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INTERVIEW | Make Money by Betting on Yourself & Building a Purpose-Driven Business with Cynthia Thurlow
00:27:35
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A
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Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
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C
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com travis. What is going on everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's mission to help you make more money. Today on the show I'm talking to a new friend of mine, Cynthia Thurlow. She is a nurse practitioner, two time TEDx speaker and internationally recognized expert perimenopause, menopause and women's metabolic health. She's a host of the top rated everyday wellness podcast, CEO and founder of the Everyday Wellness Project, and author of the Menopause Gut Balance your microbiome to reclaim your health in midlife and Beyond. With over 25 years of clinical experience, anatetics talk surpassing 15 million views, Cynthia is dedicated to translating cutting edge research on the gut hormone access and women's longevity into practical strategies that empower women so thrive in midlife and beyond. And of course on this conversation on the show today, we're talk a little bit about the business side of everything that Cynthia is working on. Give you guys a glimpse into the life of a speaker, coach, author and everything else that she's going on. So Cynthia, what's going on? Welcome to the show.
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B
Thanks for having me Travis.
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C
So I assume, and correct me if I'm wrong, I assume that when you were, you know, talking to your career counselor at 14, 15 that some of the stuff that you're doing now was not on the docket. Maybe some of it was, but some of it probably wasn't. So let's go back to that moment in time. 15, 16 year old Cynthia, tell me about what you got going on.
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B
No, I, I was, you know, that typical, you know, bright eyed, bushy tailed, straight A student. At that time I aspired to go to law school and so a lot of what I thought about, you know, I played varsity level sports, I was in student government, you know, passionate about, you know, wanting to be in Washington D.C. you know, that to me seemed to be like the place to be if you wanted to go to law school.
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C
Really.
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B
You know, I got through four years of undergrad and applied to law school and then suddenly realized that I didn't want to go to. I, I would have enjoyed studying law, but I did not want to be an attorney. I'm not actually someone that enjoys arguing, to be honest. I think the intellectual rigor of law school would have appealed to me. However, I do not like to argue. And so I pivoted. Spent two years working for a Fortune 500 company. Hated every single minute of it.
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C
Wait, wait.
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B
So after undergrad I worked for a big computer software company because I had to pay the bills. You know, my parents were like, you know, we paid for undergrad and you know, peace out. Yeah, yeah, had to pay the bills. And what's ironic is, you know, my entire childhood, young adulthood, I'd always wanted a dog. And my parents both work full time and were responsible individuals and said, you know, we're not going to get a pet, they're not going to get enough attention. And so one of the first things I did when I graduated undergrad was I got a dog. And it changed my life because I suddenly realized that I was really interested in, if it wasn't necessarily veterinary medicine, that I was very interested in medicine and how the body works. And so I worked part time on the weekends along with my full time job at a vet clinic. Really realized, yeah, I did, honest to God. And I remember thinking at the time, like, I'm so allergic to cats, so this is probably not a great idea. But what I started to realize as I was taking pre med classes, so I went back to school. While I was working full time, I started taking pre med classes. And one of the professors in one of the classes I was in leaned over and he said, you're, you're like a scooch a little bit older than most of the undergrads. Why are you here? What are you doing? And when I explained to him that I thought maybe I wanted to go to medical school, he said, you don't want to go to medical school, you want to be a nurse practitioner. I was like, oh, I don't want to be a nurse. Because I had so many medical people in my family. Like, the last thing I wanted to do was to be a medical person. And to his credit, I talked to his sister and I have had an older cousin that was in med school and she, a hundred Percent agreed. And so I ended up applying to several. They're essentially second degree programs because in order to be a nurse practitioner, you need to be a bachelor's prepared nurse first. And so I got a second undergraduate degree and then a graduate degree. The irony being it was the HIV and AIDS kind of crisis. And that became a huge interest of mine. So really on the east coast, it was Johns Hopkins. On the west coast it was ucsf. And I'm very much an east coast girl. So went to Baltimore, spent seven years there, Loved every minute of it. Best. One of the best decisions I ever made was to go into medicine and worked for several years as an ER and trauma nurse and then pivoted to cardiology. And I spent 16 years in clinical cardiology as an NP until 10 years ago when I got tired of writing prescriptions. And here's the pivot. How many people at the stage of life I was in were willing to pivot away from a well paying, well respected job to become an entrepreneur? I woke up one morning and said to my husband, I can't write another prescription. And my husband was like, what are you talking about? I was like, I literally cannot do this job for another day. And so my husband thought I was having a midlife crisis. I just said I knew I could.
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C
Sorry to cut you off. Was it the monotony of the job or was it more you not thinking that you were properly treating the patients or what? Like what. What exactly was the reason that you couldn't write another prescription?
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B
Cardiology is never monotonous. Cardiology is fast paced. It is intellectually rigorous, it is demanding. I was no longer in alignment with the traditional allopathic view that everything is symptom based, meaning if a patient comes in with shortness of breath, any intervention I create or identify, whether it's diagnostics, prescription medication, or just saying, chalking it up and saying, we've done this big workup, this must be anxiety. It's all very prescriptive based. It's all intervention based. You know, probably a year or two before I left traditional allopathic medicine, I did a functional nutrition program. And that really opened up my eyes that there was more to this conversation. And so that became kind of a jump point to integrative medicine. And so for me, when I say that I could not write another prescription, is that that prescription focus was so out of alignment with.
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A
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B
Lifestyle is medicine. So I felt like I was going to work and I was pulling the party line, if you will. Yeah, I was. I was doing exactly what was expected of me. But I found it incredibly disheartening that so many of the interventions that I was providing patients with, whether it was diabetes management or heart disease, so much of it was lifestyle mediated. If I could get patients to prioritize their sleep and manage their stress and eat less crap and move their bodies, we would have less of these other poor metabolic health outcomes. And so, from my perspective, I pivoted sharply. And of course, most of my peers thought I had lost my mind, including my parents, who were like, what do you mean? You went arguably to one of the best research institutions in the country. How do you walk away from that? And I said, no, no, you don't understand. I am so well trained. Like, I was trained to be a thinker and a thought leader and to think outside the box constantly. I was, I was encouraged to challenge authority. I was encouraged. Encouraged and not be rigidly dogmatic. Those skills translate nicely into being an entrepreneur because we know entrepreneurs are outside the box thinkers. They don't think the same way as someone else does. And so I took this massive pivot, and the irony being within a year and a half, I was making more money doing my new role as an entrepreneur and still helping patients and clients than I ever did as a conventionally trained nurse practitioner. And so, you know, that, that creating group programs, creating one on one programs, doing a good amount of public speaking, which led to a TED talk and then a second which led to a podcast, which led to a lot of other business opportunities. So I kind of retrospectively can look back now and say maybe it all didn't make sense to me at the time.
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C
Yeah.
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But at this point in time, it makes so much sense because, you know, now we have an entire, you know, generation of younger clinicians that are leaving the traditional allopathic model. So doing a lot of what I did, but doing it, you know, five, 10 years later. And I think that we're at the kind of forefront of trying to desperately shift modern day medicine in a way that clinicians are happier, they get to spend more time with patients they have more flexibility. And by the same token, you know, allowing people that work in more urgent or emergent areas of medicine, they're still in their zone of genius because they're saving lives and their work is equally important.
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C
Yeah, yeah.
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B
But I think I'm very much one of many, many clinicians now that just doesn't want to be constrained by insurance pay systems.
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C
The rules.
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B
Right. Having to see, you know, when I worked in, in, when I was in clinic, I had to see 16 very sick patients a day. And that might not sound like a lot, but my friends and, yeah, my friends in urgent care or the er, they might see double that amount. You don't have time to pee, you don't have time to eat, you don't have time to think. I used to eat, literally I would dictate and eat food at the same time, which is not an optimal way to live. And so I always say, like, I'm so grateful that I had those experiences, but I feel like I'm making a much larger impact and imprint now than I ever did before.
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C
Well, you bring up a great point about that. It's not very common for people to leave a field like that. And I think that sort of is potentially, as an outsider, part of the problem is that there's so much work that, and, and dedication and energy and literal money, like capital investment into forging that career path that it's, it becomes almost impossible at some point. The sunk cost fallacy is very, very real and has the ability to draw people into this thinking that then only continues furthering the thoughts that there are being proliferated inside of that world. Their confirmation bias becomes stronger and then they, they start holding on to the traditions of the, of, of the medicine world rather than the principles of the medicine world, which is to be constantly growing and changing and learning new information and accepting new data. And, and, and yet, because, because it takes so long to get to that point, I can see how it would be really easy to just be like, no, we're right, because we've. I've spent the last 12 years of my life studying this thing. So, you know, there's no way that this other person is more correct or potentially has something to offer to this conversation because I'm the expert and you won't tell me how to do my job type of a thing. Have you, have you found like, did you find that transition easy from like a inner peace perspective? Like, did you just have like a piece about it or what? What. I guess for somebody listening who might know Somebody or maybe is in the situation themselves, what would you encourage them to, to ask or to think about more?
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Well, I mean, I mean, transparently I can tell you that I was privileged enough that, you know, we, we had the ability to not use my income for several years. You know, my husband gave me, he said, you have two years to figure this out and then you have to go back to work. And then he realized, like, I actually there was a viable opportunity here. So, so I think that, you know, you have to have a supportive partner. That's number one. You can't do it otherwise. I mean, and I'm not necessarily saying it has to be financially supportive. I mean, that helps. You have to have a partner that that's willing to help you. I think that you also have to have the right mindset. Like, I think for a lot of people, my husband included, be the first person to tell you his ability to be risky is much lower than mine. Like, whereas I was like, I leap first and then I figure it out. That's not how most people's brains work. Like for me, I said, I know I'm going to be successful and I will. And that might sound crazy, but, you know, mindset is so critically important. And for me, I couldn't necessarily see, you know, where every step forward needed to be. But I was like, okay, the next thing I need to do is X and then the next thing I need to do is Y. And so I will be the first person to say that. I think part of my gifts in this world is that I have an ability to focus like no one else. I think that is just one of my God given gifts. I probably am on the spectrum a little bit like, a little bit like you meet me, you would never, you would never believe that to be the case. But I have an ability to focus and work really hard and I think that is my superpower. Like, I can just put my blinders on and work. But I think for other individuals, they can talk themselves out of a good decision, out of fear, out of scarcity, mindset. And so one of the very first things I started doing was hiring a business coach and really honing in on mindset and how important that is. Because if your mindset is not dialed in as an entrepreneur, you're not gonna survive. You just won't.
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C
That's right.
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B
There's a great meme that says, you know, in an entrepreneur's world, like, one day it's great and the next day it's awful. And you have to be able to Weather the good with the bad. And there, there's not one entrepreneur I know that's successful that has not had as much bad as they have had good. You have to be able to weather it all. If you need predictability, if you need a steady paycheck, if you need that kind of predictability, then it's probably not, and that's okay. It's probably not the right environment. Like I always say, an entrepreneur has high highs and low lows. And then after a while, you figure out how to avoid the lows or how to buffer them, mitigate them, at
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C
least to some degree. Yeah, yeah.
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B
Yes, absolutely. Like, I, I, I was mentioning before we started recording that, you know, you put yourself out there and you get a lot of, you know, scammy stuff that ends up in your inbox or your assistant's inbox and, like, trying to figure out what's worth my attorney's time to look at versus what's the stuff we can ignore. And so right before we jumped on, I was having a conversation with my turn, my trademark attorney to say, is this a scam?
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Yeah.
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And then we both agreed it was a scam. And so he said, I think you can ignore that, and, you know, I'll look into it for you. But yeah, I think for each one of us, it's the number one most important thing for entrepreneurs is mindset. So whether that's reading books, whether that's personal development, whether that's listening to a podcast, whether that's investing in yourself. One thing I've done consistently over the past 10 years is I'm consistently up leveling the people that I work with. I'm consistently surrounded by more successful people than even I am because it shows me what's possible. It also allows me to see, like, what are the things they do to dial in on mindset.
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C
We talk on the show a lot about different investments that we can make. And we have people who invest in stocks and people who invest in bonds and real estate and everything in between. Yet the one common denominator, the common thread that links all of my guests really on the show and something that I talk about a lot is investing in yourself. And you just mentioned that a second ago. Can you give me some practical examples of what that actually looks like?
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B
Yeah, I mean, I think initially, initially, at the very beginning, it was like reading books. So there's a book called Eat the Frog, and it's not a profound book, but it's pretty clear about do the things you want to do least. First thing in the morning, because the rest of your day will be infinitely easier. And from day one, once I read that book, that was something that I started to implement. So it's not just about the business coach, the podcast, the book. It's. Do you. Do you absorb and then implement? Because you can read a hundred books, and if you don't actually use anything tangible and valuable, then that's a waste of your time. So. So, number one, if you're going to take the time to join a mastermind, per, you know, work with a business coach, buy a book, do a, you know, listen to a podcast, actually take some action, like, don't be an analysis paralysis. Because there I equally see plenty of what I refer to as faux entrepreneurs who are like, they are an analysis paralysis. They cannot make a decision. They muddle in the ambiguity. And so I would say that's. That's number one. Number two, you're only as successful as the people you choose to surround yourself with. And I'm not saying that your personal friendships have to suffer. I'm just saying one of the most important things I realized very early on is that my tribe or the people I choose to associate with, my peers in the entrepreneurial space are critically important to my success.
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Yep.
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I don't want to be surrounded by people that are not five, ten times where I want to be. Like, I want to constantly be challenged by my peers in the best possible way. I want friends that actually will say to me, hey, get your head out of your ass. What are you doing? You know, real friends or people that are encouraging me to, you know, join a new group or just, you know, have a new experience, I think that is also very important. And I would say, lastly, a lot of my success is dependent on my family. The most important thing in my life is my family. By far. Like, if you took all the success, financial and otherwise, that I've had, if I didn't have my husband and my children's support, I wouldn't be doing it. So it doesn't mean that you have to be married or that you have to have children. I'm just saying your family, your tribe, your. Your people. Yeah. Are a constant source of support. And if they're not, they're probably not your right people, because as I've stated before, I think being an entrepreneur is high highs and low lows. And so when you're having the low lows, you better make sure you've got a good support system.
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C
Well, I love the. That you brought up the book first, because sometimes I think when we sit, when we use the term investing in yourself, people can kind of get scared and start immediately thinking about this, like, oh well, I talked to this executive coach and they're going to be know, $20,000 and I don't have $20,000. And like that's a big leap. And it's like, look, maybe at some point, yes, that is something that you need to do. And maybe at some point, yes, you do need to take the action of the future version of yourself in order to bring that future version of yourself into fruition today. Right. But it does not have to be that. Day one. Like you said, information's ubiquitous. It's, it's out there. There's people talking about it. There's people doing free podcasts about it, there's people doing free YouTube videos about it. There's people writing $25 books. They'll, they'll, they'll, they'll take 30 years to learn crazy lessons and they'll package it into 250 pages you can buy for $17 on Audible. You know what I mean? Like, just do take the action of putting a little bit of money down to say that I am worth, you know, it's, it's like a mental bet on yourself. You're betting on the, on the racehorse of you essentially every time you make that investment, whether it's 15 bucks or 15,000 bucks. As long as, like you said, you're actually implementing something like all investment in yourself is only as good as the action that's taken against the information. Regardless of whether you're joining a super expensive Mastermind or you're in a, you know, low ticket community on Facebook or something, or you got a book or a coach, whatever it is, it's only as good as the action that you're willing to take against that information.
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B
Yeah. And I can tell you in 2019, I joined my first true, like real Mastermind and it was $3,000 a month. And that was so much money to me at that time. And here's the thing, if you're smart and you join a Mastermind, you be incredibly coachable. Like I did every single thing they told me to do. And at 10 times my business, like now I laugh about, oh my gosh, that was so much money to me then. However, it is 10 times my business because what I learned, I implemented. And you know, this is something that both of the people who were heads of the Mastermind would say, like, you were just so coachable. Like, you know, we would just tell you, do the do these next five things and you would do it. And I said, well, I took the work seriously because that was an incredibly large investment for me at the time. And I think there are plenty of people that join masterminds or groups, and then they don't actually utilize the information or they don't take action. And that, to me, there could be a hundred different reasons why someone joins a group. Maybe it's just for the social piece. I don't know.
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C
Sure.
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B
But I feel like.
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C
I feel like. I don't know if you found this to be true. I feel like a lot of people are doing it because they think that that's the magic bullet. Like, that's the thing that they're missing. So they. They think just by nature of making the difficult investment, that the results will come just from making the investment. Then they get upset at the group, and they get upset at the group leader, and they start calling it a scam and all this other stuff. And it's like, no, it's like you just didn't do any of the work. That'd be like going to pay your tuition at a prestigious university and not showing up to class or doing any of the things your professors told you to and then blaming the university and being like, oh, school just doesn't work. It's like, no, you don't work, you know.
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B
Right. You don't learn throughout. Right. Yeah, exactly.
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C
Well, now, Cynthia, obviously, you have a thriving business. You have plenty of things that you're making money on now these days. What is. Like, what. What is. Just from a business perspective, what are some of, like, the key monetization aspects of your business, and what's the core thing that you guys are focusing on?
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B
Well, I would say the podcast is heavily monetized, both with sponsorship, affiliates, and then program links. So we are constantly iterating on that. And that community is. Is very sticky. And that has been. That is my passion project, is one of my favorite things I do in my business. I love podcasting. Number two are programs. And, you know, it's constantly iterating on what's working, what is not working. Speakers fees. I have a supplement business. Those are like the kind of big levers within the business, and there are things that I prefer over others. And my. My team generally, generally knows this. And sometimes, you know, we have people that have to step in. Like, I have a team that works for me in terms of clinicians, and I have a marketing team, and I have a. I have a social media team, and I have a supplement team. And so, you know, they. I allow them to exist in their zone of genius. So, you know, from my perspective, if you had asked me five years ago, could I monetize a podcast the way that I have successfully, I would not have believed it, to be honest with you. In fact, my CPA one year said, do you realize how much money you've made this year with the podcast? And I was like, no, because he pays attention to the numbers and we meet quarterly. And he told me the number. And I was like, wow, that's impressive. So I think that it's figuring out, you know, where. What do you naturally enjoy doing? That's number one. Number two, being intentional about whatever it is that you're focusing on. Obviously, I've now written two books and the book itself, both the writing and then the publication timeline and then the actual press around the book. What has been a massive undertaking over the past two years, like, it really has been a two year from pitch to my editor to coming to fruition, and probably the thing I've worked hardest on my entire adult lifetime, like nothing else has come close.
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C
Well, it shows, Cynthia. It shows there's a reason for the success you'll be able to have. And I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show and share a little bit with us about the inner workings of the business. Where can people go to get more from you?
- [24:49]
B
Yeah, probably easiest to go to my website, so. Www.cynthiathurlow.com There you can kind of get access to the books, to the podcast, to programs that we run. I work with a very limited amount of women one on one at this point in my time. I used to do a lot of business coaching. I don't do as much of that anymore, but the podcast is probably a really good way to get to know who I am. Obviously, the podcast is not business related. It's all health and wellness related. Myopically focused on women 35 and up.
- [25:19]
C
Perfect. Love it. Thank you so much for taking the time. Everybody go check out Cynthia's website as well as. I mean, you're listening to a podcast right now, so I assume you like listening to podcasts. And you, you do. Check out the Everyday Wellness Project from Cynthia. She's got a lot of great content over there as well as her books and everything else. So, Cynthia, thank you again for taking the time. I know you're a busy person. I don't take that for granted. Everybody else tuning in, remember, money only solves your money problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems. And we got some money in the bank, so let's start there. Here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.