How to Build a Career in Functional Medicine

MBT Reflections on the Fixable Ills of Holistic Health Care Gale-Force Winds at Our Backs The fields of personal holistic health and professional holistic health care have the wind at our backs like no other time in history. In the Spring of 2025, all of the momentum is moving in our direction in unprecedented ways. Even so, holistic health care practices across the U.S. still struggle to survive, much less grow and thrive as they should in a market that increasingly wants and needs their services. Today is the anniversary of our founding in 2019. Based on six years in business and 1,000 insights from working with practices and practitioners across 22 U.S. states coast-to-coast, MindBody Talent knows why the struggles exist.  Something is seriously out of whack and we know what it is. We are consistently shocked to discover that the most well-known names in Functional and Integrative Medicine, who address and cure supposedly incurable diseases, and are the most sought-after speakers at conferences, can’t figure out how to run profitable practices. As with the majority of patient diseases and maladies, the health problems of health care practices are (at the root) self-inflicted. As with the majority of patient health challenges, these practice challenges are also fixable ills; but only when viewed honestly, humbly, and holistically. The Opportunity Thanks to decades of courageous voices and waves of miraculous health recoveries in the disciplines of Functional, Integrative, Personalized, and Regenerative Medicine, the messages are finally resonating and people are finally waking up. By “people”, that means patients, caregivers, health seekers of all kinds, and health care professionals who entered their professions with the best intentions — to get people well.  Unfortunately, over the last 70 plus years, the odds have been heavily stacked against their success, our success, and patient health. The network of industrial healthcare, led by the pharmaceutical business model of disease management, convinced all of those “people” that treating symptoms of illness with pharmaceutical chemicals was the right path to healing and health. That misguided, dangerous, and deadly emperor is finally being revealed to have no clothes.  Prominent voices that include (among many others): Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Casey Means and Calley Means, Dr. Frank Lipman, and the new U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are speaking broadly on podcasts, in media interviews, and to the U.S. Congress. They are loudly and strongly waving the flag about holistic health approaches that leverage the miraculous healing capabilities of the human body when those capabilities are not constrained, thwarted, and disabled by pharmaceutical drugs masking symptoms and creating often worse side effects. Those voices, combined with enhanced access to health knowledge provided by the internet and AI (as well as basic common sense) are creating an unstoppable wind in the sails of holistic health and holistic health care practitioners. A  major shift toward rethinking health and healthcare is underway. The cautionary last third of pharmaceutical commercials have become a laughable joke if the first two thirds weren’t so full of dangerous and deadly brainwashing. The pharmaceutical-dominant era is finally being put in its proper place. So why are so many holistic practices struggling and failing?  The Problem  As with the root cause focus of Functional and Integrative Medicine, this practice illness has a root cause. MindBody Talent has consistently seen it first hand for six years. There are vast differences between the models of conventional medicine and holistic health care. The differences that are most relevant here is that conventional medicine practices don’t have to market their services and practitioners don’t have to understand the business of running a practice.  Patients come to conventional physicians through their insurance plans and network referrals. The business side of their practices are generally handled by their hospital or medical group infrastructure. On the contrary, holistic health care practices are typically smaller, privately-owned entities. Within their practices, they somehow have to understand how to market their services and how to hire, manage, and run their practice operations as a business — on top of the complex process of caring for patients.  Those business and marketing skills are not the natural domains of health care practitioners. In fact, we have come to believe (with a six-year base of hard evidence) that physician brains and business brains are wired differently, making it virtually impossible for even the smartest physicians to successfully run a practice business. That is the root cause of why the majority of holistic health care practices struggle and fail, despite the unprecedented market demand for holistic health care services that continues to accelerate. The Truths Today is the 6th anniversary of the founding of MindBody Talent. So far we have served holistic health practices in 22 states across the U.S. In those years we have spoken with and negotiated with over 1,000 practice leaders, some of whom became clients, many more have not.  The following truths apply to 100% of those practices and practice leaders: Awakening and Humble Honesty Needed The wisest and most successful practice leaders humbly recognize those truths. They hire and trust professionals like MindBody Talent to handle their recruiting, marketing, and practice operations.  Recruiting top notch clinical and non-clinical holistic health professionals is extremely difficult work. That’s why MindBody Talent largely stands alone as the only and most successful talent acquisition company in the industry with our focus on holistic health care.  However, even the most brilliant and talented health professionals will struggle to succeed when placed into a practice with poor operations, a dysfunctional culture, and/or ineffective marketing. Our biggest frustration and sadness is watching practices struggle to thrive because they refuse to understand and trust those truths. Frankly, this is the biggest reason why holistic health care overall fails to reach its potential in this country. Time to Break the Mold Health seekers need a different kind of support system from their health care providers. It’s long past time to break the old mold.  The market opportunity for holistic health