Integrative Women's Health with Jessica Drummond

In this episode, Sachin interviews Dr. Jessica Drummond on a variety of topics around her journey from being a nurse practitioner in a clinical facility to being an integrative women's health practitioner, serving clients around the world. She speaks of her experience with long-haul COVID, and how her practice had prepared for her to be absent for two months while she recovered with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Dr. Jessica shares her business insights and how going digital in time for the pandemic was a great shift for her business.

Listen to learn more about how Dr. Jessica navigates health and illness, hard times and good times, with the support of family, friends, and mentors.

 

Key Takeaways:

[1:03] Sachin introduces today's guest, Dr. Jessica Drummond, who will talk about her health challenges and her business. Sachin welcomes Dr. Jessica to Perfect Practice.

 

[2:16] Dr. Jessica is a physical therapist and a certified clinical nutritionist with a doctorate in clinical nutrition. She graduated as a physical therapist in 1999, planning on sports medicine. She enjoys sports and exercise so she started her career in outpatient orthopedics.

 

[3:19] She grew interested in women's health. Within the first decade of her career, Dr. Jessica realized that physical therapy was not the complete answer to some of the more complex conditions affecting women.

 

[4:06] That's when Dr. Jessica dove in to learn more about health coaching, clinical nutrition, functional nutrition, and taking a more integrative perspective. Dr. Jessica mostly educates professionals but she has a small practice of clients with complex chronic illness.

 

[4:52] When you come at a complex condition with a holistic mindset, and let the client lead with all the things that they can do, that gets Dr. Jessica excited. We don't have a quick-fix solution for complex chronic illnesses like endometriosis.

 

[5:25] Dr. Jessica started the Integrative Women's Health Institute as CEO and Founder. Dr. Jessica thinks that having an athlete mindset has supported her in everything, not just her work. In terms of successfully navigating entrepreneurship, it absolutely helps her.

 

[6:26] From 2006 to 2010, Dr. Jessica's husband moved the family often as a consultant, so Dr. Jessica had to keep restarting in new clinical positions. She started her practice not to be an entrepreneur but to create something she could do anywhere.

 

[7:12] At the time Dr. Jessica didn't even have an iPhone, so she didn't have a lot of tools to do digital telehealth but it was possible. She had a beautiful office in her home to meet clients in, but all of them chose to work with her by telehealth, instead.

 

[8:10] Dr. Jessica's athlete mindset is flexible, curious, and persistent. She says if you just keep doing it, you overcome the obstacles. If you give up, you don't overcome the obstacles.

 

[8:39] Sachin is reading Areté, by Brian Johnson. He recommends it. It has 451 lessons on 1,000 pages. One lesson is about making 50 pounds of pottery to get the best final product in an art class, which is another way of putting in the reps.

 

[9:54] No one mentored Dr. Jessica in entrepreneurship, but she had a teacher who inspired her in digital marketing. She has a cousin entrepreneur who helped her a lot. All during her schooling, she expected to have a straightforward clinical career.

 

[11:58] Dr. Jessica's parents supported her education and paid for most of her schooling. She had a safety net. It's easier to be entrepreneurial when you have some financial cushion. She also still had her clinical skillset if she needed to fall back on a job, that helped her to take risks.

 

[14:00] In the beginning of her business, Dr. Jessica's challenge was technology and she never did a tone of it. As quickly as she could, she hired people to help her with technology. The way she learned is when she didn't know how to do something, she would do it and get feedback.

 

[14:46] Dr. Jessica thinks what gets people stuck is thinking through how to do something, and learning about how to do it, instead of doing it. The most valuable thing for her to do was to try something and then see if it worked.

 

[15:09] Dr. Jessica was building the first large-scale digital version of her women's health coach certification when she met JJ Virgin, who encouraged her