Taking Care of Yourself and Your Business – Naturally

Are you taking care of yourself and your business – naturally? “Small Business Stacey” interviews Dr. Ray, a Naturopathic Doctor, about what small business owners do to sabotage their health – and their business – and what they can do about it.

Episode Transcript

Stacey: Welcome everybody to another episode of The Small Business Success interview series. I’m your host Small Business Stacey and today I have with me Dr. Ray Ilg who is a nationally acclaimed Naturopathic Doctor, author and speaker.

Stacey: Welcome to the show Dr. Ray.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Well thank you so much Stacey, I’m super excited to be here because nobody loves talking about this stuff more than I do.

Stacey: I know. And I am so excited to introduce you. You gave me this boring bio so here’s what I’m going to do with that (trash it).

Dr. Ray Ilg: Wahoo.

Stacey: I know Dr. Ray. I want to share two stories with the audience that is so much better than a bio that will really showcase her expertise and experience.

Dr. Ray Ilg: You go girl.

Stacey: All right ready? I met Dr. Ray a few years ago, we were both at a business meeting, a business academy where we’re both learning how to create, grow and market our dream business. During a break Dr. Ray saw me over on the side frantically fanning myself, she comes over to me and she says, “Oh are you having hot flashes?” I was like, “No, I’m having global warming.” Because I was just, I was constantly profusely sweating day and night. These were not hot flashes. And Dr. Ray asked me five questions and she said, “Look, I can,” she wanted to know what I was doing and I had gone to the OB/GYN who was like, “Oh just take estrogen.” And I didn’t want to be taking those types of hormones. So she said, “Let’s talk.” I became a patient of Dr. Ray and now I am completely turned around. I’m almost afraid to say it but I can’t remember the last time I had a hot flash. I have my energy back. I used to be a total beatch, I’m less of a beatch now, I don’t know if I’m completely not one.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Oh stop.

Stacey: Anyways, Dr. Ray completely fixed me.

Another true story is my husband Dave, Digital Dave. He was at that meeting with me as well and he at the time was having debilitating headaches. He could not function and Dr. Ray did her magic, asked him five questions and said, “You know, you should really consider going gluten-free.” Now mind you, Dave had been to every doctor, had tests and scans and MRIs and all the doctors said was, “There’s nothing wrong with you, here take this pill, go away.” Which Dave didn’t want to do. So after talking to Dr. Ray he started researching about going gluten-free and he did. And he will tell you that he is a testament that he is completely different. He feels great. He hasn’t had a headache. He lost weight. He has so much energy and this is all attributable to you Dr. Ray.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Wow.

Stacey: So thank you. So if you want to read the boring bio, you can go to her website (http://www.olivebwc.com), she’s the owner of Olive Branch Wellness Center. But she’s also the author of two books. One is Livin’ LaVida Grande, there it is.

Dr. Ray Ilg: There it is.

Stacey: Why You Can’t Lose Weight. And another book, It’s Not All Your Fault, How Your Insides are Causing Fatigue, Weight Gain and Digestive Issues. Thank you Dr. Ray, I know you’re going to have so much valuable information to share today.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Oh thanks so much Stacey. You know my goal is to really get out and touch people with their health. So many people are walking around with things they shouldn’t be walking around with and they rationalize it. They say, “Well you know I am 40,” or I’m 50 or I’m 60 or I’m 70. You know what? That shouldn’t make a difference. You should be able to be, I myself am just about 60 and I’m ready to go every day.

Stacey: You are the Energizer bunny.

Dr. Ray Ilg: When you take care of yourself and when you get to the root of the problem, you’ve got the energy. Now doesn’t mean you’re never going to sleep, it means you have the energy to do things and do things clearly when you want to do them. That’s what I’m all about here, just taking care of the people, loving them to death because I think so many people are so starved for just can you listen to my problem? How many times have you been to the doctor, their head’s down and they’re either typing or writing and you feel like well I waited an hour an a half to see you and that was a waste of 12 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. And we don’t want that to happen here. My goal is to spend the time needed with you to get everything we need to get. You walk out of here sometimes, some people are like, “Oh my gosh I never thought I’d have to give that much information. But I’m glad I did.” That’s what my heart says, “Take care of people.” So they can help take care of people, right?

Stacey: Absolutely. You’re a Naturopathic Doctor, you support natural health. A lot of the small business owners may be thinking, “Oh, that’s some old granola in Birkenstocks with this foo foo stuff.” What does a Naturopathic Doctor do?

Dr. Ray Ilg: A Naturopathic Doctor gets a bachelor’s of biological medicine first. That’s their undergrad. Then they get a Naturopathic Doctorate. We go through things like, well I have over a 100 hours in just chemistries and how vitamins are transferred around in the body and what they do and how to use them. 100, probably closer to almost 200 hours by the time you think about it. We’ve gone through a lot of the same classes that your MDs have gone through. We’ve gone through the biologies, we’ve gone through the body part stuff. We’ve dissected cadavers to learn and we’re so grateful to those people who have donated themselves so that we could. We’ve learned some pharmacology, we’ve done nutritional biochem, regular biochem, physics, all of those type of things and then we have clinical hours too. In order to become a naturopath you go into a program that’s about four and a half years long that is 30 credit hours per trimester, right around 30 credit hours. By the time you’re done, you’re exhausted.

Stacey: Wow.

Dr. Ray Ilg: It’s like being an entrepreneur but not having the income when you’re a student. We have graduated from an accredited actual school. We were hands-on, we were there. There are places that give you a nutrition type degree and you get it online, something like that. This is an actual accredited school so my alma mater, National University of Health Sciences in Illinois is where I graduated from in the top three of my class.

As a Naturopath, we look at a little bit of the root of the cause. The root of the problem. Patients can come in and say, “Oh,” like your husband did, “I have a headache.” And so people think I need to work on the head. But what we say is, “What are the reasons for headaches?” Well, we know there can be a bunch of different reasons for headaches. It can be things that are in the head. There are things that can be connected like with the eyes. There are things that can be connected with hormones, digestive, adrenals, organic acids. And so we start to be able to tease that out. Then, once we get that all figured out, we get you balanced out, then what we want to do is treat you with vitamins, herbs, diet and lifestyle changes.

If drinking coffee at midnight is harming you, that’s a lifestyle change that needs to be made. I don’t want people to mistake this, I’m not against coffee. I’m against crummy coffee. When you’re having a good quality coffee and you’re having a mold free coffee or you’re having good quality food that can change things too. As Naturopaths, we really want to get to the root of that cause. Now people who meet with me, when they meet with me, they meet for about 50 minutes to start with. I know.

Stacey: Wow, right. So not 12 minutes and in and out, take the pogo.

Dr. Ray Ilg: I am all up in your business okay.

Stacey: She is.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Yeah. But you know what? I need that information in order to make sure that I get to the root of your problem. ‘Cause that’s what you’re paying me for. And then we have followup visits that are around a half hour. Again, it’s still more than the 12 minutes you’re used to. We take the time to know you and to work with you and I think that’s what the beauty of being naturopathically cared for. We are not, we don’t follow the same food pyramid that the other side of medicine follows. We follow and design things specifically for you. You’re different than Dave, than Digital Dave. Small Business Stacey is different than Digital Dave and so everything that’s done for you is going to different than it would be for Dave. We like to, we really like to take care of you in the way that your DNA dictates, so to speak.

Stacey: I love that ’cause that’s a personal approach, it’s not a one size fits all.

Dr. Ray Ilg: It is. As a matter of fact it’s like an executive healthcare plan that’s designer.

Stacey: Yeah, concierge.

Dr. Ray Ilg: You don’t get those two things put into one spot very often especially in healthcare.

Stacey: Small business owners, right, there you go. What are some of the health-related challenges that you see that they struggle with? Remind me, we’re on a limited timeframe.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Oh yeah. This is going to be a two-parter. A lot of the things that I see is they are the people that are getting everything done. They’re in charge of the bookkeeping, they’re in charge of the finances, they’re in charge of the scheduling, they’re in charge of the problems in the office, they’re in charge of getting the office cleaned, they’re in charge of doing the marketing and there’s so much to be in charge of and then there’s the actual face to face time with their clients or their perspective clients and all those other things and then let’s not forget family and friends and church and community and all those things so we tend to see that person pushing themself beyond limits that should be pushed. They have a lot of adrenal burnout. They’re very tired. When the adrenals burn out the hormones, male or female tend to start to betray you.

Then we have the hormones are betraying you and then the GI tract says, “Hey don’t forget about me.” If you’re not taking care of the rest of you, ’cause you need hormones and you need the adrenals to help digest so then you have digestive issues. And then let’s talk about sleep issues. And all of that. So it begins to be this big cluster mess of a big old ball that has little hairy things hanging out of it and we try to Bandaid ourselves. Everybody does.

I’ll never forget this man who was actually an entrepreneur and I said to him, “Do you eat any vegetables?” And he said, “Yes I do everyday.” And I said, “Which ones?” And he said, “My hamburger comes with lettuce and tomato on it.” I thought I was going to fall over backward. It’s not that we need to have you eat a specific diet or sometimes we can carve things out but as entrepreneurs, they lose sleep, they gain weight then they’re sitting a lot so their heart is at risk and their back is at risk when they sit a lot. So I just see all this big cluster mess that we need to pretend like they’re an onion and peel the layers away and get to the center of the problem. That’s one of the reasons that I do for a lot of my business owners, we do a video meet.

Stacey: That’s interesting.

Dr. Ray Ilg: We can do that online because they’re like, “I got 10 minutes.” Me too. I see small businesses and they’re struggling to wear so many hats that they just can’t seem to take care of everything. You know, we are brought up with this mentality that the perfect American or the perfect business owner gets everything done and has the perfect family and has the perfect everything. Oh my goodness, it couldn’t be further from the truth. I want everyone’s business to succeed. And I want it to succeed with you healthy. It does no good to build a million dollar empire and you gotta spend three months in the hospital because you wore yourself down. Or you make a stupid mistake.

And that’s part of another thing I see with entrepreneurs. They tend to end up thinking fuzzy. Like foggy thinking. Well, why can’t I think this through? Has anyone ever said that to you?

Stacey: Yeah.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Yeah. So they’ll say, “Why can’t I think this through?” That’s because you didn’t get enough sleep, your adrenals are bogged down. Your hormones are wasted away. Your GI is out of whack. It’s about getting those things balanced out. Get it balanced out so you can move on and be a billion-dollar company, forget million. Be a billion dollar company. But I see them dragging in and when they come to me whether it’s via a video chat type thing or they’re in my office, I feel so bad. I really do because they look at me as I’ve been everywhere this is my last hope. Yes, I’m embarrassed that I’m in this kind of shape but now what do what I do? That’s when I do this, I roll up my sleeves and I go, “We’re going to do it. We’re going to do it. We’re going to get you back. You didn’t get this way overnight so we’re not fixing overnight but we’re going to get you back.”

Stacey: I love that. And I’m so glad you said that ’cause it’s truly no different in my business as the Small Biz Marketing Specialist. People wait until they’re in crisis mode so my business is struggling, I need marketing help. Can you help me? Oh and by the way, I want it done tomorrow.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Could you make me successful last night so I don’t have to face yesterday’s problem.

Stacey: Right. You as a professional, me as a professional, we can help them, there’s is no quote-unquote easy button that can do it tomorrow but right, we lay out the framework and the strategy to help them and then they do see the change day by day, little by little and it can literally transform their lives. And that’s what I’m so excited about in my business as well because when you see somebody go from here to here it’s I love that part of it.

Dr. Ray Ilg: I have a guy that’s with me now and he’s so funny. He came in because he wanted to get himself straightened around and all this and when he was in just last week he looked at me and he started to laugh he said, “You know, I’ve got energy back. I’m feeling awesome,” he goes, “and the funny thing is I accidentally lost 41 pounds on the way.” I said, “Well.”

Stacey: But I bet he doesn’t want it back.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Yeah, things you lose you want to find. We don’t want you to find that. You gave it away, you donated it, right. I think too when they understand that this is not eating a bunch of wheatgrass and I’m a real person, I’m not one of them, there’s no long beads and hemp, not that hemp’s a bad thing. I’m just, I’m a middle-aged woman too. I wear makeup and high heels. It’s not like you’re going somewhere weird. And everybody gets a little bit different program that’s designed for you and it’s not designed where you have to eat salads all day. That’s bleh. It’s designed to make it easy for you.

Stacey: Do you eat out?

Dr. Ray Ilg: Yeah.

Stacey: You get to be human and still run your business but you just feel better.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Right.

Stacey: And that’s the whole point because we all start our businesses with these amazing visions of what we want it to be.

Dr. Ray Ilg: An aspiration.

Stacey: Yeah. If you’re sick and gaining weight and unhealthy and fatigued, then you’re not helping your business, you’re not helping yourself, you’re not helping your family.

Dr. Ray Ilg: No. And you know what happens to a lot of people? I don’t judge people this way but I happen to know a lot of other people do judge. When people are a little bit over stressed, they begin to get overweight because they’re more sedentary. Well, we are a sedentary society in front of our computers so they’ll also begin, the face starts to break out and some women will say, “I am 50 something years old I should not have acne.” And that’s a sign of something. Your body is trying to tell you something. So let’s put together something that makes you feel better. Let’s put together something that allows you to eat out. Just make a little bit of modification here or there. Just a sideline, there’s isn’t going to be a diet designed that you have donuts every day. So if anybody’s out there wondering, not going to happen.

Stacey: But I bet there is a lot of food out there that still tastes great that’s still natural.

Dr. Ray Ilg: There’s a lot of things we can do. I had a guy that was on the road a lot and he said, “I wish I was home every night to eat but I’m not.” And I said, “Well we got this. Tell me what you see when you’re driving around a lot.” And we began to cultivate this absolutely fabulous way for him to eat. He could eat basically, he could eat anywhere except for sushi. It worked out really, really well for him and you know he said, “You know the strange thing is, I haven’t changed anything I do in my sales pitch or in the way I’m handling my clients but my sales went up.” I think it’s because he’s thinking clearer and he looks more engaged. He looks like, we all want to buy from somebody who is with it and they know and they understand rather than, well if you don’t want this.

You can feel that vibration when somebody is actually feeling good about themselves. And that’s contagious. So I want every entrepreneur to have that where everybody is just, “Oh I want to go see Joe, I want to see Stacey, I want to see Digital Dave. I want to be around them because they make me feel better about me.” And that can be every single entrepreneur out there. There isn’t any reason why they couldn’t all succeed as far as I’m concerned.

Stacey: Absolutely. Now you had eluded to this a little bit before, you’re based in Illinois and it’s unrealistic that the small business owners are going to travel the country to visit you although I encourage you to.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Why not?

Stacey: She’s amazing. But they have businesses to run. You had talked about being able to do these sessions remotely with telemedicine. Talk a little bit about that. What it is and how it works.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Well obviously we would be doing what you and I are doing right now. I’m here in Illinois and you’re not. Which we have to fix this. We would be doing this. I would be asking questions, I may say, “Can you hold your hand up, we want to see your hand. I need to see what that looks like.” Not personal body parts. No, no, no, no, no, no. No. But we will go over that. And you know what? We can begin to make a difference. We can set up Skype times or Zoom times or either one of those things that are earlier on in the morning or later in the evening because of timezones. A lot of people are like, “You know what, I’ve got 20 minutes in between a client.” And we’ll just get that done. We’ll get on there, we’ll update it. Oh okay, we need to change your supplements around a little bit. And then we’ll go ahead and do that.

So telemedicine, I call it tele-naturopathic. Tele-naturopathic care is something that is very real, very easy. It’s easy to do and it’s convenient to do but it can make a big difference. Who has time to go sit in a doctor’s office?

Stacey: Right.

Dr. Ray Ilg: I don’t even have time.

Stacey: Right. So this is based around your schedule.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Exactly.

Stacey: It doesn’t take a lot of time and you’re getting answers right away. As Dr. Ray said, she builds a program specifically around you. And you get all your questions answered.

Dr. Ray Ilg: And that’s I think the most important thing. When I’m explaining to somebody let’s say for instance if I’m just using something like calcium. Oh, your calcium was low. Well, what does that mean? And everybody, everybody assumes that means they need to take calcium. Sometimes that not the case. Sometimes you need to take calcium but sometimes you need to get more protein into your system ’cause protein helps calcium be absorbed. Sometimes you need more vitamin D. Sometimes you have some other things going on with your parathyroid gland. When I actually explain it to you and give you a little-written thing about why I find you’re more engaged and ready to do what you need to do with a report. On adrenal glands or on female or male hormones. It makes sense and people go, “Oh I knew I wasn’t nuts.”

As Naturopaths we like to have you, you can operate in a range like this, there we go. You can operate in a range like this and they call it normal health. We want you in these type of ranges which is optimal health. We want to help pull you into some of those ranges if your body will do it. If not then we gotta find out why. You’re going to die of something we all know that. But in the meantime shouldn’t you have fun?

Stacey: Yeah, right.

Dr. Ray Ilg: And all of those things are available via us doing something screen to screen so to speak.

Stacey: Right. I’m going to transition a little bit because not only are you a Naturopath but you are a small business owner. You run your own wellness center.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Right.

Stacey: Let’s talk about what do you do to market? What is your best strategy that you use to get patients is the word, patients in the door?

Dr. Ray Ilg: You know, I do a lot of public speaking. This weekend I will be doing an event for 200 women called Breathe Deep. I do a lot of like I said, speaking for corporate wellness which I find that whether you’re a company that has five employees or you have 205, if you’re paying for healthcare for your employees we all know that the price of the healthcare can be exorbitant. When we can help your employees be healthier, get them off of their butts and doing things, when we can get them eating better, we find that they miss fewer days of work. The days that they are there, they’re more productive. There are no solitaire games going on on the screen. Facebook whatever. They’re more productive, they’re more engaged, they’re sharper thinking. And they end up saving the company anywhere up to $9,300 per employee.

Stacey: Wow.

Dr. Ray Ilg: And that’s taking care. So I spend a lot of time in also advising for corporations from five to 205 and doing speaking for that. Building my business has been a very interesting journey. As with any business, you’ll have your sector that there are the earlier adopters, they want to see who you are, they want to try it out and I find that I have gotten a lot of patient referral. A lot of patient referral. But then again I know my avatar. And that’s one of the things that I think that’s super important for a small business is to know your avatar. My avatar then brings in other likes bring likes.

Stacey: Right.

Dr. Ray Ilg: That’s one of the things I did. I did a little bit of Facebook advertising. I don’t know that that was …

Stacey: How did that work out for you?

Dr. Ray Ilg: Pardon?

Stacey: How did that work out for you?

Dr. Ray Ilg: I don’t know that it was the absolute best for me. I did have some exposure and we gained some audience. I’ve also, we’re like all of us, I’m on the Twitter, the Pinterest, the LinkedIn, the Facebook, Google Plus, I’ve got my website, my videos. We recently got picked up the CBS, NBC, ABC, MSN thing so we’ve gotten picked up by that. I think it’s for my small business it’s about making the personal connection. I think people really, and that’s why I do so well when I speak, typically when I speak I will gain, I tell you a small story about that, I’ll gain about 20 to 25% of the audience as patients.

Stacey: Wow.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Which is a large number.

Stacey: Right.

Dr. Ray Ilg: And there was actually one time where it ended up being a smaller group. It was okay, so it is what it is when you speak. I ended up getting 130% of the room as patients.

Stacey: Wow.

Dr. Ray Ilg: How does that happen right?

Stacey: Right.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Well that happens because people there went home and brought somebody from their household as well. And so I was like, wow, that was very profitable for me. But I think the one thing I can say is we work really hard here to stay in contact with our patients and just little things like sending out a basket for Christmas.

Stacey: I got one of those.

Dr. Ray Ilg: You got one of those.

Stacey: Thank you.

Dr. Ray Ilg: And did you love the story that went with that basket?

Stacey: Oh my God, yes, it just touched my heart. ‘Cause it wasn’t just, oh happy holidays here’s a basket. It was the whole story behind the basket.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Right. So let me tell the listeners what happens with that basket.

I purchase these baskets from Ugandan women and these Ugandan women are being taught how to start a business and provide for their families because they’re all single mothers. And what happens is the older women and the little kids go out and gather the straw for these baskets and dye the straw and then the moms and some of the older girls weave the baskets. And so they are being taught how to be an entrepreneur and so I purchase those baskets to support those women. I also over purchased baskets so that they’re available to patients when they come in. They can purchase additional ones and those then go to somebody here called the Lazarus House that helps families in crisis. When you think about that, that one little woman weaving a basket has now helped herself, her family and another family here. And so if we can keep that cycling around. When I did something like that, my patients were all just amazed at the cards, the letters, the emails came through just hundreds. How they thought that was a super cool idea.

One of the other things I did last year was I don’t really tell my patients the exact date of my birthday but I sent out a beautiful candle that I had designed with some essential oils into a soy candle. And I sent it out at the beginning of July because my birthday is in July. As a happy birthday from me to them. And they just again. Those were all things that just made an impact and so I got a, actually got a, had a patient come in, she was a brand new patient and she said, “I was at my girlfriend’s house and I saw that you had sent her a candle for your birthday.” And she said, “I thought that was just the coolest thing a doctor who would take the time out.” It’s the little details sometimes. Yeah, it takes some planning, a lot of planning. I think it’s worth it for patients to see that.

Stacey: Dr. Ray it’s brilliant.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Thank you.

Stacey: And not only are you an amazing doctor but you are an amazing marketer. There was just so many lessons learned in there. You talked about knowing your who, your avatar, ’cause I’m always preaching market, message, media.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Right, right.

Stacey: You talked about not stopping what isn’t working like Facebook advertising and that to me is what I term ant marketing because everybody is doing it so I’m going to do it too.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Yeah, kinda gotta be there.

Stacey: It’s not working. But most importantly the story. Because we all have a story to tell. Our business is a story and you’ve wrapped your business into a story whether it’s through the baskets that you talked about, going out and public speaking in sharing your story or it just it goes on and on. So thank you for sharing.

Dr. Ray Ilg: You’re so welcome.

Stacey: With the small business owners. I understand that you have a program that you want to talk about that could be beneficial to the small business community. You want to talk about that?

Dr. Ray Ilg: Right. One of the things I like to do for entrepreneurs is I like to make it easy for them obviously to get a hold me but I also understand you’re a small business. I like to make it easy to also pay for your visits. So what I typically do for entrepreneurs is offer them what I call a package which will give them about 14 visits at a reduced rate and there’s a way to have it financed all at once or make monthly payments on it. Whether I need to talk to you 10 times in one month or just once in a month it’s the same amount every month. ‘Cause which one of us likes getting, oh this month from your accountant, oh it’s a $900 bill this month but a $200 bill that month. And then it never you can never get the big bill when you’re having a good month do you? So I like to keep it usable and affordable for entrepreneurs. If they mention that they heard about me from you, Stacey, Small Business Specialist, Marketing Specialist, then they get a special price on that.

Stacey: Oh thank you.

Dr. Ray Ilg: I also have my info product, It’s Not All Your Fault which is the premises for the book. It’s normally 79.95 for small business owners it is 49.95. Again, if they want to call my office at 630 370-7290 and ask for that, we’ll ship that out. Or if they want to email us at office@olivebwc, O-L-I-V-E-B-W-C.com we’ll go ahead and I’ll have my assistant get that out to you. Or if they want to, now I’m putting myself out there for your audience here Stacey, if they have one small, small, one small question they want to ask, they are welcome to email me. Please check out our website at www.olivebwc.com they’ll be a wealth of information on there for you. My goal for this whole 2018 is to get every entrepreneur up and running to best of their capability. I can do that if they want to come on in and do some Skyping or Zooming with me.

Stacey: Love it. Making small business owners strong.

Dr. Ray Ilg: That’s right. That’s right. It’s the way we love you to death here.

Stacey: Thank you Dr. Ray. You have been a wealth of information, tips, strategies for small business owners. There’s absolutely no doubt that you can help them. So I hope that all of you in the small business community reach out to Dr. Ray, she’s been so generous with her time and I’m a testament to what she can do to help.

Dr. Ray Ilg: Thank you Stacey, it has been my pleasure to be here and to be able to speak to your audience today. I look forward to helping you again in the future.

Stacey: Absolutely. Thanks for tuning in everybody.