This is a Time for Reflection and Rebirth [PPP #149]

On this episode of the Profitable Practice Podcast, I’m going to break down a lot of the vulnerable experiences that I had over the past couple of months, the anchors that I got rid of, the changes that I started to make and the realizations that I had of myself of my business and about my marriage. Stay tuned. 

Hello and welcome to the profitable practice podcast with me, Andrea Maxim. A Naturopathic Doctor Healthpreneur. Every week, I’m bringing you no-nonsense, no BS actionable strategies to create a practice that is not only profitable but fully sustainable by you. If you’re an action taker like me and want to create a practice that is profitable, then you come to the right place!

And we’re back! It’s been a little bit of a break and I take full ownership of that. A lot changed in me. We lost our project manager and we had to hire a new project manager and quite frankly, I just needed to take a break. I haven’t been active on social media, I have not been emailing you guys and it’s for no other reason then I felt I was just exhausted and I say “and” a lot I really need to end this out. With COVID started to come to an end and with our abilities to open up the offices, I started developing massive anxiety for the past two weeks to the point where there was one night where I went to bed late because I had been going to bed late this entire time without routine as much as I’m trying to keep a resemblance of routine I was just staying at home. Definitely! In a much more relaxed state overall in fact I personally thrived during this period of quiet. Being able to spend time with my family without feeling like I have to be anywhere at any given time. Not even to commute anywhere was a massive plus except for just doing supplement deliveries but even then after the first week of doing them every single day it was like “Screw that!” and I just two days of big delivery days so that I could bring the girls with me and they got us all out of the house doing something different but there is a day there where I went to bed late like eleven o’clock and I’m usually in bed by nine, that’s kind of my routine. I woke up at three am in just a massive panic! I was having quarantine dreams in and around that day as well as one of my dreams is like having my entire house and all of my surroundings on fire. I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t panicked, I wasn’t looking for a place to run like everything felt safe and yet my exterior, my environment is just chaotic and on fire and that was the total reflection of how I was feeling at that time because we had just kind gotten off over the panic and closing everything down, settled into a bit of a routine it was much more relaxed and  I was loving it and then the panic of what reopening was going to look like hit me two weeks out because I knew that it was coming. So I woke up at three am in a massive panic and I couldn’t fall back to sleep. I would lie on the couch and my mind was just spinning and it got so bad that I started panicking about CE credits and whether it was going to meet all the requirements of CE credits and I downloaded an online CE course and watched it at four in the morning. It was ridiculous. I could not fall asleep. So from three am until that evening no matter what I did lying down it was like my mind was just wired and it took an entire bottle of sparkling wine for me to finally passed out and of course I felt like crack the next day for many different reasons but there are so many emotional epiphanies and things that the universe was trying to show me that I think we all need to be reflecting on during this time. We are now getting back on the quote on quote swing of things and everyone’s looking for some semblance of normal and that’s what we’re trying to provide them. We have maintained the a’s of COVID free stance in marketing about keeping their health top of priority and making them remember that they’re health matters and we’re doing everything we can to keep them on course with virtual visits and supplement deliveries and all these things but it was also a huge time of reflection and there are a lot of people that shut down they’re practices to go completely online. We really merge to heavy into going into the online space and we never would have made this leap into virtual care, had it not been for to shut down but it was also a time for me to face some really important questions like letting go of one of the practices I have been in and I have a wonderful relationship with the owners and they basically gave me carte blanche to do whatever it is that I wanted to at that office but if I’m talking to you all bluntly, the one on one patient model in doing the day today is not where I shine. Since I’ve stepped into this leadership role, all of last year and continuing on into this year managing a team and having our daily huddles and supporting them and mentoring them and of course that stems into how the Maximize business has also grown. We went from making zero dollars to a six-figure run rate in a year because of how much I love being in that mentorship role and not doing the day-today stuff. So that one clinic was an anchor and if I’m being honest, the other clinic that I’m in feels still like an anchor, and that something that I’m pondering on to this year about hiring somebody else to run my old folk practice. I will still have one or two days to do virtual consultations but everybody else or all of my team will get the majority of the visits and that will allow me to for the first time in my career focus on really stepping up for one business and that’s you guys. You know, supporting you and advocating for you and being a pillar of strength for you is something that I’m just longing to be becoming full circle when everything shut down and I posted about this in social media I literally felt like my insides were black and decayed like everything was just gone and I’m so thankful for one my students in the maximize practitioners program, Stephanie. She’s an energetic healer and she’s an intuitive and a medical intuitive medical and she just said “nailed it!” she said “you have just been hemorrhaging” energetically hemorrhaging people are pulling on every energetic string that you have and they are taking all of your essences, your vitality that’s why you feel so shitty right now because that’s exactly what’s happening like imagine your body physically hemorrhaging that’s how I was feeling. And that also really made me sit and think about how I want to structure my business and how I want to show up to my business and while everyone talks about the financial goals, I completely loved being at home working minimal hours and still making enough money to be comfortable so that all of our bills are getting paid and I still have a little bit of savings and I actually really enjoyed that place. I enjoyed being able to give my husband for father’s day a golf membership because we still made a significant amount of money during the shutdown because I was managing my team and not needing to show up for the day to day and one of the things he’s always wanted since we got married was a golf membership and they’re not really as expensive as I thought they were, this one was like fifteen hundred dollars for the season and it’s a multi-course membership and I was so grateful that I got rid of a lot of that hoarding around money and the mindset around money and I educated people on this one we did our launch that just ended a couple of weeks ago about how money is really just this invisible entity that allows you to buy things, allows you to buy learning experiences, it allows you to buy education, it allows you to become a master in your field. It really has no bearing on anything that we do nor does it carry any weight but we as humans make that money mindset story of all and therefore the money is the center of all evil, money is the center of whether we are going to make a significant investment that is going to give us personal growth, business growth and give us that experience that we’re longing to have even if it is the worst possible outcome and the worst possible outcome is you’re just out the money that’s the worst possible outcome. The learning experience you will have from that is where the growth happens. And so a lot of what I was really working on was letting go of so many of those anchors that were really weighing me down. I know during this time a lot of people work strongly considering giving up their licenses. If maintaining a medical license is an anchor for you, then you need to really investigate why that’s the case. If staying in a brick and mortar is an anchor for you, then you need to investigate why that’s the case. And as I have done we made multiple podcasts about this including my I mean it was three podcast episodes that go Id interviewed Megan my associate who was an employee and runs my Caledonia office. We also have this belief that it’s all or nothing. That if you don’t want to practice in the building well then you have to sell it or you just walk away and I can tell you one hundred percent proof that there are ways for you to step up as a leader, hire people, and yes! It is an expense but I couldn’t imagine my life without that necessary expense and I’m supporting her, mentoring her, she’s getting her feet super wet with the analogy like she’s massively in the deep end but she has floaters on and she’s totally safe and secure and she’s just waiting in the water because of the experience that she’s getting and this is also my ability to give back to the community in a different way just like what’s probably going to transpire in the Oak Hill office so if any of you are in Oak Hill Ontario and looking for a job? Reach out to me because this is where I shine. So as things are reopening, as things are going back to quote and quote normal, I really want you to investigate what it is that you actually learned over the past four months. You probably learn a lot about how you respond to intense situations that you have no control over. You probably learned a lot about how much you like or dislike spending all day with your children. This week is the first week where my kids have been back in daycare and I could not be happier. I love my girls and they are just amazing but I’m not built that way. I’m not built to play with my kids and be the teacher, that is just not how my brain works. Luckily they’re both in well Ariel is now in grade one while Brooklyn is just starting JK so there wasn’t any massive amount of education that they needed to have but still the pressure as a parent to do all the things as the teacher said was definitely there and I had to give up on that, I had to make sure that they were learning in different ways so we downloaded some educational apps and we would go outside and play and those other things but maybe being at home with your family including your partner shined a light on how you are as a couple, how good your communication is, how you both deal under pressure. Scott and I crushed this entire transition. If there is one thing that I can take away from a marriage perspective is that the level of communication that we have, the lack of expectation that we have for each other, the lack of judgment that we have for each other. We talk about financials freely, we were open about our worries and our fears and our struggles, and never once did we get into a big fight or panic over anything because we just started to let go of all the things that we couldn’t control. So from a marriage perspective I’m in, Scott and I were an amazing team and really leaned into the environment that we had to and he stepped up massively for me. Luckily his season just started now so he was able to watch the girls so I could work in my office three or four days a week. So you know there’s a lot of things around that too that everybody has but it is also time for you to reflect on how did you show up for your audience, how did you show up for your patients, how did you show up for your business during this time. These are all things that I think you should reflect on and learn from them. So that now that we are basically getting this brand new start which is exactly what it feels like. It’s like a rebirth. You do things differently. You approach situations differently. You build a business structure that fulfills you when where you feel like you are in your zone of genius that you’re doing what you are meant to do and what makes you really happy and along with that I strongly encourage you to start working through your money mindset and really embrace the idea and it takes a while you are certainly not going to be like a changed person at the end of this podcast but I really want you to embrace the idea that money is so invisible and so intangible and you can create money from nothing. If you are willing to put the passion and the grit and the work behind it. We had three different elite members have four-figure launches in a week by sending out four emails. It doesn’t take a lot for you to make money appear out of thin air but it does take grit and focus and a plan and aligning with a mentor who gets it, and that’s what exactly we were doing with the elite mentor program. So that is my one ask of you is after this podcast while you are listening to this podcast episode. You’re reflecting on all of those things that we talk about is how you showed up for your business, how you showed up for your family, how you want to restructure things, what anchors do you want to get rid of. We went so far as to get rid of one of our daycare providers who I have not wanted to give my money to for over a year and I just said “Screw this. We are out”. There’s a lot of change that needed to happen. A lot of clean up that needed to happen and on so many different levels universally and I really love to hear from you on Instagram @AndreaMAximND. What some of those things were that you started to get rid of? What were the anchors that you got rid of? What are the changes that you are committing to make? And don’t just say that you are going to make that change you need to identify or capital becomes the person who just has those changes, who just doesn’t do those things. That’s all I want for you for the rest of the twenty and beyond. So I look forward to hearing from you on Instagram @AndreaMAximND or Facebook, Maximize Business and reach out and let me know how this podcast episode inspired you. Also, if there’s any way that I can support you during this rebirthing time, if I can be your mentor I can help you really plow through your to-do list like we’ve done for our elite members like we are getting a year, one to two years’ worth of dreams and ideas have done in three months with weekly mentorship and like really help you crush this year to feel that you are back in momentum. I want you to book a game plan call with me. The link is in the show notes and it is a thirty-minute call and we will breakdown what the pieces are in your business that you’re missing of course how I can help you get those pieces put it together so that you have a strong foundation to work with and support you with every step of the way. I’m Andrea Maxim and I’m out. 

You guys are killer! Thank you as always for listening to the profitable practice podcast. Leave me a comment and if you haven’t already, I would love a review on iTunes. Definitely! Subscribe to this podcast and leave me a quick review. For those ready to maximize practice, contact me at www.maximizedbusiness.ca.