Speaker 0:01

Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.

Guest Introduction: Dr. Aimee Duffy

Tom Jackobs 0:36

Ladies and gentlemen, gather round the heartwarming treat here that we have today On the Heart-Led Business Show, we have the delightful Aimee Duffy, the Visionary behind Functional Medicine collaborator. Now Picture Cupid, but instead of arrows, she's crafting connections between passionate nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and clinical pharmacists with understanding and support of supervising physicians. Together, they're igniting a revolution in integrative care. So join us as we dive into Dr. Aimee's journey of nurturing partnerships that allow patients to flourish. So welcome to the show, Aimee. I'm really excited to have you here today.

Aimee Duffy 1:18

Is awesome.

Tom Jackobs 1:19

Well, great. And, and you know, we've been friends and you've been a client of mine for six years now, I think, and I've just love watching your growth throughout. And of course you have another episode on the Heart-Led Business Show as well, talking about your main business.

Defining a Heart-Led Business

Tom Jackobs 1:35

But of course, I always ask the first question, which is, what's your definition of a heart-led business?

Aimee Duffy 1:42

I think, it's really interesting as I ponder that question right, and go into it, is I forget that I own a business sometimes. Like, you know, I just feel like not a business person. I remember being in residency and I was like an intern and there were these third year residents getting ready to graduate and they were presenting this business idea that they have, that they were gonna go open their own business. This is family practice doctors. And I was just like, how do they even know what they're talking about? Like I just was as an intern, all you care about is, the medicine part of things anyway, and learning what you needed to learn. And at that point I had baby number one and was pregnant with baby number two. So I was also just in this world of how do I find time to do all the things. So initially going into medicine, I had no idea about business. I had almost an aversion to talking about business, thinking about business. I was like, I just wanna focus on the patient and not worry about anything else and let somebody else take care of whether the business is gonna be functioning or successful. Just gimme my paycheck and let me go do my thing. And interestingly, I think in that scenario multiple things happened. But I was in a private practice, but not really involved in the business, although as a partner, so I got to see some of the numbers and whatnot, but I didn't really, wasn't involved in decision making and things until that business said, Hey, we're looking to get bought out by the hospital. I think it's gonna be better for us. Financially they can manage all the numbers and stuff and we can go do what we wanna do. And then I was like, that sounds like I'm gonna be owned by somebody. I've seen other friends and colleagues that were working for, the big hospital system and. I just knew that wasn't the way that, that I wanted to practice

Building a Patient-Centered, Heart-Driven Practice

Aimee Duffy 3:20

medicine. And this was all during a timeframe when I was starting to do this hormone, bioidentical hormones and integrated functional medicine. So I was doing tests that were not traditional tests that were part of the hospital system. When I opened my practice, it was not because I think I can make a lot more money. It was more I wanted to have freedom to be able to do what I felt was right for the patients. And when I opened that practice, and it's so funny, like even we were celebrating 15 years this fall. So we were reflecting on that at our team meeting that we had, first, first week back in January after holidays and whatnot, we went around the room and just talked about, what our gratitude was and sort of growth opportunity for this year. And I was just tearful. I'm like, for 15 years, I've been here hanging out and when I hear you guys go around the room and how grateful you are for the job that you have, for the impact that you have on people, and that's what my team of, I think we have 12 people right now. It seems like it comes waves of more and less, depending on how many interns we have really is what happens. To me, I wanted a place, and I say this all the time, like stress is not allowed in our practice. Like we, we have to practice what we preach. So, it can be busy and it can be, lots of things happening and you're multitasking and you walk away and you go, wow, that was a busy day, but it should never be a negative stressful day. I want people to love coming to work and if we have that feeling about what we're doing, then we're going to, be in a much better place to take care of our patients when they come in. They're gonna see how much we enjoy what we're doing, I've seen it over and over, traditional medicine where everybody is just miserable and. It mean to each other and mean to the patients, and very short. And I don't have time for anything else, but, giving you a quick, direct answer. And so that's when we look at our testimonial videos, you get the chance to see those all the time. And that's what the patients talk about, is like the staff, the, they make you feel like your family. They make you feel loved. And, that really comes naturally. Like it comes naturally with the people that we choose to be part of our team. And that's really what, what I built this business around is like we need to be 110% when we're here for the patients and for ourselves. And that's what our focus is. I said, I forget it's a business sometimes it's like I know that there are experts in the field of that are helping me manage my business so that, I can make informed decisions and do what's right for the business. Because you can't help people if you don't have a business that is functional and stable. I can't afford these amazing team if I didn't have, some revenue coming in, that helps us.

Tom Jackobs 5:56

That's a great, not just definition, but explanation and demonstration of what a heart-led business really is all about. And you put it perfectly in terms of making those patients feel loved and heard and understood in an environment where unfortunately, 99% of the people don't feel loved and heard and understood, and I think when you put your heart into it, it just, it shows and your practice has grown tremendously and what I've visioned over the last six years and it's just so refreshing to watch. But I can totally understand why it's happened, because of that heart that you've put in the leadership that you've put in as well.

Aimee Duffy 6:41

You've met my team, right? And they all present the same way. They love their job, they love what they do, and it's not just a means to an end and a, clock in, clock out. I've done my, my checklist of things for the day. Generally, if there is somebody that happens into that environment. They work themselves out pretty quickly. I'm not over here going, eh, you're fired, you suck. But they end up going, this, this is not the job I was looking for. 'cause it's not always easy. It's fun, it's fun and it's very rewarding. But it's a hard job too. And anytime we're doing something that's helping with health, it's gonna be challenging at times and you have to find a way to, to bring that emotion in. One of the skills you have to learn as a caregiver, I think, is not to take it all home with you at the same time. So you gotta find that balance.

Tom Jackobs 7:26

Yeah. Yeah.

The Origin of Functional Medicine Collaborator

Tom Jackobs 7:28

So how are you taking this your heart-led approach to the new venture function medicine collaborator? And maybe give a little background on what that is for those that may not understand.

Aimee Duffy 7:38

I should count how many years, but somewhere around four, five years ago I was approached by a chiropractor that I know that's a good friend of mine and their office manager, and they wanted to hire they're in Charlotte, so farther away not anywhere near me. They wanted to hire a nurse practitioner to come in and support their business and asked if I would be the supervising physician. So for those that don't know, nurse practitioners are RNs that go and get extra training and they're actually called practitioners. Like they can see patients, they can write prescriptions. But in most states, they are required to have a supervising physician or some, it's also called a collaborating physician so that they have some support system in place to bounce off questions. Just be supervised by a medical doctor. And I have nurse practitioners working in my practice that's, who, who helps me see all the patients that we have. And so I was like, great idea. I wanna help support you and you guys can take care of patients by, giving them prescriptions for hormone cream or thyroid, medication as needed along with the chiropractor stuff that you're doing. So it makes total sense. So I hung out there for a while and then they hired another one. So then it was like, can you do two? Then I was like, okay. And so it turned into this interestingly, then the referrals start happening. This wasn't a job that I was like out there advertising or marketing for. I now have 10 practitioners that I supervised in North and South Carolina. What's interesting about it is it turned into me helping somebody else and helping them to. If I'm only one person, I can see so many patients a day, and then my team can also only see so many patients a day. But if I can, support another practitioner who's then exponentially seeing, hundreds more patients because of the support that I'm giving them. It's like this could grow.

The Matchmaking Model & Community Approach

Aimee Duffy 9:28

And because of the current practice that I have and what I've learned along the way is that systems in efficiency is really important, is I created this community. So one of the requirements for supervision is that you have to meet on a monthly basis. While I'm like, I don't have time to meet all of these, one-on-one in my world, like that's a lot of time, to have nine hours a month that I would need to support them. So I was like, let's just all meet and have the same, one-on-one meeting once a month. And so they all come, we have a zoom meeting where everybody's there, we're sharing, ideas and they're bringing cases and it just becomes a conversation and they're learning from each other and it's just been an amazing opportunity and experience. And so my first thought process is I can do more, let me go get licensed in tech, 'cause I'll get questions. I have a friend who's in Texas, can you do this in Texas? I'm not licensed in Texas. I gotta go get a Texas license and then I have to go get a Georgia license and a Florida license. And then you start running into things like, Georgia has a requirement that the supervising physician must physically practice in Georgia. And I'm in South Carolina, so I can't be. A supervisor for Georgia. So then I'm like, well, I need to find somebody who can help in Georgia. And so hence what happens is the matchmaking system of functional medicine collaborator where the, what happens, and let me go back for just a second is that along the way other things have happened. So this supervising physician thing has happened. And then on another note is, success leaves clues. We've just talked about that. And so I have become in a lot of groups where I was initially there as a mentee, learning from coaches and people. And then after, three years of being in that group, it becomes, Hey, can you come teach us about this? Can you do a webinar about that? Can you come to our next retreat and talk to our people about how you do things in your practice? And then a very close colleague of mine started a practitioner training program to help these, either MDs or nurse practitioners who want to start their own business and do what we're doing. Let's learn from those mistakes that we made and help them do it quickly and much more successfully in the beginning. So, she says, Hey, can you come teach in my practitioner training program? And so that has happened. During that timeframe, we've got all these nurse practitioners that are learning more and more about functional and integrative medicine. This side of medicine is really growing and you've been to our conferences where we're getting, this conference that we put on every year. Started at, maybe 30, 50 people that showed up the first time. And then, we're expecting 200 plus this year. That's growing. Other conferences I've been to started, in the fifties, hundreds, and they have thousands now, like a four M is a huge one. So this is growing and what's happening is that it's almost outgrowing the system where these nurse practitioners get all this training and are ready to start and take care of these patients in a way that is gonna be more supportive to their optimal outcomes. And they can't find supervising physicians who speak this language, who understand what we're doing. So they go, oh we don't do hormone replacement therapy 'cause there's this big, still x although it's getting better. But hormone replacement is like this weird thing, or we don't know about, nutritional IVs or we don't know about supplements to support cholesterol or gut health, all that kind of stuff. We just refer people to the specialist and they take care of it. We don't know about autoimmune disease and whatever. So they are struggling with having either somebody that they can ask case questions to, or somebody who just is willing to be their supervisor at all. You're over there doing woohoo stuff and we don't trust that. We don't know. We don't have any education in that, so we can't help you. And so they're ready to open their businesses and they can't legally because they don't have a supervising physician. It just fell into my lap. The universe says Here you have a new job. You help these practitioners so that they can help see as many more patients as we can. And that's always been my thing when I'm on podcasts. And, I don't like the term marketing. This is not about marketing, it's about education. It's about letting people know that there's a better way out there to optimize your health and if I'm on a podcast that somebody hears in California or Minnesota, wherever they are, hopefully they can take the language we're saying and they can go find a practitioner in their area that can help them. And to me, that's, that's where my heart is, right? That's a legacy that I'm trying to share is, how many lives can I touch exponentially that don't always have to be the one-on one-on-one patient right in front of me. So that's really where, is this grown. And put it out there and said February 1st I'm launching this business and so let's see what happens. And it's happening. We've got matches being made, we've got, you know, medical doctors that are coming and saying, this is really cool, I wanna help. And we've got practitioners that are over here going, I need your help. And it's becoming a place where I can support them without it taking extra time and energy away from, my mental capacity to do all the things. 'cause I don't wanna be stressed and overload, work overload. We gotta still have a good work life balance. Creating the systems and helping people make those connections, is really what it's all about.

Tom Jackobs 14:37

And that's great. And what a way of, you know, exponentially getting your reach out there as well through, through others. And the fact that you're doing the group coaching, I think that's absolutely brilliant and really beneficial for the other practitioners that your mentee, your mentees if you will, because not only are they learning from you, but they're learning from each other as well.

Aimee Duffy 14:59

The other MDs that are part of our group are all coming, we're all coming to the same meeting, so they bring their own expertise in something that maybe I don't have expertise in. And so I'm learning from them. Everybody's learning from them. And everybody has their own sort of interest, right? And what they really wanna focus on in.

Tom Jackobs 15:14

Wow.

Aimee Duffy 15:14

And yeah, it's been absolutely fabulous and interestingly, if we just, we're doing our individual meetings and going by the rules, a lot of it is you have to meet monthly for the first six months, and then it's twice a year after that. And we would have no connection at all. And these people that have been with me two, three years, they come every single month and they're like, I'll see you on the next meeting. We're building this little community. And, they come to the conferences that, that we're all involved in. We're getting ready to go on the BHRT, symposium at Sea Cruise, literally tomorrow, leaving for that. and, several of 'em are gonna be there. So it becomes this, again, this community where we're friends and we get to hang out with each other outside of work too. So it's really just been a fun, exciting.

Tom Jackobs 15:54

Yeah.

Aimee Duffy 15:55

Growth prop, whatever you wanna call it. It's just, it's fun. When you're doing what you love, then it doesn't feel like work.

Tom Jackobs 16:01

Yeah, that sounds

Scaling Impact Without Burnout

Tom Jackobs 16:02

great. So how are you, working with them to bring the heart into it? Or is that even by design? Like because you are who you are, so you bring your heart anyway.

Aimee Duffy 16:13

I just had a call, yesterday with a new nurse practitioner and they're just like, thank you so much for doing what you're doing. It's like that again I'm just led to do this. It fell into my lap and I'm like, people are asking me, I might as well do something with it. And I wanted to build it to where I was very nervous about creating. Like I said, I don't wanna be averse to work by any means, but I didn't, I don't wanna create burnout for myself, right? And so I went, what happens a year from now, two years from now when I have 50 nurse practitioners that I'm, that feel obligated to me and then, or I'm obligated to them and then I get burned out and I don't want that, I want, I wanna continue to have this, this ability to help as many people as I possibly can and not feel too stretched thin. And so that was a huge part of this decision making process and how to do this is structuring it that way. And don't know if I'm answering your question, but it's because this sort of fell into my lap and it's if I have this thought process, then surely there's others out there. And I really wanna say that most practitioners that I meet, doctors, all practitioners that are in functional integrative medicine, we all have the same heart. We all are like we, we are here to help people. And the system is keeping us from being able to do that. The traditional medical system. Everybody goes into medicine I'm sure because they wanna help people, that's, you, you ask medical, pre-med students going into medicine. Why do you wanna do what you do? Nobody's there to say, I wanna make a lot of money. 'cause that's I heard doctors make a lot of money. It's not about that. It's about

Tom Jackobs 17:41

Yeah,

Aimee Duffy 17:41

learning the skills to be able to really help people and impact their lives. And these skills are being learned and yet they get depleted, for lack of a better word, where they get put into a box where you can only use your skillset in this certain way. And if it doesn't match the timeframe that we're requiring or what insurance will cover, then you can't do that. And so

Tom Jackobs 18:03

right.

Aimee Duffy 18:04

practitioners, again, that are getting out they're doing what I did 15 years ago. They're getting out of that system. They're saying no to that. I wanna take care of my patients in a better way. And so these practitioners are wanting to open their own practice to have the freedom to be able to take care of their patients in this way. And that's where, I'm on these trajectories of, okay, let's support them by supervising, let's support them in the business coaching world. We support them clinically with our conferences and all the travel that I do to teach at these conferences from a clinical perspective to help them understand how do we do hormones and how do we do immune system and gut support. It just shows, it's just who I am and what I do. So it's not really that hard.

Tom Jackobs 18:45

You're a magnet to it as well. So it, like minds come together like people, so I love that.

How to Get Involved with FMC

Tom Jackobs 18:51

How can people learn more about, the work and get involved if either they're an MD or they're a nurse practitioner.

Aimee Duffy 18:59

That we've made it super easy. So we created a website. It's functionalmedicinecollaborator.com. I know it's a long word, that's just how it works to hopefully define who we are and what we're trying to accomplish. But we've got all the information on there and on the website, depending on who you are. Are you a nurse practitioner, physician assistant, or clinical pharmacist who's gotten some training in this world then? You click that button and there's some information you can fill out there so we can get to know you a little bit better and learn what connections you need. And then if you're an MD and this, speaks to you and you want, you wanna do this. And I think, the other thing is that if you wanna talk about the money for a second, again, there's success there in, in just the support that you're doing and we value you and your time and your level of expertise. And if you follow the system and you have a group coach call once a month and you have to sign, some charts, maybe it's two hours a month of your time. And if all of them come together at the same time, then exponentially you can have this little side gig that can support. Either paying the bills or hopefully, something that you love. If you wanna go on vacation or you wanna, buy a new car or whatever it is do something fun. Like we're, we're so bogged down, especially practitioners that are in the business side of things, when you spend so much time stressed, and especially in these ones that are just in, in the hamster wheel, and they're just like. I can't take any time off of work and I can't, I can't exercise because I've gotta chart more and I've gotta do all this stuff and it's just how can we help everybody? Be more efficient and create a system. And from an MD perspective, it's a super easy way to bring your knowledge and your experience into the world, just like I've said, and exponentially help that many more people. But it's also gonna be a good, a good monetary support for you from, from another second job if you want to think about it. So many people go get a second job, and it's like urgent care, moonlighting at the ER, which is not. Uh, stress free.

Tom Jackobs 20:55

That's not a good job.

Aimee Duffy 20:56

It's not the second job that you want to help you, pay the bills if you're trying to make these, this business work, so I built this to be very clear, and very, Supportive to people. Each side fills out their information and then, we look at it and we match, states that, that require that. So the MD is licensed in this state, then NP, wants to work in that state. So we match 'em by state, we match 'em by skillset. What are you, what do you wanna do? Are you doing Botox and aesthetics in addition to your. other stuff. Do you have an IV bar? Are you doing, ozone therapy, which is very popular, HBOT or, hyperbaric oxygen. There's all these things that, these practitioners are learning and have the skills to do and we need the doctors that, can help them.

Tom Jackobs 21:36

Yeah. No that's great. Yeah. We'll put that down in the show notes as well to make sure that everybody gets that.

Advice for Heart-Led Founders

Tom Jackobs 21:42

Is there any last words of advice that you would give to somebody that wants to start a heart-led business, but might be a little bit afraid of doing it?

Aimee Duffy 21:50

I think, what I've learned a lot throughout the years and through support, is a huge part of that. I could have so many advice, but, to some degree you, you don't wanna make a silly, impulsive mistake. But if your heart is led to do something it's like, when it's scary is when it's great, or you're your, life begins where your comfort zone ends to some degree. So it's like you get this gut feeling that I should do this. This sounds like it would be a good thing. It's where I'm led. But then you get, your brain gets in the way and says, what if, what if I can't do it? What if this, what if that? And so 100% off the bat is if that's where you're led, jump off the diving board right? Get in there and go all in and all in really means to me, get the mentorship, get the coaching, get the support system in place. Pay the highest dollar that you need to for your accountant. Don't try to do, my number one like mistake that I made is like thinking that, oh, we'll manage the books ourself and just have the cheap dude accountant. Not that he wasn't cheap, just pay for them to do your taxes at the end of the year. I have no idea what I'm doing. And, whether this is an expense or a whatever, I've learned all these tools along the way. You wanna make the right decision and have a, not just the most expensive accountant, but, if they have a program that says, we'll do all the things for you, then let them do all the things for you, and you go do the job that you know how to do best. So, you know, have the support system in place. Get mentors, get coaching, you do a lot of coaching and sales and our team has really benefited from that. And that, again we're in this to support our patients, but we also have to have a new skill set that is how to talk about money. Because doctors don't know how to talk about money. We're not really taught that. it can be very uncomfortable because we're all like in the insurance model where we don't really talk about that or we try to, do what the insurance wants us to do and not what we think is best for you. And so that's a, that's another skillset. If somebody's looking into this business and their heart is led, and they go, I really want to do this, but I would say do it with support, and that's what's really gonna make it the most successful for you and the most freeing is knowing that you have a team, a team of experts around you that, that aren't gonna let you fail.

Tom Jackobs 24:02

I love that you said that too. Getting an expert and, and you know, from my own experience and talking to hundreds of entrepreneurs as well. Initially you always, I always thought, oh, I don't wanna spend that much money for a mentor. But, looking back, I probably spent 10 times that failing at stuff and losing money in the first six months of business I could have saved all that money and headache. Had I invested in a good coach or mentor, you know, the one, the one thing that I did write was I hired an accountant to set up the books from the very start and that was probably the best investment that I made so.

Aimee Duffy 24:39

I agree. Well, I didn't do that initially.

Support Systems, Mistakes & Key Lessons

Aimee Duffy 24:41

And it's, um, led to, we've talked about this story before and it goes into all kinds of other things, but we, I filed for bankruptcy in 2020, not, multiple things happened, which was, a not medical malpractice lawsuit, but a lawsuit from that that office that I was in, in the OBGYN, because they had, they did not end up getting bought out by the hospital system because the value of the practice was not there. And so the practice the doctors that I left let it just fall apart and they just close the door. And so there was a significant that left on the building and some loans that the business had endured that I didn't know about. But because I was assigned partner, I was responsible for some of that debt. And again, I didn't know going into a partnership that, that, that was a possibility. You just assumed this business is doing well. And so again, had I had a lawyer that might have looked at my stuff and, helped me and I didn't know any of that. I was very naive back then. and we all are, when we first start something you can't know, until you've learned it. So again, the things that I've learned along the way is get that support system in place. Have some legal person look at all, all your stuff, all your documents, that sort of thing. more so to be on the safe side. We don't have to live in a world of fear by any means, that being said, been there, done that.

Tom Jackobs 26:03

You wanna learn from other people's mistakes.

Aimee Duffy 26:05

You know, that can help you avoid those mistakes is really what we're looking for. So, you know, in the functional medicine collaborator space, not only are we making, matchmaking, but we have all these levels of, of, if you wanna call it affiliate support, right? Somebody says, how do I do this? How do I do that? Here's the person we use for malpractice that is, speaks the language that understands functional integrative medicine. Use them. Here's, if you need training because you're opening your own practice and you don't know what to do, then go do practice launch with Deb Matthew. If you need support in, in marketing and nurturing your leads, guess where they go? I have a pretty little link that says Business Lead Maximizer, right? So we got all these support systems in place, right? For people when they ask a question, how do I do this? How do I do that? We have, already created this network and this support system there too. So that's another part. Another level of this matchmaking, business and collaboration businesses is, it's hard to trust when you go Google something.

Tom Jackobs 27:02

Oh, that's so important.

Aimee Duffy 27:04

Is this gonna be Good or not? And it's relationships that I've created right over the last 15 years. And really, like you said, after, uh, COVID changed everything, and I think in a good way. We all hated it and it was horrible. But, know, I met you because of COVID. I met, um, Ignite Marketing because of COVID, because we had to regroup what we were doing. And All transitioned a little bit and it's been all for the better.

Tom Jackobs 27:27

Yeah and having those connections too just helps accelerate the growth of the people that you're helping as well, which is exactly what they need. That's, what the clients need and that ultimately the patients need as well.

Aimee Duffy 27:39

If your business is running smoothly. You're not stressed out. You have the clinical knowledge, but you also have the business support. All of that's gonna funnel down to what you really wanna do is sit there in front of the patient and help them understand what's going on with them and help them, have a better life. And that's really what we want.

Tom Jackobs 27:57

Yeah, that's awesome.

Closing Reflections & Episode Outro

Tom Jackobs 27:59

Well, Aimee, thank you so much for spending the time with us today. We went a little bit over, but you know, this has been a great conversation and, and thank you for sharing your, your bits of nuggets, your nuggets of, of wisdom and, everything that you're doing to support the community and make people healthier as well. So I, I really appreciate you.

Aimee Duffy 28:17

Thank you for having this platform that helps us grow and stay in that heart-centered space too. It's awesome.

Tom Jackobs 28:22

Yeah. Absolutely. And thank you listeners for watching or listening to the show today, depending on what platform you're on, I really do appreciate it and make sure you're checking out everything that Dr. Duffy's doing, and I'm gonna put all those links down into the show notes as well. So it just makes it very easy for you to click on there and check out, the new program. and also while you're down there, if you could do me a favor and if you see a review button, that'd be really great if you could give the show a rating and review. It just helps spread the word about the Heart-Led Business Show and helps more people realize that you can have a heart in business and make money at the same time. That's the whole point of the show. So until next time, lead with your heart.

Speaker 2 29:05

You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.