Inside the Confident Clinician with Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND
Off The Charts Podcast
Hosted by Dr. Bobby Parmar
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (0:00 - 0:22)
Hi Off the Charts. We are so excited about who our guest is today. Her name is Dr. Jordan Robertson. She's an icon. She is legendary. Just one of those people who makes you wonder how do they do it?
And he's about to show us how. And we're so impressed by her that we just had to have her on the show. Paul, what's her resume?
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (0:23 - 0:50)
He has founded the Confident Clinician, which is a clinical education tool for clinicians. It's used by, I think, over a thousand clinicians now. He runs a magazine, an educational magazine called The Stacks that's read by 5,000 or so clinicians.
More than that, I think. He was a research lecturer at McMaster University for 15 years. She covered nutrition, covered medicine.
She covered space medicine. She did a collaboration in space medicine with NASA. Like genius.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (0:50 - 1:20)
She doesn't cover the world. She's going to drag us into the future by our hair.
Whether we like it or not. I hope you enjoy it. Hi everybody.
Welcome to Off the Charts. We're talking today to Dr. Jordan Robertson. I'm Dr. Bobby Palmer. I'm Dr. Paul Maximus. I am so happy to have her. I actually interviewed you six years ago for my online education company called Campfire.
And we're back. If you remember that.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (1:20 - 1:46)
I do. Actually, I was thinking about where I was in my life. Like at that time, and I was perched in the basement of my previous office location, like with my laptop on my lap, like really as we do and our businesses are getting going, like stringing it all together and hoping no one can see behind the computer.
So I totally remember that experience and I'm so glad that we're back together having another conversation.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (1:46 - 3:11)
Yeah, me too. I've been creeping you hard for the last five years online and I've been watching your actual fangirl. Oh yeah, 100%.
I will talk about it. He'll come into the room and be like, “Look at what Jordan posted.” All the time. I'm constantly like, honestly, look at what she's doing now.
Oh my God. It's like, Paul, you don't know this person, but like she is an icon in our world and not on social media. So I've followed you through Bobby's follows.
I liked you through Bobby's like, and like, that's one of the reasons why this is so important and special to me, because I, even though I think you're younger than me, I kind of look up to you in the things that you've done and you're such a role model and you've done so many wonderful things for our profession. Cause even when I interviewed you for campfire five, six years ago, the whole point was to like create, um, more conversation in our profession and like lift our profession. That's was our whole thing was how do we get our profession as naturopathic doctors, like better than what you and I both thought we were before.
And like, how can we play a role in doing that? And so observing you for these many years of just so proud of you for what you've done, like you're so that's reflecting, uh, and will reflect the questions that we wanted to ask you to get your expertise and your experience, uh, in some of the things that we think are the most important questions we are going to have to ask of each other in medicine. Um, and basically how we do the things that we do.
So thank you.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (3:12 - 3:16)
Oh, that's like the nicest intro I think I've ever had on a podcast. So thank you so much.
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (3:18 - 3:26)
Why? What do people say about you? Okay. So we have a number of topics that we want to hit today.
Where do you want to start?
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (3:26 - 4:07)
So Dr. Robertson has this persona online and you like do these things that surprised me of what the version of you who I thought I knew, and that is you have this fearless attitude and I'm so emboldened by it. And I'm so impressed by it. I'll give you an example.
It's the clap back. You're like a, you're like a clapper backer. If somebody says something you like, we'll use it as a teaching moment for our profession and for everybody else.
Like, how did you get there? Where does that come from? Were you born with it?
And like, why do you do that?
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (4:07 - 7:02)
Oh my gosh. Okay. So I appreciate that you notice that because that is something I work at so hard.
And I do feel like there is a bit of a story, but honestly, it comes down to every time I make a decision, I just ask myself and I don't want it to sound super cliche, but like, what does leadership look like? Like, what does leadership look like right here? Right?
Like, what does leadership look like in making this post? What does leadership look like in making this hard decision? What does leadership look like in choosing curriculum for the confident clinician?
Right? I think for me, that's always been my big driver is trying to figure out like choice by choice, moment by moment, decision by decision. That means sometimes I'm choosing the thing I don't actually kind of want or is harder for me or takes more time or is going to maybe be challenging to me.
I've never gone wrong in the long run by making the North star around decision making. And it is something that I like, I hope for us in naturopathic medicine that we have strong leadership. And I've not always seen that in every area of our profession.
And so I always hope by doing it day and day and day that it inspires other people to make those same choices and be able to have that leadership in their practice in their lives and the way they show up online. But for me, like honestly, I attribute a lot of my like who I am today to my undergraduate experience. I went to McMaster University when they were building their undergraduate health sciences program.
And it was, we'll call it a social experiment where they put us through leadership training, communication training, personal development, we it was a very, very unusual experience. And the leader of that program, the Dean del harness, bent and broke every rule in undergraduate education and always chose like the best for us as students, even if it was hard, even if it was kind of anti to the university's, you know, general policies, it was always about how do I create like the best learning environment for the students and push them to be better human beings. That was my full undergrad.
So it was like a weird contrast when I then went to CCNM. And, you know, when I was an undergraduate student, my opinion was respected. I had a say in what my educational experience was like, even as a lowly undergrad, and going to CCM was very different. Obviously, I think we've all had, you know, we all have our traumas from those years of our life.
But then coming out of it, it was like, how do I build something that bends the rules or breaks them where necessary, to allow clinicians to be better and demonstrate and show leadership all the time. So that's where it comes from. But it was like intentional leadership training, it wasn't something that happened by accident or something I was born with, I don't think.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (7:03 - 8:03)
So like, I went to CCNM, I was a few years above you. And I really despise my experience. You know, I say that, for the same reasons that you're saying there, it just felt like this, like a wayward, ragtag bunch that was trying to get us to be the best we could, but they didn't know what they were doing.
And my experience then felt really like, leaderless, like, I felt like there was nobody directing or motivating, or it was just going through weird motions, like passing exams. And I just really didn't enjoy it. So when I left the school, which I think is a very common experience for a lot of people in our profession, they leave and they feel so exhausted and unmotivated.
And they don't have this energy to like, get out there and business, the medicine and medicine, the business and all of that. And there's just this defeatist attitude that a lot of people have. Do you still kind of see that now?
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (8:04 - 9:52)
I certainly have engaged with the schools multiple times, like around leadership training, it's hard to overhaul the way that you manage a large organization. I would say like, I have this ultimate luxury of being the leader in a privately held company, right? Like, if we don't like something, we change it.
If something's wrong, we change it. If something needs to be done, we change it. And when we talk institutionally, it's, it's a big ship to turn.
And so to get up to speed with evidence based and inquiry based clinical education, the school has had to pull a lot of big, slow levers. And I think they're being successful in some regards. Now the gap that needs to be made up is to support the faculty to be able to navigate those curriculum changes, because it's great to say, oh, we now offer integrative care models, etc, in curriculum, but the faculty needs support so that they know how to lead as educators and to be able to give the skills to the students that they need to be successful when they graduate.
But it's hard in a big organization to magically make things better. And so I think that this next up and coming generation of NDS, they do have opportunities we didn't have, they do have some skills we didn't have. Is it perfect?
No, but I think it's better than it was, or at least that's my experience. I love speaking to some of the up and coming younger NDS because they ask better questions, they're more critical. You know, I think they have a better view of what their life will be like as an NDS, like they have a more realistic view than maybe we did when we graduated.
So I like to think it's getting better out there. But that's a hard thing to change like that kind of in that level of culture in such a big organization.
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (9:53 - 10:04)
And this is a story I know a little bit about, but if you can kind of flesh out, why choose the Confident Clinician path instead of the CCNM path for your leadership? What was the backdrop for the birth of the Confident Clinician?
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (10:05 - 11:47)
Yeah, it was definitely like, oh, well, I mean, vulnerably, I applied at CCNM seven times and was never hired. And so which is part of my founder story. So it's not the first time that I've talked about this.
I have applied seven times. And at the time when I was applying, I was the only ND teaching critical appraisal and evidence based integrative care at a university. I was the only ND to be working at that level.
You know, I taught probably 600 undergraduate students throughout my time at McMaster University because I was a faculty member at McMaster University when I applied at CCNM. And so I was back up. And that's, that's the story.
So I wanted to make a change at the school. When I was a student, I was told that I didn't have what it took to make that change. I told them I should be hired because I had this background and this training and this expertise.
And they said I didn't have enough experience to work there. So I told them I was going to go to McMaster and build courses for them. And I felt like that at that time, they were like, Well, good luck to you like you, you arrogant student who thinks you know everything.
And I did. So I went back to McMaster, I pitched them to undergraduate research based courses on integrative medicine and clinical nutrition. I was hired, I then worked, I taught their team based inquiry method, which is basically like their personal development, research and communication courses.
I taught those courses for 10 years, I actually facilitated a course with NASA at McMaster on space medicine and the evidence for zero gravity based medicine. This is my resume.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (11:48 - 11:59)
And then I actually know all of these things. Because you've been watching all my podcasts, and I listen to your Instagram, and I watch everything. So I, I actually have answered all these questions.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (11:59 - 13:33)
And that was a cool experience. Because it was really like, when we get down to it a lot of training for clinicians, it's not topic centric, right? Like, who cares that the dose of CoQ10 right now is 200 megs?
Like who the fuck cares, right? Like, because that data changes. And so what the space medicine on my resume actually shows you is that, like good clinician-based facilitation is topic-independent, right?
Like the skills required to be a good thinker, a good communicator, a good leader, a good group member, have nothing to do with what you're actually studying. Those are skills that are needed to be endemic across clinical education. I co taught a course with NASA, I don't know anything about space medicine, and I still kind of don't.
But I facilitated a university level course with astronauts on zero medicine, or zero gravity medicine, because I had the skills to train the facilitators, they had no idea how to run an evidence based, like education for the students, they didn't know how to deliver the content to the students. And so I was the liaise between the content and the students for NASA. But I couldn't get hired at CCNM.
And, and that's like, you know, for maybe a reason. And maybe I was arrogant and annoying and righteous, right? During that phase of my career.
I also had a lot of experience. And so perhaps I was a total asshole, and wasn't the right person for that position at that time. I didn't do a residency, I left, and then asked them to take me back, like you knew what you were doing.
What's that?
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (13:33 - 13:37)
I was like, you knew what you knew what you're doing. I know what you're doing.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (13:37 - 14:31)
Totally, but I certainly am annoying, right? Like I would be annoying to hire into that kind of system where change is hard or changes perceived as hard. I would have been quite disruptive.
And so I totally understand why I maybe wasn't a match at that time. But then the Confident Clinician was really born from this idea that if like, nobody wants me, but I still want this thing to happen, I will build it. And it started with zoom links and handouts.
And I met with like 30 clinicians once a month, they paid me $30. Like it, that's how it started. And then it has evolved into this massive clinical decision making platform.
You know, we have 800 practitioners in our program, it's a huge thing now, but it was born from like, I know this needs to exist. And I can't seem to do it with anybody else, because no one will hire me. So I'll just make it myself.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (14:33 - 16:08)
I see now how you are so confident with your clapbacks, because you're just like, I'm NASA, bitch. What are you gonna say to me? What are you gonna say to me?
I love that attitude. I mean, I have it too. I have that same style of saying this to Paul and other people all the time, because I'm quite assertive with my opinions.
And if somebody says something, my response is always who the fuck are you? Like, who, who are you? Like, who are you to say anything, you can have an opinion, but don't expect that you're not going to get something right back, because I know what I'm doing.
And if I don't know what I'm doing, I'll learn, I'll change, and I'll grow. But I know what I know, when I know it. So if you have something to just opine, good luck.
And that's why when I see you do it, it actually is reassuring. It's like this, it's comforting knowing that other people, because you kind of feel like, I'm like a dick, like you feel like a, you're just like, Am I being mean? Am I being rude?
Am I being a bitch? And then you're just like, well, Jordan does it. So I think I'll do it too.
And people try to talk me off that ledge. They're like, Oh, somebody says something about you online, Bobby, don't, don't, don't take a night. And I'm just like, no, let's go.
So I like that. I'm just like, well, Jordan says something. Yeah, you keep what you feel to him.
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (16:08 - 16:12)
He has clapbacks. He reads your clapback. And he's like, ah, I could, I could do it.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (16:13 - 17:03)
I think it's what you're saying. It's like, there's a confidence in that leadership element and there's just a like, why? What gives anybody else a right to sort of question what you know, and that you've studied and you've, you've experienced and you're just it is so offensive to me that people can have an opinion about everything and then don't expect you to sort of like defend what you know.
So I'm, I'm so glad to be in that kind of company. And I think more of us in our profession could have that. I guess you're doing it with a confident clinician, like you're, you're encouraging people to get this kind of like, fortitude of their personality and they come into themselves and become more, like strong in their not just medical knowledge, but also their, their attitude around this kind of stuff.
That's the confidence that we need to, I think, build to generally, especially now.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (17:03 - 19:27)
Totally. And it's, you know, one thing I always try to approach the claps or the clapbacks with is your unprovoked negativity, I think is really, it really doesn't have anything to do with me, right? Like unprovoked negativity that has a lot more to do with a person who's slinging the mud than it does to me.
If it's provoked, right, if I do something that makes people frustrated, or makes people angry, then I'm happy to address it, right? Like, that's, that's my question. Like, what does leadership look like, like, leadership looks like having dialogue about things we disagree about, or something I've done that has upset you or offended you or made you feel unseen or heard or whatever.
It's unprovoked negativity that I think needs to be addressed. So that clinicians can feel seen and heard, because they're getting unprovoked negativity all the time. When you're under-resourced, right, as most clinicians are, and I mean that like in every sense of the word, most NDs are very under-resourced.
They don't have time, they don't have money, they don't have energy, right, they don't have any spark or passion left. Unprovoked negativity, when you are under-resourced, is very difficult to deal with. And it can feel like an attack when we feel awesome.
And we're like, windows down, you know, tunes on and you and someone sends you a negative thing on Instagram, you're like, whatever, bitch, like, I'm, you know, living my life over here, and I'm great. But when you've had three patients in a row cancel, and you feel frustrated, and a medical doctor told you you're crazy, and someone gives you an unprovoked comment on on Instagram, you are in no place to be able to receive that with the level of like discernment that you need to keep going. And so by demonstrating like I get unprovoked negativity, and we're going to call this out, because it's not appropriate.
I hope that it helps other clinicians who are maybe more less resourced than I am at this moment, like to be calm and be able to show up as a leader to be able to say, Oh, like this is happening over here. And this is how Jordan's handling it. I, my unprovoked negativity, I can handle it like this too, and not feel so defeated by it.
Because I do think that NDs have a bit of a hope deficiency. And, you know, by showing them that it's, it's okay, and we move forward and unprovoked, those unprovoked comments don't have anything to do with your self worth. It's just hard not to feel that way when you don't feel good from the beginning.
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (19:28 - 19:45)
As you've gotten bigger, have you gotten more attacks or less attacks or more negativity or less? Because on one hand, people know who you are more. So they're less surprised.
And they're like, Yeah, that's Jordan, take it or leave it like you don't have to follow her page. And on the other hand, you get a wider audience, then more trolls come out from the bridge.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (19:47 - 22:01)
Yeah, I would say it's more and that happens, you know, as you elevate and things change in your business, then that does mean that some people are going to be disappointed or frustrated. I really love the Claire Hughes Johnson quote, she's the CEO of Stripe. And she says leadership is disappointing people at a rate that they can handle.
And there are moments where I've had to disappoint people, right, where I maybe personally don't deliver content that I used to, or I maybe personally don't respond to an email when I in the past would have, or we up our fees, because it's a reflection of the platform that we've built, or we make a change that requires people to do something that in the past, they haven't had to do. The larger my organization gets, the more policies, procedures, boundaries, and things that have had to exist so that we can preserve the culture, preserve the product, and stay current and relevant with the times I've invariably disappointed people along the way by making those changes, even though they're the right thing to do. So I would say my inbox was fuller, with challenging comments, especially when they feel loyal to something or a person when there's a change, they feel like you're making an attack on them.
Again, especially if they're under-resourced. And if you increase prices by 5%, then if people feel under resources, they're going to be frustrated by that. But I've also had to create so much better boundaries around my inbox and customer service, I now have a team.
And so I do feel better than I maybe did. Maybe a year ago, I think I was in the sack where I didn't have the support. And I had a lot of inbox challenges.
But I've learned that I actually can't show up as my best self. If I'm reading every negative comment that comes my way. People told me I don't support women.
People told me I hate people, like, it's unbelievable, right? The comments, but it's coming from a place where they're feeling threatened or under-resourced. And so it lands in my inbox.
But I actually don't need to read it. And I think that I needed to make that big decision this year, like, what makes it to my inbox versus what's accompanied discussion, or customer service problem.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (22:02 - 23:42)
I really like you keep saying under-resourced. What a lovely way to encapsulate everything that that means. You know, we say like, the cup runneth over your cup is full, dear, like, Oh, how could you add more?
They're already spilling. But under-resourced just kind of implies that there's actually a solution that there's to get more resources delegate, find the things that are going to help you so that you can take on these things. If that's what you want to do, if that's your intention, and that's your mission, then find the ways of doing that, you know, you and I talk about this all the time. How do we find the time?
How do we find the time and one of the things you have said recently, maybe Yeah, more recently than before, as I creep is you're saying yes to a lot. And that is also like, like, I could be literally just like the letter Y. So just say I say, I say yes to almost everything because I have this desire to take every opportunity and see where it goes.
It's kind of almost like an illness. It's just like, yes. And I feel like my capacity to struggle is pretty high.
And so like, if I have this large capacity to know that my ability to struggle doing lots still will not really take me down. Like it just won't. Then I'll take on more.
I'll say yes to a lot of things. I feel like you have a very similar approach. I mean, at least recently, like what, what is that about?
Is that accurate?
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (23:43 - 25:25)
Yeah, I say yes to almost everything. And when I say that, and everyone's always like, but what about I say yes to the opportunities that make sense for me? I'm not saying I have lots of discernment in my yeses..
That I like publicly talking about that, because I do think many clinicians are waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect amount of money in their bank account, the perfect day, the right like, to say yes to themselves to say yes to risk in their business, to say yes to opportunities that are a little bit frightening. And I say yes to all of those things, right? I say yes to investments before I know how we're going to make it happen.
I say yes to people that no one else has ever taken a risk on. I have more brand new graduates teaching in my organization than anyone else, because they're brilliant. And of course, and just give them the mic because they deserve it.
I'm willing to say yes to a lot of things so that people will wait for the perfect opportunity to say yes to that 100% means that sometimes I'm doing a lot of things and I am a resilient person. So I can have 19 things going on at once and 18 of them are on fire and I'm like, Okay, it's time to go to the gym. So I totally get that modeling my level and capacity is maybe not realistic for some people.
But the idea behind it is that I bet on myself like every single day and I just want clinicians to do that too. And I think that's what you're doing Bobby by saying yes, like what you're saying is like I can do this, right? Like you're betting on yourself and there's no better person to bet on than yourself.
That's the best ROI you'll ever have.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (25:27 - 26:36)
Yeah, I bet on myself and having the people around me that believe in that bet to help me double down on that bet is so crucial. Because if you didn't have them, you are then this under resourced person that you're talking about just being like, how could you possibly cope with the mountain of stress of saying yes to all of these things that you wrote something once that I used to like cut back of people with like said, you said you were like, Yes, I said yes to this blog. Yes, I wrote a blog or I wrote an article for I think it was like NDNR or something you like?
Yes, I said yes to that. And that led to all kinds of doors that opened five years later, even that you would have never been able to predict at that time. And you have this open attitude about I don't know where this is gonna go.
But let's see. And I also think that's part of it, too. You never know where something is going to lead.
And that kind of is exciting to be like, I'm gonna say yes to that, even though right now might not offer some great return. But who knows?
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (26:36 - 26:45)
Can I ask you a question? What do you do when you've said yes to too many things, and then they all sort of swing back on you at once? And you're like, Oh, shit, I didn't realize.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (26:47 - 28:28)
I blame myself. No, well, but I do like I'm also like, like, I created this mess, Jordan, like you. And so it happened for sure.
Like, I've definitely had some moments of like, burnout and overwhelm. And when I think back to it, it was maybe not the number of yeses. But it was like under-resourced yeses, where I got myself into a spot where I didn't have enough support.
And I do think we're kind of, you know, bred as NDS that we don't get, we don't deserve to have a team or support. Like I still see clinicians who've been out for 10 years that have no one doing their front desk support or no one, even just making them a cup of coffee. Honestly, that's not a princess move.
If someone brings you a cup of coffee in the middle of your virtual appointments, I'm sorry, it's okay to be supported at that level. And it took me a bit to get to that place in my practice where, like, we literally had to have an SOP for someone to pay my parking tickets, because it was better for the clinic for me to be working than it was for me to be doing that kind of bullshit. And I do think it takes people too long to get that level of resource that they can be in their flow state all the time.
And so I have got myself there 100%. And I have had a lot of shit go sideways, where a lot of things happened all at the same time. And I was like, like, when I accidentally was speaking for two organizations at once at two different virtual conferences, and had my own event running at the same time, I was like, who said yes to all of this?
You Bobby's with a mirror monitor muted over here nodding over here chatting over here. Yeah, I would.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (28:30 - 29:04)
Actually, we got a parking ticket in my car last round, save for that. Anyway, he got a parking ticket, man. Thank God for our team, I could just leave the parking ticket that's for us and they paid it and I didn't have to think about it again.
I don't even think that I should be the one to do this. I don't know. Like me, I want to have other people making it so that I don't have to spend that five minutes.
Because that's going to take away from all the other missions like that. And it'll add up for sure. Jordan, have you heard of a book called buyback your time?
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (29:04 - 29:36)
Yeah, and it's great. Yeah, I'm a total Dan Martell fan. I just spent a lot of the last year in one of his, you know, well, I own a SaaS company.
So I was in his SaaS mastermind for a good part of the last year. So I'm a big Dan Martell fan. The buyback principle is great.
It was such a practical book. I've recommended it to lots of clinicians, you do have to go into it with a learner's mind. Because if you go in, like, I can't afford this.
No one can help me. No one can do it as good as me, then it's hard to get the success out of that book. But what did you think about it?
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (29:36 - 30:00)
I loved it. When we read that, that transformed how we did things that was like, almost like, like a Super Mario mushroom that like, immediately we upgraded and we're like, this is smart. Let's do that.
What are some other sort of frameworks that you've come across that have leveled up the way that you structure your days, your organizations that have kind of helped you organize your systematic thinking?
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (30:00 - 32:30)
Yeah, that was a big one. I love a lot of Ben Hardy's work, like, 10x is easier than 2x. That's a book that he wrote, co authored with Dan Sullivan.
That was another one for me that was a big game changer, because we always imagine that doubling our likes, when we think about increasing our business, we always just think about increasing the work, right? Like if you were going to 2x your clinic, you're like, Oh, God, how on earth are we going to see twice as many patients and do twice as many prescriptions and twice as many injections. But most businesses need to think differently about their goals.
And if we said, Well, how would you 10x your clinic, suddenly, you can't just do more of the same. And Ben's follow up book, which I just saw him speak a couple weeks ago, it was great, is on is called scaling. Or I think it's called scaling.
Sorry, Ben, if you happen to stumble across this podcast, and I don't remember the name of your book. Um, though, the science of scaling, that's what it is. But it's the same idea that if you choose a really practical, realistic goal, like say, we want to double our clinic revenue, your brain already knows how to do that, you'd have to just double the patients.
But if you said you wanted to 10x your patient, your clinic revenue, suddenly, you'd have to get awfully creative for how that happened, right? You'd have to innovate the offer, you'd have to change what you did, you'd have to like, really change who you partnered with, who you worked with passivity, innovation, and so for me, like, my goal is to be on the desktop of every naturopathic doctor in North America. If that's the goal, it's not just about growing our membership one by one, it's about partnerships and organization and technology and innovation and API and integration.
And suddenly, the solution has to be something that you would never do if you kept the goal super small. And that for me right now is where we're headed, right, we're headed in this, like, 10x kind of scaling vision, because the goal is so big that we have to do it in really innovative ways. That's been a really key learning moment for me over the last year is like just getting busier always implies we're just doing more of the same.
And that's exhausting. Doing 10x, you have to like, approach your entire ecosystem in life very differently. And I think that's such a cool way to think about how to grow our practices and our impact is like, what would have to be true if I was going to help a million people, I have to do things really differently than I do them right now.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (32:31 - 32:44)
Paul, do you remember when we opened gravity, that we opened a Whitehorse location and a Vancouver location? And I said, Do you want to do it 10 more times? No, it's like, absolutely not.
And then he's like, where's the nearest window?
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (32:44 - 33:58)
Well, because as I sort of think about it, you can either scale on tech or scale on people. But if you're going to reach a million people with a one on one business, you need a million or whatever it is 100,000, let's say, practitioners to like to do that people based business. If you're scaling on tech, then that makes it a lot easier.
But then you have to be tech minded, tech able, right, tech fluent. And so I think the benefit of having both of us be so different is that Bobby's brilliant one on one in a room with a person, but he doesn't know where to find the power button for his As Jordan quite missed at the beginning of this podcast, painfully for five minutes. And I'm, I'll do one on one.
But ultimately, I'm always thinking, can I just film a video about this and then just send it for pennies to the next 100 people. And so those two when they meet, like that's a powerful combination. But often when we're approaching a project or a goal, we're both coming at it from different perspectives, where he wants to dive right in with the one on one.
And I'm thinking like, hold on, let's wait until we've built a machine and then put 10 people through it. How I don't know, just can you speak to that dichotomy? Because we're two people, but you probably have both in your mind.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (33:58 - 34:03)
I mean, she has a tech company. True. You literally have a tech company.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (34:03 - 35:06)
I do. But I didn't really think about it that way at the beginning, to be honest, and I had to learn a lot about the customer journey, customer experience, what that all looks like. I will tell you, if you want to like, you know, blow your brains out, heat map your website and watch where people click.
It's unbelievable watching what happens like you, you put a button and you want people to click it and people are clicking like over here. And you're like, Oh my god, my life's work and no one can find it because they can't find the button. So if I've had to go through a lot of, like, different learning processes to figure out how to go from that.
How do we help one person? How do we create a system that has a really streamlined user experience so that multiple people can benefit from the solution at the exact same time. So I've had to go through and to me, I've been very tech minded always like I think if I had to do over, I would just love to be a developer think like developer product innovation. That's where I should have gone.
And if I had a career do-over, that's totally what I would do.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (35:07 - 35:17)
I'm about to leave me for you. That's all you need to say. I'm about to be alone.
I grew up in Ontario.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (35:22 - 37:15)
Yeah, and like the, the untold part of the confident clinician story is that like, I started that business on a $20 WordPress plugin. Like I, I checked, I checked the entire thing myself on the back end, I built the entire thing. I had a team member who was helping me at the time, but 80% of it fell on me and my YouTubing and I was like, Oh my god, I'm going to have to do this.
So I was like, okay, I'm going to be using the capability to figure out how to launch this business. Now it's very different, right? Like now we have, there's a lot going on.
And now it's actually exceeded my tech capabilities. Um, thankfully, but yeah, like, like trying to like manage those two goals is hard, because even on our team, like sometimes we can get really stuck thinking about one person's experience and journey and not that I don't super care about them and love them, but that individual who's, you know, cat needs to go to the vet. And so they have to miss this call, and they'd like their money back.
That is not a reflection of what we are delivering on scale. And so I have some team members that will get really concerned or worried about that one person. But then we have to have the balance of people going, Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a sec.
Like, we have to uphold our vision and goals of scale and support many clinicians. We cannot direct resources towards this one person with a diabetic cat, we have to direct resources towards the vision, which is helping all naturopathic doctors. So I but I see the problem, Paul, and I think it's just like dancing back and forth, especially when we do medicine as patients benefit immensely from one on one care.
But then how as a business, do we create sustainability and systems so that we can help people at large, but also create a sustainable place for people to work, and for owners to work?
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (37:15 - 37:59)
Do you think, I mean, there's gonna be, so like AI is everywhere, you have an AI company, and that's the whole tech bet, right? That it is, like, we pay a lot of attention to it, Paul and I watch podcasts and read and just we're really enmeshed in this whole AI world. And there's like this dystopic future that's being presented and all kinds of crazy, disruptive, societally, completely like you should be panicking because the aliens are invading in three years, but they're already here.
You have an AI company. And what I wanted to know from you as a naturopathic doctor, how do we fit into all of that? Like, where are we going as a profession?
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (37:59 - 40:19)
Yeah, it's a good question. And I definitely have had moments where I'm like, Oh, everything we do is obsolete ever. Like it's, I even have these fearful moments where I especially when I was very fast to adopt AI into our work, but very discerning for how we did it.
And I can share what our values were there. But then I went through this long window of like, Oh my god, what I've built is obsolete. And I've come out the other side, actually.
And now I think what we have built is incredibly important. And it's not obsolete. But it speaks to what I think the capabilities of AI is right now.
And then what I think the capabilities of humans are right now. Because AI really like it for clinical decision making, let's just start with it there. It can tell you what you don't know very well, right?
It honestly comes back to those same leadership qualities that we were talking about at the very beginning. They're related. If you don't know your blind spots, if you don't know your bias, if you don't know what you don't know, AI is not going to help you, right?
It's just going to do a shitty job at integrative medicine research. And it's going to still point you towards the same solutions you've always done. And it's if anything, it's going to decrease your value and worth to your patients, because they can look it up too.
So they don't even need you. But what actually needs to happen is that we need to use AI as a tool to get discerning, unbiased, great clinical information to doctors more streamlined, because there's a lot of friction in getting research to doctors right now getting research to naturopathic doctors, we had no mechanism for it. Right.
So if you hadn't seen a patient with lupus in 10 years, and one walked through your door, you have homework, there was nowhere to go to look it up. Asking ChatGPT, if you have no idea what to ask, doesn't give you the answer you're looking for. But if you have a system and a support tool, like Confident Clinician, this is where I'm going with it is that we've actually told you, “Here's what you need to know about lupus if you don't know anything.”
And so we've actually bridged how you can go from like, not knowing to knowing with a resource, but just putting it into free AI or just putting it into an undiscerning knowledge base. I mean, it's reading Bob's blog about lupus also. And so the information you get back is not great.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (40:20 - 40:30)
Yeah, blog, it gave me my own blog as an answer to my own question. Three of the references of five.
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (40:31 - 40:38)
I could have asked myself. I wonder if I but I wonder if it knew that. Now yours now.
I don't know now.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (40:39 - 40:45)
Well, good on you for the SEO there. Because it's quite impressive.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (40:46 - 41:23)
My boyfriend is a web developer. And he has me at the end of an SEO whip to be like, listen, what's trending right now. And what's going to get the most clicks is this. Can you write something about this?
And I'm like, okay, fine. Let me get it out immediately. And then and then that heat map you're talking about.
Jesus, people really love clicking on beat urea for iron deficiency. They're like, what happens when I pee? It's like, it's so crazy what people click on.
You're like, I worked 30 seconds on that. But the one that I worked on for 18 hours of it. No, ignore that one completely.
The life changing one. I don't know.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (41:23 - 41:36)
No, I know. I always used to say, like, if I posted research that was like, oh, my God, a study was just published. If we do this one thing, we'll never die.
And the people are like, did you just burn your lunch? Like, right? Like, literally what they're interested in.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (41:39 - 41:49)
Oh, God. Yeah. Thank God for these people to directly show us the way.
I know. Are you so like you're bullish on AI? I guess that's what you're.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (41:51 - 45:06)
So what I think, and I've been following it, too, obviously, is that the next iteration of AI is going to be. And I hope that this is. I hope this is the next iteration.
But I do think this is where it's going. It's like expertly trained knowledge bases are going to be the next version of AI that we're interested in. Right.
The internet was sucky before. Now we just have it faster and more confident sounding. Chat GPT is incredible at synthesizing data.
Right. Like I even put our member survey into chat GPT. And I said, what of these comments should I own?
And what of these comments should they own? And it did a beautiful job of being like this person hasn't blocked time in their calendar for the calls. But and over here, Jordan, you need to own that.
You've never covered respiratory infections with herbs. Like it really is amazing at synthesizing large volumes of data. But it's what it's retrieving from wasn't really working for us in the first place.
Right. If integrative medicine research was easy, we wouldn't have had this problem in the first place. So what we're going to find is that AI is giving us the same answers faster and more confidently.
But it's the data pool that it's pulling from starts to become the question. Where did it get it? And so when we built our AI, I had to make a really strong decision that was before any of this was even really being talked about to close our system.
And I said, actually, you don't want our AI to ask the internet what to do. I actually only wanted to ask us. And if we don't know the answer or we haven't covered it, I'd like it to say that rather than hallucinating and picking up an answer from some blog.
I just wanted to say we're sorry. We haven't covered that yet. And so sandboxing our data was like a big decision because at the time, you know, custom GPTs and whatnot was a big deal.
And every and every company was rushing to put custom GPTs in that were leveraging internet based data. And I had to make a decision to close our knowledge base. Interestingly, they just released their AI.
And I am so pleased that they actually chose the same thing. They've chosen a closed sandbox system. If it's not up to date, they say they're very clear that they do not talk to the internet, whereas other AI tools right now for medicine are talking to the internet.
And so what that means is that the data you're getting from us or from up to date has gone through a physician first. It means a person actually said this is worth paying attention to rather than having a flood of data that is indiscriminate, right, where you have no idea if it's important or not. Not every study should change the way we practice.
But if all of them are given to you quickly in confident sounding ChatGPT, it actually doesn't help the clinician at all. One more thing, because now I'm on a rant. I do think there's a role for the clinician.
So AI is not going to take your job as long as you're a great behavior medicine coach, right? Like as long as you can help people move through behavior, change and transformation. If your patients were coming to you for the dose of berberine, and that was all they were looking for.
They don't need you.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (45:06 - 45:07)
God help you.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (45:07 - 45:37)
They don't need you, right? They can actually find that in one second now. But if they were coming to you because they can't change or they're not sure what to do, or they need clarity or a teammate or a cheerleader or ideas or lab work or some other controlled act that you do, like suddenly your role is really clear and we can't get rid of you yet.
And so leaning into that part of your relationship with patients, I really think is the way that we persevere through the AI age in naturopathic medicine.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (45:38 - 45:50)
As the resident robot, I'm looking at Paul. That is me. Yeah.
How do you feel about all of that? That attitude, that perspective, our future, the profession.
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (45:53 - 48:03)
Not loci. I don't know. Things are changing so fast.
To your point about the sort of cold sweat that one might get when you build a system and then a minute later, you're like, is it obsolete? As soon as we hit like finished, is it now just wiped out? It seems like every month there's new tools, new tools available that make the last way we were doing something completely just archaic, slow and archaic.
And so I don't know if things are changing so quickly. I saw a video last week of you putting your arm in this, you put your arm in the sleeve and then there's a laser and it perfectly finds your vein and then punctures and gets the blood, pulls right out and slaps a bandaid on top. You imagine something like that and you're like, oh, but the physical skills, even if it takes the intellectual things, the physical things we're still going to do.
No, we're not. Not as soon as that technology becomes cheap enough that now it's in every single LifeLabs and then life labs appointments are on time every minute and a half in and out. Done. Then why are you drawing your blood with a butterfly and missing and like, sorry, I had coffee today or whatever it is.
That's gone. I saw a video of somebody getting a haircut and she sat down and this was like a laser, I don't know, 3D map of her head. And then it literally gave her a haircut.
It was robot arms going around in circles around her, like lasering, giving her a fade, doing it over. Like it was amazing. You think that thing can't be repurposed to do Botox?
We can do surgery. We can do robotic surgeries. Now you think that's far away.
So like, even when we're protecting ourselves with like, ah, but I'm still needed. I'm doing this physical manual thing. Anything you do repeatedly can and will be automated.
Anything. Give it, give it enough of a time perspective. And so it's like, I see AI coming and you just kind of have to swim faster than the next person and hope that you're all swimming faster than the tsunami that's coming because when it comes like, it's a tsunami.
Where are you going to hide?
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (48:03 - 48:37)
And I wonder what your gauge is, Jordan, about what naturopathic doctors are in adopting AI and, and like what they're saying about the AI embedded in your programs. Like, are they loving it? Embracing it?
Cause I, the, a lot of the ones that I'm talking to are just really ostriches. They just really are like, don't even talk to me about that stuff. I'm still, I'm still busy over here doing other things.
I don't have the capacity to take on this AI monster.
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (48:37 - 48:45)
Yeah. How do you deal with that existential problem? Like, ah, he'd go to work.
Let's keep building. When like, oh, we're always going.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (48:46 - 49:12)
Yeah. I, you know, it's funny. I was at a leadership conference right when we were starting to build the AI and I was sitting around a table and there were some MNDs at the table and I said, you know, I'm about to launch this product, but it's quite innovative and new.
When I say I, like, I say, I, AI, you say what? Right. And like, I wanted to gauge the temperature of what people thought.
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (49:12 - 49:13)
It's a fun game.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (49:13 - 49:16)
And one, I say, I, I, Paul says we're doomed.
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (49:20 - 49:23)
I think it's going to be like a utopia at the same time.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (49:24 - 49:29)
Hopefully, hopefully we're like all just like surfing and zip lining and AI does everything else. Right. Really.
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (49:30 - 49:38)
It's amazing. And there's going to be a, there's going to be a, like a trough of disillusionment and terrible ISM.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (49:39 - 50:15)
But then hopefully we come out the other side surfing, but I was sitting at this table and I said, like, tell me what you think. And this was just to try and date it. It was a year and a half ago.
Maybe it was two years ago. So not that long ago. Like if I think about the like inception, it's like the matrix, right?
Like watching this all happen. So I first realized that we needed to do AI like in November, two years ago. And then we started building our product in the February of two years ago, or not quite two years ago.
And then we started to, and then we launched it. It's amazing.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (50:16 - 50:34)
That's amazing. That two years ago, like, you know, ChatGPT, maybe a year ago, people were just like, oh, there's this website where you can Google things that it thinks for you. And like, that's amazing that you had that kind of foresight and just, yeah, that's.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (50:35 - 52:20)
Honestly, it was a real problem solver for me because we had built Confident Clinician to a size that made it impossible to find anything in it. So keyword based search is really limiting, right? So we could tag pages.
We had keywords. We put acne on every page that talked about acne, but waiting for the searches and trying to get the right information in front of the right clinician at the right time was impossible. And if people spelled acne wrong, as they do, they wouldn't even get the results.
So I had a problem that AI solved and the system we built actually listens to our videos. And that to me would just unlocked so much potential. I can talk through how to clinically make a decision and it informs the knowledge base.
So when someone says, what's the dose of berberine, our AI might say back, that's not the right question to ask. Actually, the first thing you need to consider is, and then it talks through clinical decision making, as I did in the video. So it really solved a problem for me.
But it was like a year and a half ago that I was polling these NDs. I was like, what's, what's, I say AI, you say what? And one of them said, did you know that AI, the power of AI is coming from unborn human fetuses?
And I was like, oh, and then I'm like, well, shit, like I'm about to launch this product. I'm like, is this the going feeling about this technology that is like this conspiratorial that like, that it's like, I don't know. I had a moment, right?
Where I'm like, I just like invested a lot of money in this tech build out. And this person thinks that my tech is going to be powered by unborn fetuses. But most of the people at that table were afraid.
At that time.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (52:21 - 52:26)
Attached to abortion clinics, like that's your evil, sinister, Ursula source.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (52:26 - 53:54)
Like help us help us. But that was like, it was generally unsure, afraid. Like that was the going concern at that time, which was like just like maybe a year and a half ago.
Then we added AI to our system and people could not talk to it. They'd write menopause and then our knowledge base would be like, ah, it's a life stage. Like it didn't really know how to answer the questions.
And just this week, it's amazing. I went into the back end to see what people were looking at. And people are now like, can you make me a Canva image that shows the differences between premature ovarian syndrome and polycystic ovarian syndrome and make it purple and pink and blue, like the rapid adoption of, and it can't do that by the way.
Like, let me just be clear. We can't make images. It's not worth it for us to build the tech to make images.
But what I'm trying to say is like the, the rapid adoption of the clinicians has been insane. Like a year and a half ago, they were like, why did you do this to us, Jordan? And now they're like, it's integrated in the way they think, the way they ask questions, the way they approach their patient care.
And that's a very short window of time that they have evolved. And so I think that clinicians are able to leverage their time and they are seeing the potential, but I do think they need to be reminded that they actually need to grow as leaders and communicators to be able to deliver patient care in the face of AI. I think that's where I would really love clinicians to focus their time and their efforts in the next couple of years.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (53:56 - 55:51)
My God. Yes. I think the future needs us to still retain our brains that we can't like, you know, even now.
And if you have fetuses. Yeah. Oh, it's hard for those.
Very useful. Where's the power bank? I just, that was so shocking to me, but I have this, like, I don't know when you said that, like, I have this shame.
I've said this many times to other people about our profession. I verbalize that honestly, I have this deep shame that I'm a naturopathic doctor and that my peers say things like that in greater numbers than other professions . Of course you have these one-off whack job medical doctors and one off whack job. I do more than one off whack job chiropractors, but like, okay.
But like naturopathic doctors stand alone, in my opinion, as having the most unbelievable commentary about things. And you're like, you're supposed to be a critical thinker that went to the same program that I went to that exists in the same profession that I do. How, where did you come from?
Like what? What? And so it's like, when you say things like that, it just gets to a place in my spirit that is so embarrassed.
And then I'm like, thank God for people like you. And this is what, you know, we try to do with our education and in this conversation with you to like, try to dispel some of those things and try to just be the opposing force so that people don't just only hear that on repeat from many different places, because there's just so many different voices like that in our profession, that I really want to stamp the fuck out. And so I'm so happy that you do this kind of thing, because it's just they, that kind of opinion needs to die.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (55:52 - 58:40)
It totally needs to die. I have this incredible privilege of working in the self-selected community that I've built. And so it's not very often that I go out into the wild of naturopathic medicine.
It's truly like I spend 80% of my time inside a community that I said, hey, friends, do you want to join? Right. And, and you probably need, you know, there's, there's maybe a little bit of a barrier to entry in terms of being interested in change and being open minded and evidence based.
So I get to hang out with what I think are like the absolute most amazing clinicians. And so I, it's really changed my perception of naturopathic medicine because every day there are seven, 800 naturopathic doctors doing really great work through our community. When I do poke my head up occasionally, I'm like, oh God, like, what are we up against here?
And that can feel, it feels a little bit, it can feel hopeless because it feels like changing the medical doctor's mind or anyone else that we would love to have a collaborative relationship with. That's what we're up against. And that's partly why I want to be on the desktop of every MD in North America, because I think it lifts the entire profession up if everyone was practicing with a standard of care.
But right now we have clinicians who've honestly built their entire identity around acting that way. And that would be very hard for them to change. And so I try to hold this like empathy and compassion for people that like to stick to their guns, like about whatever controversial topic is, you know, trending right now.
And they're like, adamant that that's the right way to practice medicine. And they're, and they've built their entire brand and their entire personality and, and the way they think about themselves around a modality or around a, could you imagine, could you imagine if doctors were like, I'm the Crestor doctor, like we would think that that was crazy. And yet in our profession, it's very normal for people to be like, I'm the, and then insert some modality or some dogma or some particular way of practicing naturopaths.
You can't practice that way. Like that's, what does that mean? If you've signed up that your personality is tied to a particular modality, your patients aren't getting the smorgasbord of options when they see you, right?
They're getting a very biased opinion. And I, I, but I try and have compassion for that because if they have built their life, their brand and their identity around something that's wrong, it's very, very, very hard to change. And it's very threatening for them to have to change their mind.
So I always want to hold space so that if they want to change their mind, I'm here, but if they can't right now, I try and understand that even though it's very difficult.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (58:41 - 59:57)
I think when you allow for the existence of homeopathy, you allow for what you just described, that somebody can double, triple down on a singular modality because they truly believe it is the be all and end all to solve everybody's problems. And that's the fallacy to begin with. If you truly believe in these kinds of therapeutics, I mean, I use that word very loosely, but like, if you truly believe that these things do something, then how could you not want to only do that and think that way and not ignore everything else?
Because you truly believe that this one sugar pill is going to solve this person's root of their issue. So I think that's where a lot of our, um, the confidence in some of these doctors comes from because they've bought into that so hard that nothing else is even possible. So they would say back to you or to me or to Paul, what do you, you guys, you don't get it.
Come back to me in 400 years when quantum mechanics meets quantum physics meets the quantum. And then you'll quantum, you'll be able to quantum understand me. And you're just like, oh, he thinks science is catching up.
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (59:57 - 1:00:02)
Hey, uh, how's your, how's your kidney? Kind of just catching up.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (1:00:05 - 1:01:05)
There's a, the, my fucked up kid. He was left. Well, actually, yeah, we still throw it.
Anyway, So yeah, I, I a hundred percent agree. How is it?
Okay. I know our time is precious here. So I just want to ask a couple more things of you because I also want to hear from you certain things.
So I'm going to change the topic a little bit. Let's do it. You are obviously iconic.
You do lots. You are a leader in our world. Thank God.
Uh, you've heard this question many times. How the fuck do you do it? How, where, where, how, why is your resource pool, uh, Olympic?
What, like, what is like, how do you do it all? What do you sacrifice? Are you sacrificing?
Do you have to choose between one thing or another? Is your health some days at the mercy of what you choose to put in your schedule? Help us mere mortals.
Understand, uh, how it might be done. Okay.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (1:01:05 - 1:03:40)
Uh, yeah, that's right. I am just totally AI. You know what?
I don't. So I don't think I'm sacrificing anything right now. Um, that there have, there have been moments probably.
Right. But I exercise, I go to sleep. I eat pretty decently.
Like I, I don't think, you know, I have great, lots of time with my family. I work from home with my partner. We spend a lot of time together.
Sometimes we talk about work too often. And that's a, that is a, that is a work in progress. We'll call it to me.
That's always been about that. Like, how do I, uh, gain leverage inside my businesses so that I can be doing more of what I should be doing, right? Like that's, and even before buyback and even before some of these other great business related concepts around, you know, letting the 20% go away and focus on this.
And I've kind of always had that approach. I've also bet on myself. Like in the millions, right.
I've bet on myself in the millions and that has allowed me to build the big thing. You don't, you don't get to build the big thing if you won't do that. And so have I had some sleepless nights over my own betting on my own projects a hundred percent, but it's been that like, what does leadership look like?
What do I need to do here to get me leveraged into that next space where I can be doing more of what I need to be doing and taking a lot of risks on myself. Like it's, that's been, that's just the relentless piece around it. Um, but I, and I have built support in and around me.
Like now I have a team of like, there's like 25 or 30 people that work in my ecosystem at any point in time. I still own my clinic. Um, so there's, I have that whole team and all those people that work there.
And then I have the confident clinician, um, business separate. So it's mostly about how do I like to get myself to be in a spot where I'm able to do the magical things that only I can do most of the time. And that letting other people support me with doing the other things.
And I am just weirdly resilient. Like, I don't know, like my HRV is in the hundreds. Like I literally don't know.
Like maybe there is some kind of weird, uh, genetic thing that I'm just like able to carry a big load. But I think it's from some practices, but there also may just be some luck in there. I don't know.
I also have great quads. So maybe just my quads and my resiliency, they came with me out of the womb.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (1:03:43 - 1:03:52)
I, I haven't ever met you in person. So until that happens, I'm going to believe that you are AI and that I'm speaking to a hologram.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (1:03:53 - 1:04:03)
I'm only five, four. That's always the big surprising thing. I must have big zoom energy because every time I meet someone, they're like, whoa, you're way shorter than we thought.
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (1:04:07 - 1:04:17)
Okay. You had to either. So I think then we know the answer to these rapid fire questions.
If you had to either lose 30 minutes of sleep or get one more article read, which would you choose?
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (1:04:19 - 1:04:27)
Uh, Ooh, I think I would, I think I would lose sleep. Yeah, I think I would lose sleep.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (1:04:28 - 1:04:34)
Okay. Because she's so resilient that she can get away with let's sleep and still perform.
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (1:04:34 - 1:04:56)
HRB would be 95. Yeah. I mean, it might go up.
Yeah, probably. And then what if you had to choose between a workout or seeing one more patient? Workout.
Okay. What if you had to choose between eating a granola bar while catching up on your emails or getting a full salad and protein lunch, but you didn't touch your email.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (1:04:57 - 1:06:00)
I'd have to choose the protein lunch and salad. Not because I don't like granola bars, but because I actually feel like it's impossible for me to be at inbox zero. So that feels like a fallacy, like, just eat these granola bars and do your inbox Jordan and everything will be fine.
No, I might as well have the protein salad because my inbox actually has a human that does my inbox. Haley, my assistant, is incredible. And for the first time ever, I am down to zero.
But there were times when I had like 50,000, 60,000 unread emails in my inbox. And so having... Oh my God.
Oh, I had some shots of my phone where like, you know how your iPhone is like tells you how many that it like got so big that it was just like, it didn't even know how to put the number in the little bubble above the mail icon. It was really, it was a problem. And then I would clear it every once in a while.
I would just be like, mark all read. And then six months later, they'd be like 47,000 emails in there again. So I would take the salad because I don't believe I can get to inbox zero on my own.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (1:06:02 - 1:06:26)
Thank you so much, Dr. Robertson. You are... A legend.
Yeah, like... Oh, you guys are great. From the bottom of our hearts, like this is your first guest, your delight, your profound and I'm so glad you exist in our community.
I think it's extremely important that people like you who think the way you do drag us forward.
[Dr. Paul Maximus, ND] (1:06:27 - 1:06:34)
Thank you for developing the thick skin that it's taken to get to this point to change the profession at apparently no cost to your nervous system.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (1:06:37 - 1:07:39)
TBD, TBD. Yeah. Oh, you guys are great.
I'm so happy to have this conversation. And like, honestly, for me, like the ability to have these frank, vulnerable, open conversations about what we... I mean, people, I think, get a persona, right?
I still get the like, people think I can maybe be unapproachable or have, you know, resting bitch face. And I'm like, have we talked? Like, have we tried?
Because honestly, I don't think I've approached any conversation with that level of ego and righteousness in quite some time. Maybe when I applied to CCNM, right? It was a bit of a different story.
But I truly just want people to be able to succeed and to be able to get the resources they need to succeed. And I'm so happy to have dialogue. And so having this opportunity for me goes a long way because I like telling this story because it shows that I'm what our values are and what our goals are.
And then it's totally possible if you bet on yourself and believe in yourself to be able to like, you know, get somewhere cool. And I'm so happy to share the conversation.
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (1:07:40 - 1:07:46)
Thank you for saying yes to us. Also, I can see why people think you're intimidating. So I'm just gonna put that out there.
[Dr. Jordan Robertson, ND] (1:07:47 - 1:07:48)
I'm only 5'4".
[Dr. Bobby Parmar, ND] (1:07:48 - 1:08:09)
It doesn't matter. Thanks, Jordan. Off the charts.
Thank you so much for joining me today. I really had a great time and I hope you did too. Please share this with a friend or a lot of friends and leave me a review.
It really helps promote this podcast. Thanks so much.
Disclaimer: This transcript may contain errors, omissions, or inaccuracies. It should not be considered a verbatim record of the conversation. For context or clarification, please refer to the original audio or video recording.
