get a hold of you. You guys are too. All the time. We can't get in to get visits. So we had to find that balance between having enough staff to deal with everything, but not overstaffing to where you're wasting money. So, yeah, it was a challenge at first, for sure.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: At what point did conversation start with you becoming the taking on the COO duties in addition to your nurse practitioner patients?
[00:15:02] Speaker A: Yeah, interesting enough that came out about two months into me working for the company. So, you know, me and Dr. Saleevy, JP Sleevey, we hit off pretty quick. And he saw my potential, I think, early on, and he knew that I had wanted more. When I took the job, I told him, like, my Job is to help you grow this into big of business as we can make. So he early on gave me some extra tasks that I probably wasn't ready for because I was so worried about just getting through my patient load that I was nervous. Can I get through even more? Can I do more? But he put it on my plate and challenged me. And it was good for me because it got me to really commit. It was like all or nothing. I was in. I was full go into this Carolina holistic medicine. And it forced me to take a full interest in my job. And also came with profit sharing, you know, which is another, I think, important aspect when you're hiring people. If you want them to buy in and be a part of the growth of the company, offer profit sharing, because then if the company grows, they get paid more, and that's a very good incentive. And that's what was offered to me. So I took it on and I thought, hey, if I grow this to be a $2 million business, my paycheck's gonna triple in, you know, in two years. So it was important for me for the business to grow.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: That's good. Good motivation. What a blessing, though, too, to have a medical doctor, one with the insights to, you know, be all encompassed in the views. But it sounds like he's very fairly savvy business as well.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: He is. And you don't get taught that, right? I mean, in medical school, they don't teach you how to be a business owner. So he had a lot of bumps in the road for the first few years. And he told me, you know, this business almost didn't make it. You know, there are a few times where he wasn't sure if it was gonna be able to keep the doors open. He learned a lot. And the biggest thing I Learned from, from Dr. Slievey is don't be afraid to make changes. You can always make changes again and adjust. But just kind of letting things coast because things are okay isn't a great way to build a business. You gotta take risks, you gotta make changes. You gotta do uncomfortable things to grow the business. And some fail. But more, you know, with him especially, many more succeed than fail, and which is why the business keeps mo the way it is.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: I love it. So where does. Where does the Priority Health Academy start to show up in this journey? And the first off, let's talk about what the Priority Health Academy is for the people that are listening.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Yeah. The Priority Health Academy is our academy that trains providers, meaning doctors, nurse practitioners, or physician assistants. So physician assistant is the same as a nurse practitioner. They just go through a different route, schooling, but again, same idea. So what we do is we train doctors, physician assistants and nurse practitioners in functional medicine and in how to run a successful business. So it's a two part plan and the goal is to get them to be able to open up their own practices outside of the South Carolina area. So that way they can kind of be under our umbrella but have their own business at the same time, almost like a franchise.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: So you're, you're training them in the stuff that they should have learned in school and didn't. But then more importantly, you're teaching them the business aspects to be able to then go out and actually have like. I'm assuming that means like the systems and the marketing and how to hire and how to manage office, all that, all the stuff you guys learned the hard painful way.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: Exactly. That's the problem. Yeah, that's exactly it. You know, learning what electronic medical record to use, what supplement stores to use, what labs to order from, how to order, how to hire people, how to, you know, do HR type things, how to do a medical, I mean, a background check on people when you're hiring them, how much to pay, how to write contracts, you know, all this stuff that just, this isn't something when you're going to school to be a nurse practitioner you ever think you'd ever need to know. But if you don't know that kind of stuff, your business is going to fail very quickly. So we're giving them all that insight as well.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: So the people that are finding you, are they, are they practitioners and doctors that already have clinics or a lot of them going, I want to have my own clinic but I'm not sure where to start with it. So they come to you and that's sort of like you're giving them the foundation and the confidence to be able to actually go and do that.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: Yeah, most of the people that almost all the people that come to us are in a traditional medicine role right now, working in a hospital or you know, a primary care office and wanting to make a change and get into functional medicine or holistic medicine because they see where healthcare and where things are going, especially since the pandemic. You know, people are taking their health into their own hands now and not always trusting that the traditional healthcare system has their best interest in mind. So they come to us looking for education first off, and a way to break free of the hospitals that they're working at, which is setting up their own clinics and being independent Practitioners, I love it.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: So in a lot of ways what you guys are doing is you're, you're creating a, you know, it's a term holistic, but you're almost creating a parallel health system to what we've got going on in the United States. There's the, here's the insurance and you have to do that. And then you guys are like, and here's this other way so you're not beholden in half to, to, you know, just see the doctor your insurance tells you you have to go see.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: Right? That's the perfect word to explain. That's what we use all the time, parallel health care. That's what we're trying develop, give patients options that you can go see your traditional doctors.
But there's also another option. There's a parallel health care system where you can come and see somebody who's going to kind of look for root cause or preventative treatment. And, and you have your choice on which one you want to go see. And we're trying to give people options. Like you said, if I have a heart attack, I'm not going to go see my holistic provider. You know, I'm going to go see a cardiologist and a cardiac surgeon. But if I'm trying to get my cholesterol or insulin and diabetes under control, or if I'm trying to find out why I'm having chronic pain, I'm going to go see a functional provider because they're going to get to the root cause of my problem.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: So, so early a minute ago you're talking about you had a membership coordinator. So do you guys is part of the business model to have like a monthly fee for people that make. Turn it into more of like a membership based service or.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So in most DPC models, so direct primary care models, instead of paying for each time you come and get a visit, you know, most do membership based plans. So someone comes and the first couple visits, they pay like one set amount of money for their first two visits. We come in, we get to know them, we order labs, we see how they're doing. And then after the second visit we have kind of a good idea as to their health care needs. And then we decide, do you need to be seen twice a year, four times a year, six times a year? Like how complex are you? And then we offer them a plan based on how many visits we think they need per year. Now they have a couple options. They can pay in full for that plan for one year, they pay in full and they get A nice little discount for paying in full or option B, they can like a gym membership. You pay a monthly membership fee and then you get, you know, two, four, six visits per year based on what plan you signed up for.
So those are, those are what we try to use.
[00:21:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I, that was actually one of the, so here in Vegas that, that was one of the things that probably changed my health for the most. Now he's not a functional doctor, he's still a traditional doctor, but he, he was like, I don't deal with insurance. I'm just a membership based, there's a monthly fee and you know, text him whenever I need to. I can pop in whenever there's no opening. And it's almost to the point now that when I have to go see my primary physician in my insurance network, I'm like, I gotta deal with the insurance. It's like, yeah. So it's like I see my primary guy once a year for my ph and I do all the blood work and then I use that as the rest of the year going to my other doctor because it's the same. I can just go in and go, hey, I want to run my labs now and here's the things I want to test and here's why. And I can just pay that fee and get exactly what I need and have a handle on it. So that's fantastic.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's actually getting to the point now where I would say over half of my patients, I'm their primary care provider, they don't even go see their once a year person for labs anymore because they just don't feel like they get much out of it.
So, you know, you can utilize your insurance and go that route, but in the end, I always tell people, if you get to the root cause of your problems and fix your problems and you have great help, it's one, money well spent. And two, you're actually probably going to save money in the long haul because you're not going to be sick all the time. You're going to, you're going to be able to work more, you're going to be able to enjoy your life, you're going to be able to stay healthy longer. So it's definitely money well spent.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: So realizing that you were in the full on medical mode and then you're building this business and eventually had to take on the coo. What, what are, what's two or three of the biggest lessons you've learned taking on the coo Hat.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Yeah. So the first is that you can't make everybody happy. Unfortunately, you know, when you have a lot of them, when you. As you get more and more employees, everybody kind of wants things done a certain way. They want certain salaries, they want certain schedules. They want things done the way they think it should be done. And you have to take all things into consideration, but you got to make the best decision for the. For the company. So you can't always try to make everyone happy. And that's what I learned early on. I was always trying to please everybody. When they came to me at the problem, I tried to make the problem, you know, go away for them. And I just causing another problem by doing that. So you have to kind of not worry about people's feelings, as bad as that sounds. But you got to do what's best for the company. The second thing I learned was that patients or clients or whoever you're working with, they are willing to adapt to changes in the company as long as they trust the person who's making the changes. So what I mean by that is if the patients trust me as a provider and know that I'm doing what's best for their interest and they're best for their health and I make a change, they're going to say, well, I think Chris is doing what's best for everybody, so I trust that he's doing the right thing. And they stick it out with you. If they don't trust you and you make a big change, they're going to say, well, I don't like, why are they always changing things? I don't know about this. And they're going to leave. So building trust in your client base and your patient base is very important, and it allows you to be more flexible with how you run your company. And then the third big thing that I learned was you have to have many forms of revenue streams coming in. You know, we have a. We recommend patients going to a certain supplement store, and we get a percentage of the money that comes from that supplement store. So people buy a supplement from them. We get, you know, 7% of that purchase comes back to U.S. labs. You know, if we have someone order through a certain lab, you know, we get a percentage kickback from that. You know, so having different revenue streams coming in all the time is very important because you can't just count on one revenue stream to make a successful business. And then the party Health academy is also a big revenue stream for us.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: Sure. How, how big of a difference did it make on your cash flow when you realized, oh, we can have multiple streams of cash flow in, in a. And again, holistic and I guess a more authentic, an authentic way. It doesn't feel weird to the customers.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: There's nothing's changing for them.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: Right. You can't just keep raising your prices on your patients and expect them just to keep paying it to increase your profits. You have to find out other ways. And that took us from, I mean, you said it perfectly at the beginning. You get stuck at that 1 million mark. And we were, when I started at this company, we were hit. We were right at that 1 million mark and kind of stuck between like a million and 1.2.
Always every year. And then as you build up more revenue streams and start making use of labs, making use of supplements and making use of the priority Health Academy and finding different ways, you know, selling lectures, all that kind of stuff, you notice you all of a sudden break through that 1.2 wall and then it's like 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 comes really easy. So yeah, the multiple streams of revenue easily can double your growth.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: Well, a lot of that's more passive too. Right. You're recommending these things and it's no extra work to you and suddenly you've, you know, just increased your, your, your revenue by 40% and it didn't take any extra work.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: Right. And it's not like, like advertising. You're spending money to make money with, with finding these multiple revenues. All you're doing is making agreements with these companies you're already going to work with anyway. But you just get them to, you know, kick back some money back to you and it's a small percentage to them. Lots of small percentages add up in the end and it creates a good revenue.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: Well, and for people, because I've talked to people, I'm like, well, why would they do that? It's just like, well, why if I'm a supplement company and you're referring people to me, normally I've got to go spend a hundred dollars on Google Ads or Facebook ads or YouTube ads to get a new customer.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Oh, like why?
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Like, let me just give you 7% of that and I'm not spending it on YouTube ads. Same like, it's just a marketing expense to me.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: Right? Yeah.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: So.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: And we make a ton, these companies make a ton of money from us, you know, sending our patients to them. They make, they make a lot more money than we make getting back from.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: Them, that's for sure. So what's the goals now with. So obviously you gotta, you've got a solid you know, base with your clinics and you've got the Priority Health Academy, which sounds like it could do a lot to really change things for a lot of people. What's the three to five year vision look like with that?
[00:27:51] Speaker A: Yeah, so the, the big thing is, you know, with the administration change, we see a big opportunity right now to really push this alternative medicine idea and utilize functional medicine as a. We're not hiding anymore. Like we kind of used to have to, we used to kind of have to sit back in the weeds and kind of. We're not here. Just find, try to find us and we'll help you, but don't tell anyone about us. You know, it's word of mouth. We're a little allowed to be a little bit more loud now and we're allowed to talk a little bit more about what we do. So we really want to grow the idea of treating and fixing chronic illness. We want to really work on helping with children, like getting rid of chronic disease in children and helping them thrive and trying to find alternatives to using, you know, anti anxiety medications and antidepressant and stuff like that on kids. So that's the first thing is just try to really make this country much healthier and give them options. As far as the Priority Health Academy, our goal is to create that, our big goal, three to five year goal is to actually create a physical university where you can actually have professors, you can actually do clinical rotations, you can actually have a full medical school but for functional medicine or alternative medicine and train people and have them be able to find jobs in the functional health system like anyone else would. And in medical school when you're going to get a job in a hospital, you'll take the. We have the ball rolling on that. That's not something, that's a pipe dream. We have the ball rolling on that.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: So are you looking at that of like as a traditional four year education? Are you looking at as like this is a, like a one year thing that somebody's gone through medical school, they can come here now to get what they need to pivot and get the business skills they need to launch successfully?
[00:29:33] Speaker A: Yeah. So this would. The, the plan now is people, they graduate medical school instead of going to a traditional residency to get their, to become a physician, they will come to our school and they would do the residency through us in functional medicine where they can get their clinical rotations done, they can learn and then they can, they can proceed to go into functional medicine full time. The problem is all functional medicine doctors now have Pretty much all come to functional medicine as a second career. Something got them fed up in the medical. In the Western medicine side, and they come to the west functional side to find an escape. And we want to make it so people can start their career in functional medicine as a primary passion instead of coming to it as a secondary passion.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. All right, so if somebody's listening to this podcast and they're. They're a practitioner or other, the other one was they and a doctor, how can they get. How can they learn more about you and learn more about the Priority Health Academy?
[00:30:27] Speaker A: Yeah, so our website is Priority Health Us. So Priority Dash Health Us, that's the website to the Priority Health Academy. And that kind of takes you through. Whether you are a patient or somebody who just wants the educational material and learn about health, or whether you're a provider who wants to do the full boat of learning to be a provider and start your own clinic. You have options on there, and it takes you through kind of the path of all your different options and paths and shadowing us and using all of all the options we have to offer. So that website will take you there. We also have www.carolinaholisticmedicine.com, which is our traditional website. And that just gives you kind of an overview of what we do as a healthcare system, what we do to treat patients. You can order labs, you can do all kinds of stuff on there as well. So those are the two main websites we have.
[00:31:20] Speaker B: Chris has been fantastic. Well done, you. I'm excited about the Priority Health Academy concept, and it's such a great time for it, and I think people are ready for it. So, again, thank you so much. Thanks so much for the time. I appreciate you being here.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me travel.
