EP142: Modern Holistic Health and Healing with Dr. Elena Villanueva

Perfect Practice

In this episode, Sachin interviews Dr. Elena Villanueva on her journey from chiropractic to holistic health practitioner. She shares some of her origin and the health crisis that cost her three sports medicine centers and her home before she recovered. Listen to learn more about the Holistic Health practices of Dr. Elena Villanueva.

Key Takeaways:

[1:01] Sachin introduces today’s guest, Dr. Elena Villanueva. Dr. Elena runs an amazing practice that brings the best of ancient wisdom and modern science together to help people have their deepest healing and feel amazing even when all other things have failed.

[1:42] ModernHolisticHealth.com is where you can learn more about her work.

[1:49] Sachin will ask Dr. Elena to unpack her recipe for growth, persistence, and success, and share with us how we can build a practice that we love, that gets amazing outcomes, and that has an awesome impact in the community, and build an amazing team that does great work.

[2:33] Sachin welcomes Dr. Elena to Perfect Practice.

[3:04] Dr. Elena’s biggest challenge has keeping her personal life and lifestyle as her “number one.” She starts working and she can just go, go, go, like a racecar. Before you know it, the wheels are coming off the car because she put herself on the back burner.

[3:51] Her biggest rewards have been when she sat down and took time to get right with herself, reprioritize her values, and get a deeper understanding of how she can have longevity in this type of work.

[4:24] Dr. Elena aspired to be in the health field from the time she was six or seven years old. Her stepfather was a surgeon. Her uncle is a surgeon. All her uncles are in the medical field. She wanted to be like them, helping people, and making a difference.

[4:49] In her pre-teens, Elena started going to the clinic with her dad, getting patients ready to be seen. As a teenager, she was with him in his plane, flying to border towns to do charity cataract surgeries for the farmers. She helped him in the surgery room.

[5:39] Elena developed a love for helping people. That led her to go to chiropractic school to learn to do things in a more natural way. At the time, she didn’t know about naturopathic school or she might have gone in that direction. That’s the essence of the work she does today.

[6:03] After chiropractic school Dr. Elena had three successful sports medicine practices in the Austin, Texas area but she ended up getting very sick. Her father had just passed on and she had no advocate to help her. She was ashamed to tell anyone she was suffering.

[6:41] Dr. Elena was so sick she almost died. She lost her three practices and her home. She lived in her car but didn’t share with anyone what had happened to her because she carried a lot of shame.

[7:03] Dr. Elena survived. She experienced a lot of miracles along the way and says miracles are always there if you’re looking for them. She had a big shift that led her to where she is today. She went back into practice with opportunities to cover for other doctors on maternity leave.

[7:33] Dr. Elena rediscovered her love for being in the health and wellness field, this time, doing more holistic and functional-type care rather than strictly the biomechanics of the back and neck. She discovered her purpose for what she is supposed to do, and that’s why she is here.

[8:03] It has been a beautiful ride, but it’s not always easy. It presents itself with challenges. If we can become conscious of the common challenges, we can overcome them and we can complete our mission or whatever it is we believe that we’re here to do.

[8:23] Sachin points out the many similarities between Dr. Elena’s journey and his own, including the unwellness he experienced and thought was normal before discovering functional medicine. Informed decisions bring better outcomes.

[9:57] Dr. Elena found out that there was a combination of factors that had led to her becoming ill and unable to heal. That is what she teaches today in her five-part series. She had had a combination of toxins in her body, including mold. She wasn‘t eating the right foods.

[10:40] She was burning the candle at both ends so she had a lot of physical and mental stress running three clinics as a single mother. She worked super hard to build security. Her choices, combined with toxins in her environment, and unresolved trauma, led to massive dysbiosis.

[12:11] Dr. Elena also suffered fatigue, brain fog, and back pain, She went down quickly with some severe symptoms and conditions. Doctors didn’t know what to do for her. She had severe bleeding for about two years. The doctors wanted to cut out her reproductive organs.

[12:55] Looking back, she sees it was a lot of grief being processed. She lost her memory gradually. She developed complete aphasia and severe gut issues. She had to take things to help her sleep and to help her massive panic attacks that she thought were heart attacks.

[13:47] She experienced massive headaches, emotional breakdowns, massive depression, and rashes all over her body. It felt like everything that could go wrong was going wrong.

[15:10] Dr. Elena talks about how her experiences help her as she reaches out to others through an educational five-part series, starting with the Beyond the Pill Masterclass, and the Mental Health Masterclass, exploring the root causes of problems and offering solutions that work.

[16:24] Dr. Elena’s experiences also show up in her practice. Everyone who works for Dr. Elena first came to her because they saw her teaching when she shared a part of her story when she found that our mess is really our message. Her story can inspire audiences and practitioners.

[17:53] Dr. Elena’s approach incorporates a multi-faceted system addressing the conscious and the unconscious mind, the belief systems, the mindset and the stories that we create, and the unprocessed emotions and trauma, as well as the physical facets of who we are.

[18:21] The physical aspects are explored through bloodwork and labs, to help guide the bio-individual needs of their foods, lifestyle choices, and manner of exercise, supplements, and protocols to work on for the different organ systems of their body.

[19:34] Modern Holistic Health has a six-pillar system: Personal, Business, Marketing, Sales, Lifestyle, and Integration. Personal comes at the top, as she learned from her very successful mentors. She applies the Personal to her team, helping them to develop themselves.

[20:27] Dr. Elena believes that the degree of success that you can see in your business is directly correlated to your personal development and growth. Success to us doesn’t just mean money. What happens if you’re healthy in the money section, but not in the relationship section?

[21:12] A lot of people have a bad relationship with money. They generate money but later they have nothing to show for it. They don’t know how to invest their money, build their portfolio, or be better stewards of the money they make. This is under the Personal pillar.

[21:45] Personal is the first of the six pillars and Dr. Elena teaches a lot of personal development. Dr. Elena sees that as a gap in a lot of practitioner certification courses and masterminds. Dr. Elena has a lot of breakthroughs with her practitioners on that.

[22:11] The second pillar is Business. What are the foundations and the values upon which we are building our business? Why are we doing the business? It’s important that what we are doing with our business is in alignment with our value systems. Know basic business strategies.

[23:01] Building a solid foundation is important so you can get to that million-dollar mark and beyond it. What worked for you to get to $500,000 isn’t necessarily the same structure that will get you from $500,000 to $1,000,000, from a million to two million, and so on.

[23:47] One of the biggest mistakes practitioners make is that they try to grow wide quickly rather than focusing on growing deep roots first. Be involved in and understand every bit of your processes, in the beginning. Know that Version One is not going to be the final process.

[24:42] You need to be on top of your processes. When you scale to the next level, if your processes are not solid, and you’re not deep-rooted in your processes, that’s where things will go sideways really quickly and you could end up losing money without even knowing it.

[25:03] Dr. Elena teaches her practitioners to develop a mindset of curiosity and excitement around the processes. If you dread working on your processes, you are saying to the universe, “I don’t want this anymore,” and something will happen to mess up what you’re trying to build.

[25:38] The other four pillars are Marketing, Sales, Lifestyle, and Integration. Building the right team around you that has the same values is part of integration. Integration is key. That is where you get the real growth. Integrate all the parts for long-term business success.

[30:12] Modern Holistic Health has an organizational chart showing who is on each team. Dr. Elena tracks metrics and KPIs of the top things each member of each team is responsible for doing. She has them fill out a questionnaire to assess their values every year.

[31:20] Annual assessments help Dr. Elena to know if employees are still a good fit in the practice, should be promoted, moved, or go somewhere else. This is vital to the success of the business. Implement a process like this from the beginning, with a chart, to be able to scale.

[35:48] Dr. Elena believes it is important to invest in your team members’ professional development. It’s expensive; structure it so that if they leave your organization shortly after your investment in them, they owe you back the money you paid for their training.

[42:16] Dr. Elena has experienced stress when someone wasn’t meeting their metrics and she found it hard to fire them. Now she sees that if someone is not doing well, they know it and they’re not happy in their job, so it’s easy to fire them. Help them find a job where they fit.

[43:31] Dr. Elena speaks of having kept people in the practice for too long. It was bad for the business. After firing them, the business rebounded like a rubber band. Don’t keep people that hold your business back. They’re not happy, either. Let them go sooner rather than later.

[46:09] Dr. Elena has been super blessed to attract amazing mentors who have also been amazing friends to her. She has burned through a lot of money hiring mentors and joining masterminds. She feels a lot of gaps with practitioners in the personal development area.

[47:38] About two-and-a-half years ago, Modern Holistic Health hired their most recent business coach. After spending about $85,000 on him, they realized he wasn’t delivering what he promised, which was to help them set up a C-Suite and investors. Dr. Elena says this is rampant.

[49:41] Dr. Elena has probably spent $250,000 hiring people who didn’t help them. Ask for referrals from people who are where you want to be. Don’t get your referrals from somebody promoting themselves on stage but from people who have hired the best themselves.

[50:42] Dr. Elena speaks of some practitioners paying to go to an event and leaving feeling overwhelmed, having gotten little pearls of advice but not enough to connect the dots and implement in their practice, leaving a gap.

[51:08] Dr. Elena says the program she has put together is something that fills those gaps for practitioners. She also comments on the success of Sachin’s Metabolic Program. Besides the program she offers, she helps practitioners with their personal development.

[52:05] A big reason why people are not breaking the $250K or the $500K mark is their own limiting belief system. It’s not all just about the mechanics of building out the right SOPs and hiring the right people. It’s about what’s going on with your money mindset.

[52:30] Modern Holistic Health, is filling in the gap with a lot of personal development tools and breakthrough tools. She speaks of just finishing a week-long Level 1 Breakthrough event that took people through amazing blocks and limiting belief breakthroughs.

[53:15] One of Dr. Elena’s clients at the Breakthrough last week just sold one of her clients a $12K Breakthrough on the same tools she had learned in the Breakthrough.

[53:47] Certain practitioners have money mindset issues and limiting beliefs. Dr. Elena helps them to break through those blocks and limits. She sits with them, looks at where their process is breaking, puts together a process for them, and asks them to follow up in eight weeks.

[55:37] Dr. Elena has been diving into esoteric studies and is excited to explore spiritual experiences with mature women, traveling to ancient, megalithic sites and gathering in a community with like-minded women to live their lives in head-heart coherence.

[57:24] Practitioners and mentors can learn about Dr. Elena’s work by visiting ModernHolisticHealth.com and @ModernHolisticHealth on YouTube with case studies and teachings on things from bioenergetics to hormones to epigenetics.

[58:33] Sachin thanks Dr. Elena for the conversation today. Here’s to an amazing year ahead helping people in the capacity that brings you the absolute most joy. Dr. Elena sends the same wishes to Sachin and everyone listening to this episode of Perfect Practice.

Mentioned in this episode

Perfect Practice Live

Dr. Elena Villanueva

More about your host Sachin Patel

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Books by Sachin Patel:

Perfect Practice: How to Build a Successful Functional Medical Business, Attract Your Ideal Patients, Serve Your Community, and Get Paid What You’re Worth

The Motivation Molecule: The Biological Secrets To Eliminate Procrastination, Skyrocket Productivity, and Get Sh!t Done

Tweetables:

“If we can become conscious of the common challenges, we can overcome them and we can complete our mission or whatever it is that we believe we’re here to do.” — Dr. Elena Villanueva

“The degree of success that you can see in your business is directly correlated to your personal development and your personal growth.” — Dr. Elena Villanueva

“Know that Version One is not going to be the final process. You may go through 10 versions of how you want your front office, whether it’s virtual or a physical office, to operate each day and the checklist of what you want them to do first.” — Dr. Elena Villanueva

“Integration is not optional, it’s key. That is where you get the real growth. We need to integrate all of the parts, all the things that I just talked about.” — Dr. Elena Villanueva

“A players only want to work with A players and B players only want to work with C players” — Sachin paraphrasing Steve Jobs

“We have experienced keeping the wrong people for too long, for whatever excuses we came up with. … But when we let go of them it was like the business rebounded and did way better as soon as we cut the branches.” — Dr. Elena Villanueva

“Oftentimes, a big reason why people are not breaking the $250K or the $500K mark is their own limiting belief system. So, it’s not all just about the mechanics of building out the right SOPs and hiring the right people.” — Dr. Elena Villanueva

Dr. Elena Villanueva ModernHolisticHealth.com

@ModernHolisticHealth on YouTube