Written by Christopher Kelly
Oct. 14, 2016
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Chris: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly. And today, I have for you the audio from a recent Webinar that talked to tell me about an idea on functional medicine training. We have a bunch of people live on the Webinar. A mixture of licensed and unlicensed practitioners who are interested in getting into the field of functional medicine.
And we answer that questions and we talked about our business strategy and we talked about marketing. And we talked about our education. And I hope it’s really helpful to you. Let me know in the comments on the show notes of this Podcast if it was helpful for you. And maybe we’ll do another one of these Webinars in the future. Thank you.
Hi everyone! Thank you very much for joining us for this Webinar. I’m very excited to be here. We wanted to do this question and answer session because we get asked all the time about functional medicine training and what other vast training courses to do and what career options should I take?
And I realized that I get that question so often that I should either record or video or write down the answer or have a session with everyone and answer some of those questions.
So, why don’t we start by talking about how you got into this thing, medicine in the first place Tommy? What inspired you to get into medicine in the first place?
Tommy: The honest answer is that I was finishing my biochemistry degree or is natural sciences course. Lots of different biomedical sciences, physiology, biochemistry and pharmacology, things like that. I didn’t know what to do next. I had a spot on a master’s course at Cambridge. A friend of mine said “Oh I think I’m going to apply for medicine”. I said “Oh yeah, okay”.
But, it was slightly more involved than that because I had… growing as a kid I had a lot of… sort of, weight issues and things like, not really terrible but enough to sort of have nurses who I lettered to my parents about my weight and things like that. And I have sort of, found my own road through eating better and actually teaching myself how to move and so some exercise and of course, all of it was excessive because that’s what teenage boys do.
But I sort of figured out some of my own path and kind of figured that somewhere down the line of training in Med so I could then help other people do that too.
Of course you then figure out that medical school teaches you absolutely nothing about any of that. But that was sort of the motivation and the reason I go to medicine in the first place.
Chris: Okay. Yeah you can see that this is very different. So this has happened to me before. When I was in the university, I did… I went into university with undergraduate degree in electronics. And I’d already worked the recession’s development department and the local electronics company.
And during that time there, I realized that what I really wanted to do was computer science. So when I showed up at the university, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and why I was doing it. And I lived with a whole bunch of guys that were doing aeronautics and astronautics.
And the only reason they were doing that degree was because it began with –A. And it was on the first page of the prospectors. They really have no clue. And for me, I think that education is a bit asked backwards in that way. You kind of think “Ooh, I would quite like to do…” and then, once you got in the real world, you just cover whether or not you have that problem.
And the same thing happened to me with functional medicine. I didn’t get into because one day, I took a fancy to it. “Oh, this sounds interesting. Maybe I need a career change.” I got into it because I was feeding like it and I want to figure out why.
And the diet piece, the PEDIA diet specifically was really, really helpful to me and once I got my brain working, I though wow, what else is possible. And I was listening to a ton of podcast at that time and I heard Dan Calash talked about functional medicine. And I worked with him quite briefly, did some of his test, and didn’t have a tare of a lot of awful lot of interaction with him.
But at the end of the session of working with him, or the period of time working with him, I was so in amid with the changed that he had facilitated in me. I just had to know how it worked. So it’s kind of a very different situation. You’ve got very problem-driven.
And so that’s why I did the Calash mentorship. And it’s an online training course that you can do. But of course it still doesn’t bridge the gap with what you know Tommy right? Like you’re not ready to start practicing medicines after doing the Calash training course. So can you talk a bit about how you became licensed and the type of work that you did as a doctor in UK after you finished medical school?
Tommy: Yes so it’s basically a fairly standardized. And I think, it’s slightly more standardized in the US because in the US, usually by the time you finish medical school from the way I understand it from the people I know that have been to medical school here is that you go into an internship and you already have an idea of what you want to specialize it.
So you’ve already sort of, semi-specialized towards the end of the medical school. Whereas in the UK when you come out, it’s still very general and then you go into 2 years of post-graduate rotations basically, that cover everything. So I did internal medicine and quite a bit of surgery. I did some outwardly carol, geriatrics or whatever you want to call it. So people mainly overt sort of, BH to 75. And I did some accidental medicine. So a bit of everything.
And then from there you start specializing. That was the point where actually I went and started my PhD. So I’ve done sort of like the basic grounding and rotated most with different departments. But had like actually finally specialized yet.
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But I think that that’s the way I view it is growing for as long as possible because then you go into your future career with a wider grounding and a wider experience. Up and the road from leaving medical school to become a consulting or attending or whatever you call them in your medical system. It’s lightly longer in the UK because the training system just takes a little bit longer.
Chris: How did you become interested in functional medicine?
Tommy: Yeah so I… that came from various stages. First, I guess it came through kind of fairly old diet, kind of fear as well. So I first learned about the fairly old diet when I was coaching rowers, Cambridge and Oxford. And I was sort of looking at various ways to train people who came across the cross-fit and then all sort of payload stuffs, some of Rob Wolves things.
And that sort of just got me thinking more of about the biochemistry of how our food and lifestyle essentially are going to affect out health. Which wasn’t really something that you talk about much at medical school. We talk much more about acute illnesses and chronic illnesses and how we intervene once they’ve already develop rather than how to intervene before they develop right?
So that kind of got me thinking about it. And then I’ve got into a work with some family member that looking at the system analysis which is an engineering method to sort of deconstruct the course of multiple scores because my step brother has multiple scores.
UK basically built this big system as a big map for the interrupting courses and obviously most of them far from genetic ones that we can determine how much control and most of them are environmental dietary toxin based. Some of these are anatomical things as well.
And that kind of got me into looking at methylation cycles, vitamins and the importance of medical processes, the effects of environmental toxins and that. So then essentially, that’s kind of where functional medicine starts to come from right? That’s where people start to look at. They’ll start to look at that end.
And then when I started my PhD, I just had time to… even though my PhD is sort of, separate from them. So I have time to dig into the research actually, really sort of get into it. And then start my blog and podcast and met you. And then I could sort of start over to really apply that to people.
Because I see a lot of people out there who have great knowledge and have researched a huge amount of stuff and concise acres so the cows come home. But they haven’t actually worked with the person to apply that right? It’s also very…
And I was like that for a good period of time. I happily admit it. You actually need to go out there and actually work with people to figure out whether the theories are well and good but until it actually helps somebody to feel better, it’s essentially useless.
Chris: And as a classically trained physician, do you think that you need to do a functional medicine training course because you haven’t done one right? You figure this whole thing out. You figure out this organic acid. You figure out the Dutch test. You figured out blood chemistry. You figured out the stool testing. There’s really nothing that your education didn’t help you with for the functional medicine piece.
But do you think it’s necessary for a classically trained physician to just do functional training medicine?
Tommy: I think actually, yes. And I would give the answer to most people but purely because from what I’ve learned in my training. So blood chemistry and analysis, we do quite a lot of basic blood tests. Most of the blood test, we do and then also, some of the other things that we may be looked at but probably like we thought that podcast analysis on the podcast and like how you look at your asset based and things like that.
So some of that stuff, you’ll definitely learn. But then all of the other things, in terms of looking at like the organic acids, that’s just based on what I have retain from my degree in terms of biochemistry and then build on top of that.
So nothing that I learned from my medical degree about how to interpret an internal acids test. This kind of have been a trial and error in terms of how you then apply the basic knowledge you have to the test result in front of you. And anybody could do that.
But I have benefited from working with you and got into some of the knowledge that you’ve learned from the functional medicine course. If I had been doing this all by myself, I probably would have done something like Chris-cross of adapted course. Something like that, just to kind of give me some kind of direction in terms of applying what I knew in medical school to that kind of functional word because it’s not necessarily a bad intuitive.
We’re definitely taught at medical school where all of the stuff that we do in functional medicine doesn’t have any negligence behind it actually helping right? So, we have to kind of… though there are some steps to navigate in there any maybe learning and doing in courses or learning from somebody you actually trust their experience in terms of applying the patients would be beneficial.
Chris: Right and I think the difference between our educations is mine was top-down right? So I went in with the problem. I did the Calash mentorship. I actually did his advanced training as well where he taught exclusively about the organic acids. But in that training, it was very kind of “Oh well, if this market is high, then it means this. And if this market is low, it means that.” And there was never really much discussion of the biochemistry that underpins the test result.
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So you kind of have this, trust him almost and what has been incredibly helpful for me is going back in doing brainwashes, metabolic fitness pro where he’s just teaching basic biochemistry and then I also went even lower than that and spend some time doing chemistry on the com academy.
And then the understanding of those things, the organic acids, suddenly… I didn’t have to remember stuffs. Like I wasn’t constantly looking at the manual thinking, “Wait, what are lactate and pyruvic again? I don’t remember”.
So I think there’s a problem with these functional medicine training courses for that reasons right? But even I’m pretty sure the Chrysler is also not teaching the basic biochemistry. So for anybody that hasn’t done those things already, I think they can run into a problem.
Tommy: Yeah, so then the next step for most people is going to be filling the gap right? So depending on where you come from, if you are somebody who has like some of the basic biomedical things maybe, like premed in college or you’ve done some basic biochemistry, physiology. And then do some kind of course to them and fill in the gap since I have to supply that all for people who have just done some of the functional stuffs. Maybe they’ve done FDN or they’ve done payload of whatever.
They need to go back potentially in a few hours. I’ve actually learning what underpins the results of the tests they’re doing particularly because I think… and a lot of things that we’ve ended up doing, you almost ignore… so everything gives you most of the problems will give you a renounce. “Well this is low, this is high. Give the supplements. Take this whatever”.
And what will I… we get to take what we want to do there now. Right? You just listen to it. But I think a lot of… because between the 2 of us, we have all the information that we know how we want to understand those results. But anybody starting out would just be tempted to rely on the output, the recommendations on the test, which honestly aren’t bad things. But often involves sending a patient thousands of dollars of supplements.
Chris: Ha-ha yeah alright. And it works until it doesn’t work right? One time you’re going to get the difficult person and then you’ll just be completely stuck and you don’t know what to do.
Tommy: Yeah, absolutely.
Chris: But let’s… I want to really give encouragement to the unlicensed practitioner of any type that might be watching this video because I would say and maybe you correct me on this… that how much of the benefit that comes from our programs comes through diet and lifestyle modification. There’s really nothing to do with medicine or diet analysis at all. It’s all stuff that everybody’s probably doing. But they really aren’t.
Tommy: Yeah, probably most of it.
Chris: It’s true isn’t it?
Tommy: And obviously, you and I enjoy and many other people I know. Some of you or whoever are listening now or would end up in this thing would really enjoy getting into this sort of, the really geeky side of the biochemistry on this sign of how the body works, how it interacts with the environment.
In reality, fixing the weary people interact with the environment or what they’re actually doing, that lifestyle choice on a daily basis, most of which probably is may be even in common sense that people is spending a lot of time in this world. But just nobody… the average person in the world isn’t doing it. And it doesn’t… all they need is a coach and someone to help them do that.
And you don’t necessarily need to understand the pathways of ketone metabolism say, to help somebody to that. I know that’s absolutely right. You need to help people sleep better, improve their relationship with food, improve their, maybe movement or stress management. All those things and it does need a requirement of the degree.
Chris: Yeah, right. Absolutely. So if I was to start this again, I’d be tempted to I don’t know… I pretty, I love the biochemistry and the geeky test. But if all I cared about with making people feel good and running a successful business. I’d be really tempted to do Mark Simpson’s Primal Health Coach qualification where that’s all you do right?
You just get people to do all these things that they’re should be doing anyway but they’re not. And I’m sure that you’ll get fantastic results. And you think, it does happen the other way around. So you’ve got over-qualified physicians, medical doctors and all they do is prescribe a low-carb diet right?
Here’s the diet sheet, you eat less than 30 grams of carbs per day. And that’s a really, really successful medical practice and they’re not really doing medicine at all. If anything, they’re taking people off the prescription drugs. So you know that a strategy like this can work and that’s so much simple than the primal health coach.
Tommy: Yeah, we often joke about this. There’s a lot of low-carb practice. I mean they’re doing brilliant work and really helping people. But you’ll order $5,000 worth of fancy blood tests. And then the answer is go low-carb anyway. So if you’re not somebody who has access to order somebody in those test you go skip on the middle man right? And you probably save the patient or the client some money and so.
Chris: Well I think at this point, we better start inviting some questions from people because that’s probably why those people have attended live here. So if you can type your questions in the chat box in the right hand side, I don’t want to totally dominate this with just an interview with Tommy although I’d love to do that. I almost love it Tommy.
We do actually have some specific questions about functional diagnostic and nutrition which is one of the training courses that I did that we could get into. But maybe we could just wait on a couple of seconds to see if any questions appear in the chat box.
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What people typically want to know is which training course should I do. Should I do the Calash method? Or should I do functional diagnostic nutrition? And when I did those training courses the decision was more difficult. And I think it’s gotten easy enough because I believe that Dan Calash is no longer taking unlicensed practitioners. So that kind of narrows down your choices.
Both training courses have gotten more expensive but Calash’s training is now very, very expensive I think. It’s now $12,000 I would say.
Tommy: I think the adapt course, Chris-cross’s one is similar and that you need some kind of qualification and already as an entry-point. So that basically leave you with FDN and obviously I haven’t done it and you have so you could obviously tell people about the pros and cons of it.
Chris: Yeah so the reason that I did the diagnostic nutrition course and if I had said this before rolling, I think Reed Davis who’s the man organizing that course would not have let me on. So what happened was felt shit, changed my diet, felt good, did functional medicine, felt even better, desperately wanted to know how it works, once I understood a little bit of how it works I really wanted to start a business.
I’ve always have a passion of starting a business ever since I was a graduate. And this really drove it really hard. And I realized, after I’ve done the Calash mentorship, I have no way to order these tests that was so intriguing to me right, especially this new test.
You need to be a licensed physician in order to order that test. And I knew that the functional diagnostic nutrition training plan course rather, they have this medical direct program so that once you’ve finished and gotten your certificate, they would allow you to order the test through the licensed doctor.
And that was the main reason that I did the course which is probably not a good reason like I said, Reed wouldn’t have let me on if I have said that now. But having said that, I really enjoyed that training course. It was close to take 6 months or something and I just devoured it over the Christmas holiday.
So I really sat there on-duty. I’ve decided to a guide that I want to hold something. I’ll sit there for like 18 hours a day just taking multiple choice quizzes and watching videos. And I absolutely loved that. And I have a really good time doing it.
And I would certainly change it if I had full control over the content and the test that they use. Then there are some changes that I would make. I still really, really enjoyed it. Okay so I’ve got a question from Troy. He would like a list of the training programs, resources that you’ve mentioned in this webinar. Yes of course, I will link to everything that I talked about in this webinar.
So I’ve mentioned a few different things. I mentioned the Calash Method, I mentioned functional diagnostic nutrition. You mentioned Cross’s adapt training program. And then also the primal health coach I think is very, very interesting as well.
Tommy: And then also Con-academy. Bro’s medical and fitness coach.
Chris: Oh yeah.
Tommy: So some of this course are courses on like basis physiology and things like that.
Chris: Oh yeah that’s right. I did of course on basic physiology and that was fun as well. I think that any kind of learning is fun to me. And it’s even more fun when you know that some of it is wrong right? When you do the course area on physiology of course and they talk about the primary purpose of insulin is to drive glucose into cells right?
We will get it down into that rabbit hole. But maybe you can go to some specific questions here about FDN. So to give you a little bit of background, I think this person is a personal trainer and they are working with client and they probably have good results. So I’m sure most personal trainers do. But they must get clients that are doing everything right and they’re still not making results right?
So what do you with that person? You’ll just get him to do more jumping jacks? You’ll get them to run faster on the treadmill? Do you take another look at their food diary like you mean you know, once they’re doing the diet and the lifestyle stuff, I’m sure eventually, they’ll get stuck.
So for these types of people I think that functional medicines and training courses could be really helpful.
Tommy: And in terms of that though, is there anything that you… and you can’t touch anything that is basically right? So find a thing where you look back, when you look at those functional training courses, do you have to like jet into some of the knowledge that you’ve gained like you just have to ignore some of the things because you know they’re incorrect? Or as sort of everything have been useful in terms of applying it to people?
Chris: Yes so some of the stuff, I was quite selective with functional diagnostic nutrition from the beginning. Right? So they’re really into these gold-bladder flushes and coffee anonymous. And I just completely ignored that from the start. I thought it was kind of silly, not evidence-driven, and slightly risky just not something that… I mean, it is part of what guided me. I never needed to do that to feel good. So why should anyone else like I did moreover, yet I just thought of it as an easy tarry.
And then some of the training I thought was probably wrong. Like I saw the stages of infancy or anything. They have this model where there’s this different discreet stages of adrenal dysfunction and either in the beginning, I knew enough about physiology and know that that was highly unlikely that human physiology had discreet ones and zeros a bit like the computer right?
And that’s my education has gone on. I now know that that model’s totally useless. And the first clue came for me actually was when I read Why Zebras don’t get ounces. I just said Zebras. Cereus don’t get ounces.
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Tommy: Oh no, you’ve spent so long in the US now.
Chris: I know, it’s terrible. And Robert Sapalsy talked about how Han Say-A, famously didn’t win a noble prize because of the mistakes he made with that model. And then he was like appearing in this training course that I’m doing. So that definitely sets some alarm-bells ringing.
Well yeah, so the first question was, what help services would you offer before studying FDN? How did you integrate your new training into your services offerings at the beginning? So in the beginning, there was nothing to me. I wasn’t a person of training or anything. Or as a computer programmer, sat in the back office of a hedge farm somewhere.
This is so funny. I talked with my business consultant and they laughed at me modeling like “How much are you going to be earning next year?” In the early days, like it just appears from nothing right? And this is big-bang and suddenly, there’s a business where it’s once nothing.
That’s how my business started. So I had no interference whatsoever. And we started, Judy and I… so Judy also did the Calash mentorship and the advanced course too. And we started by just testing or family and friends. And it kind of expanded out to people who are on my bike-team and then we did an episode on the ben-greenfield podcast and then we just totally mandated with people who wanted to do the same test that I’ve done.
So the answer to what health services do you offer, the answer is zero. And then how did you integrate it? So in the beginning FDN allowed me to order tests without a doctor. But eventually, what I did was I partnered with Jamie Kendal-Reed who is also a local medical doctor. And we were friends already. We used to ride our bikes together. And we were very similarly aligned on our thinking. And she was super cheesed-off at that time with her work as a primary care-doctor because she’s on the very end of the equation right? She’s having… she’s got 10 minutes to write a prescription. And she’s supposed to fix that person in 10 minutes, it’s just ridiculous.
So there was definitely some alignment with our thinking and the other thing I realized now that’s important that one person, a startup, does not make. And to have someone smart like her, to help me with the business side of the things, I realized I was really old and I really recommend that to everyone.
If you’re listening to this and you’re not a licensed practitioner working by yourself and you’re thinking of starting a new business, you need some more founders. You need some friends.
And if you’re unlicensed, I think it makes sense for one of the founders to be licensed so then you’re going to solve this problem of how do I order these tests. And this happens in computer science startups as well. So sometimes you’ll have a non-technical founder who doesn’t do programming. And that person needs to find some programmers if they’re going to do a startup perhaps it’s not going to be a good mix.
So how did I integrate FDN to be honest, I didn’t use a lot of that protocols. So when you do FDN, they have some very, very structured protocols as a big spreadsheet with a big list of supplements in it and a big test in it.
And you also post a mechanistically do the protocol and you know, you fill-out the spreadsheet based on the results of some of their lab tests. So it’s all very… you’re not really required to use your brain in the creative sort of ways. And that didn’t really resonate with me. And I continued to basically practice the Calash methods even after I’ve done the functional diet nutrition training course so that’s quite a long answer to that question. I have to let you answer that question.
Tommy: Well I think there’s a few things in there that kind of have jumped out and if you go to like walk, even if you started with like friends and family, that wasn’t even in like a form of business. But that’s very similar to what I did. And like, when you spend a lot of time being the person that trains people, coach people at sport maybe is growing. But also some other things.
And then also just like various nutrition, diet nutrition and then people ask you questions right? And your ways… I think it’s important that somebody asks you a question about their diet or training then you can give an answer but somebody just goes around and telling people stuff. You just become boring quickly so don’t become that person.
And then you started by the people around you. And if they see benefit, if they see the benefits in yourself and they become interested. So then I was the first person. I think I was the first medical doctor to register on the payload position network which might be dead now.
But at least not that big. But in the UK, now I’ll just put my email address right there and I was like “I’m not going to charge everybody for anything. I can’t be your medical doctor. But I know some stuff and if you have some questions, I’ll happily answer them.
So then I just got some emails and then you had to sort of, get some discussions with people. You use to help them as far as you can. And you do have to be very careful but you’re not even now, somebody works with me, I am not becoming their position. Right? I am still only acting as a coach. And I think you need to be careful in terms of the relationship that you created there so that people are not misguided is maybe the wrong word. But they should understand what your relationship with them is and what you can actually offer them.
Chris: Yes, I think that is a danger for licensed physicians. With me I think it’s less so. So when you go talk to a computer scientist about your blood-chemistry, it’s pretty obvious that I’m not a doctor. Right? Whereas with the licensed practitioner, I think it becomes less clear and it’s very important to understand the limitations of what you can do.
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So occasionally, people ask us about acute situations that are going on and I have absolutely have no clue. I really don’t know anything about acute stuffs. So… and the same is true about myself, I don’t know how to fix my own acute problems absolutely no clue! I still talk to doctors. I’m lucky to know quite a few of them now that I trust.
And yeah, I’ve broken several… I’ve broken 2 limbs since finishing the Calash mentorship and I can promise you the Calash mentorship was absolutely no use for fixing broken limbs and the doctors there have really splendid jobs of fixing that kind of problem.
Tommy: And you should not be… the rule is you should never do friends or family coming to ask you the question about, “Should I go and see a doctor about this?” The answer is always yes. Because you don’t want to be the person who says “Oh it will be alright”. And then it turns out to be like something you can’t be objective about so it’s aggression.
But we do have a question from Megan who’s now saying whether or not we should be withdrawing her medical applications because she’s worried that she’s getting an expensive degree and a little bit of the majority of what she learns is to replace pharmaceuticals with lifestyle medicine.
So asking me, if I would do it again, would I still go to NBRU? That’s a really good question and it’s one that I…
Chris: It’s a $64,000 question right there isn’t it?
Tommy: And this is the one… so you and I get questions separately and this is the one obviously that I get and it kind of really depends on what you want to end up doing. So if I did it again, I absolutely would do the same root because I basically threw various different reasons fell into what I’m doing now and I really love it. And I wouldn’t change it.
Even though at the moment, this isn’t like a firm career for the rest of my life. I just really enjoyed doing this. So I would change that. And I think the medical degree did really helped me. But one of the reasons, one of the ways it helped me is because it gives me credibility. Right?
So it’s got very little to do with the actual medicine that I learned although that is still useful particularly when you’re dealing with patients who are dealing with chronic issues. You know having some of that and the stuff you’ve done in med school is helpful.
But you don’t necessarily learn all the things that you would need to learn if you’re then going to do lifestyle work with people. And if you’re working within traditional medical system, you’re really hamstrung in terms of what you can actually do with people. Just because of the time… just because you don’t have the time to work with people to really affect their lifestyle, you just don’t get that in a traditional medical setting.
Chris: So I think largely is the business opportunity for unlicensed people is the doctors have a fantastic education obviously by definition, they are very smart people. It’s just they don’t have the time. Like they’re stuck in a framework that doesn’t work. And so that’s the business opportunity. That’s the gap if tomorrow, Kaiser starts spending 2 hours with these patients and sees them once a month, then we might be screwed right?
Tommy: But the thing is, then so is somebody thinking about medical school. The important thing is actually, that is a big lifestyle medicine push at the moment. So it’s gaining traction in the US. In Australia, there’s a new British science for them and I’m a trustee of this, just kind of starting. So people are really starting to think about this.
So, I mean, you could potentially hope that it’s going to change enough and it’s going to become part of the practice. And I really don’t know the answer for that. If you want to just work with people and make them feel better, then you don’t need a medical degree.
If you want to be somebody who’s part of that either part of the basic research, publishing things or changing the way that we do medicine, then you do need a medical degree because you’re never going to be able to do it from outside the system. You have to be inside it on somewhere.
So it kind of just ends on what you want to end up doing. A lot of people are just starting. They want you to know, you can still help hundreds of people, thousands of people feel better fixed their chronic issue and have a huge, huge impact and you don’t need a medical degree to do that.
So the long answer Megan is, it just depends on what you want to end up… where you see yourself in terms of placement in the system. Does that help? You can maybe write a response.
Chris: Here’s another question from Mallory there actually and this reminds me of what Brian Walsh said. So I mean obviously, I had this dilemma myself, many times and I’d love to ask doctors… so what would you recommend? What career path would you recommend?
And when I talked to Brian Walsh, he’s been on my podcast a couple of times now. I’d just been on a summit interview with him. He is one of my favorite human beings, he is an amazing guy. He said “What I would do, is I would go get a ticket to play the game”. And what he meant by that is the minimum, requirements to become licensed it whatever state, whatever part of the world you’re in. And then you’ll learn the functional medicine piece on top of that.
Right? So then spend too long to get the ticket to play the game. And Brian’s recommendation for the ticket to play the game was what Mallory has just suggested which is: the physician’s assistant.
Tommy: And so, depending on if I’m right on saying this, depending on the state, a physician’s assistant kind of centrally order tests and function as a fully independent practitioner without the lead of the doctor to work with.
Chris: Right, it’s going on fairly a lot. So Brian only just got his license in Maryland just a few months ago because it’s all recently natural practice doctors weren’t recognized as licensed physicians in Maryland. Whereas in California, the laws are a lot more relaxed where even an acupuncture has kind of stayed as a primary caregiver. So it’s very different according to the state and them I’m sure it’s going to be completely different again in other countries.
[0:30:21]
Tommy: Okay so Mary says that you can supervise by position. I guess that’s in wherever Mallory is working. So then you have any recommendations for somebody who then can already function as an independent practitioner.
Chris: Yes, that’s a startup with a doctor who’s burning out. That’s what I would do.
Tommy: Okay then that’s perfect because then that puts us into Caroline’s question which said “If an unlicensed person wants to team up with a licensed practitioner, how does that work? Who does what with each kind of patient? How does the unlicensed person benefit the practice of the licensed person? And therefore like, out the client?
Chris: Right so, the way that we’ve done this… how have we done this?
Tommy: Because you do a part with Jamie who’s a licensed physician right?
Chris: Right, technically.
Tommy: You do all of the client facing-work.
Chris: Right exactly. So Jamie is a licensed medical doctor. She is the CEO of Nourish Balanced Rights. So we started an S-Corporation together. So at the end of the year, when there’s distributions for my business, part of it in theory goes to Jamie. And she has played a role in some options, like being part of my education and a technical adviser.
But she’s still doing other work on the side right? Like she’s still acting as a medical doctor working for someone else. So where is this going for her? It’s not about making some money on the sides. It’s about building a career for in 5 or 10 years’ time where she maybe want to go spend a whole bunch of time inside a medical facility because the nice thing about doing the type of coaching that we do is we don’t see anyone in person right?
So you get to talk with people in your pajamas over video conferencing software. And that’s pretty cool. I get to hang out with my daughter all day long rather than being stuck in an office and I’m sure it’s even worse if you’re stuck in a doctor’s office.
That’s a huge advantage for her and I don’t feel like all the pieces have come together yet. You know that story’s still evolving.
Tommy: But I guess where the question stands from is: what’s the division of labor is right? So she gives some benefits in terms both setting up the practice and in terms of potentially ordering things would then actually, she can continue her career while she needs to develop that. But then you can do most of the client-facing work. Right?
Chris: Yeah exactly. So this is… but I’ve used analogy before. When you build a house, there’s an architect and there’s a builder. Right? You don’t really need the architect on sight in order for the house to be built. And it’s a similar relationship where you and Jamie are like architects and I’m the guy that’s showing up on sight and laying the bricks and mortar.
And Jamie has done some laying of bricks and mortar works. Just like architects I’m sure have laid some bricks in their time. And she’s done free consultations. She’s done follow-up consultations. She’s done everything that I do. But certainly not in the same volume.
Tommy: So then that’s over the arch where people can… this is to answer to the question. So then you can potentially… if you hook up with a licensed practitioner who is sort of aligned with you, in that way and that there’s something that they’re interested in working and then you do most of the client-facing work and you sort of benefit from their licensing and they can also work with some of the education and training and things that you didn’t get.
Troy has also said that you recommended not to get a high-debt if you’re not going to make the money to pay off loans. That’s a great point. I particularly… so for Megan’s question about medical school is that… and one of the reasons why Jamie is still working as a full-time physician is because she’s still paying off her medical degree. Right?
Chris: I know. It’s a bastard. So I too, I said that $12,000 was a lot of money to do the Calash mentorship. Well Jamie has a $270,000 of student debt. And so that gives you very limited scope to start playing around with startups right? I was very lucky that I was in my late 30s where I was working at a hedge farm. I have some money in bank. I could afford to go for a few months at least without any salary.
So I was in a position to start a startup. Or is that may not be true for some of the licensed physicians because there’s so much student debt.
Tommy: Yeah my debt is much smaller but it’s still enough that I can just sort of jump out and do this stuff full-time here because I’m still paying off. It’s less than Jamie’s but it’s still enough to sort of be a constant worry about like where your income is coming from.
And I think that’s all the point that when you speak to people, it’s about how… and maybe this. So Clay has asked about the business side of the equation. And so he’s talking about Nish marketing and sort of how you position yourself but it’s also important for people to realize how you make money. Right?
So all of the profit at the moment comes from, it comes from selling your time which scales very poorly. So people need to be very aware of the fact that in this kind of model, your time is the only thing you can sell and you only had so much time. You may need to go by Chris because you spend a lot of time battling with that.
[0:35:15]
Chris: Yeah so that’s the things. It’s just when everybody wants to talk about functional medicine and biochemistry and physiology and how they’re going to solve people’s health related problems. And then as soon as you’ve started the startup like “Oh crap, I started something that doesn’t scale.”
And I know from doing some training courses, particularly Paul Graham’s How to Start a Startup which is a training course that’s available for free from Stanford University. The problems that don’t scale are actually usually quite good ideas for startups and you can worry about the scalability peace later.
But I can tell you right now, I feel like I have just got into the point where I can like stop losing sleep over whether or not I’m going to make my mortgage payment. I think as an entrepreneur, you almost kind of hesitate to jinx anything like that but I think we’re going to be okay in terms of our income.
But yeah, it’s all coming from selling my time. So I spend an hour on the phone with someone. I send them an invoice, they pay that invoice. That’s how I make my living. Nowadays we’re moving in so this could be part of it. The reason why I’m starting to feel a little bit comfortable is… in the beginning, I was doing functional medicine on a shoestring, I was basically giving it away and living with my life’s savings.
And now we’re transitioning to more towards a program where people are paying a monthly rate. And I just love it. I could start sending people invoices like I can just serve them. Like when you ask me a question I know that I can afford to go spend time on that offline because you’re paying me a monthly rate right?
And when I find problems on a lab result, I can just send you the supplements to fix the problems that we found. And so the program is amazing for both I and my clients and I think that’s been a really important business development. But we’ve not gotten away from the fact that we’ve created a business that doesn’t scare away. There’s only so many hours in the day that I can sell.
And so that is a difficulty and maybe I’ll get Gary Ralston of Ralston Consulting who I’ve been working with for the last several months. And I feel like his influence and his health has been influential to my business. Honestly I’m not sure that I’d still be here doing this if it wasn’t for him. So I should probably get him in the podcast and talk about some of the things that he’s done.
But yes, once you’ve figure out the functional medicine piece, you’ve done get to work around the business which is almost as difficult.
Tommy: Yeah so Margaret has asked, how to describe how you began your startup. With maybe some sort of technical information and usually you couldn’t hide it altogether.
Chris: Like the physical processes of starting a startup. Well I hired a corporate lawyer who created an S-corporation for me. And we spent many hours on the phone with her. It was me and Jamie and Julia because she’s also a director of the Nourish Balance Drive. Tommy is now director of Nourish Balance Drive. And yeah, we put together an S-Corp.
I mean we also put a client agreement as well. That’s quite a lot of time. So we don’t have my practicing insurance. We have a client agreement that we have everybody signed. And the essence of the agreement. So this is not medical advice right? Or we start of doing off due to anything we say.
Which is true right? We’re not doctors and we don’t give out medical advice. So that’s the physical process of starting the startup. I don’t know if there’s anything else to say about that. I’ve had to repeat the process several times. So one of the gotchas is you know, when you employ someone… and I haven’t mentioned Emilia until now. So Emilia is the registered nurse who lives in Utah that I employed.
Tommy: So we actually have a question from somebody called Emilia, who says “How important is it to have a fantastic posting and that’s working for you.
Chris: I was dying before I hired Emilia. I was like, I thought I was going to die. I was doing everything. I was creating plans. I was coaching people one on one. I was putting supplements in boxes. I was taking stuff to USBS. I was doing literally everything. I was opening whole sale accounts and testing companies and supplement companies. It was just completely insane and my head is going to explode.
And I was going backwards you know? People were getting frustrated with me because they wouldn’t get into service or the attention is taking me too long to get around those all types of problems. And then Emilia totally turned that around.
So I really got lucky. And this is one of the nicest things about having an audience right? When you have people that listens to your podcast. You’ll find it much easier to do recruiting than any other type of company. And Emilia actually approached me and said “Hey, here’s my CV. Here’s my certificate. I’ve done the Calash mentorship. Are you looking for anyone?”
And you know, when I first saw that there’s no way that I could afford to employ someone. And I thought if I don’t do this, if I don’t just hire her, I’m never going to know. Like whether this is really a good idea for a startup or not.
So I didn’t talked to a business person. I didn’t do accounting or anything, I just said “Okay, you’re hired!” And I just started paying her salary and hoped for the best which is I’m not sure if anyone should try and repeat that but what I think because now, Emilia get paid a salary which is a going rate of a registered nurse in Utah. And I haven’t gone completely bankrupt. So I think that’s something…
[0:40:00]
Tommy: And you managed to keep the business going without you at least worrying?
Chris: Exactly. So I think the business has gone forwards since I hired someone. Because it gave me a headspace. I could start thinking about things. I could stop putting out fires and start where the business is going next.
Tommy: Yeah so when we talked about scaling of time and Margaret has also made a point about developing online courses or e-books or apps and things. And that’s a great point if people can do that. And that’s absolutely… those things that we’ve been talking about for a while and I’ll put them together.
So that is actually something that you can produce which does scale right? Because you put in the times developed it and then it sells itself hopefully. But equally, in the meantime, you have to remember that anytime you spend developing that is the time that you’re not billing to somebody else. So you could be in the position that you could afford the time to do that. If you do that, then it would be very helpful.
Chris: I mean the other problem I think with the online or virtual products is who the hell are you going to sell it to? Right? And do you have a following of people that listens to your podcast or watching your YouTube channel or whatever medium you use to connect with people.
Tommy: Having an email of lists. That’s one.
Chris: Having an email of list? Well who the hell are you going to sell this thing to? That’s the problem and they guys have been really helpful to me with figuring this stuff out. Jordan and Steve from SCD lifestyle. And Jordan has been on my podcast and maybe I’ll link to that as well in the comments section or something for this video.
But yeah, those guys have really spend a lot of time thinking about the marketing piece and helping practitioners reach the people that they can help right? So that’s the problem is you finish your functional medicine course then like, right okay. I’m ready to go.
And in the old days you could just stop and shop a town and hang up a sign in the door and people would find you. And of course on the internet you can’t do that. You need to be a lot smarter than that.
And so that has kind of… I see that as the other… the third prong on your trident right? You got a functional medicine piece, you got the business piece. How the hell am I going to make money out of here? Or when they come in business deal, how are those people going to get good value for money? And how am I going to handle them efficiently?
And then the third prong is: how am I going to find those people in the first place? The marketing piece. Which of course is another industry in itself like people will spend a lifetime trying to master marketing and maybe never get as good as some other people so yeah. It’s definitely a difficult area to be successful.
Tommy: And this kind of feeds into a kind of, start describing close discretion which is about the practitioner of this project which is Jon and Steve.
Chris: Exactly. That’s the training course I did. It was really helpful.
Tommy: So they talked about finding your Nish. So then Clay asked how important you feel that is and whether your own path to wellness influence this decision right? So you set up the Nourish Balance Tribe to help at least who feel like crap perform better right? Because that is actually your story.
So do you feel like it’s helpful for people to help the people who they identified with the most right? So if you have one particular journey, should these folks be having a similar journey to you?
Chris: Yeah I think that part was crucial. I mean that’s how the startup started. And it’s becoming less clear now as more people are getting involved then we realized that our program could help pretty much anyone. But that’s not how you reach people right? You can’t just say to the world, “Oh we have this thing, and it fixes everything in the world”. You sound like snake-horse salesman right?
And that… I needed that additional bank here for your podcast, it’s actually Jamie and me when I used the bank here for your podcast. And people were finding us up and saying whatever Chris-cat did could you just send me that? I want that in a box, send it to me now. Here’s my credit card number but just send it to me.
Because I listened to his story and that’s exactly what happened to me. That’s exactly what happened to me. Like I need to do whatever he did. And that I think is the best way to start a startup.
And so I think it’s difficult for people who are licensed physicians or classically trained practitioners in some way that they’re thinking, “Oh wow, this could help anyone”. And then you create a problem like you can help anyone, you won’t help anyone. So you’ve got to be specific.
Tommy: Alright. I think that has covered all of…
Chris: Yeah the chat box questions.
Tommy: Yeah so we’ll organize if there are any more. Is there anything else from that list about the questions you’ve got about?
Chris: Yeah I’ve got… I was asked where there any additional wonderful scenes, startup costs? Probably not to a business and a savvy person. But the legal fees were kind of crazy. I probably didn’t need to do that because you know, I had to do it all again. So when you hire someone in another state, you have to go to the process of starting an S-Corporation in that state again.
So I did it all again, I guess when you’ve done it once, it’s easy to do it again. And I didn’t have the lawyer to help me. What else? I mean the startup cost is basically zero. I mean, that’s what’s so cool about this business is because there’s no bricks and mortar presence, the cost are really, really low.
I end up spending a lot of money on tools, things like Zoom, and Zen-Desk. And flap. Yeah, all these little tools that I think they’re all kind of 20-30 dark colors a month. And I think you need to sign up for that. And then before you know it, you’ve got 12 of them and it’s like a significant cost. Schedule ones is another one I can’t deal without.
[0:45:02]
Although I might choose a different calendaring app to use again but just the idea of the software that makes appointments for me. I was also very lucky in it because I was a programmer. I was able to build myself a website that was not just a blog. I also handled that podcast. And it does the shopping cart and I also programmed the shopping cart so they automatically orders the lab test when people order them from my website.
So I did a lot of automation work on the website. That would have cost a lot of money if I’d have a programmer to do that. So that’s worth mentioning as unforeseen cost.
Tommy: Oh would you recommend people to do that right because it’s going to save them that much time and…
Chris: I think that I’ve seen one of the things that hiring immediately has allowed me to do is like, I’m just doing something by hand over and over again. And I’ve optimized the process to be as efficient as possible. But you guess the point like okay, now I know how this should be done. I really just need to write some Python code to get them to do it for me, to get that to work for me.
And until you hire someone to help you, you just never get to that place where you can either clear your head enough to think about what the python code might look like. Yeah hiring someone was really boring I think.
What challenges have you had along the way with setting up the FDN? What might you have done differently? Automated earlier. You know, so that’s what I’m doing now. My primary focus is to go back to being a computer programmer. So for the past week or so, I actually would be doing far few of client course like I normally do and I’ve removed myself completely from the free initial consultations that I was doing.
And the reason I’ve done that is because I want to spend more time writing more python code and automate some of the really boring things that we do. Say for example, you know when someone signs up for our program, we have to order them the test that’s done automatically already. But also do stuff like we create a folder in Google Drive and then we’ll grab some notes that we created in a calendar. We put those in a Google Drive.
And then we have like a template, house plan that we use that we update some links in there to update the results and we create a cello board and we… there’s all kinds of things that we do. We have our client agreement that we need to be signed. And all of these things, they have APIs. And it’s very, very boring for me to have them… do over and over again by hand.
It would be much more efficient if that was done with python codes. So that’s why I’ve gone back to being a programmer and I think you know, the past 2 and a half years like I would be able to do the job that I’m doing now as a programmer, had I not been in the trenches doing this work directly.
So I think that was important. And I always stay really closely connected. I’m still doing one on one course with people and I will always do that because I think the moment I stop doing that, I’ll stop understanding the problem that I’m trying to solve with code.
Tommy: I guess that’s a good… I kind of link that to Caroline’s question which is whether we are paperless in terms of ordering from client labs, and forms and notes and all those things.
Chris: Yeah I think so. We do get complemented on this. It just seems basic to me, but results come back to the labs and we put them in Google Drive and then we share them with the client. The courses are not here for compliance. But it is what the client wants. They’re not here for compliance. The client wants ease of use.
And they already have Google Drive and it works with their phones and it works with their iPads. And it means they don’t lose their stuff and they can search for it and… so that works really well. We don’t know exactly. We don’t send paper copies of anything.
So quite contact the lab and tell them to not send me paper copies of anybody’s organic acids results because that gets really useless very quickly.
Tommy: So then the issue would be to say if somebody is a fully licensed practitioner trying to do or you know, something like a licensed manner. Then you do, you have to be compliant and it will require separate system such that is the case.
Chris: Right and doubt that at some point, somebody will make me jump through that hoop right, where I have to make all of our systems for compliant.
Tommy: And Margaret’s made out a point is that what your programming in terms of automation sounds like an app the other practitioner will pay for.
Chris: Oh it’s funny you should say that Margaret. Yeah that is the plan. That is the plan. So people will be asking us for a training course. And I think what the practitioners really want, you don’t want to be taught this. You want an automatic right? So Tommy spends a lot of time studying biochemistry, and that shapes… that’s kind of evidenced-based reasoning is what shapes our protocols. And it’s changing all the time.
So if I was to make a training course for Tommy, the second we finish it, it would be out of date. Right? Because the story is naturally evolving all the time every day. And so, if I was to create some software, did somehow interpreted the test results, and then automatically created the diet and lifestyle recommendations. And then also maybe some nutritional supplement protocols.
And then you could use that as the practitioners’ starting to point you know, where you could modify as you saw fit as the patient so fit as well and you would talk to them. I think that would be a lot more useful than a training course.
Tommy: But also, I think in terms of like the early steps of automation, there’s all that stuff that you’re doing in terms of organizing notes, getting things ordered dealing with results and things like that sort of automating that side as well which would hopefully be a part of it because that is something that people could spend a lot of time doing which is just a waste of time essentially.
[0:50:09]
Chris: Right, exactly. Exactly. Yeah we’ve got also some ideas for the application. I’m also very interested in the idea of connecting people. So the moment, my number one wish for the people who grew up in the program for 8 months during my free consultations that would be freaking fantastic. It would be very difficult to talk to somebody on a free consultation if he’s not feeling good.
And they also don’t feel like throwing a bunch of money either in the same way. You just don’t… people like spending money on things right? If I get a new car out there, I’m quite happy to spend $8,000. Otherwise I’m not so keen. But if you think it’s really going to help you, you would spend the money.
And it’s kind of difficult for me as someone who’s already feeling good and it has been for a while to explain how this process is going to make you feel good. And when you talk with somebody who’s been on the program for 8 months and they’re feeling really good, then you’re greatest evangelist and like “Yeah, yeah, I’ll talk to them like you know?”
And maybe we could achieve that same goal with some kind of application. BLS, that’s kind of based I think yet.
Tommy: And so, and Margaret, it’s kind of… you’ve jumped inside of our headset. Because you’re talking about it, then you’re using big data to refine and provide more evidenced based protocols and that’s exactly why we’re building. So Chris has developed tools to extract the date, to extract the results from what we get from the labs.
And then I’m building models to then which we can then use to interpret the data which will then… which can evolve overtime. That’s the whole point. Right? So that we can then continue to tweak as we learn more because it’s not a static process at all.
Chris: Yeah exactly. So yeah, I’ve spent a week- a couple of weeks ago doing machine learning, training courses. So there’s a bunch of really good online machine-learning courses and a bunch of good books. And so I spent a week doing that. And the machine learning piece is almost done for you.
There’s toolkits like psychic learn from python and then also Google has an open source project called Tenths of Flow. And so I wrote the parses to extract the date out of the PDF report that comes back from the lab. And then we can start a big machine-learning project.
And who knows? We could put in some other inputs into the machine learning like how quickly people got better. Or how much sleep they report are getting based on the protocols. So that types of input may also feed into the machine-learning. And yeah, exactly, it would help our system involved.
Tommy: So is there anything else? Are there anything else on your list?
Chris: So I was asked about some specifics about functional diagnostics and nutrition. What are your thoughts on the current lab testing that FDN recommends as well as the systems and brands that have relationships with?
So as you went in and I looked to see what test the FDN course that I did and now you’re using, I don’t think it’s changed very much. So they do Adreno’s Test profile which is a slight of the test which looks like sex hormones and called as so. And we’ve seen that you’ve used the duck test which is basically the same in urine and the reason we made the change was because the main reason is you’re able to do the full accounting for court design.
So the saliva test only measures free court design but it’s a bit more complicated than that. So I think that the adrenal test profile has been a little bit outdated now. So it may be adjusted. They also do something that’s called the bio-health 101 which is like an organic acid’s test with only markers on it, which I think is kind of a waste of time. I don’t know, what do you think of that Tommy?
Tommy: Yeah so that’s… we’ve gravitated towards the Great Plains’ organic acids test because that’s just… it’s well validated and gives you a huge amount of information.
Chris: Right. It’s just not very good value I think, that bio-health 101. And Calash used to make and eventually refused to look at them. I used to bring them in class each week with me. And I bring these bio-health 101s with me like, “this test is a waste of money”. Just order the organic acids test, it’s about the same. It’s not much cheaper and it’s got 3 markers on it.
And then the mediated released test for food sensitivity, so you want to talk about that Tommy?
Tommy: Yeah, it’s a waste of time.
Chris: Sorry, moving on.
Tommy: No, no. It’s not just known there. And I’ve been asked about it in podcast as well and it’s an interesting theory but it’s just… it’s not been validated against gold standard tests in any way whatsoever. So, maybe it’s useful. But just nobody’s taking the time to actually validate it which makes me very worried about of actually using it.
If people have issues, we know which foods causes it with most people. Start with the elimination process. It’s very free.
Chris: Yeah I think that’s one of the things that we’ve done is spending a lot of times thinking about which is the test to get people the best value for money. And the food sensitivity testing, I can basically right down the foods that you’re going to probably have a problem with.
And just push across the table to you, “Don’t eat these things”. Wheat and dairy are the 2 main offenders. And you don’t need to spend $400 on a blood test to tell you that those 2 foods are likely to be causing a problem for you. Unless you’re feeling awesome right? So that’s what we’re doing.
It’s… we get people an elimination diet. The AIP or whole 30 or some other failure type diet. And then in 2 months, 3 months’ time, when they’re feeling fantastic, you get them to read 2 experiments with reintroductions and usually that person figures out that they can’t eat one of the foods that they’ve eliminated in the first place.
[0:55:05]
And it works really well every time and there’s no need for your fancy food sensitivity test.
Tommy: Yes and Margaret’s also asking about the FOREX labs which I think again, that probably the more… where the most advanced and the best available but equally if you want to do a full prop of panel and you’re worried about multiple sensitivities, as many thousands of dollars.
Chris: Right, they’re super expensive.
Tommy: Super expensive. So an elimination diet is free and what that does is it also helps people tune in to how their body responds to food while in just relying on a test to tell you that. So…
Chris: Oh my god, this is the most important part. It’s the most important part.
Tommy: You’re engaging with the process and even though it’s a lot more drawn out and potentially complex because you can only choose one food at a time and it takes a long period of time. It allows people to really understand this better and it’s a lot.
With the most of the people that I’ve worked with, if I recommended $6,000 worth of SIREX labs, they couldn’t afford it. So I would always thought with real basic elimination diets with the gold stand even though that’s sort of the boring and drawn out process.
Chris: Right, I’m sure for some people, it’s helpful to know that this stuff is cross-reacting. Maybe you’ll see the act, and then you find out “Oh shit, I’ve been drinking coffee for the last 2 years and it’s cross-reacting.” And so that could be really helpful information. But I just don’t think it’s where you would start.
Tommy: Yeah absolutely. I think if you need more information and you’re still really struggling, then and the patient can do them, I think they’re a great option. Whichever is done has some brilliant work and also news. I’ve spent a lot of time working with people with multiple scorosis and some of the work that he’s done with guys that like to do some operations and looking at the way different foods cross around with different elements of the body and there’s even more up to date that they’re going to publish and I’m really excited to see that.
So they’re doing great work. It’s just the in terms of what your patient and client will benefit from those.
Chris: Right. And mark’s just making a point about my fitness. I’ve reached literally only stumble into this woman Ellen Miner, and I won’t shut up about her because she’s been doing research in mindfulness for like 4 decades. And it’s something that’s been tremendously helpful for me but I just didn’t know about her and her work.
And so I could have found out about it 40 years ago but I didn’t. But anyway, that’s one of the things that July my wife now does the coaching on my diet. What has taught me was I eat something, and it feel like shit and I wouldn’t even assume that it was anything to do with the food.
And it was her that kind of said that “You notice that a bowl of oatmeal might make you feel like this”. And I’m like “No way. Everybody eats oatmeal”. That’s what you’re supposed to eat for breakfast. That’s what the cardiologist told me to eat for breakfast.
And she’s like “I don’t care what he said, it’s not making you feel good is it?” And then the moment you kind of like “Oh yeah, wow. She’s right”. You have bacon and egg the next morning and you’re like “My god she’s right!”
And that really opens up a whole new world of possibility once you’ve made that mindfulness connection.
Tommy: And just for that, was it Ellen Langer?
Chris: Ellen Langer! Yeah the Ellen Langer Mindfulness Institution. And she did a podcast recently with Aaron Alexander who has a podcast I believe was called the Align Podcast. Aaron is a roofer in Band. I will of course link to that. I’ve actually booked Ellen for my podcast as well. I couldn’t resist the meaty podcast.
But it’s some interesting implications for developing an application with computers. With all of this mindfulness stuff. So I’m going to go in Aaron too with his podcast but she’s got a wonderful book called Counter-Clockwise. And there’s a bunch of interviews and presentation in mind.
What about the metabolic typing diet? That still seems to be and FDN thing to be on a diet. What do you think Tommy?
Tommy: Again it’s one of this things that when you look at all of this different diets that’s supposed to be linked to a certain type, the actual evidence that’s available and the reason why they work is because they stop you’re eating of processed crap and start with eating real whole food.
Chris: Exactly.
Tommy: And then maybe there is some tweaks that will help certain people. I’m definitely having convinced by the metabolic diet and all the blood type diet. But I think it’s because the basis of all these diets and the reason why they work is they get people to ear real food again.
Chris: Exactly.
Tommy: The rest is just a bit of decoration.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. So that’s exactly what Ron Honesdale said to me that the standard western diet is so bad you can basically make any change to it and it would be an improvement over what the person was eating before. So it really doesn’t matter.
And so I don’t doubt for a moment that functional diagnostic nutrition practitioners get fantastic results. That’s like, it’s very Reed Davis to say fantastic like that using these tests and these protocols and this diet, just because the current situation is so bad that you really can’t fail to improve on it.
Tommy: Yeah absolutely.
Chris: That’s not much of a compliment. Is it? But I think that making people feel good is still an important work and I…
Tommy: But that’s still… when you look at everybody arguing in which diet is best, and the way he implements that diet all of it boils down to actually getting people to eat real food again.
Chris: Right.
Tommy: There’s literally… and it’s the common message over all of them. Even if you’re talking about corn base or pale, or metabolic typing or blood type or whatever. None of them say “Eat this gluten free, highly-processed bar”, it’s all like going back to real foods.
[1:00:10]
So I mean that’s… and so all of these people having huge benefit with their clients, with their patients because they start to feel better. But that’s the underpinning reason why.
Chris: And then there’s one last question is, do I have any other income that’s not FDN? So let’s substitute the word FDN from the functional medicine thing that we do. And the answer is Saw-off. Not really. I mean we just started the ketone summit. And I have no idea whether that actually is going to make us any money or not. I just… it’s kind of like the entrepreneurial thing in general, you used to do some bottom-up tinkering and stuffs disappear from ether and you don’t really know what’s going to happen.
And so the dust is settled. And that’s definitely true of the ketone summit. In theory I might make some money out of that depending on what you call an hourly rate because I’ve spent a lot of time recording interviews and editing interviews, it was fulltime job for several months.
And then what else, we’ve got fact-fibers. We’ve made a nutritional supplement, an MTC or powder. And again, we’ve done one run of it. I’ve done the kilo so I’ve certainly not gotten rich out of that. We may have broken even. And that may turn out to be something fruitful in the future.
Other than that I don’t think we have any source of income. Can you find something else in there Tommy?
Tommy: No I mean, I think the reason we made fat fibers is because we wanted and then we thought some people might want to do that, I don’t think it’s not even designed. It was not essentially designed to be like a huge source of income right? It was just a product that we wanted for ourselves.
And I think that’s going to be the case of anybody so, if you start the benefit, you’ll notice that people who start developing products, develop a huge number of them and also they can offer and get… especially depending of their trying. But the quality is, they might become really expensive. I think that’s just…
But if you’re developing products and supplements to actually be a real source of profit but that’s really hard. That’s really hard work. And you’ll end up really sacrificing from all of your principals.
And that’s what I’ve heard from people and trying to make supplements and regimen things and you just always have to sacrifice somewhere so I don’t think that’s really a viable option for somebody who’s trying to make a living out of it.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. But the general principle of solving your own problem I think is a really, really good one. Right? So this thing, what is it that irritates you most in the world? And then to solve that problem in whatever way you can. And the reason I’ve made that product was I really wanted a powdered version of MCT oil. And the only one on the market had Sodium Casing in it which I knew was going to make me pee at my pants. So I made a better one.
And the same is true with the functional medicine piece right? I went to the doctor. And the doctor wrote me a prescription for Fire Egro and he said go see this gastroenterologist. And the gastroenterologist said that it’s nothing to do with your diet, but the whole experience was so awful that I reached the pain point where I was just waiting to do something else.
And then so in amid with the new solution that I wanted to jump on that bandwagon and solve that problem too but it was started with my own personal pain points.
So, now for the practitioners, fix yourselves first. Like make sure that your toe is quickly clean before you start trying to fix someone else. That would be my advice. I think most of the practitioners that are coming to this had some sort of pain points. When does fat cows hold shares?
So Clay, I think that’s a phenomenal idea. So the MCT or powder, we’re thinking about doing a chocolate version of it, and Clay came up with the name Fat Cow, which I thought was just fantastic and I did a podcast and we talked about the flourish and beans of ours are manufactured from New York.
And I have been talking to them about doing a Cacao version and I don’t think there’s any way that they can supply that Cacao and the quantities that even we would need to make a supplement product like that. You’ll never know but something might come to it but I said “Oh, could you send me a hundred kilos of those nips” and I was just, no reply.
And then a couple of weeks later, they said “You know, we’re still trying to figure it out but like a hundred kilos is not even that much”. So I’m not exactly sure when you’ll see a fat cow but yeah, it’s definitely another product that I would really like to have because that’s what I do with it right? That makes the entity or the powder with Cacao and make this hot dream so…
Yeah, maybe sometimes in. Cool, I think we’re out of questions.
Tommy: Alright.
Chris: Well I hope this would be helpful to people and if there’s more question, maybe we could do another one in the future.
Tommy: Yeah, absolutely. I think we’ve covered all the basics.
Chris: Excellent. Well then guys, thank you very much for joining us and we’ll speak to you again soon.
Tommy: Yeah, just us.
Chris: Thanks Tommy.
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