Small Business Bestie
Entrepreneurship is hard, and sometimes we could use a friend to walk a mile in our shoes. Small Business Bestie is here to provide that friendship, support, and inspiration that small business owners need from time to time.
Small Business Bestie
49: Healing at the Root- Terri Paige's Journey to Functional Medicine
Terri Paige shares her journey from corporate accountant to healthcare innovator as co-founder of Medical Transformation Center (MTC), a practice focused on cellular medicine and finding root causes of health issues rather than just treating symptoms. After experiencing her own health crisis, Terri's quest to understand gut health, hormonal balance, and cellular function transformed not only her wellbeing but led to creating a revolutionary medical practice with her physician husband.
• Balancing 43 years of marriage, raising eight children, and running businesses together for 33 years
• Transitioning from traditional primary care to functional medicine when conventional approaches failed to address Terri's multiple chronic conditions
• Creating MTC to help patients optimize cellular efficiency for better immune function, metabolism, and microbiome health
• Navigating business growth challenges while implementing the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) for better organizational structure
• Practical advice on improving health by eliminating artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and processed foods that damage gut health
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Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Small Business Bestie. This week I am chatting with Terry Page, who is just a powerhouse of a woman. She's got such an interesting background and I'm so excited to learn more about what you're up to these days and kind of the path that got you there. So, miss Terry, if you'd take just a moment and tell us about yourself and we'll get going.
Speaker 2:Well, I'd be happy to Thanks for having me. It's nice to be here, it's nice to meet you sort of in person. I guess this isn't in person these days, right? Yeah, well, I am a wife and a mom, so I actually like to say that first, probably because I've been that for so long. Yeah, I have been. I always like to say I've been going steady with my husband for like 47 years, but we've been married for 43. Wow, and we have eight children together and three grandchildren. And we've been in business together for 33 years.
Speaker 1:Oh, if you guys are listening, you can't see my slow blink right now, but that is incredible.
Speaker 2:We make it work, we make it work. We grew up together. I mean we literally, I mean sometimes, honestly, we behave like siblings together, you know, and not a good way. You know that competitive thing, you know, I don't know. People ask us how long we've been married, how come we've, how we've been able to stay together so long. And my husband came up a few years ago with this really insightful answer, and it was so true. He said we just didn't give up at the same time is what it was. Because you know, I mean, of course there are the years and the not years and the. You know the seasons of. You know, why am I even here? So why am I even here? So I don't know, we just didn't both give up at the same time. That's really the answer.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful and that's the same in business too. Right, with business partners, you have the same type of like reality that sometimes one's on and one's off. As long as you're not both off at the same time, you're golden. That is true, that is true.
Speaker 2:But my background originally is in accounting. My husband and I both went to college at UK, at the University of Kentucky, and graduated there. I worked as an accountant while he went on to medical school and you know I always like to say it was kind of. I told you this earlier. I'm a recovering accountant. I think it was a wonderful skill set to have, you know, a degree from UK in accounting and that business background. And I worked in corporate accounting and did a little stint as an internal auditor, which was painful given my personality because unfortunately you're sitting in a room locked in there ticking and tying and nobody likes auditors, right, you know I couldn't talk to anybody. But good preparation.
Speaker 2:We moved to Louisville and my husband did his residency here and then we always knew we were going to hang a shingle, go out somewhere into a community in Kentucky. Probably we didn't really quite know where. We both grew up in rural Western Kentucky and we knew we didn't necessarily want to go back there because it wasn't close enough to a big city but we wanted that kind of country feel, but closer. So we settled out in Oldham County and hung that shingle in 1992 and started that business from scratch. He did the doctoring and I did the business side and for a while it was just the two of us and a nurse and it was so simple back then I could do the insurance billing at night Wow, on my own, you know, on the old matrix printer. You know Now I wouldn't even touch that, nor do I ever touch taxes, but it was just simpler back then and we grew that and I've always had a passion personally for health and wellness and you know, when I was a teenager actually even younger than a teenager I was into fitness and nutrition and learning the next thing and that just has carried through my whole life as a thread.
Speaker 2:So I loved being part of you know it was a primary care practice that we originally started back then and loved being part of that health journey for our patients. Later on I actually dabbled for a little while thinking I was going to buy a fitness center. Glad I didn't do that because as I was evaluating that, the YMCA announced they were going to build one in our community, so it wouldn't have been a good one. I don't think it would have lasted very long. It was a little boutique fitness center that was great.
Speaker 1:It was the only game in town and while I was evaluating it, the YMCA came in and said we're going to come out to Oldham County and I actually ended up just being on the planning committee for that Well at least you still got to have your hands in it, right yeah, so really quickly, because I'm not from Kentucky originally and I'm still trying to figure it all out what's one of the towns in Oldham County that I may have heard of?
Speaker 2:LaGrange, crestwood, peacock Valley, just kind of on that east end of Louisville in between Louisville and Cincinnati, going up by us.
Speaker 1:Okay, thanks for that geography lesson. Sorry.
Speaker 2:Just a little bedroom community. So a bedroom community to Louisville, which made it perfect for us as we were doing our evaluation because, you know, close enough, in 20 minutes into downtown Louisville, but still, especially back then, we actually bought a farm. We bought a 50-acre farm and there were many farms along that corridor when we purchased it back in 92. But by the time we sold it in 2018, I mean, actually it was the only farm on that road. Oh wow, and we enjoyed it. We had a great time there, had all eight kids of ours there Two of ours weren't born in that spot, but six of them were and so we sold it. My husband and I were ready to do that. Kids mourned it a lot, but we were just kind of ready to move on and not have that much of a maintenance. I always say we moved into town, so then we moved back into Jefferson County and that's where our business is now.
Speaker 1:I see. So tell us about the business today. You said you started with primary care. How has that changed over the years and what are you guys focused on now?
Speaker 2:Primary- care, especially back then, was a little slower paced in terms of the interactions with the patient. You were really able to build that relationship and that rapport I mean it was private practice right, so it wasn't part of a large system. A lot of the metrics that are in place today you know they weren't there back then, which actually, in my opinion, was good, right Was good. It allowed for relationship building, hand-holding, understanding the family, that type of thing you know. Now it's very metric driven and code oriented. You know there's a process and you know check these an algorithm more of an algorithm today, right, which you know.
Speaker 2:In some cases, of course, algorithms build efficiency and that's wonderful, but you know it just over the years, it seems as though the humanity might have, you know, taken a little bit of a backseat to a lot, of, a lot of corporate medicine. So over the years, we did build that practice. We built it, built a building, built, brought in partners, ended up selling that one to the, to the partners in 2003 and moved up into the LaGrange area and built another one and I was out of the business for a while. We had six kids actually in seven years, from 99 until 2006. We had that other set. So we were really super young when we had our first one. Actually, he went to college with us. We were really young when we had our first one and then the second one and she'll tell you this. I mean, she tells everybody she was the only one that was planned, but anyway she was. We had her actually last year of med school. We thought that was a great, brilliant plan. Little did we realize what we were going into in residency and I would basically just become a single mom during residency and work. Anyway, it was, it was fine, it was okay, we made it.
Speaker 2:Those were hard years, by the way, just so you know, those were some of those years where one of us was given up, but anyway, we just felt, like you know, we had a kind of an awakening. You know, I guess we got a little bit older and I realized, you know, gosh, I always wanted a big family. We've just been going and going and going for so long that, you know, once you slow down a little bit and you start to think and reflect, we just actually opened ourselves up to however many God wanted to send us. And he sent us six and seven years, and I was 35 when we had the first one. So that was a little hiatus from the business for me.
Speaker 2:But during that time, actually, some brewing health conditions that I'd really had my whole life but had just managed to work around, particularly like GI issues and some autoimmune conditions and things like that, you know, they really hit the fan in about 2008 for me. With that we started to look for answers, but at that point I literally had a pill for everything. I mean I had a pill for my GI problems, my allergies, my depression, my fibromyalgia, my chronic fatigue. I mean I had all those diagnoses and I literally had a med for everything and you know the overarching answer was I was just depressed, right. You know that was the overarching answer and it did kind of hit a fan. And there was a watershed moment in our home where I challenged my husband because he had kind of fallen into that pattern of here's a symptom, here's a diagnosis, here's a medication, right out. Really, what's the root cause, what's the reason and how can we get the body to heal itself? Because really our bodies can heal themselves if they're given the right prompts and the right tools.
Speaker 2:So we started to go down a path, personally, as a family, to figure out basically how mom could come back alive. Basically because I was like 60, 70 pounds overweight, just really struggling with health issues, and I was, you know, mid-40s I think I was 44 when it all kind of hit the fan, maybe somewhere around there and that led us personally, as a family, down a path to look at things like gut health and to look like, you know, gut permeability and nutritional deficiencies and some genetic information and just a lot of different things that we started to just do at home and once I started to feel better and come back alive. You know I'm always looking for a project, right, I'm always looking for a project. You know, once I started to feel better, had more energy, my kids were getting a little older, you know I was ready Okay, let's take something on and we really felt like, you know, what we had learned along the way could be really helpful to our patients in primary care.
Speaker 2:So, ostensibly, in 2011, january, I went back to work for a year. Now I was homeschooling too, just keep that in mind. I was homeschooling during that. It was good. It was good, but our oldest son was in a position where he could help us for you, help us with some of that for that year.
Speaker 2:So I was going to go to work for a year 2011, calendar year and put systems in place and create a model in that primary care center that was more focused on being proactive and improving performance and function and if somebody was really struggling, trying to find that root cause of what was going on, and back then that was a novel idea, you know, and part of our goal in doing that was to ultimately make it standard of care, and I can tell you, you know, 14 years later, it truly is, you know, finding the light of day, which is incredible. But so we did that. My husband went and got some more fellowships and certifications and some training. I did some certification, started to go down a path of really digging in and learning more on the biology side and how to help people in nutrition and coaching. I became a certified coach in the lifestyle space and we were off to the races. I mean it was a wonderful time. Fortunately didn't just last a year.
Speaker 1:Really your plan didn't work.
Speaker 2:Fortunately, unfortunately, no, no, it didn't last a year. Well, you know, there were a lot of market forces that were happening Again. We thought we were just going to do this in insurance-based primary care, okay, and what we there were, there were a lot of barriers to that. What we found was that it really, you know, I mean a primary care visit's usually what like 10 minutes maybe, you know, and it needs to be because of that structure. Now, you know, health care reform had come in in 2008, and that had shifted.
Speaker 2:There were a lot of good things about that, but also a lot of things that I really think that was the beginning of the shift into what we have today, which is more, again, like I said, metric-driven and not always in a good way. The advent of electronic health records. There were so many other things that created more red tape in the primary care practice. So, you know, overhead was going up. We were having to like, oh, make sure these codes are down to the nth degree so that we can bill, so we can collect, because if it's not, you know this specific code, icd-10 codes right? Six months for our payment instead of three months, right, yeah, that kind of stuff. So there were a lot of other mitigating factors happening in that world. Not all patients were into it. They just wanted a pill for something.
Speaker 2:So what we ultimately did is in 2013, opened up what we have today Medical Transformation Center as an offshoot of that primary care, but we still kept them running. So a day a week my husband would work as Medical Transformation Center and then the other four days a week he would work in primary care and we had other physicians, nurse practitioners. It was a very large primary practice care practice up in LaGrange. There were like 10,000 patients. It was huge, and so I was still there managing those, running those. But after about a year he realized, you know, I can't one day a week tell people what I really believe and the other four days a week tell them here's a pill, here's a pill. So ultimately we made the decision, sold the primary care practice he had some time that he needed to give to the entity that we sold it to and we just ran a very limited schedule in Medical Transformation Center from about 2016 until 2017. And then in 2017, we just went full throttle into the business that we have today.
Speaker 1:That's incredible.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, basically what we do is we help people that either want to just be at their peak, you know maybe there's not much going on, you know they're not struggling with health conditions, but they really want to. Maybe they're watching their parents age not so gracefully and they, you know, want to understand their genetics and their nutrient absorption and how they can just perform their best, whether that's just, you know, at home, whether it's in the sports arena, whether it's in the boardroom, wherever it is, they have peak performance. And then other folks who've struggled and been everywhere and not found answers that truly help them be well, as opposed to just managing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the practice that you have now, is your husband the only provider or do you have other physicians and providers in the office?
Speaker 2:We have two physicians. We have two physicians my husband and then we added a physician last year and interestingly enough and this is common knowledge she shares the story. So I'm not talking out of school here, but she actually was a patient of ours when she was in college many years ago and she was one who had been everywhere and had a little handful of meds for all the different symptoms. But you know, we thankfully were able to help her find that root cause, which were gut issues. You know they were gut issues and it was manifesting as skin and mood and all other kinds of things, energy. And she remembered that and she later went on to medical school and wanted to be in the space.
Speaker 2:So she actually reached out to us a couple of years ago and said, hey, I'm finishing up my residency, can I just come and shadow? And we thought, sure, come and shadow. And you know we love her, she loved to be, wanted to be part of this again. So we're really very excited because ultimately and we go around now and we teach other practitioners all around the country and have done even a little bit of international on the principles of what we call cellular medicine and that basic concept is. You know our goal is to make your cells as efficient as they can be, you know, from an immune metabolism and a microbiome standpoint, because if all of that is running well, then you're running well. So you know it's just part of our mission to make this ultimately standard of care, so that it's you know, it's out there and just part of the lexicon that's amazing.
Speaker 1:I have just enough knowledge about the things that you're talking about to make me sound really dumb, so I'm going to ask some stupid questions.
Speaker 2:Now it's like an onion. We're all learning here, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's. It's so interesting because I think that the way that our society is kind of set up, it's like you're supposed to take responsibility for your own health and wellness, right, like this is your own responsibility, but also medicine is difficult and scary and complex, so just trust the experts, but also make your own choices. And so I think that there's a strange dichotomy there of like how do you stay informed enough, because it is complex and ever changing and all of those things, so how do you stay informed enough but also still have faith in your providers, right? And?
Speaker 2:like I've been doing, for example, a class for years for our patients. I mean, I do four classes a month on gut health and the backstory on how that impacts your whole health and the connectedness of that, and then how to nourish yourself in a better way so that you can have your best health. You can have your best health. And you know things that we have been saying that were wah, wah, wah, wah. I mean kind of like really, are you sure? Well, you know now all that's kind of coming out. You know things like I don't know GMOs. I mean, you know, many, many years ago we were trying to tell people you don't want to eat those glyphosate when it goes in those are, those are sprayed all the time. That's why they're genetically modified. When they get sprayed glyphosate's on it, you eat glyphosate, it wrecks your microbiome. Don't eat it. It's not going to be perfect, you're not going to be able to. So you know you do want to do your research and understand and read, make sure your sources, because, too, I mean that's kind of. The other thing is like so many studies are funded with an agenda. That's a tough spot too. I mean, you know, remember the food pyramid. Do you remember the food pyramid, right? Yeah, food pyramid. Eat this much grain, eat this much fat. Don't eat fat. Fat makes you fat. Eat all these pretzels, all this bread, all that. Well, I mean it was funded by the grain industry, right? So you know, I mean based on the evidence. Now, when you look at from 1980 forward, you know consumption of grain and carbs, you know autoimmune disease, diabetes, consumption of grain and carbs. You know autoimmune disease, diabetes, obesity. I mean it's compelling when you lay those graphs on top of each other.
Speaker 2:Now, was it correlation, causation? I don't know. You know you tell me Correlation is it causation? But you know, I mean it really does stem. I mean we do know this and this is evidence-backed and based. A lot of the things that are coming out now and that's the other nice thing is that you know, the curve used to be kind of like this you know, information coming out and it being adopted. Now, thankfully, and I really do think a lot of it is the post-COVID world. You know, like you just said earlier, we're all waking up and going. We have to take responsibility too for ourselves. Right, let me learn, let me digest, let me read this. You know, now it's like all of a sudden that curve. You know it's had a spike on knowledge and information out there, which is exciting yeah.
Speaker 1:The number of medical practices who are adopting a model that sounds a lot more similar to what you all do is so inspiring, because I've had experiences personally I'm sure everyone has where you know you've got something going on and there's just no answers. No answers and having a provider who will actually sit down with you and take in okay, let's spend an hour to find out what's what's really going on. Tell me about the family history, tell me about your lifestyle, tell me about your stress levels, tell me about your work you know all of that. And then to say, you know, I think there's a couple of tests that we could run to see, like, is there something else happening here that maybe you know? And so, like a lot of other people, get a little blood test, find out that there's like a genetic mutation.
Speaker 1:Oh, you have no vitamin B in your system, you know. Okay, so you have no energy, great, but yeah, I think that, like that. So you have no energy Great, but yeah, I think that, like that, the time value that providers are able to give to their patients in a setting like that is so important, because you do get that backstory and it's like you can actually put the puzzle together instead of just like looking at where's the hole in the picture and trying to like randomly fill it with some pill, you know, to actually get a full idea of the picture, and then say, okay, well, logically it makes sense that this could be happening, right?
Speaker 2:Right, I mean it's, it's exciting. I mean, you know, anytime I used to do all of the intake calls when we first started. I mean it was a Google voice number. It would come to my cell phone, I would answer it wherever I was.
Speaker 2:You know, that actually was one of my favorite things about our whole, our whole business is hearing that story at the front end right, hearing that story of, and so oftentimes it was just like this resignation and hopelessness of.
Speaker 2:You know, I have been everywhere, nobody has heard me and it could just be something as simple I say simple because there are a whole lot more complex things but as I'm going through menopause, right, and I feel awful and I can't think and I don't know what's wrong with my brain, and you know all those things, and my doctor's just telling me well, you know, it's normal, natural, you'll just get through it. Yeah, no, I mean it is normal, actually, I guess yes, but we have tools, right, but being able to, you know, connect with that person and just say you know what I hear you and you are not the first person that I've heard this story from and we've got this, we've got this, you know, and then, over time, to see that transformation of what happens with them and the impact not only that it makes for typically that individual but also their whole support network. Because especially, like you know, for a mom right, for example, if a mom's really struggling and you're able to help mom, well, what are those lifestyle choices, that information, that knowledge that's going to then permeate down to any? You know children, grandchildren, you know her mom, dad, whatever you know all these extended relatives. They're going to see that change and I mean, and if she controls the food sourcing and things like that for the family, obviously that's going to be a huge impact Right Generations. And you know that's good work, that's exciting.
Speaker 1:That is really exciting. So are you still functioning as kind of like the? You're the CEO of the company. Is that correct? Is that your position?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so tell me about like the team that you have in place in the business. I'm always interested to find out more about like leadership styles and things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you know we are in an evolution. It's kind of fun. You know we've always, like I said, my goodness, I think 33 years now qualifies me as always been an entrepreneur. You know, we've always, like I said, my goodness, I think 33 years now qualifies me as always been an entrepreneur. You know the stint I did over in corporate accounting. I mean, you know it's business ownership, right, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. Absolutely it's like whoa, okay, I'm hanging on and I'm scared to death but I'm going to jump.
Speaker 2:But you know, with this particular practice, we started out very small. Like I said earlier, it was an, it was an offshoot. I mean, we had the whole structure in place of the large primary care when we first incorporated a medical transformation center. But then, when we sold off, then our little skeleton crew was. There were just three of us. There was me and my husband and we had a medical assistant at the time and you know we functioned like that. We had, you know, a small patient base we were just building and we actually spent 2014 as a PR blitz and then kind of had to pull back a little just because of capacity at that point that we had made. So we really didn't start in earnest until 2017, I would say, to fill up a full book of business, so to speak. And at that point there were three of us total, then there were four and you know, when you're running a small business, especially as a startup, it's all hands on deck, right, everybody can do everything. You know, nobody's really just. This is my lane, this is what I'm responsible for here. I've got that one. Oh, let me take care of that. Let me take care of that. Well, that's all fine and good in the beginning, right, and that's the way you have to run, right, you have to be the jack of all trades.
Speaker 2:We went, we were actually poised for some growth. 19 had reached out. We were hiring a nurse practitioner at the time. We were going to hire her and we had started to add to our team. You know base. You know we'd added another clinical person to help support the new nurse practitioner coming on, we finally hired somebody full-time to answer phones and really be a good president, you know.
Speaker 2:So we were building out a team and starting to look at permanent space. We were in timeshare, which was great. Youhare is a wonderful thing when you're growing a business but you don't have all that fixed costs and assets to pay for. But we had a little thing in the beginning of 2020, right, a little business disruption during 2020. And we were in a tiny little space like 600 square feet, so we couldn't really distance, we couldn't, you know, do be compliant with all that.
Speaker 2:So we actually all went home in March of 2020 with our plan of how we were going to head off and I just hired like two people, so they were remote, trying to train. But again, you know, it was just very all hands on deck and you know we're all working together and we actually, you know, it was just very all hands on deck and you know we're all working together and we actually, you know, we did pretty darn good for a year. We worked remotely for a year. We had a system, we had a voiceover internet phone, we had a handoff procedure. We would have a morning huddle and an afternoon huddle via Zoom.
Speaker 2:It grew actually during that year, wow, and I think it was because well, I mean, I know it was because, again, what we talked about earlier, people realized gosh, I want to be proactive here, get myself as fit as can be and healthy as can be, so that I can have a stronger immune system and be ready to withstand whatever. Right? Yeah, and so we did. We grew, and then we came out of our, our homes in the beginning of 2021. At that point, we had decided to build and to start our expansion.
Speaker 2:We did not. We had not brought on the nurse practitioner, we just paused her and then brought her on. That following year we built, we moved in from 600 square feet to like 4,500 square feet. I mean we were like, oh, my Added team members, you know I added a full-time RN to start to build that, because then at that point we were more than consultation. Consultation meaning, you know, just conversation like this, right here, go get your labs, go get your tests, here's what you need to go do, go get, et cetera. I mean that was our business model, it was just consultation. But we knew when we built a physical space, we wanted to add supporting services like stem cell therapy, like IV infusion, like some regenerative procedures, so a lot of different things that we had in our plan to do. We just had to pause a year.
Speaker 2:Well, when we moved in here in our new space with more team members and you know that's actually where we experienced some growing pains in terms of management structure, business model, that or you know, that type of thing no longer did all hands on deck worked, but we really, you know, struggled to find our footing on. Okay, who's accountable for what? How do we create some structure without stifling the team spirit. Yes, and, and, and and it was. It was painful. I mean, you know, I've learned a lot of lessons along the way. You know I don't know if you've experienced this, but fighting your own nature sometimes is tough. Absolutely know if you've experienced this, but fighting your own nature sometimes is tough.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And realizing. You know, I tend to be a people pleaser and a oh, don't worry about that, I'll do that, or oh, I don't want to bother you, but, yes, you know, and that makes creating a nice, you know, accountable not punitive, but just accountable structure, you know, so that we can all function and take the best care of our patients. And you know, there not be confusion. So it was. It's been a painful journey. I will tell you. We have again, we're always a work in progress, okay, right, but we have thankfully come out that other side now and I've developed, you know, we've developed a leadership team, which has been fantastic. So now it's not, oh, go ask Terry, go ask Terry, go ask Terry, because you know I created that right, Right, okay, I've got to decide everything, and you know when a buck stops with me, and you know all of that, I had created that, I think, for too long. It was appropriate in the beginning as a startup, right, but not as appropriate. You know, we probably went maybe a couple of years too long.
Speaker 2:Yes, truthfully yes, and now, actually, we've embarked on a journey to implement EOS. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Oh, my gosh, you know, I read that darn book in 2020. I read the red traction in 2020 and thought what a great idea. I can do this. Finally, now we are working with an implementer. Oh, congratulations. We started a couple of months ago and you know we're getting our footing on it, but we're all. I mean our leadership team. It's so exciting to have now more structure, because my nature is not structure, yeah, but other people on our team do have that, and so you know, just learning how to communicate within those confines and that's your lane. You go, do it and just, I don't know, tell me what to do, I'll do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm such a huge fan of EOS. I think that the biggest drawback to EOS is that it really is laid out for like a larger team. You know you do need to have that leadership team capability and so if you're a solopreneur or two or three people like, it's really hard. But I still think that the principles in EOS are so important to grapple with and understand even from the beginning. Even from the beginning Because, if you can imagine, like if you had read that book back in 2013, you know and started the practice with some of those principles of not letting you be the book or the buck stops here, but instead there's some sort of a guide or a system or a process that you're following. So congratulations. Do you feel comfortable telling us who your implementer is? Because I know I want people to be aware of who their resources are in the local area. The only implementer that I know right now personally is John Fox from here in Lexington, but I know that they're all over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Jack Martin is our implementer and actually the way it happened, you know, I don't know if you what you think about this, but you know, I just think sometimes we get what we need when we need it Right. And I was at a spot where, you know, we and I have worked with a. Personally, I have worked with a coach for 11 years and she is phenomenal and she has helped me personally through a lot of, you know, growth and our business. She's she's out in California. She was actually a coach before there were coaches, which I think is amazing. Like she's one of the people she knew, Stephen Covey, you know she's the OG. She's the OG and you know so many of the things that she was coaching us to do here as a team.
Speaker 2:We had we had done a lot of it, but we were having and you know, and I do know just from a responsibility standpoint, I think a lot of that had to do with me and just some of my issues we were having trouble creating a scorecard and accountability structure and so forth, and we'd been grappling with that for a few years and I had looked at some different systems. Oh, maybe this could help us, Maybe that could help us, whatever, and we had moved towards a leadership team but again, hadn't really handed fully. It's like still, oh, it's okay, I got it, I got it, I can do it. And I'm part of a group at the University of Louisville called the Small Business. I'm on a CEO roundtable with the Small Business Center at UofL and we get together every month and somebody sponsors a speaker and a few, maybe three months ago, somebody had brought in their EOS implementer, Jack, and he had just given a little presentation and talked about it.
Speaker 2:And you know, I'd been revisiting my book, I had been reading it anyway, and I just thought, okay, I think I'm just going to take the next right step, which is schedule a coffee, yes, Get a coffee with Jack, Talk to him for a minute and just see if this is a good fit. And you know, then, once we did that, I had the coffee with Jack. Then we did that discovery day with the leadership team and you know, and I just said, what do you guys think, what do you want to do? And they were like, let's do it. Yeah, which was thrilling to me because, you know, sometimes I might be the visionary, I might come up with like a few ideas over here that might be a good deal, and I was like, oh gosh, I hope. I wonder if they're going to think it's one of those. Oh my gosh, there's another idea you know, terry had a dream.
Speaker 1:What an idea over there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, we don't have time for that. So I've been very thankful that our team has embraced it. And you know we're muddling through our level 10 meetings right now and trying to get them right, and you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that for you guys. So I'm just going to give a little backstory, in case anybody hasn't heard me rant and rave about how much I love EOS.
Speaker 1:Eos stands for Entrepreneurial Operating System and it is a system that was created by Gino Wickman. He wrote a book about it, called Traction. That kind of gives you the high level overview of what this system is and how it can help your business. There's a whole library of books that go along with Traction to help you dig deeper. And they have a team of implementers all across the country or the world actually, that you can hire an implementer to come in and kind of guide your team through the process of getting the EOS implemented into your business. And then once you get that implemented sometimes it takes a few months, sometimes it takes a year or two, but once you've gotten it implemented, then you just kind of work together with your team, with your leadership team within your organization, to continue carrying out those principles and gain traction for your business, to help you grow, scale, meet your goals, all of those things. So that's our TED Talk today on EOS.
Speaker 2:What I loved about it was that and Jack was real clear about this he goes my goal is that you graduate, absolutely. I don't want you to become dependent on me forever, he said. The reason I have some capacity right now is because I've had some people graduate, which is exciting. And you know, I looked around and I've been watching some other businesses here locally that I have admired and known about and watched them just flourish and grow. You know, some of them have sold their businesses, somebody retired, you know I mean, but they, you know, just watching what has happened to their businesses. You know, as I've been paying attention in the last 10, 15 years, you know, that was really the reference point. Those were the reference points for me.
Speaker 2:But what's interesting, I think, about EOS is that, honestly, I had read most of the backstory, right, you know? I mean and Gino will say this, he didn't invent EOS, he just consolidated so many of the masters, right, you know, steve Covey, patrick Lencioni, Jim Collins, he just consolidated so many of the masters, right, you know, steve Covey, patrick Lencioni, jim Collins, he just consolidated all of it into a structured system Absolutely Like that. You could, somebody could say here do this. And that's where I feel like we were flailing is creating that structured system, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I love that. I had no idea that you were an EOS follower and that is so exciting. It's one of my favorite things to talk about. I do think it's one of the best tools out there for entrepreneurs and, like you said, there's a ton. There's probably a million different ways that you could look at how to improve your business, but I do really appreciate that EOS brings it all in and it says okay for systems, here's how you do it. For leadership, here's how you do it. For meeting posts here's how you do it. And it kind of brings everything together into one little package for you, so it's not so overwhelming and you're not having to like cherry pick things from reading all the books. Well, and I think that's it.
Speaker 2:I literally have read so many books over the course of you know, the last, especially 15 years, and one of the things that we have done early on is, you know, and there are all kinds of tools to do this, but they're basically the profiling tools, and the one we did was emrogenetics and what I know about myself. And that's kind of freeing too when you do some of those tools, don't you think? Because you learn some things about yourself that maybe you have always fought, you know within yourself and just thought, oh, what's wrong with me? Why can't I be like and not struggle like this with whatever? And it's kind of empowering when you realize this is how I'm wired and that's okay. I just need to go hang out with somebody that's wired the opposite so that we can get stuff done. It, so that we can get stuff done Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so I am very, you know, relational big picture. I've got analytical and I want so think of a pie. Okay, so my relational is this is, you know, I think it's like I don't know 60, 70%, you know. My conceptual is maybe 20%. My analytical, you know, is a good chunk of the rest of that and my structural is like almost non-existent and it makes so much sense. I love options and so, reading all those books, there were so many great ideas. I personally was having trouble distilling it down, making the choices and getting it done Absolutely. That's what I have appreciated personally about EOS and the team members that I have on, you know, together with us now, that have a lot of that structure. They're breathing a sigh of relief. It's like thank goodness.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah Well, I mean, I should have known as soon as we got on the call that you were a visionary, because your jacket just screams like creativity.
Speaker 2:I love it so much. Don't tell my PR people or my yeah, because typically I get I'll be in trouble for this jacket. Okay, just I'm going to tell you. Normally I am supposed to. If I know I'm good. If I'm supposed to be on camera or photographed, I am supposed to be wearing a color. If I'm supposed to be on camera or photographed, I am supposed to be wearing a color. But man, I just wasn't feeling it. Today we had big storms. I wanted to wear my black. Yeah, you look amazing. I like black and white. It's simple, it is. It's classy, but you know you've got the moment would be totally.
Speaker 1:Man. Terry, I've had so much fun talking with you Before we go. Is there anything else that you want to chat about, any words of wisdom, anything like that that you want to leave our listeners with?
Speaker 2:today. Well, honestly, probably just a little health advice, you know, because it's so impactful. I didn't mention this earlier, but it was actually what built the revenue for my husband to get trained get trained, like we talked about earlier, in kind of the mid, like 2012, 13, 14, 15, when he was doing all that training, you know, somebody had to pay for that. This is like my story in life, right Uh-huh For his education, uh-huh my story in life, right. So my story is education. But I actually grew a really large business with a health and wellness company, with a network marketing health and wellness company, and unfortunately I don't work that as much as I used to, but I still use all the products and the principles are so sound and they are part of our ecosystem here at MTC. But I used to go out and do wellness workshops and I would tell people, especially back in those earlier days of Medical Transformation Center, I would say, you know my day job is, you know, starting a medical practice, a startup, and we're doing, you know, regenerative and functional medicine and really helping people get healthy. But I'm just going to tell you that if you do these things that I'm telling you tonight in your living room, you may never even have to come and see us. Are you going to tell us the things? Okay, medical transfer, it's like MTC light. Well, you know, there's so much that's connected to your gut health. Okay, I mean seriously like autoimmune disease, hormone issues, brain fog, foggy thinking, focus, add, ADHD. There's so many pieces that are connected. They're all interconnected and this is data backed on the science side and medical transformation center.
Speaker 2:But I'm just telling you that if you pull out as much as you can the artificial sweeteners, so things like NutraSweet, aspartame, sucralose, all of those things that aren't really a plant, I mean, stevia is fine, it's a plant, eat it. Monk fruit fine, eat it. You know, if you don't want the sugar, right, pull out all that artificial junk because it's wreaking havoc on your insulin levels. It's such a cruel joke, right, you know I mean, when you eat that zero calorie Coke it makes your insulin level spike. Yeah, right, you know I mean it shouldn't. There weren't any calories in it, but it does, because that's what that chemical will do in your system. So it messes with your gut, it destroys your microbiome. Artificial sweeteners, artificial preservatives, bht, bha, and you're never going to get this perfect, so don't make yourself nuts that it's either all or none. But do the best you can Start pulling some of that artificial junk out of your diet and eating clean, whole foods clean, being non-GMO, organic as much as you can antibiotic, steroid, hormone-free animal products, because all of that disrupts your hormone system, has a huge impact on fertility or just function.
Speaker 2:Early menopause, early puberty there's so many pieces to this Focus and ability to think clearly.
Speaker 2:I mean so many of our kids and again, we were in internal medicine and pediatrics practice so we did a lot in the early days but so many kids maybe that are medicated, that don't need to be if we clean up their diet and get their gut more in integrity so that their little brains can, because your neurotransmitters are made in your gut, the stuff that create your ability to focus your mood, that manages anxiety and depression. And that's not to say there aren't situations, of course, that we need counseling on and help and coping mechanisms, but get your body as intact as you can so that you've got a fighting chance to be resilient. So that's what I would tell you. I mean, I'm 61 and a half years old, I'm almost 62. I feel better today than I did in my 20s, in my 30s and into my early 40s before we started to make these transitions, and it just gets better from there. So just that's something that you can control. You don't have to pay anybody else any money for anything. Just start shopping differently and reading labels.
Speaker 1:Such great advice. I had a conversation once. My background is also in health and wellness. I was a massage therapist for a long, long time and I was training specifically for oncology massage and I really wanted to help these people. And I was at a workshop and the teacher was this beautiful old hippie lady and she said you know, if somebody is in cancer treatment actively, if they call you and say, will you bring me a Big Mac on your way to the appointment today, she said you stop and get them that Big Mac. And I was like no way, no, how, I would never bring anybody anything from McDonald's. You know that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1:And so we had this huge, long conversation about food and all of these things. And she said you know, michelle, the amount of pressure that you're putting on yourself to be absolutely perfect with your diet is probably causing more dis-ease in your body than the good that you're doing, because I was so wrapped up in never, ever touch fast food. You know, no sodas, no sugars, no, you know all of these things. And she said you're taking it like to the extreme the other way. And so I think it's so important for us to realize the way we think about our food. The way we think about our bodies also has an effect. Do the best you can do. Like you were saying, you're never going to be perfect.
Speaker 2:You're going to want to go out to eat. You know. Do the best you can do. Do the best you can do, yeah.
Speaker 1:Which is probably a lot better than most of us are doing, you know it's always yeah, it is, it's a, it's a work in progress.
Speaker 2:But just, you know, find something you know, switch out your. I mean honestly, I tell people, even if you drink a regular cane sugar, you know, non-gmo cane sugar soda, as opposed to a diet soda with NutraSweet or sucralose, you know, I mean, that's, that's a good switch. I'd always rather eat pure, non-gmo cane sugar, right, you know, than eat sucralose. Anyway, that's what I would say. Just you know, it'll impact you, it will impact the folks around you. Just start to become aware of what you're putting in your mouth. And you're right though, michelle, we see, because we see people here that will be like I can only eat three things, Everything else bothers me. That's the extreme. I'm not saying that. Don't go down that path, but just start to make those little changes to clean up and see what you notice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Okay, so tell us where we can find you on the internet and socials and all of that, if anybody wants to follow along on your journey On social well.
Speaker 2:On social well, medicaltransformationcentercom is our business, and then terripaige is Instagram and Facebook, and I don't know, I think maybe there might be a picture of me and a bunch of kids on my profile picture but, that's okay. You know that is a lot of fun. That was a fun, fun season. It was exhausting, but you know is a lot of fun. That was a fun, fun season. It was exhausting, but you know, our youngest now is almost 19, so yeah, yeah, congratulations.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, terry. It's been so fun to talk with you. I'll make sure to link out to the website and your social medias and all of that in the show notes. So if anybody's interested in following along, please check out the description or the show notes to be able to link out and see more from Terry and her team at the Medical Transformation Center, and I appreciate it so much. This has been a lot of fun, terry. Thank you All right, we'll talk with you guys later. The Small Business Bestie community. Join us in the Facebook group or find out more information on the website at smallbusinessbestieorg. Please share the podcast with your friends, who could use a friend in business, and it would really mean so much to me if you follow the show and take just a few seconds to rate or review. A five-star rating really helps the show become visible to other besties who may just need the support and friendship that we offer.