E58: Why We Transitioned from Traditional Healthcare to Holistic Hormone Coaching with Dr Heather Rhodes

Do you ever wonder why patients often return to the hospital in worse shape than when they left? As a previous nurse, I've seen it firsthand and it's a heart-wrenching reality. That's why I transitioned from traditional healthcare provider to health coach, and so did my guest, Dr. Heather Rhodes. Our mission? To fill in the gaps left by mainstream healthcare. We share our personal journey of earning our health coaching certifications, making plans, and establishing successful home-based businesses that don't compromise our roles as mothers.

But we didn't stop there. Heather and I are teaming up to offer resources for health coaches who desire to provide better results for their clients, comprehend hormones better, and build a thriving business. We're excited to connect with like-minded women on our new Instagram page, @hormonebizbesties, and to announce our upcoming program tailored specifically for women's health coaches - come join us on IG so you don't miss it!

Resources from this episode:

Hormone Biz Besties Instagram

Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Program

Health Coaching Biz Email Sign Up

Don’t forget to subscribe, share this episode, and leave a review. Your support helps us reach more women looking for answers.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this podcast is to be taken as medical advice, please take informed accountability and speak to your provider before making changes to your health routine.

This podcast is for women and moms to learn how to balance hormones naturally in motherhood, to have pain-free periods, increased fertility, to decrease PMS mood swings, and to increase energy without restrictive diet plans. You'll learn how to balance blood sugar, increase progesterone naturally, understand the root cause of estrogen dominance, irregular periods, PCOS, insulin resistance, hormonal acne, post birth-control syndrome, and conceive naturally. We use a pro-metabolic, whole food, root cause approach to functional women's health and focus on truly holistic health and mind-body connection.

If you listen to any of the following shows, we're sure you'll like ours too!
Pursuit of Wellness with Mari Llewellyn, Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, Found My Fitness with Rhonda Patrick, Just Ingredients Podcast, Wellness Mama, The Dr Josh Axe Show, Are You Menstrual Podcast, The Model Health Show, Grounded Wellness By Primally Pure, Be Well By Kelly Leveque, The Freely Rooted Podcast with Kori Meloy, Simple Farmhouse Life with Lisa Bass

Chapters

• 0:00 Traditional Healthcare to Health Coaching Transition
• 11:55 Addressing Gaps in Healthcare
• 24:12 New Support for Women's Health Coaches

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello friends, I have a bonus episode for you today, and Dr Heather Rhodes and I are talking about our stories of how we went from becoming traditional healthcare providers she was in pharmacy and I was a nurse in the hospital and really kind of what led us to move into health coaching and then how we actually did that, how we got our health coaching certifications, what our plans were and what we're doing now, because I know that not only is it so fun to hear other people's stories number one but I know that there are a lot of healthcare providers and even non-healthcare providers, but women and moms out there who are interested in doing something in the holistic health space but maybe don't know where to go, and so we wanted to share our stories, and we also have an announcement at the end of this episode. I'm going to give it to you now as well so that you don't miss it, but Heather and I are starting to help health coaches specifically women's health coaches who are wanting to not only see better client results and understand hormones better so that they can work with their clients on hormones, and who want to build their businesses so that they can have a successful business from home and, most importantly, a business that you feel completely aligned with, because it is created from your values and you're helping people in a way that you deeply believe in. So we have some resources in the show notes. The first one that I want you to go to is our new Instagram page. It's at HormoneBizBesties. So if you are a health coach or wanting to become a health coach, come join us there. We're going to start posting some content there that will be helpful, and we have a program coming up at the end of July that is for women's health coaches who want to have a clear path to really be able to see the results for their clients, as well as increased revenue in your business, of course and we're going to be teaching you how to create your signature program so that you can become the go-to expert in your field whatever that is for women's health coaching and really be able to see exponential results for your clients, because you have such a specific method and you can see those bigger results for your clients and help more people. So if you're in the health coaching space or you want to become, join us at our Instagram, hormonebizbesties. If you are not, and you just want to hear our stories. I hope this is fun for you and can't wait to share it.

Speaker 1: 2:31

Welcome to the Happily Hormonal podcast. Now, if you're a little iffy on whether or not the word hormonal is a good one, you're in the right place. My name is Leisha Drews, registered nurse and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner turned holistic hormone coach, and, after going through my own hormone journey and having my three babies, I actually believe that our hormones are one of the greatest gifts that we've been given as women and that, no matter what you've been told, it's possible for you to have thriving energy, good periods and the stable mood all month long. And I am here to show you the way. I think it's time to change the narrative around words like hormones and hormonal and start to reclaim the power that we truly have as women, which is a power to change not only our own health, but the health of all of our family for generations to come.

Speaker 1: 3:16

Hormone Balance doesn't have to feel hard. It can actually feel simple and fun when we do it in a way that aligns with how our bodies were made. If you're ready to start trusting your body again and feeling really good in that beautiful body that you've been given, then grab yourself a yummy drink and maybe a snack, and let's do this, hey. So Heather's here with me and we are really excited to kind of change the topics that we normally talk about here and talk a little bit about our health coaching journeys in our businesses.

Speaker 2: 3:48

And so, heather, welcome, so glad to have you back this is my favorite place to be, so I'm glad to be here.

Speaker 1: 3:55

Love that. Okay. So, heather, I'm gonna have you start, because you actually started coaching just like just before me, I think, like we've been in our coaching businesses almost exactly the same amount of time, and so I would love to, just for the people who don't know the backstory on you you didn't start out as a health coach. What were you planning to do before and how did you start to transition into health coaching? And let's just go from there.

Speaker 2: 4:21

Yeah, absolutely. So I have a little bit of a non-traditional route in the sense that I went to school to be a pharmacist. I actually got my MBA during pharmacy school because I knew I wanted to own my own business in some capacity, but I always envisioned that being a pharmacy. I was like, yeah, I'm gonna run a pharmacy and it's just gonna be great.

Speaker 2: 4:42

I don't even know if I knew what pharmacists did when I had these dreams but, essentially, when I got into pharmacy school I knew that I really loved spending time teaching and educating people and so I did a residency after pharmacy school which was really focused in the primary care setting. So working in the doctor's office, giving people education on things like diabetes and metabolism, high blood pressure, all that good stuff. I did a teaching certification so I kind of went all over the place in the pharmacy world where I was teaching, I was working in doctor's offices, I was doing different like clinics and education-led clinics in certain communities, and then my husband's job moved and I went into retail and all that good stuff. So In doing retail pharmacy which is the traditional, like what you'll see if you go to CVS, like the pharmacist behind the counter, this is just like counting pills and pumping out prescriptions. There's not a lot of time or room to interact with people, to teach, to help, to really do anything besides kind of hand them their medications. And so the industry itself was just kind of frustrating and I knew I wanted to be back in the primary care system, like back with the doctors.

Speaker 2: 5:54

During that time in the interim I started doing some additional things. I started working at a compounding pharmacy, so helping people more with hormones. I started writing clinical trials for a drug company. I have a degree in clinical research and so I would work for drug companies and get the data of their studies and then write the trials for them. And, without getting too political, I will say that was a big turning point for me of realizing how the entire system of healthcare works. I've seen it from all of the different angles, from being in the doctor's office to being in the pharmacy where the meds get dispensed, to writing and working for the drug companies that are creating even the curriculum that's going to our doctors and our PAs, and I've taught the PAs and the doctors. And so what I started to realize pretty quickly was the system itself is not set up in a way to help people heal in the way they want to heal. And I started realizing really quickly people want to get better and people want to heal.

Speaker 2: 6:57

And then I became the patient and so, specifically during our fertility journey, I knew I felt what I think a lot of people in the healthcare industry are feeling now 10-fold. This was like seven years ago and it's only gotten progressively more broken as a system. And so once I felt that of like, I wanted answers and I wasn't getting them. I wanted to know what changes do I need to make in my day to day to get the result I want, which, at the time, was to get pregnant. Or even I've gone through things where I've gone to the doctor and I'm like I want to sleep, I want to lose weight, I want to feel more energized, and I was never getting those answers, and so that's when I really dove into.

Speaker 2: 7:38

I was always very interested in podcasts and learning how the body works. When you learn about medications, you have to know how all of them work in the body. So how the body works was really inspiring to me, and all of these things kind of came together in this one moment where it really clicked for me that people want to get better. People don't want to be on medications their whole life. The system is not set up to give them the tools they need to be able to achieve that, but our bodies are designed so perfectly that that is possible. I'll never forget sitting on my couch and hearing just thinking like did God really design us to have these bodies that function well until we're 25? And then we have to take these chemicals, these chemical substances that we created only 20 years ago I mean, now it's 40 years but in order to live. And it just hit me like I don't think this was the design he had. I don't think he made a mistake, I don't think our bodies just don't function well.

Speaker 2: 8:37

And that really led me to dive so deep into the books, the research, the podcasts of just uncovering this other world of functional and natural medicine. And so I went back to school, became a holistic health practitioner, did a lot of self research, a lot of self guided stuff, and decided like I will not let another person feel the way I felt, where you're stuck in a system, you're not getting answers, you can't necessarily figure it out. And I also remember thinking like I have these degrees in like research and medicine, and that's the only way I was able to find the answers I needed. But there's so many other people out there that are so good at things like accounting and interior design and that are creative and like they don't have those degrees to do that. So like who's helping them? How are they getting answers?

Speaker 2: 9:27

And that's when I knew that was the bridge that I specifically wanted to help gap. I wanted to bridge that gap and so that's when I decided what to do. And then when I tried to figure out how I was gonna do it, it's all I mean. I was like I don't know. So I started with I just kind of started putting stuff together and was like, okay, I'll help a couple of people for free and then I'll figure out, like, what can I help with? What do I know a lot about? What can I not stop talking about when I'm at dinner or when I'm listening to something and I go home and I'm just telling my parents all about? I'll never forget I listened to a podcast. I got home I told my parents all about how children with ADD and ADHD and autism, if we can do fecal transplants and give them somebody else's poop, they'll get better.

Speaker 2: 10:12

And I remember my family being like what in the world has happened to her.

Speaker 2: 10:18

But I think so many of us have a story where we were the patient or our eyes were slowly uncovered to something and something inside of us burned so deeply that like we couldn't not talk about what we now knew.

Speaker 2: 10:33

And so I think it's just a passion, and I think so many health coaches and so many other practitioners I talk to there tends to be that same thing of what I sometimes call like the golden thread, which is this thing that's just pulling you and you can't like not follow it. And so that's kind of my story of why I decided that I was gonna help the people that had skills I necessarily didn't to really experience the other world of what it's like to truly heal, of what it's like to know so deeply that your body can do something and then experience it doing that, to follow that gut and that intuition of I don't know if the meds are the answer for the rest of my life and it can be messy, and so I just knew that like I couldn't have that understanding and this knowledge and not share it with other people. Yeah, that's about your work. That's so good.

Speaker 1: 11:30

I'm sure you're good. Yeah, no, there was so much good in there. And, honestly, like hearing you tell that, I'm like I don't think I've really heard that whole story, so that was fun for me here too, and also didn't know you had three degrees. I thought you had like one or two, so that's impressive Overachiever. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, I love that, though. So one thing that I heard you say a couple different times is just like you never wanted other people to experience things the same way that you had. That was so.

Speaker 1: 12:07

I don't wanna use traumatic in like a dramatic way, but like in so many ways, a fertility journey that's not going well is 100% traumatic. And even the women that we work with, all the time we hear the same story, and this was my story. So I went to the OB and they I asked them is there a natural option for birth control? And they're like ha ha, like no, you'll get pregnant. And that was it. It was just like no, that doesn't work. And then when I tried all of these different types of birth control and they really didn't work very well for me, they did keep me from getting pregnant, but I was having all kinds of other symptoms with it. I was just told like it's not the birth control, it's just you, but it was the birth control.

Speaker 1: 12:49

And so there's so many different, different stories that we hear from people now that we've experienced, and I 100% agree that's why I'm here as well, as I don't want other women to have to go through that and just be told that what they're feeling is normal and that there's nothing that we can do about it, essentially, besides medication, because it's just not true at all. And so my story is similar in so many ways because I also wanted to help people. I also love taking care of people and teaching them, and so I went to nursing school. And when I went to nursing school, I went because I wanted to change the world, like I wanted to be making a difference for people and saving lives, and some of that definitely was happening.

Speaker 1: 13:36

I cannot stress enough even though same like there's a lot about the medical system that I really started to see from the inside wasn't helping people best case long-term. But what I will say about nursing and being a nurse who cares about people is you are there for people when they are hurting most and when they are the most scared, and I think that that's like a beautiful ministry and my husband still works in the hospital and, even though there's still so many things that we don't agree with happening, like you can't replace that having someone who actually cares there when you're sick and when you're hurting, and so obviously, like there's good and bad sides of of the medical field, of course, but all that to say what I think you're trying to say, what you're saying too, though.

Speaker 2: 14:22

you worked in acute care, which the system is set up really well for that, and I was over in chronic care, which is like people that are coming in every month for the same thing every month. You know what I mean, and so I think that's we're seeing the gaps from these two different angles, which is really neat.

Speaker 1: 14:39

Right, and that's actually what I was going to say. So after I worked in the hospital almost 10 years between, like when I was working during nursing school and after nursing school and I worked in lots of different areas of the hospital, but when I worked in the more like I never worked in long-term care, but when I worked in the areas where people would come back over and over again, like the emergency room in the town that we live in, I would see people over and over that I essentially started to know because they were sick so much. And the same thing when I worked on the floor. We would see these same people come back sicker and sicker, with heart disease and COPD and all of these diseases that are just like once they get to the stage that you have to be hospitalized, there's not a lot of hope, honestly, like you're just so sick at that point, and so I kept seeing that happen over and over, and I especially noticed that the nutrition information we were giving in the hospital was like an actual joke. Our diabetic diet in the hospital was just 1800 calories of straight carbs, like spaghetti, diet, soda, bread. Like there was no balance. There was no like. It was just that it was 1800 calories essentially and they wouldn't let them have like real coke. They would only let them have diet coke. But there wasn't any actual information going home with the patients other than essentially, like don't eat more than 1800 calories and don't drink real coke and with diabetes. Obviously there's so much more to that.

Speaker 1: 16:11

But as I started to see these people come back again and again in just such worse shape and I was about to tell a story that's gross, so I'm not even going to go there but just seeing like this stuff, like it just gets people getting sicker and sicker and coming back, I started to realize like I'm not really helping them the way that I want to help them. And could I sit down with them and like have a conversation about like this is actually what's going to help you with your nutrition? Like I could sometimes most of the time I didn't have time because I was running around crazy but also one nurse sitting down and saying, hey, ignore all the paperwork they just gave you, it's not going to help you. Like this is what you need to do. First of all.

Speaker 1: 16:53

I probably get in trouble for that because don't listen to the hospital policy. I got in trouble a lot, yeah, and that's the thing like when you're trying to give alternative information, it's not Covered by your job in the hospital and so you do get in trouble. And so the same thing that you said, like I really Started to see a huge gap, that like they were not getting this Education, that they really needed to continue to be better, and I wasn't able to do that in the hospital for them because mostly of time constraints. And that's where I really started looking For an alternative, because I wanted to help people before they got to that point.

Speaker 2: 17:28

And it's so interesting what you just said, though, because when we think about those conditions you were just talking about heart disease, copd, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, it's it. Those are all metabolic, even PCOS, like. They're all metabolic conditions, and the only way the hospital knows how to Influence somebody's metabolism is to actually slow it down, which is, hey, restrict your calories, which is why they kept coming back, and that was the exact same gap I was seeing, because I was in the primary care with those same conditions and, and we were just giving people more and more and more meds, and they weren't actually getting better, and so I think it's so neat that what we do now is so everything comes back to metabolism, but, ironically, what we were doing before was that we saw this huge gap, and all our patients were struggling with dysfunctioned Metabolisms, and we weren't able to help them in the setting we were in, so we both were like, okay, well, let's find the setting to fix them, which takes us to what you did instead.

Speaker 1: 18:23

Yeah, so I spent quite a bit of time looking at different programs. I thought about getting my master's in holistic nutrition that was something that I was looking at but then I actually found the functional diagnostic nutrition program, which is a certification. It wasn't a master's degree and I was really drawn to that because as a nurse, I really liked having the data and I could run labs and do functional lab work. And just a quick little Personal side note during this time, the last couple years, I was working in the hospital, I had my first daughter and Through the first couple, like around when she was two, she had a lot of issues with asthma and gut issues and even eczema, and Thankfully I found someone who is a functional doctor who was able to do gut testing and we made some dietary changes and like started changing our whole lives, to be honest, and she got so much better and she's never had problems with those things ever again.

Speaker 1: 19:13

She's almost nine. It's incredible. And so seeing that change in my own daughter, when I had such a strong mother instinct, gut feeling that, like this is not Okay for my baby to be sick, yeah, this is not something that I'm going to accept, and so that drove me to find answers for her and really start that, you know, deep research Myself into health and then really have never stopped since then. But ironically, some of the testing that I would be able to do through FDN was the same type of testing that we had done for her. That had been so helpful, so that was a huge draw for me.

Speaker 1: 19:47

And then I, once I got my certification through there, I started working with clients and because gut health had kind of been my background, I was working with more like general clients with gut health and I found that, again, I was still not feeling like I could help them to the extent that I wanted, because every person that was coming to me was from a different walk of life, different ages, different problems, but all of them kind of like had an idea that maybe their gut was involved.

Speaker 1: 20:16

But for me I ended up, you know, doing extra research on every single person Because everything was so different. So that wasn't sustainable for me. Yeah, and what really Got me to the place where I felt like I was truly helping people and like really confident in what I was doing Was when I was able to focus on one area and when I was able to focus on hormones, and even though you and I both know focusing on hormones is still focusing on like everything in the body but when, when I'm working with someone who has like a similar range of symptoms, I already know what to do for them and I can start to get them feeling better so much faster, and so that really made a huge difference for me in my health coaching journey.

Speaker 2: 20:58

Yeah, and I think that's something that I didn't hit on, but it mirrors so much of like I had Jude, or when was yeah. So Judo was born, I think right before I started like realizing I want to do this outside of the home. I don't want to go and just work a nine to five every single day. I love having him and I wanted more flexibility there. I knew I wanted to still work, but I just wanted more flexibility, and so that was a huge driver for me too was like, hey, I have this knowledge and I don't want to get in trouble by sharing it and I want to be able to really make the impact that I desire to on my own terms. And it really just became a question of well, how do I bring in the income to do it Right? And I'm sure you had this same thing where, like a nurse in a pharmacist, income are pretty significant.

Speaker 2: 21:45

And so I know I've worked with a lot of clients that you know from a business standpoint, that kind of have their nine to fives and they're wanting to make that transition.

Speaker 2: 21:55

And what you just hit on is one of the biggest things that allowed me to be able to make that transition was really understanding, like what is a sustainable way for me to help somebody and make the biggest impact in that, and not just consistently try to, like convince people that I could help them, even though I knew how to help a lot of different people with a lot of different things. When I was spending so much time trying to convince them and trying to take on everybody, it was actually counterproductive to my ultimate goal, which is what you were saying too, of like hey, I have a kid and like I wanted, I want a certain lifestyle while still impacting people. So, yeah, I just think that's really neat, that that was kind of like an interconnected loop, that having kids and realizing we wanted something different from our careers while also having a bigger impact, was kind of that same mutual goal that we ended up going towards.

Speaker 1: 22:48

Yeah, yeah and honestly, like I am super thankful I only had to work full time for the first like six months of Evelyn's life because my husband was finishing nursing school at that point and then I started working part time. So I've always worked part time almost the whole time I've had kids, but it's been really incredible to be able to instead of working 12 hour, which means 13 hour shifts at the hospital and not seeing my kids literally the entire time they're awake Now I work from home and instead of having a part time nursing income, I can make a full time nursing income working two days a week from home, and so that's been just a huge blessing because I'm here with my kids and I can like truly invest in them and not be gone as much of the time as I was before.

Speaker 2: 23:35

Yeah, even today I have a kid that woke up sick yesterday and so my husband's like, Well, I won't work and I'm like it's fine, like I can move things around, like he can watch a show, I get done when I need to get done and it is really great to know that, like if my kids stick, I don't have to freak out that I've got too many holidays or that I've got like somebody else has got to take my workload. It's if you know that from the healthcare like scheduling system, it's hard to have an entire team dependent on you being there while also having kids when life just happens.

Speaker 1: 24:11

Yeah, yeah. So I think that we just wanted to be able to share some of our journey in this episode, and so this is, you know, obviously for people who are health coaches, but also for people who are not health coaches, and we have a couple of announcements coming up. Actually, heather and I have been having such a great time doing the podcast together and just like working together in some other aspects, and so we've decided to team up and start helping women's health coaches and women who are wanting to become health coaches to really find that direction and that clarity so that you can build your business in the way that is so aligned for you, for your family, whether that's full time, part time, whatever that looks like, because I know that so many of us have a desire to help other people and still do that within not, you know, destroying your own motherhood or not I think destroying was really dramatic term but like not, not like abandoning what you truly want to do because of this dream, like there is such a chance to do both. And so we have a new Instagram page that we will link in the show notes for you. So, if you are interested in becoming a health coach, you are already a health coach and you would really love to either specialize in women's health or have help with growing your business.

Speaker 1: 25:31

That's going to be a space for you and we would love to hear from you. So, please DM us. We want to get to know you, we want to support you and, yeah, we're just super excited about this. But hopefully, like for anyone who's listened, this story is encouraging because there is so much hope that if you're in a career that you're, you know, even if you thought it was what you wanted to do there is so much hope to be able to shift and change and see great results. And so I'm. I'm at the point with my three kids that, like I probably would stop working if I didn't love what I did so much, and so that's a huge testament to being in the right place.

Speaker 2: 26:11

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think I tell everybody they could be an entrepreneur with anything they do. But just because there's such a need and I think that's really what has been an underlying theme through today is that, like we saw gaps and we were like, hey, we have this passion, we have this heart to make an impact and fill these gaps so people can really have what they want. And I think we were both driven to really achieve what we wanted and that has been the same thing that we've both seen in the business world, which is why we've decided to team up and to help support other people. Because when we started these businesses and we have these big dreams for them and we want big impact without sacrificing our motherhood with replacing other salaries we've been used to we realized there's some gaps in being able to do that as a healthcare professional.

Speaker 2: 26:58

Everybody's starting online businesses. There's billions of business coaches out there, but we knew it is very different to sell somebody on help. It is very different to have an ideal client based off of their health means. And so, because we didn't necessarily have that guidance and someone saying, hey, I'm three steps ahead of you, I just learned how to replace my salary. I'm going to show you two. I'm three steps ahead of you. I just learned how to get consistent clients. I'm going to show you two. From this same industry is where Lisa and I were like, okay, there's another gap here. Like, we've done it. We figured it out, we spent a lot of money and a lot of tears doing it. So let's help people so they don't have to. And that's really the heart behind us starting this Instagram page and putting out some resources and, you know, really again allowing our impact to go further, because you're able to make the impact you want as a coach or as a guide of any sort in the healthcare industry.

Speaker 1: 27:56

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we are just getting started on this journey, but we have some really fun programs coming up and lots of things that we want to share with you. So definitely head over to our hormone bids besties page and we will be updating there, and we actually will have a couple of bonus podcast episodes coming for health coaches. So if that's, you, make sure to let us know so we can make sure that you get them and we will see you next time.