Radio Front Desk

How a mystery illness sparked a new approach to healthcare | Brandon Jacobs of Park Integrative Health

• Jane.app • Episode 9

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Brandon Jacobs often says that without integrative healthcare, his life wouldn’t be the same. A persistent feeling of being “off” led him on a years-long journey to find the source of his symptoms. Brandon was eventually diagnosed with a rare disorder that processes certain foods and turns them into ethanol in the body, making him feel “drunk.”

In this episode, Brandon shares how his personal health journey inspired a unique approach to healthcare by combining primary care with health and wellness — all under one roof.

To check out more stories like Brandon's, head to frontdesk.jane.app.

Guest bio

Brandon co-founded Park Integrative Health in 2016, where he currently leads as Director of Allied Health. Brandon’s approach to leadership is based on empathy, and he strives to create a safe, inviting culture that empowers others to thrive. He believes strongly in supporting others on their journey to reach their potential and become the best version of themselves. He seeks to help individuals understand their unique worth as they work towards their goals, whether professional, personal, or health-related.

In 2023, Brandon and the leadership team at Park Integrative Health worked on the build-out and creation of a sister location to house physiotherapy and chiropractic care for the business. Synapse by Park Integrative Health opened its doors in late 2023, and is proud to continue to support the community with a personalized integrative care experience.

Prior to building Park Integrative Health, Brandon worked as a school teacher, a certified personal trainer, a yoga instructor and trainer, and a Registered Massage Therapist.

Guest links

In this episode

Speaker 1:

But then, as I, you know, got closer to my 30s and some differing life stresses started piling on, I found that I was feeling less and less well, and so what unwell looked like to me would have been that I was a highly functioning alcoholic is what the physical symptoms would have been. You know, we would call them episodes, or it would just look like Brandon's not feeling well. He just needs to sleep it off, which sometimes helped. But ultimately, like I just kept saying like no, like something is wrong, like this obviously isn't normal. None of you guys are acting like this and so like something's wrong.

Speaker 2:

Brandon Jacobs often says that without integrative health care, his life wouldn't be the same. Brandon Jacobs often says that without integrative healthcare, his life wouldn't be the same. A persistent feeling of being off led him on a years-long journey to find the source of his symptoms. Brandon was eventually diagnosed with a rare disorder that processes certain foods and turns it into ethanol in the body, making him feel drunk. The experience inspired Brandon to create his clinic Park Integrated Health, located in his hometown of Sherwood Park, alberta, canada. What makes his clinic unique is the combination of primary care providers and health and wellness professionals, such as massage therapists and acupuncturists. With this blended model, he's been able to offer a truly revolutionary healthcare experience. If there's a need, he tries to fill it all while educating people on the benefits of the integrative model.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to Radio Front Desk, a show that surfaces what real people in real clinics are doing to open, run and grow successful health and wellness businesses. I'm your host, denzel Ford, editor-in-chief of Front Desk Magazine by JNAP. Here we have powerful conversations with health and wellness professionals on the business side of clinic life. We hear their stories and discover what works and how to do it, and we also talk about what doesn't work. If you want to check out more stories like this, head to janeapp forward slash front desk.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, I'd like to start by getting to know you a little better, if that's okay. So I'm just wondering if you could tell me your background, maybe get into a little bit of your early life, that kind of inspired your career, if there was anything like that and what brought you here today to talk to me. Well, when I left teaching, I started to do that and I thought this probably won't be sustainable long term. So I took massage therapy and then I also thought, well, this might not be sustainable for my whole life and so I took a whole bunch of yoga training. So I started to bridge all of those into some holistic and allied health healing.

Speaker 1:

And along the way I met Heather, my partner and the mother to my daughter, and Nija Bakshi, who is one of our co-founders and she was a massage client of mine. And we went through, you know, she was a client of mine for a good 10, 12 years. And as we started to build a relationship, Heather and I always thought, like, well, when you graduate from acupuncture school, what are we going to do? And we thought we would do like training, massage, yoga, acupuncture, and open up a little clinic. And Nija on this other side was like what are you and Heather going to do when she finishes? And so I told her and she's like well, I'm really looking to get out of inpatient medicine in the hospital and I was thinking that like we could work together and see if physicians and allied health providers could work together as equals Do you? Is that something that you'd be interested in?

Speaker 1:

And we kind of went from. We kind of went from there. I said yes, and so we started working on some background stuff over 18 months before we opened in 2017. And Heather was like well, how are you going to do that and can I help? And so we joined forces, along with Nija's husband, Mahesh, who does a whole bunch of the finite skills that we don't have, like fixing things and accounting and that sort of thing. And we just all joined together and really were invested in the area of Sherwood Park. That's where I grew up, that's where Mahesh's parents are and that's where Heather and I live now.

Speaker 1:

And so you know, long story short, educational wise, and that's kind of where how we got here yeah, okay, there's so much to dive into in that.

Speaker 2:

Um, I also understand you have a really interesting personal health journey, that sort of informed your way of moving through being a business owner and being involved in health care. Could you, could you talk about that a little bit? Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Where would you like me to start in that part of the journey?

Speaker 2:

Well, from what I understand, you have a long history with not feeling well and you didn't know why for a long time. Maybe start there.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so I can say that my first recollection was around when I was 13, playing baseball at my wasn't my high school yet, but it eventually was and I just remember like not feeling like myself in spite of having eaten well and being hydrated, I just like didn't feel like myself. My dad would have described me as like not being there or that, just like something was off, and so that's kind of my first memory of it. And then the memories are kind of scattered. I remember it happening when I was playing Alberta basketball when I was probably 16 or 17. I was on the bus and you know, my teammates were just like what's wrong with you? And of course, like in that age category, you're like nothing, like nothing's wrong, like what do you mean? And so I got and you know, as I aged, like I still got defensive. But you know, upon a lot of reflection, people were just looking out for me, because when you don't show up the way you normally do and people check in on you like they're not doing it because something's wrong, they're doing it because they care about you. And I found it happened a little bit in when I was playing university volleyball.

Speaker 1:

Probably not a whole lot, um, but then, as I, you know, got closer to my thirties and some, some differing life stresses started piling on, I found that I was feeling less and less well, and so what unwell looked like to me would have been that I was a highly functioning alcoholic, is what the physical symptoms would have been. That I was a highly functioning alcoholic is what the physical symptoms would have been, in spite of, you know, being with Heather for an entire day, not out of her sight, my cognitive functioning would just kind of decline throughout the day. You know, we would call them episodes, or it would just look like Brandon's not feeling well, he just needs to sleep it off, which sometimes helped. But ultimately, like I just kept saying like no, like something is wrong, like this obviously isn't normal, none of you guys are acting like this and so like something's wrong. So, by a stroke of I don't know, I don't know, just call it like thankfully, because without integrative health care, like I don't know, I don't know, just call it like thankfully, because without integrative healthcare, like I wouldn't be alive.

Speaker 1:

Heather and I were watching a TV show and a man named Dr Kenodia was on the TV and there was a reenactment of a man who was at a pizza shop got pulled over by the police. He couldn't walk a straight line, could hardly talk. He was a devout non drinker and it was just a reenactment of how food can interact in people's systems. So essentially at the time, food would interact in a way with me that produced ethanol in my system, and so we didn't know this at the time, but we saw this reenactment so I flew to Ohio to meet with Dr Kanodia and I was basically like, can you help me?

Speaker 1:

So he's a functional, he's a functional medicine specialist, so he's an MD, and an MD operating out of Ohio, as I mentioned and you know, so kind of began a journey of some testing, so all kinds of different testing and supplementation. He's still my doctor today, but I did end up getting diagnosed with some lesser known diagnoses, which are auto brewery syndrome and SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, which, as I mentioned to Alex and Baz before, more people know about it now because it's been more mainstream it was even like one of the episodes on Grey's Anatomy.

Speaker 1:

So you know, 10 years ago, when it was when it was happening to me, it was less known Like I went to my doctor not to pit it against doctors, but I went to my doctor at the time and told him what was going on. He basically said, like that's not real Because at the time it wasn't a real diagnosis. But right.

Speaker 1:

You know. So you know I knew that something was wrong and we just kept exploring and exploring and exploring and, you know, finally we found. So when I met with Dr Kanodia I, you know, he started helping me on that end. But I also started taking really concerted self-care. So stress reduction, which wasn't only working out in yoga, it came with massage and acupuncture and nutritional changes, because even though I was eating healthy foods, they weren't healthy for me. No one would assume that eating eggs and black pepper and mustard and things like that might make their ethanol levels high. But after some food sensitivity testing, like, yeah, very interesting, but that's what was happening for me and that's what happens to lots of people. Now we can just more readily see that, like, perhaps there's something else going on with you and integrative healthcare or a whole bunch of different avenues that you can explore might be able to help you. And so that's, while all of this was happening, we were still opening our company and Heather was still in school and trying to do this full time.

Speaker 1:

But for me, that's why it's such a passion project Not only is it in my hometown but I get you know a good number of people from high school or acquaintances, like reaching out and asking like can you help me? I've reached some roadblocks. I've tried these part and parcel things or these one off things like is there something that you can do or that you guys offer that can help me, even if it's not to see both a physician and allied health. Members like is there something that you can do to help me? Members like is there something that you can do to help me? So it's, it's very passionate for me because, as I mentioned, if integrative healthcare and Dr Kanodi and all the help that I received on the back end I wouldn't be alive.

Speaker 2:

Wow, yeah, that's really powerful. Can we dive into the integrative healthcare, a little bit Piggybacking on that and like so what do you? How do you? Well, two things. First, you've mentioned the term allied health and I just want to make sure that all of our listeners kind of are on the same page with us on what we mean by that. And then if you could do the same with integrative health as well, if you will.

Speaker 1:

So allied health is basically what we decided to call what was once called alternative or complementary modalities, so basically anything that's not considered medical, like a medical doctor or a nurse practitioner. We called allied because we view our team all as allied members together. So they're allied with the medical system and allied with themselves. They're not complementary and they're not alternative. They're you know, they're allies in your health journey. So that's that's what we have chosen to call, to call that area, because before my title was the Director of Holistic Health, which made sense at the time because they were holistic modalities or that's kind of how they were viewed and we just wanted to amplify the way that we viewed them and the way that we want the public to view all kinds of avenues of care. So we decided to call it allied. And as far as integrative health care, we call it integrative instead of integrated, because integrated denotes that there's a stop, but integrative means it's ongoing and ever-changing, and so we called it park integrative health because we knew it would always be evolving.

Speaker 1:

We had no idea what the team or the modalities or anything would look like and they have vastly changed over the years and they've changed which services are most popular at any given time, and what we're really trying to do is show that healthcare can really just be universal. It's not one side, so to speak, over the other. It's not medical versus allied, or my doctor did this or my chiropractor did this. We try and elevate all of the modalities to the best of our ability, knowing that we won't be able to. You know, please, everybody and not everyone's going to have the same viewpoint. Integrative healthcare is just new in practice. It's not new in theory, because that's how that's a medicine's practice, you know, all over the world. It's just a little bit newer here, at least in our area, a little bit maybe in yours and across Canada. It's not as common as other places in the world. So we're trying to, you know, get a foothold on how we can change the way healthcare is experienced in Canada.

Speaker 2:

I love that so much, and what I noticed about your clinic is that you have many of these allied healthcare options within it, and then you also have physicians, so could you talk about how those two things exist within the same world and maybe bring us inside the clinic a little bit Like what's it like to be there?

Speaker 1:

I mean I, I I love it there. I mean I, I really I took a lot of places that I worked and really focused on the things that I didn't like or the ways I didn't like to be treated. And they won't obviously call anybody out, but have some really pinnacle moments that happen with every place that I worked that I was like, oh, if I'm ever fortunate enough to run something or lead people or help people have a job for their families, like this is how I would want to do it. So when you come in, you're greeted with nice, friendly faces, very fresh branding, greenery and essentially all of the tones and colors and everything that we've picked are so that essentially you would feel safe in the space. You wouldn't know that you're here to see a doctor or that you're here for therapy or that you're here to see a massage therapist.

Speaker 1:

Everyone is treated the same in the waiting room. The difference is that you predominantly go to the west side of the building if you're seeing a physician and the east side if you're going to allied health. But that's grown and evolved and changed over the last seven years. So essentially you'll go to your appointment and there's obviously we have lots of options. But the biggest thing is that you it's not really a choose your own adventure, but there are a lot of options. So while our physicians right now happen to be full, because there's a huge demand to have a family physician, we offer something that Heather actually has produced in all of our processes, and those sort of things are the things that she excels in. So all of the programs and those sort of things that we have are from her brain. I just get to talk about them.

Speaker 1:

So the client care program is at the core of our company and it's the bridge. It's the bridge group of people and the bridge thought that you can refer from the physician team to the ally team. You can refer from the ally team to the allied team. You can refer from the allied team to the allied team, or the public can self-refer themselves to one of those streams, depending on who's available. So I would say it's kind of like a health coach, only it's more like starting at the beginning of your journey.

Speaker 1:

So let's say you're really interested in park integrative health. You know that there's not a doctor accepting, or you have a doctor but you're not sure where to start with allied health, you could book a client care consult, virtually or in person, and you could come and sit down and essentially it's a way for you to tell your story, for the client care coordinator, um, to listen and to essentially see what your goals of treatment are, what modalities you've had, which ones you're interested in, and then to remove or at least talk about any barriers that you have. So that could be finance, time, personality, you know what have you, and then essentially they can help you book and build a plan. Then you go into our client care program and then the client care coordinator is the one that checks in with you. So essentially, they check in every couple of weeks, see, like you know, maybe you missed an appointment, hi, so, and so we see that you did miss your appointment. Like, is everything okay? Are you still interested in this modality? So essentially they get followed until they, you know, are maybe a more stronger agent of their, of their own health. Maybe they need a little less help, maybe they need less help booking.

Speaker 1:

But we do lots of consults that way. Or instead of having, say, a hallway conversation where I say to someone hey, you know, I'm glad you enjoyed your treatment, I've already rebooked them, like I think you'd really benefit from acupuncture instead of simply having it in the hallway and that person being like, yeah, yeah, sure, I'll probably book acupuncture maybe one day, and then it's gone out of their brain. We can either put a task in Jane funnily enough, hi, this client is looking for more information on acupuncture and one of the client care coordinators contacts them or we do it a little bit more in real time, but then we send consult letters back and forth about this person's collaborative care. We have a consent form for people to enter the client care program where, if they want everyone to be able to view their chart notes so the care is collaborative then we do that. And then if they request something even deeper, like a patient case conference or a client care conference where all of their providers get together to discuss what they're doing for their care, we also do that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, wow, that's quite a lot. It's quite a lot. What is your approach to getting patients or clients to understand the value of these different modalities and the other options that are available to them? Like, how does that conversation go?

Speaker 1:

It's been evolving over the years. So I will say when we first started, there was, admittedly like a lot of pushback, not simply from the community or the medical community, which there was, but more from clients not quite understanding like it came in here for my free health care and now my physician is saying that I should book a massage, but I should book it in this building where I have to pay, which is true because it's still a business. But also, instead of referring out, what we did is we created some posters that were branded and tailored to every physician's panel and we put it in the rooms, such as do you suffer from depression or anxiety? And then on the bottom it'll say perhaps you would benefit from a referral to our mental health team, like talk to a client care coordinator. So then it allowed the client to be more of the agent of like hey, that is me and I would like to hear more about that instead of it feeling like it was the top down, the doctor knows everything.

Speaker 1:

Because one of the things we like the most about the team of physicians that we have is that they're allowed and empowered to say I don't know, but I do have a whole team of over 50 people that could probably help you because I don't know everything, and so that's how more conversations are started. But, more than anything, it's simply education. So we have lots of ways to do that. Instead of having pamphlets, we have unassuming QR codes that link us to our website so people can peruse as they wish. We have our services, vision, mission, values and our team in the waiting room with some light, ambient music so that if that's what people want to watch, they certainly can.

Speaker 1:

Our nursing team or our admin or moa team. They might have more of a hallway conversation like hey, I hear you, I see you're here in for this like. Is a referral to x, y, z of interest to you? If not, like, please talk to your. Like, please talk to dr x and if so, look, you can come back out and talk to me about it and I can book you something. So it's more just educating that we do have more modalities, but you're not bound to seeing any of them. And if you want an external referral, you know absolutely. But it's really just to educate people not just that we have the modalities but that there are other options.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love that, and when I'm on your website, I was like kind of shocked at how many different options you have. So I am too. Maybe you could just quickly give us a laundry list. And then I'm wondering how you made the decision to to bring in the ones that you brought in. How, how was that decision made to to choose acupuncture or whatever you're going to choose? Sure?

Speaker 1:

So when we started, like I was a massage therapist before so I just assumed like most people have benefits, especially here for massage, so I thought massage was definitely going to carry the allied team. So we started out really small with four core things, which were massage, acupuncture, mental health and nutrition. So I started there and then it's really just evolved. It's evolved.

Speaker 2:

I just have to interrupt you for a second to just congratulate you that that was your starting point. I mean, that is quite a group, so please continue. I'm sorry. But that's like right out of the gate. That's a huge, wonderful starting point.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you, and that's what I thought we needed at the beginning, and we still do. Those are definitely our longest standing modalities and then it's really just evolved. It's evolved as people have come in and they've, you know, wanted to offer other things. We have a nurse practitioner model. Now that's different than some others. It is fee for service. Some clinics have their nurse practitioners see their medical panel and we just have taken a different approach. But that was just in a way to support the medical team.

Speaker 1:

As another offering, we offer our new building, synapse by Park. Integrative Health houses our physiotherapy and chiropractic team. Essentially, we outgrew the space the community had been asking, like when are you going to have physio and when are you going to have chiro in? There was a five year hold in the plaza, so we kind of had to wait till that lapsed anyway, and then so we expanded so we could grow the team in that way, but still in the plaza. So it's technically still under one roof, because we all share a roof, but it's just in two. Um, it is in two buildings um park.

Speaker 1:

Integrative health is unit 970 and synapse is unit 910, so they're not that far apart, um, and we offer medical aesthetics. We are adding an intimate health or a sexual health division in the coming months with a physician who is in our community that reached out and wanted to do some work with us. We have occupational therapy, and occupational therapy came out of a demand from the long COVID community because we still do run one of the only long COVID programs in Alberta. Dr Bakshi was kind of the lead at one of our hospitals, not kind of, she was the lead at one of our hospitals and so we still run a long COVID clinic. So occupational therapy and a very specialist physiotherapist that we have came because that was a demand that was needed.

Speaker 1:

That's all I can think of off the top of my head before I go off on a tangent. So it's a lot and there's some more, and some of it's been diversified because some of the massage therapists offer some things that are a bit outside of massage therapy, like manual osteopathic therapy, which is different than osteopathic manual therapy, and we have both. We have MOTs and we have an OMT, and so the education around that has been important, just like the education around the difference between what a RD so registered dietitian does versus a certified holistic nutritional consultant. They have similar educations but take differing approaches, and so it's been a lot about educating our team first so they can talk about it, and then the public second, and so it's just, it's just evolved.

Speaker 1:

I rarely turn away something that somebody wants to try because I think like, well, if not us, who, why don't you try that? Why don't you see if it works Like we? Why don't you see if it works Like we can work together and see if this is something that brings you joy or fulfills your practice or your family? And we just kind of go from there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So if I'm hearing you correctly, some of your decisions were made because you kind of thought it would be good to have, and some of it were patients actually asking you for for a certain type of treatment. Is that correct? Definitely?

Speaker 1:

and we are the first to say, like we don't know, we don't know everything, and so, like, if you have an idea or feedback or something that you want, like let's sit down and talk about it, because we definitely haven't, we haven't thought of it, of everything. So, um, yeah, some of it's come from a demand, or we see that there was a need that we didn't realize there might be, because I trialed occupational therapy before COVID and it was a really big flop and there just wasn't the demand. The occupational therapist that we had is amazing, but she came from the school system and lots of people were looking for occupational therapy like return to work plan, and lots of people were looking for occupational therapy like return to work plan More like what other people would think like occupational therapy, as they got hurt on the job and I need to get back to work and her niche was a little bit different.

Speaker 1:

But then she had a different niche that we just couldn't fill at the time. And then long COVID came and now we have two occupational therapists and they're both quite busy. One works, you know, predominantly virtual and she's busy also.

Speaker 2:

So I have a bit of an abstract follow-up question Do you have a sense of where patients and clients are getting the information they get outside of your clinic on what they think about the different types of healthcare Because you're talking about? You know, in one moment in time a certain type of treatment not really being in demand, but then, after an event, it becomes in demand? Where is that coming from? I guess, more generally in society it's kind of a big question, but I don't know. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

Speaker 1:

I think in general, it is the knowledge that not everyone holds all of the information and not one thing works for everybody. Everyone who has had some sort of self-care has probably had a bad experience. That doesn't mean that that person is a bad person or a bad provider. That person likely had something going on for them that nobody knows about. And so I think, instead of just saying like that modality doesn't work, it could just be like that modality didn't work for me at that time, because there are hundreds of thousands of success stories for each modality.

Speaker 1:

So I think people are educating themselves more and taking a bit more agency over what you know, what knowledge means, and that the physician A doesn't know everything and B doesn't have to know everything. They don't have to. They don't have to hold all of the cards and they likely don't want to because it's a. It's a high pressure job, especially in family medicine, where you kind of go to them for everything. I mean we can't be expected that they know everything in the world. So it's great for us for them to have a very trusted team and a trusted brand in the community to refer to.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Can you talk about your business partner who is a physician and what was her experience collaborating with you to? About your business partner who is a physician and what was her experience collaborating with you to build this business, and where do you think her interest in having that partnership came from?

Speaker 1:

Well, I will do my best to speak on her behalf, because, obviously she's not here.

Speaker 1:

So I think she is very forward thinking and so I wouldn't say that she's necessarily like a unicorn, but I would say at the time she could see that medicine could be done differently, that it could be changed, that there were more options. There are still physicians that we know that don't believe in modalities like acupuncture, even though acupuncture has been around for thousands of years. So I think it took an open-minded physician to want to do something different. And then, essentially because Heather and I built such a trusting relationship with her and her twin girls, I think she just inherently trusted us that we would make good decisions on what modalities we would bring in.

Speaker 1:

And so I think it came just like any business like. It comes from relationship building, because they're all businesses of humans for the most part, especially when it comes to self care or your body, like. Like it's all a business of humans, so, and they're messy and they need help. And essentially you need to be open-minded if you, if you want to try something new. And so I think she went through a lot of strife amongst colleagues and the medical community in general, saying like that's not going to work or that's not a real thing or you know whatever kinds of things that I don't even know. That was said and I think she just disagreed or buried it somewhere and and moved forward. And here we are, almost seven years later, with, you know, an expansion and a thriving company and people still connecting with us who have been turned away from where they work for someone that they want to try for the betterment of the community. And we said like, yeah, let's try it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love it. You just mentioned expansion. Maybe we can flip a little bit and talk about your growth story. So I understand that your clinic was the first of its kind in Edmonton, Alberta. So what was that like? How did you get off the ground from the start?

Speaker 1:

You know, we had a lot of like haphazard meetings and a lot of like coffee shop talk. That was more, like you know, truly it was the four of us coming together having a lot of different skill sets. I was fairly connected in the health and wellness communities. I knew some people that I could contact, even though we did hold open interviews. And Nija, she was running internal medicine in the company and she had a physician in mind that was going to join us.

Speaker 1:

But essentially it was how are you going to do that? What are the systems going to be? That was even more important because, like you can have a lot of really big ideas, but the answer is, the question is always like how are you going to do that and how will you make that successful? So, as I had mentioned, like that's where heather came in and was like we need things like a human resources manual and and that sort of thing. And so we really started on the on the back end 18 months, even even beforehand, even before we were looking at spaces, um, because you wanted, we knew it was going to be a really big responsibility to employ people, um, and we wanted to make sure that, even though it's evolved and changed and obviously we still didn't get it right in the beginning, like we did our best and we didn't, we didn't rush it by any means, and so we started long before we opened.

Speaker 1:

And then I would say, when we expanded, we, you know, we we went a little bit quicker because we thought we had a lot of knowledge, which we still did, but I would say that the expansion happened a lot quicker from the first time we talked about it to when it actually became a thing.

Speaker 2:

I love that you mentioned the Human Resources Manual because I'm fascinated by all the little nitty gritty things that people need to do to run these businesses, to open them, to keep them afloat in a positive way. Has that document changed since the very beginning to now, where you have a lot more staff that would be needing to work under that manual?

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, it changes all the time. It's a living document. It gets changed and updated and it all comes from things you didn't think you need to put in a human resources manual.

Speaker 2:

It comes from the mistakes.

Speaker 1:

When something goes wrong, you're like let's add it to the manual it also was a good reminder for us that, um, people view the world differently and so, even if we take our values, for example, um, like a value, like integrity, it does mean different things to different people. So in our manual we've and even our team at the time like we had them right, like what does it mean to you? Because it means different things to different people and we were finding that there was some. You know, we do a values exercise even before, like in our interview process, because we found that if our values don't align, we're probably not going to be aligned to work together.

Speaker 1:

But that's the biggest thing that changed in the human human resources manual, which was, um, the way we do the work and why, and everyone being on the same page of like what that actually means, because there's tons of definitions for lots of words in the dictionary and so it was more of a yeah, this is what this to us. This is what it means, like to show up with integrity. This is what it means. This is what patient and client-centered care means to us, instead of just this is our value and it means to you what it means to you. So it's an always changing document, because healthcare and business and people are always evolving anyway, so it needs to be an updated living document.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love that. Can we dive into the people first, care and culture of your clinic and how do you approach that? I'm assuming that's one of your values. So if I'm right about that, yeah, so tell me how you do define that. And then, what are the nuts and bolts of how it looks from day to day, what people are expected to do?

Speaker 1:

So is this patient so this patient center, like for the public or for our team, is it really for the team.

Speaker 1:

Like your people first, culture within your clinic yeah, well, you know, building a really positive culture was really important to me when we first opened.

Speaker 1:

We went to some conferences. We went to a thing called the cult conference, uh, out in Banff, alberta, um, and got some really great um stuff there. Um, we went to some leadership conferences because, I mean, we've all been in leadership roles in some sense but, like other people, have a lot more knowledge. So we did our study and some homework on what we wanted that to look like and feel like and so it looks it's kind of more in like the smaller details, at least on my end in my portfolio like people fill out like a love languages form or a client, you know, a staff member appreciation form when they start. So we know how they like to get feedback. We know what's important to them, you know, stemming from the five love languages. Obviously even that has evolved over the years, stemming from the five love languages. Obviously even that has evolved over the years. But there's no sense in giving somebody a gift card if their love language is quality time as an example.

Speaker 1:

So we do celebrate people's birthdays and anniversaries and that sort of thing and we try and tailor that to what their specification is, which is a lot to go through with 50 plus people. But that's part of my role is remembering everyone's birthday and anniversary and milestone anniversaries. They get a little bit extra. And birthdays I always send a text or an email and everyone still gets a card and some people have had six or seven cards for their birthdays because they've been with us from the very beginning. We offer wellness days instead of sick days because we really want to support that. Like, you can take a day off when you need to take a day off, just make sure it doesn't affect your team. You know, to the best of your ability. We're very, I would say, loose on things like timely lunches, because we still we know people need to recharge and so long as the work is getting done in an effective manner, we like to think that we offer a lot. We don't often offer a super strict dress code because I want people to express how they feel and their own personality within some guidelines, but we don't have uniforms or anything like that.

Speaker 1:

You know, I know everyone's name name. I know lots about their families, as much as I can. We do frequent check-ins and so I've found over the years that, even though it hasn't landed for everybody and even though not everyone stays with us for years and years like I, do my very best to hope that they feel cared for, appreciated, valued um, and if they don't like they're welcome, they're welcome to reach out um. A couple times a year. I ask for feedback. That I never want, but it always makes the company better um, and so I just try and let them know that I do really care about them and while we are a business and so we need to make money, so they can make money and we can all support our families, I still always want to do what's best for them and I try to let them know like this is this feedback is what I believe is best for you, not what's best for the company.

Speaker 1:

Because they still let people to, for the most part, create their own schedules. They get to block off the time that they need. We try and treat them as true contractors. Can't deny them vacation time, can't deny them sick time. I don't say you can't block off the last client of your day and I would say sure, maybe that's to the detriment of the bottom dollar sometimes. But I'd rather have people work with us for five, six, seven, ten years part-time and be super happy, you know, have a set schedule and a quota and have them be with us for two.

Speaker 1:

So try and be as flexible as I can.

Speaker 1:

One thing that we learned, even out of us having a child, is helping support our team that does go on a leave, and so we'll be coming up on supporting our 28th team member with a maternity leave so very well versed in that and trying to help them come back in a way that is good for them and their family and still allows them.

Speaker 1:

You know, we cut shifts or time slots short so they can be home for bedtime or have a later start time so that they can drop them off at school and all that sort of thing. So we do our very, our very, very best, um, within the constraints of still needing to keep the doors open, so a lot of stuff goes on in the background for those things to be possible, um, and as I talked about as, like leadership and doing those sort of things can be super lonely because they're all the background stuff that, um, that people don't get. But when you give them one-on-one attention, like they're the only person that you're, you know, working with right now, you know it's easy to forget that we're also doing that with 50 plus other people.

Speaker 2:

Right, yeah, there's so much in there that I think our listeners can draw from. Personally, I am inspired by you using the five love languages to interact with your team, because I I don't have the same love language as most people at work. I actually want more work. I want more work. That's what I feel, like I don't. I don't want someone to say you did a good job. I want them to give me more work and more responsibility, and to me, that's the equivalent of yay, you did a good job, denzel. But so many other people aren't yet there. They actually want me to say you did amazing, and I have to remember that. But, like, using the model of the five love language is exactly that exercise of remembering that other people need something different than what I need. Yeah, okay. So all of that has really set you up and you have expanded to a second location. So would you? Would you talk about that? When did you make that decision? When did you feel confident that?

Speaker 1:

that was the right thing. And how did you do that? Well, I'll just like be super honest. So we've been really wanting to add physiotherapy and chiropractics. Um, we were just like waiting for this, this five-year milestone, to to be gone and all the restrictions in the plaza to lapse, and so we had a strategy meeting in february about k it's lapsed. It lapsed in august. Like it's time to start thinking about like how how can we do this?

Speaker 1:

And so we started out small, with a couple of physiotherapists just working in our within Park Integrative Health. But like physiotherapy for the most part, like probably needs to be done in a bigger space where they can at least move around, not just a treatment room. So we had a strategy meeting in February and in March we bought a bay. So I would say, not a whole lot of planning went in other than, like this bay's been available. Our attention finally turned to it and like, if we don't do it now, like we're not going to do it, because there's always a reason not to. So I would say we put in a lot less thought than maybe we could have, but only because we'd done it before. So that's just kind of how that went. We bought it and then it was like, okay, start at the end, and who are all the people that we need to get this in place? So, first things first. It was like, well, we obviously need a designer and we need a contracting team, and so that's kind of where we started contacted a designer, made sure that she was part of the architectures group so she could tell us essentially the do's and don'ts and can's and can'ts of the space that we bought. Then there was find a contractor who wanted to do the project, because you need those things in place really before you can start anything. The bay was a pizza and donair shop, so all that stuff is still in there. So it's really hard to like walk in to see a donair shop and think like this is going to be a physiotherapy space.

Speaker 1:

And then we just kind of started with, like our vision board of what we wanted it to look like and feel like and what we wanted the experience to be like, and we we worked from there. So we went backward, back and forth a lot with our marketer and with our design team, making sure that, even though it might take longer, that the renderings looked how we wanted it and that, but that it was also still profitable, because at first we're like, oh, let's have like four private rooms and a physiotherapy tub and this and that. And then it was like, well, if you want more than 10 people in here, you have to have two bathrooms. And then we're like, okay, like maybe we'll just build an upstairs, and they're like, well, that doesn't really work in these space we had.

Speaker 1:

We had all these thoughts of things that we thought we could do to maximize the space, but essentially it was here's what you can actually put in it, and so we just had to work with it because we already bought it. So. So I would say we put in less thought into what we were buying, but more. It was such a big demand from our community and when you're like we needed to do something, something else and something more, because we'd already outgrown the space for the most part how are you, how are you making certain decisions around what needs to be there from a treatment perspective, considering you're not a physical therapist, physiotherapist?

Speaker 1:

I have a really good dialogue with the team that I have and a couple of external people that I spoke with, which was essentially like what do you need?

Speaker 1:

Because I'm not a physiotherapist, not a chiropractor, like what do you need? And so I essentially, like, asked for a needs list, a want list, a wish list and dream list, and I basically got what I could from everybody. But it's interesting because what everybody wanted more than anything was time with their clients. So, oh, interesting, yeah, so that is one thing that we really put out there is that there's not a quota, there's not a time schedule, there's not a restriction, like if they need to spend more time with their clients, they get. I've really tried to is that there's not a quota, there's not a time schedule, there's not a restriction, like if they need to spend more time with their clients, they get.

Speaker 1:

I've really tried to let people practice the way that they want to and need to practice. If they want to run on the 10 minute, they can. If they want to run on the 20 minute, they can. And so because we do know that with the right team and with the right level of attraction, the company will be successful. And so I would say I just asked them what they wanted and needed and got what I could, which is also changing. But yeah, they just they wanted time. They want, like I want to be able to spend time with my clients. So that's what we offered and then, as new practitioners, come in. If there's something that they need, we see what it is that they need and if it fits within a certain budget. At that time of year it's either a yes a yes at this time or a no not at this time. But let's circle back at this date.

Speaker 2:

Right, yeah, I love that. So let's just in our last little bit here, if we could talk about marketing a little. A lot of our listeners find that to be kind of an enigma how do you do it? There's a lot to choose from. So I'm wondering if you could talk about what you did, what you found to be most successful and even, if you feel comfortable, what you found to not really work very well, and why comfortable what you found to not really work very well, and why Sure?

Speaker 1:

So as far as what I've learned in marketing, which is a ton, I would say that it's one of the most important things that you can invest in.

Speaker 1:

Word of mouth is great, but word of mouth only comes around if you get your name out there, which marketing can do. And so we went through a couple of marketers at the beginning that we and essentially like butted some heads with um and so they weren't a right fit, uh, but it was really early on. Like we kind of went through a couple at the beginning because, like I knew that's what we needed, kind of like the ambassadors that we have, like I know that I can't personally spread the message of integrative health care just because I grew up in Sherwood Park. That's not really how it works. And so I finally met who we have now.

Speaker 1:

Her name is Karina. She's been with us for coming up on six years in July, so almost the entirety that we've been open and essentially she helps us with all of the branding. She does things like creating a brand Bible. What you want your brand to look like, feel like, does it fit your personality. And so essentially we did go through a recent rebrand when we, when we were so while we were opening Synapse, we went through a rebrand and we redid our website. So we decided we'll just do it all at the same time, which was really great for the organization. Really stressful on our part, but we're all past that now.

Speaker 1:

But I would say, like finding a marketer, we're really lucky because Karina kind of does it all. She does our SEO and she does our communications and she kind of does everything where we don't have to. You know, she also does our social media, so it's not like she we have someone doing social media and we have someone else, so it's kind of like she's our like integrative marketer, so to speak, because I just made it up actually, so we, we can we get to talk about all of those things in real time, and so I really do think that, outside of like all of the team members that we have, she's one of the people that works in the back end, that does a lot of the thankless work. That, which is why we have a lot of these forward facing things in these programs Like it's great that we can run webinars, but how do we get that message that we're running webinars out there? And then, like, how do we put it on a website? Are all things that aren't in our strong suit and also things that we don't necessarily want to take the time to do. So we'd rather pay an expert and put our time towards our strengths. Just like I don't do accounting, I'm sure I could learn, but Mahesh has an accounting background. As an example, right, I could write the human resources manual, but that's a strong suit of Heather's, so I would go to Heather, I would lead on my team to do things like that. So I think marketing is the same, and finding and vetting someone and doing it very carefully and going with your gut on this is a good match and a good match for me versus I just need somebody, but I would. I would strongly suggest doing that.

Speaker 1:

What did one? Uh, one of our earlier relationships within advertising was, um, like stopping advertising, as like trying to stop a clock, which is more the idea of like you should always advertise because, like I'm sure you can attest to, if anyone who watches tv or sees a commercial like, those are really big, multi-billion dollar companies that are still advertising. Right, mcdonald's, Coca-Cola, pepsi, some of the really big, long-standing companies out there they don't stop advertising just because they're super popular. They just advertise more and more and more. And that's like some of the realtors that we have in the area the busier they get and the more well known they get, the more money they put into advertising. And so obviously you have to look at your margins and look at what's possible and make sure that you're doing some things that might be a return on investment. But I can't say what those are. I can't say for sure.

Speaker 1:

I know that we had limited success with radio, but we did try. But that's not just, and there's still that's what helps run radio stations is the advertising dollars that they get. So it didn't work for us but it works for lots of people. But would we go into marketing for radio? Probably not. Would we put our name and brand on buses again? Probably not. Oh, interesting, but we did.

Speaker 1:

And so focus a little bit more on some community initiatives and some more targeted smaller markets, especially now that we've been open for a while. Do I think that we could do more marketing? I mean, I always do, but it's just finding the smart ones that make sense. Like for a long time we didn't do. We've got some billboards like right around our plaza that we didn't do for a long time. We've got some billboards like right around our plaza that we didn't do for a long time. But then, when we opened Synapse, I felt like we should probably like inquire about this again, just to get the brand visibility out there. So right, because if someone needs at least seven times to notice something like, you've got to find other ways to do it.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, long story short, I think everybody should either look for a marketer or find a key team and someone that fits in their budget and even if it feels like it might not like, I still think it's super important because it's just, it's a, it's a broader scale to get yourself out there. Even if it was just SEO or your search engine stuff, like even to help you move in that area, like I think it it's, it's still worth it. So we're always trying to find new ways to get our name out there.

Speaker 2:

Um, because, like I mentioned, we can't do it by ourselves how do you have the conversation with your marketer on what's working and what's not working? Is that just you guys do regular meetings? Does she create a report for you? How does that work? Kind?

Speaker 1:

of, like all of them, we're actually quite good friends and so it's yeah, we're able to say like I don't really like this or I don't like this in the social, or can we switch it to this? Or can I get a report on that Google Analytics? Because I'm not seeing an uptick. Like we had discussed, we had discussed this percentage of an increase and it's nowhere near that. Like, can I see what's going on? Um, I mean, I evaluate to, I usually ask for like what does this mean? But I still want to know, like we talked about this being the return and this isn't happening, and so, like, what do we need to do differently? And even karina has outsourced to some other experts, because I don't expect her to know everything either.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love that one. So it's just no, go ahead. No, you go ahead. Okay, I was just going to move on to the next question. I thought we Okay, what is next for Park Integrative Health? What is your next vision for what's coming?

Speaker 1:

Well, our next vision is continuing to build the team at Synapse. So we've got four physiotherapists and two chiropractors. We want to continue to build the team because, funnily enough, all the physiotherapists that we have are moms, and so we don't have a full-time physiotherapist. We have four who work a couple of days a week because they have families, which is great for now. So it's really building out that and we are really excited where we're going.

Speaker 1:

So this is all you know this. Nothing's ever 100 percent and we've learned that a sexual health division for all, identifying people, as well as ideally adding a physician who may or may not be accepting new patients I can't say that for sure. It's a really big deal to have a physician who's accepting. So I can't say that for sure, but we're looking at expanding that and we've always been on the hunt for a naturopathic doctor to join our team. We're just really active in that search right now. Before it was just passive, and it was. We did some interviews and didn't really find the right fit, but now we feel like it's something that's really vital to add to the medical team.

Speaker 1:

So that's the next step and then I would say that, if all goes according to plan, our next step would be opening up our own mental health division in its own bay.

Speaker 1:

So even though we just renovated all four of our counseling rooms with new flooring and air conditioning units and everything, we're hoping that at some, at some point, that would be the next expansion is moving mental health to its own space where we could have a play therapy room and kind of do a little bit more than can be done in just single rooms. So that's what we would be looking to do would be to take those four rooms and put them into a new bay and then whatever else we could, and then repurpose the four rooms that we have to accommodate added growth. So if I had to speculate what we would be looking at, that's likely the next step. We'd also talked about adding psychedelic-assisted therapy into that building, since that is something that is coming more to the forefront. So those are all things that we're working on. Um in the background. I just think we'd be probably a little bit more strategic in the timing of an additional bay, because there is still one available in the plaza, but um synapse hasn't even been open for for a year yet.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, well, I am so grateful that you came today and shared your story with me and with all of our listeners who will hear it, so I appreciate your time so much. I think there's so many nuggets of wisdom that people are going to get from this conversation, so thank you so much, of course.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, and I'm always happy to come back.