Revolutionizing Patient Care through Lifestyle Medicine with Dr. Melissa Gomez

When you meet someone like Dr. Melissa Gomez, you can't help but feel an instant connection to her passion for a holistic health revolution. As CEO and founder of Thrive Medical LLC and Thrive Farms LLC, she's exactly the kind of physician who left the well-trodden path of traditional medicine to create a more patient, planet, and prevention-focused practice. This episode is a powerful testament to the courage it takes to reshape a career around the core values of well-being and community service. Dr. Melissa's journey from overwhelmed doctor to holistic health pioneer is a story that resonates deeply with anyone who has ever yearned to align their profession with their purpose.

The conversation with Dr. Melissa is an eye-opener on how our healthcare system could be transformed by incorporating lifestyle medicine—prioritizing diet, exercise, and community as key contributors to our health. Discover how she is pioneering a change, fostering a nurturing environment where patients are empowered through education on sustainable living and proactive wellness practices. 

If you're ready to experience the embodiment of care and connection, join us for a conversation that will surely leave you contemplating how to live a life that is not only healthy but holistically harmonious.

📣 Get in touch with Dr. Melissa: 

💼 Web: Thrivingwithdrg.com

🌐 Instagram: @thriving_md

📚 Facebook: Thrive Medical

📺 YouTube: Thriving_MD

📚 RECOMMENDED readings and programs:

🧠 On Mindset - Soundtracks: the surprising solution to overthinking, https://amzn.to/40W2zHv

💬 On Communication - The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication: Apply Them and Make the Most of Your Message, https://amzn.to/3N1c56g

📈 On Scaling Your Business through Synergies - Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork, https://amzn.to/4a7USlQ

🎧 Listen to the show:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/66x3kimKtCA4dSHE51IOEj?si=486ebbd41f284f3d

🍏 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/un-expectedly-successful-the-podcast/id1691434992

💌 GET IN TOUCH WITH ME 

🎓 Learn about my Online Academy, Her Path to Purpose and Profit, at drgriselda.com   

💼 Economic Development Consulting: ascendostrategies.com

Who I AM:  

I am Dr. Griselda Martinez, your transformational business coach, speaker, and consultant dedicated to empowering seasoned professionals like you to step confidently into entrepreneurship. After reaching the peak of my career, I realized my true calling was not in the corner office but in guiding women to unlock their purpose through business ownership. 

Join me and a community of passionate, purpose-driven entrepreneurs making a real difference. Subscribe to become part of the un-Expectedly Successful tribe, and let's elevate your business journey together. Share your aspirations in the comments and discuss how we can achieve them. Ready to redefine success on your terms? 

Let’s go!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

As much as wonderful big vacations are and having a nice I don't know whatever you name the thing those are so fleeting in terms of how much bring you happiness and it's all these moments of connection with other humans that bring you that true, true happiness. So I feel like it always goes back to that one core value of did I do something today that I felt like I had that connection with a human and I made that slight difference?

Speaker 2: 0:26

To every one of you and the way of entrepreneurship, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about my special guest today. My guest is Dr Melissa Gomez. She is the CEO and founder of Thrive Medical and Thrive Farms and let me tell you she is a medical doctor who left a high pain job to pursue her vision and her bigger purpose in life, and she'll dig into what that means in terms of her business. But let me tell you what she does as a doctor. She's still a doctor, just a very non-traditional doctor. To begin with, she starts with two hours of an initial visit. Okay, I'm going to pause there, because now you know what type of doctor she is.

Speaker 2: 1:14

She believes in lifestyle and food as a way of people getting healthier not maintaining the illnesses, but getting healthier and keep the health. So I'm super excited about all the nuggets she's going to be dropping. She focuses on diet, exercise and lifestyle as interventions for quality of life. She and her husband not only do this medical practice, but they also believe in the quality of community connection with nature, and that is the primary reason to the foundation of the farm component that we'll get to hear also today. Let me tell you a success story from Dr Melissa. She started working with this individual who was about 400 pounds. They worked together for about five years and what they helped him achieve is to create a lifestyle based on exercise, a healthy relationship with food that not only translated in a healthier person, but an even more successful entrepreneur, With no further introductions. Dr Melissa, welcome to our show.

Speaker 1: 2:27

How are you, I'm good. Thank you so much for having me, griselda. I feel very honored.

Speaker 2: 2:31

I am honored and blessed to have you here, Dr Melissa. So let's get started. And this is a raw and genuine stories of women entrepreneurs. So, Melissa, what is it to be Melissa for you?

Speaker 1: 2:45

Well, I think that to be Melissa is to be a person who really feels like she's contributing to her community and allowing people to understand that it is completely possible, without significant medical interventions, to lead a completely healthy, happy, highly fulfilling lifestyle, and I feel like that's what I was put on this earth. To help people do is to just get to the point where they really wake up in the morning with lots of energy, they feel really good and amazing throughout the day, they feel like they have control of their emotions, they feel appropriately hungry and appropriately sleepy, have a good sex life and are able to live that life most of the time without a lot of kind of traditional western medicine interventions that might be more reliant on kind of the industry itself than on what a human can do really on their own.

Speaker 2: 3:45

Wow, Wow. Melissa, you touched on this right away. I have a high priority for you. So one of the things that you mentioned to me offline is that you are most brave about having left a high paying job to pursue your vision and your mission in life. Can you unfold that for us? You touched upon it, but can you unfold it?

Speaker 1: 4:09

Oh, it's so complicated. But I feel like and I love all of my colleagues that are in the kind of more traditional medical practice format but I definitely felt like it was not the right place for me and I was frustrated even in medical school. I thought about dropping out of medical school because I thought I think my calling is more in helping people exercise differently, helping people eat differently to prevent things from happening to them, as opposed to waiting until the illness developed and then getting on, you know, mostly pharmaceutical treatments and whatnot. I felt odd about it, so I almost dropped out of medical school. But I was already like $80,000 in and I had one here, oh wow.

Speaker 1: 4:51

So I thought let me finish this out and then see how I could still pursue my vision of what I felt like it would be to help people heal, and so I stayed in. But I definitely feel like once I was in, it still didn't feel quite right. For years I worked full time at the hospital at first and there were days in the morning where I felt so overwhelmed and so scared that I wasn't going to treat the patients that I had sufficiently well, with the volume of patients that I would cry in the morning before I even got to work, because I was just stressed and nervous. Oh my, God.

Speaker 1: 5:23

I left that job yeah, it was not fun, but it was an eye-opener that I you know I knew I couldn't continue doing it that way, and then I went to an outpatient practice that was devoted to helping patients with like diet and lifestyle.

Speaker 1: 5:36

We did have a bariatric surgeon, so we were really trying to get patients to a healthier place. But even then, I felt like what I was asked to do wasn't allowing me enough time and consideration to really treat the patients in the way that I had always dreamed I could. With the help of my husband, who was just like he's like just quit, and I'm like, okay, but the mortgage and you know the kids and you know what are we going to do with like our bills and stuff, and he's like we'll figure it out and yeah, and so finally I got the courage to write the letter of resignation and I left my previous job in August of 2021 and really have not looked back. So it's been. I don't make a ton of money, I'm not going to be the multimillion dollar physician, but I feel very at peace with the way that I'm able to practice now.

Speaker 2: 6:22

You know, Dr Melissa, you said you quit in August of 2021 and then you started your practice. That's exact the same month I started my business.

Speaker 1: 6:33

No way.

Speaker 2: 6:34

Yes, I had not connected those two, but that is. I left my previous employment July of 2021 and August of 2021 was when I had my first contract.

Speaker 1: 6:45

Wow, well, we were at the same time.

Speaker 2: 6:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but okay so so I know how I felt as an employee in that moment. Can you describe where you were in previous to making that decision?

Speaker 1: 7:02

I guess I felt like my employer was not really overly concerned about, first and foremost, the wellbeing of the patients that we were taking care of and then, secondarily, myself and other practitioners and, frankly, all of the staff that I worked with at my previous clinic, and so they kept downsizing the staffing. So once we had had a full-time office manager now we were sharing one office manager between many, many offices they took away a lot of freedoms from us. So we were able to, like you know, request time off. You know, within 24 to 48 hours.

Speaker 1: 7:32

If you know, something came up a dentist appointment. The kidney needs to go to the doctor. Then they were asking us to send these requests to corporate, and probably the most difficult thing that they were asking is could we increase the volume of patients that we were seeing? Wow, you already are feeling like you know, 15, 20 minutes is not enough for each patient, yeah. And then they're asking you to shrink it down to closer to seven to 10 minutes and you're like I, oh my God, yeah, I mean, who can you really get in depth with, particularly with the diet and lifestyle changes that I know are really necessary to create a very meaningful change in seven minutes, you know.

Speaker 2: 8:06

I mean, that's the length it took me to introduce you.

Speaker 1: 8:10

The length of time it takes is to write the note. Yeah, wow, and that's very common. It's very common that most physicians have somewhere between seven to 15 minutes per patient before they're really kind of needing to move to the next. If you prescribe, you actually get reimbursed at a higher rate than without prescriptions, like if you do an emergency. So that's the other kind of conundrum that you're in is that in order to kind of cover your overhead and make ends meet, we are very much encouraged to do prescriptions at every visit or change prescriptions at every visit.

Speaker 2: 8:42

Wow, you know that.

Speaker 1: 8:44

Yeah, nobody knows this. There are lots of things about our medical system that most patients are not aware of and they don't understand, like why do I have to wait two hours for my doctor? Why can I only see my doctor for a few minutes? Why does it take three months to get in to see my doctor? There's a lot of moving parts that we're really encouraged to kind of keep the status quo. Wow, and didn't feel very good at night when I would go to sleep and go over what happened during the day. So I knew at some point I was going to have to change that and thankfully I have a very supportive spouse and we were at a place financially where we had paid off a lot of our previous debt. So we just wrote the letter and turned it in and that was it.

Speaker 2: 9:23

Wow, Wow. So, oh my God. So you talked about even during your training in school, in medical school something did not sit right with you and something did not align to something bigger than you in you. So can you tell us about your moments of reflection of this bigger vision you had and what you said that you were, that you were call to do the things that you dream of doing? Can you tell us a little bit about those moments of reflection of you as in a bigger purpose?

Speaker 1: 10:05

Yeah, I guess a tiny little bit of background. So, looking back now, I don't think I was really an overweight child, but I definitely felt like I was kind of like the gordita Mmm, the gordita cousin, and I was the gordita friend and I was just somehow chunkier than my cousins and my friends and whatnot. So it was impressed upon me that I wasn't quite fitting in to the way that the world wanted me to be. So I think at a very young age I kind of had this idea I need to be healthier, I need to eat differently, I need to exercise, mmm. I was in pursuit of this idea, probably since I was a very young person, but I don't know that I learned much when I was a young person. I mean what? Maybe what I did on the Oprah show, or maybe what you know some other, I don't know. Readers digest, if people remember that. You know reader yes, I do, I do. Matter of fact, yeah, I think I got to medical school being like hallelujah Somebody tell me how my body works, so that myself and then I can help people that had a similar plate like me that were confused as to why, you know, they weren't quite eating the way they should have or they weren't quite exercising the way they should have, and so that's what I expected of medical school, mmm. And the saddest part during medical school is that I mean, I learned so much. I went to UNM and I loved it there. They were very supportive of me and I had a great time.

Speaker 1: 11:26

But I'll tell you what I learned about diet and lifestyle during medical school. I learned one sentence I learned if you have a patient with high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes we didn't even talk about overweight or obesity, we just talked about diseases. Yes, you know, you could consider, you know, overweight and obesity a type of disease, but at that point it wasn't even on the radar. Yes, so I said, if you have a patient with one of those three metabolic diseases, try diet and exercise first Period. End of story. For four years I knew a different cancer treatments. I could tell you all the different types of pills for blood pressure and a million types of things for diabetes, but could I tell you different types of exercises that would be specific for certain medical issues or different diets? Nothing, no.

Speaker 1: 12:12

So you know, medical school was kind of surprising in that way and that's really what made me think like I'm not learning lifestyle stuff that I felt like was fundamental to health and wellness, and I think I kind of thought, well, maybe it'll come to me at some point after I graduate or some men will teach me.

Speaker 1: 12:27

And so the truth is, after I graduated from medical school, I just spent a lot of time nights, evenings, weekends which I still do to this day self-teaching. So, to the point where I really understand the physiology of how lifestyle interventions make humans healthier, and it was a calling that I felt very strongly about and I knew that, you know, incorporating this farm type of lifestyle where I really understood where my food was coming from, because I think poor Americans were so confused about food and were so far away from a traditional way of eating that really helped us maintain a healthier metabolic state and, you know, weight, frankly, compared to what our grandparents, great-grandparents and prior generations had. So it did feel too far from what I really needed to be doing to just, you know, quit my job and pursue this full-time in spite of the risk to, you know, financial gains.

Speaker 2: 13:19

Wow, okay, so we're talking about bigger purpose here. Right, it feels like you talked about your childhood, but can you think of how the where you're coming from, in terms of your parents, grandparents and previous generations, has impacted that way of seeing life? Because you mentioned it twice, I'm curious, like where did that come from, that bigger connection?

Speaker 1: 13:49

You're asking some deep questions. I'm very fortunate. I have very, very loving parents. You know my parents are both born in the United States, but they're. My dad grew up in Mexico, in Chihuahua, for nine years before he came back to the United States. My mom was born in the United States but her parents were born in Juarez, so they were very close to the border and when I was young my mom and I would travel to Juarez to collect food and feed.

Speaker 1: 14:18

You know poor people living in the colonias and in that experience I learned that sometimes you get more. You know you think you're helping people, but the truth is your own soul is fulfilled so much more when you devote your life to helping others compared to you know you thinking like, oh, they need me so much. Or you know I'm the one giving, like really when you give of yourself and you're very involved in community and you feel like you have that human connection. That's where all the soulfulness of being on this planet as a human being comes from. So when we were doing the work in the colonias, I knew without a shot of a doubt I wanted to do a job that helped other people, in whatever fashion it would be, and, unfortunately, the way that I was learning to do it in medical school and residency felt short-sighted. It was all intentioned but I felt like it still was missing the bigger picture, and so I knew I had to kind of pursue that in a way that was more meaningful than what I had been taught with all those intensive years of schooling. And you know, at the end of the day it still always boils down to, when I look at, what really makes a community and people healthier. It always boils down to what are we doing for each other and what is our community.

Speaker 1: 15:31

So I think it was very, very, you know, blessed that I was able to grow up along the border, in a border city where you could really see the discrepancies between the haves and the have-nots and the needs of your community, and so I feel like I'm still trying to continue to do that and part of the farm is trying to get the local communities that maybe feel like they're disenfranchised and they don't have access to some of the information that you know maybe high or so socioeconomic neighborhoods and you know as parts of the state have, so that we can kind of still continue to create something that's bigger than just, oh, one appointment, one patient.

Speaker 1: 16:08

You know one conclusion it's a more holistic approach, even in terms of like the community that you're helping, as opposed to one individual person. So it's, I guess I mean, it's just such a big concept to try to explain, but it feels so, soul-driven, it feels so. That's where my soul keeps driving me to go, in spite of the fact you know I don't know if you know this, griselda but I live in a fifth wheel. I don't live in a house.

Speaker 1: 16:37

Oh, wow, because of a choice you made Right, because we didn't have the financial infrastructure to buy the farm and build the house at the same time. The farm didn't come with a. It came with a house, but it wasn't a really livable house. Yes, Matt and I have sacrificed a tremendous amount because I think our souls are driven to this larger vision of what we see for our community.

Speaker 2: 16:58

Okay, all right, for my audience, I'm gonna make a pause in this beautiful story of soulfulness I love that. And soul-driven I love those concepts. Okay so, dr Melissa, you are you. You went to medical school, you graduated, you went to work for a big hospital serving patients. You got to know the system and you also got to fully understand that your bigger calling, that was connected to your earlier heart and soul experiences and your commitment to serve the community weren't being met through that path. So one day, you, you said, as a family decision, let's end this story and shift gears. So what happened after you turned your resignation?

Speaker 1: 17:57

Well, I mean, I had to work for my employer for three more months so that they could try to bring somebody on, but in the meantime, matt and I went and looked for a camper. So my husband is Matt, we went to go look for a camper because we knew we were going to have to be living in a in a makeshift situation for a while, and then we started looking for a farm with water, because water security in the entire world is of a concern, right? Yes, global warming and you know, um, persistent drought, and so I would have stayed in Las Cruces, like I mentioned. You know, I would have stayed in Las Cruces indefinitely, but our biggest concern was, like, water insecurity. So I basically took, I guess, what I would call kind of like a sabbatical, because I didn't start working on my practice right away.

Speaker 1: 18:37

I took, I left, august of 2021, but I didn't start my medical practice until August of 2022. Uh-huh, I took that kind of almost full year to find the location, to do the research we needed, to make sure we had the right land and then to really like bolster my understanding of the practice I wanted as opposed to the current I currently had. So I did a lot of studying, a lot of creation of documents, so that I had like kind of spreadsheets and other other reference forms so that I could go back to them and refer to the things that I know I needed to kind of have on, you know, on on standby, um and yeah. And then we sold our house, we stayed with some friends and on their property for a little while because we didn't have the farm yet, and then we moved our camper up to the farm and we've been, you know, working on rehabilitating the farm and getting this practice going ever since.

Speaker 2: 19:22

So, so, okay, Dr Melissa, in in the pursuit of this driven, so driven effort, she quit her high paying job, she started strategizing for the practice that she wanted and dreamt of. Then she started looking for a piece of land that had water, because the part of the mission, the vision, is to have a, a farm for healthy foods, right as the source of healthy foods. Okay, and then she moved from Las Cruces, new Mexico, which is about a hundred thousand people in population in a county of about about 200,000 people, to a place called Chamita, new Mexico. For those in my audience not familiar with New Mexico, how many? What is the population of Chamita, dr Melissa?

Speaker 1: 20:17

You know, I? I don't know for sure, but I feel like it's less than a thousand.

Speaker 2: 20:22

Yes, it's a tiny community. Yeah, it's a little township that has historically been.

Speaker 1: 20:26

Actually, the really interesting fact about Chamita is we have the first Assecia ever created in the United States. So this Assecia that feeds my farmland was the first one ever built in the entire nation. So really cool to be here and see these cottonwood trees that are so old. And we're right, the very base of our farm is on the Chama River that feeds into the Rio Grande, just a few miles down. So it's a very beautiful, magical, healing and like historic place to be. But it's very tiny. It's a little place but but I'm 32 miles away from Santa Fe, so I still have like a pretty large metropolitan area that I have access to.

Speaker 2: 21:03

So for my audience, if you know where New Mexico is Northern New Mexico, it's Santa Fe, new Mexico, filled with arts and culture and so this little farm that it's in Chamita, new Mexico, I mean you were describing and I'm like I want to be there. I want to be there and I will tell you audience how you may also get there in a little bit, but anyway. So you talked about offline. You said you had in mind a holistic approach to health, not keeping the diseases, but actually seeking health where it's connected to food and air quality and connected to nature and connected to community. So tell us, tell us about your approach to medicine as a business owner, as a really amazing business owner committed to making medical, the medical field, look different with all these components.

Speaker 1: 22:01

I mean, I definitely want to be a disruptor. I would love to encourage our medical community to start to start evolving more to these concepts because basically, when I, when I see a new patient, I want to see the whole person. I don't want to just see this one diagnosis that fits this you know diagnosis code or this other diagnosis. I want to really understand the whole picture. So I want to understand you know what was your childhood like. You know. You know who are you close to now and what is your family about. You know what is your job situation in relationship with work. I want to know your sleep patterns. I want to know how you're moving. I want to know what your patterns are with food and you know what kind of access you have to that food. We absolutely keep in mind that. You know.

Speaker 1: 22:41

We're not we're not just trying to serve people that have a lot of resources and money. I want people to know that these types of things can be done on. You know a lot of these things are just free for the taking. You know, like regular outdoor exercise and we can, you know, work with, like you know, reasonably priced food and whatnot. But it really is about this holistic picture that I really understand, like where is your stress coming from? Why is it that you can't sleep at night? You know what's the thing that keeps you perseverating and distracted from making a healthy food choice? I mean, these things play such an important role and after we've seen you, myself and my medical assistant, we try to create a lot of continuity of care with you. We try to be very easily and accessible to contact. We have multiple modalities of which you can get ahold of us, because I don't want people to feel like their needs are not being met through lack of communication and information.

Speaker 2: 23:35

I love that. Yeah, so you are creating a community and a personal connection with your patients.

Speaker 1: 23:43

Yeah, and we try to do something once a month whereby we try to involve our community into something else. So we were doing in the summer it's gotten a little cold but we were doing once a month hiking with your doctor Awesome. We did a free cooking class at Natural Grocers in Santa Fe in December. So we're really trying to provide free, accessible information to the community so that there are these events that bring people together.

Speaker 2: 24:09

Yes, that's awesome. That's awesome. So I'm going to just dig a little deeper into how Dr Melissa actually connects with her patients, so as a way of her doing her health seeking journey with you all, if you become her patient, she has to begin with, as I said in the intro, to our initial visit. Then they have a four follow-up health coaching funcles with the team, then they do touch base emails, then they do EC access to Dr Gomez and her team via phone, text and email. This on its own, dr Melissa. This is unheard of on traditional medicine, right In the US primarily, but in other parts of the world as well, but also, you said, offline. You said it is time intensive, but I am creating a path to success because it's based on connection and accountability. So tell us what led to that approach. I mean, this is pretty intense. I even, as a patient, like, oh my God, my doctor is going to be after me.

Speaker 1: 25:27

They feel that way. Patients are like. You know, every time I open the refrigerator, dr Gomez, I think when I'm at the grocery store, I'm thinking about you. You're always in my head. So we're pretty intrusive, but we try to do it with the most loving care and we try to always come from a place of like success based, you know, mentorship for the patients. Yes, and so you know, I feel like, yeah, I just feel like it has always felt like the right thing to do. I don't know if I might be a little bit underpriced in terms of the amount of time, intensity that I give to the patients, but it's certainly let's say this I feel like I am the richest doctor in terms of like satisfaction and you know, again, just complete feeling that I provided the best care that I could, and that isn't valuable. I mean, I don't know how you put a price on that, so it ends up paying for itself, I think, in the dividends that I get from the relationships I have with patients.

Speaker 2: 26:29

Wow. And then you said it's the most rewarding thing you have ever lived in your life, other than your marriage and your family and kids. So tell us, tell us. Tell us a day in the life of Dr Melissa Gomez in this beautiful farmland that you described, yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:50

So I actually think this is a great question because I don't think anybody has a clue how it ends up looking. So I do a lot of follow up phone calls, and so there's several mornings that are completely restricted to these follow up phone calls. And when I do the follow up phone calls, as often as I possibly can, I pull up the patient chart, I review what I need to about the patient, and then I actually go outside, put my little earbuds on and take the phone call with the patient while I'm, you know, walking through the path. Wow, so I see my cows, I see my horses, I see my apple orchard the sun is out or maybe not, you know, I see my neighbor as, because I'm right next to the OK okay, I'm a Pueblo. So I'm waving at my neighbor and I'm communicating with the patient in a very like, you know, physical and physically active way. So I'm not sitting behind a desk all day, mmm, when patients come to the farm. So I do have a little makeshift camper. That's a pretty rugged office right now because we're working on the infrastructure for seeing patients.

Speaker 1: 27:46

Yes, but we actually sometimes do walking appointments with patients. So we'll get the intake in. We'll put some of the information to the computer and then we'll spend some of the time of the actual patient visit walking around the farm, me asking what's going on with your sleep, what's going on, and I have, you know, take a little notepad and I'll write down some information so that I can complete the note at the end. But it's very interactive. A lot of times I'll print patients' notes and I'm you know they're lab results and as I'm calling them, I'm reviewing them. But you know the cow's right next to me because I'm down the pasture. So it is. It feels like I'm working, living and playing in this kind of magical farm that we bought, so wow, and we have people come here all the time. We invite everybody like everybody's welcome at the farm, so we oftentimes have people stopping by and coming to say hello or picking some apples or something like that. So it's like it's very holistic, it's very holistic.

Speaker 2: 28:39

I love it. Oh my God. Okay, I cannot wait anymore to tell my audience how they can come to the farm, how they can come to this magical place. Okay, so a little bit of context to how Dr Melissa Gomez and I connected. A few weeks ago I was a panelist in this women's conference and I spoke about I'm sorry, you were amazing, thank you and I spoke about where I had worked before and one of the workplaces is Arrowhead Center at New Mexico State University and Dr Melissa Gomez, at the end of the presentation, came to talk to me and she said my husband says that he hired you and I'm like who is your husband? Anyway, he Matt, who Dr Melissa has mentioned a couple of times.

Speaker 2: 29:29

Matt. He was the person in Arrowhead Center to hire me in one of my actually it's in my career life. That's what trigger me being here in this moment. Just a few years ago, maybe close to 14 years ago, because it was. It is an entrepreneurial center and Matt was the director for the entrepreneurial program and he hired a whole bunch of students and that's how this conversation came about. So, dr Melissa, thank you so much for making me reconnect to that moment of joy and my mission that has brought me here. But in addition to that, tell me yes.

Speaker 1: 30:17

When I told Matt who the panelists were, and he's like Griselda and he kind of like you know, did his little Rolodex so trying to remember, and then he was like she's one of the sharpest women I've ever met and I was like, oh wow, maybe at her.

Speaker 2: 30:32

Wow, thank you for that, matt. Then thank you for making that connection, dr Melissa. Anyway, at the end of the conversation and hearing all these amazing things about this farm, we are committed to having holistic retreats at this dry farm. So, dr Melissa, for my audience, tell us what these retreats look like and who are they for, and what the benefits are that you and this beautiful farm and all of your knowledge will bring to the participants.

Speaker 1: 31:04

Yes, so the retreats will include ideas and information about how to live your best holistic wellness lifestyle. So it will include meditation. It will include yoga and other forms of movement and exercise. It will include outdoor space and time to enjoy nature, to get your vitamin D, to get access to sunlight. It will include lots of information about healthy eating, how you can have a great relationship with food and not have to worry too much about being fastidious about don't eat this, eat that, but just really have that great understanding of what your body can really need to thrive and it will help people just live their best, you know, complete, highly healthy lifestyle.

Speaker 2: 31:48

Okay, can we include some apple picking up from the orchard?

Speaker 1: 31:54

Yes, Playing with the horses, all of that, playing around in the river, down at the base of the property, all of that is easy access here, wow, okay, so you talked a little bit about sleep.

Speaker 2: 32:11

Can you tell us what you see in your patients and why is that so important for our well-being?

Speaker 1: 32:19

Yeah, so sleep for many years, even when I was in medical school, was relatively poorly understood, and I don't think that we had a concept of some of the physiologic things that really happened during our sleep that we are only now, maybe in the last decade, having a lot more information about, and probably three of the most important things to know about sleep is number one your brain and your body do build up debris and kind of things that need to be done, things that need to be cleansed out, and a lot of that cleansing happens while you're sleeping. So when you have lack of sleep, probably one of the most detrimental things that happens is you can build a debris, particularly in your brain, that increases the risk for dementia dramatically. So this Alzheimer's dementia, the Leigh Body dementia and other forms of short-term memory loss that can happen. Another really important thing about sleep is that that's when our hormones are produced. So a lot of really important hormonal metabolic processes that happen in our body the basis for their health and wellness are really happening while we're sleeping. You see that even a few nights of short sleep starts to affect people in a way that predisposes them to diabetes and become less tolerant of carbohydrates and sugars and also a lot of our mood stabilizing chemicals are being produced while we're sleeping at night as well.

Speaker 1: 33:33

So what I see in my practice is people treat sleep as kind of an optional priority. So most people that I see short sleep, and so a lot of people are getting six hours of sleep or less per night, when we really desperately want people to get seven to nine hours of sleep to really do all that cleaning and rehab that's necessary while we're sleeping. I also see people have bad habits around sleep that include, maybe timing of eating, timing of alcohol, timing of caffeine that really people don't think it has an impact on their sleep and it has a drastic impact on their sleep. So we spend a lot of time coaching, like what you know, let's not do caffeine after a certain time during the day because otherwise, believe it or not, it's still going to keep you from getting that deep. Yes, so there's so many components to it, but it's one of the pillars of health and wellness that I always focus on when I see a patient.

Speaker 2: 34:26

Wow, wow, fascinating. Yeah, and I mean screen time and all of these things, right, that really doesn't help us at all. Okay, I'm going to take a turn here. Okay, and business woman, what has it been the most exciting moment for you in this journey?

Speaker 1: 34:48

Hmm, I feel like probably the most uplifting thing that happened for me is that I saw a patient who she had been struggling with multiple sclerosis for many years and felt like she wanted a holistic approach. And she had been to many other practitioners previously and didn't feel like she found somebody that fit very well with her. And so her and I met and we talked about I mean, she has the most amazing diet I've ever seen and we talked about sleep, I mean again some of the same themes that we've discussed throughout this podcast and we went into depth with her and she did me the service of after we met, she went on to a social media platform called Nextdoor, where people in those neighborhoods kind of communicate about what's going on. She did me the favor of going on Nextdoor and, just you know, putting a beautiful review about her appointment, wow. And finally it was like I went viral.

Speaker 1: 35:43

Oh, whereas kind of my average had been like one or two new phone calls a day for people kind of kind of calling to inquire about what was going on with my practice, she just kind of like blew me up and really helped me on the map. So I just am so appreciative for some of these, like you know, services that people have done for me, as you know, awesome. So I think it's really beautiful to be able to see that. You know, if I've had that impact, that somebody feels the motivation to go out and put it out there online and, you know, just help me to continue to grow and stay in business.

Speaker 2: 36:17

That is so awesome. So, dr Melissa, you talked about you taking a year to really form this vision and then started implementation, and then you talked about the farm and the infrastructure and as you're building it. So what's to come for for, for the future, for next year. So what is exciting about what's coming up?

Speaker 1: 36:42

I think the two biggest things that we really want to do. So number one like first and foremost, is we want to continue to build the infrastructure on the farm. So every tiny little penny that I'm making at the practice, I'm basically rolling it right into building a kind of like it's going to have some offices in the front and then it's going to have living quarters in the back, and so that's the kind of infrastructure that we want to get going on the property, and so we have the electrical in so far, but we're still working on trying to get the rest of it together. And you know, building right now and interest rates and all that stuff has made things slow down.

Speaker 1: 37:16

Yes, so that's probably the biggest like number one thing that we have, you know, on the docket, but I would say probably the other huge thing that I want to just continue to do is just continue to do community outreach, because I have found that I get the most fulfillment both with the patients and then also within my community. So I just want to continue to have the planning that we're doing something every single month as a way to outreach to the local community, to offer some service, basically free of charge, to keep it out so that people know what services and what offerings are there that they could do to improve their quality of life.

Speaker 2: 37:48

So those are probably the two biggest things that are going on right now that is so exciting and, dr Melissa, as you talk about these things, your level of energy just changes. I mean you're it just like gets you excited and going, and so I am so excited to to see what is coming for you in the new year. But also as you're speaking about the infrastructure and the farm and the outreach, and I mean it sounds like you have been in stretching mode outside the medical piece right To now be a business owner, to now be a farm owner, to now know about construction, to now know about the cost of lumber.

Speaker 1: 38:41

Yes, we know that, and it's not something I knew before, but I know now. Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 38:48

So, dr Melissa, what has it been to be a medical doctor, with all this amazing training that you received, and then with all the self taught pieces that you've been working diligently, and now being a business owner, which is a totally different turn to the, to the practice right?

Speaker 1: 39:08

So it's been so rewarding and it's also been one of the I mean, there have absolutely been days where I'm like, oh my God, what did I do? You know, let me go back and work for somebody else, because there was just so many things that you know. If somebody didn't teach you, like you know, take you into the business, which, which I didn't have you just don't know what you don't know. And so there's. I have to say that I had one of my worst days sometime last, like late winter, early spring, where I was just like I'm not quite sure if I'm going to be able to make this happen. I was just, it was stressful, and I walked outside to the pastor and one of the horses came over and like comforted me in the most meaningful way that I've had in a long time, and it made me just realize, like you know, there's so much to offer out here, and maybe you know so, equine therapy is one of the things that we're thinking of adding, because it's like, well, this is legit, these are out of heel people.

Speaker 1: 39:59

Wow, it's been one of the hardest things that I've ever had to do. It's one of those things where, like talking about not getting good sleep at night, like you sit up and worry about your business and are you going to be able to make ends meet? Are you going to have to take it alone? I mean all these kind of questions that you know need answering.

Speaker 1: 40:15

But thankfully I've been honestly, because I've been so blessed, really from you know the parents that I had to the spouse. You know my I have to have two step sons and then just all the support that I've got, you know, since I've left. So I just feel like I do believe in God and I have a strong faith and so I feel like I just have to kind of let it go sometimes and trust that this is the path that was meant for me to take, and there might be bad days, but that doesn't mean that it's not going to eventually get me where I want to go, as long as I'm like steadfast and you know, and also expressing vulnerability to friends, family and even patients is they just give you so much back if you just let them in a little bit. So that's a really important part about being like a business owner is letting people know when you need help.

Speaker 2: 40:58

Wow, I love that. I mean, yeah, business ownership is it's not the simple decision, but would you exchange the fulfillment and for those moments of hardship?

Speaker 1: 41:12

Yes, you can do it exactly how you want.

Speaker 2: 41:16

Wow, wow, I hope you go that way as well. Yeah, totally, I mean this. This moments are one of my favorite moments I get to do in my day to day. How blessing is that? Okay, so If somebody is listening right now and they are feeling where you and I felt not too long ago frustrated, stressed about not being able to accomplish the mission that we believe we have in us and are considering business ownership as part of their deployment of their mission and vision what would you tell them?

Speaker 1: 41:56

Well, I actually have quite a few friends that are interested in entering the same space that I'm going into. I do really think there's a lot of physicians out there that are like is this what I signed up for? Is there a way that I could do better? I feel like always coming from a place of abundance. I think that there's enough of the pie to go around for all of us. I think that when you're trying to look for business opportunities, I think it's so important to look for people who have done at least something similar to what you're doing past and had to start from scratch or maybe had to. I always think I have looked to my friends that have started their own business to ask them words of wisdom and advice.

Speaker 1: 42:39

I also think that, again, just having that strong support system of one or two or three people that you can really turn to almost no matter what's going on, and then you can grab on their shoulder for a little bit and let that bad moment pass, because for the most part it's mostly just a short moment and then, if you just kind of let yourself calm down, maybe take that afternoon off. It was just a rough afternoon. Give yourself that mental break, I think that you know. Circle back to your core values. And why are you really doing this?

Speaker 1: 43:06

For I think that the one thing that I think has helped really support me through this business is it has such a strong purpose and so always easy for me to remember. Like when I have a bad day and I'm like, oh, I'm not doing so good today, I think what more could I be doing for my patients? Could I reach out to somebody that I haven't heard from in a minute? Could I reconnect with an old colleague, or something like that? And that always brings that joy back, that uplifts. So I think always remembering who are you doing this for and then making sure that they're at the forefront of your business model always gives you that re-boost that you need when times get rough and you're feeling kind of down.

Speaker 2: 43:41

Wow, wow. You talked like this really awesome hack, like what else can I do when I'm feeling down? What else can I do for those that I am called to serve? And that reminds us of why we started this journey to begin with, right? Oh, that's amazing. You also talked about your core values. What are your core values, dr Marisa?

Speaker 1: 44:06

I mean, I still think that it goes back to this idea that why are we I mean like existential, why do humans exist? In my opinion, there's really one reason it's to provide care and love for each other. I think there was no better illustration of that than what happened to us during COVID and how much our being separated from each other was not good for us. And we're still offering from the residual effects of having that separation for such a long, prolonged period of time and almost feeling a sense of fearfulness of our fellow human. Yes, I feel like my core value at the end of the day always goes back to like you know, love thy neighbor as you would love thyself and then rest, kind of flows from there. So it helps me to understand like, like, if I have a patient that can't pay for the appointment, I'm like I don't care, let me just help you.

Speaker 2: 44:54

Let's just Okay. The audience don't take that Okay.

Speaker 1: 44:59

We need to make a living here and you can cut that out if you like, but at the end of the day it just really feels like if I continually go back to that core value of I am here to serve you, and whether that's my husband that moment, or you, or the person at the grocery store that's having a bad day or whatever you know like those little moments. I mean. Life is not about as much as wonderful big vacations are and having a nice I don't know, whatever you name the thing. Those are so fleeting in terms of how much you bring happiness and it's all these moments of connection with other humans that bring you that true, true happiness. So I feel like it always goes back to that one core value of did I do something today that I felt like I had that connection with a human and I made that slight difference and then they gave it right back to me and it just kind of that's straightforward.

Speaker 2: 45:45

I love it. I love it, dr Melissa, I love it. How many of my audience listening here wants Dr Melissa to be your doctor? That level of care and loving More patients.

Speaker 1: 45:59

I have plenty of room on my patient. You know roster, so I'm definitely in the in the market to take on new Awesome.

Speaker 2: 46:06

Yes, that is so cool. Okay, so can you describe success? What means success for you? Dr Melissa and you touched a little bit throughout the conversation with what does success mean to you?

Speaker 1: 46:20

I think, personal. I mean, I don't think my personal success and my business success are that different. I feel, like you know, feeling like I'm able to wake up in the morning and have a good, clear definition of what my sense of purpose is. And that's not always clear Every there's, not every day that I'm like oh, I'm so clear today, like you know, I'm like, I'm not like, I'm not like, I'm not like at home and I don't want to do this, you know. So don't get me wrong. I'm not, you know, trying to say that every day is like, you know, la La Land. But you know, I feel like it's such a blessing to be able to wake up in the morning and kind of feel like you have that sense of purpose. I feel, like you know, success is honestly like feeling good, having energy, being able to sleep well at night, being able to wake up with energy, being able to feel like I have the resources I need to be able to do what I want to do, and then be able to close my eyes at the end of the night and say I was able to, at least to a certain extent, achieve some of those things, like that love and connection with my partner, that love and connection with my family, that love and connection with my clients and patients, with my neighbors. I definitely think that having access to good and healthy food is a success. I think it's so successful if you're so privileged to be able to move your body. Well, you know, many people have disabilities. They may be in a wheelchair, they may be using walkers, they may have chronic pain and those of us that maybe don't have as much of that. It's such a blessing. And you know, and certainly one of the things I want to do is help patients get to the point where their physical movement is the least limited so that they do feel great when they're moving. So it has.

Speaker 1: 47:44

It all goes back like my success has so much to do with the core values of what I'm trying to do, both for myself but for all the patients that I get to see. Those are just successful days. I try to live in the moment and not be like, well, when I get to this amount of money, then I can finally take that vacation, because I realized those. I mean I, when I had that big, high paying job, I took big, beautiful vacations. I had a big house that was much bigger than my husband and I needed. I had a very fancy car and they were so fleeting Like, they were lovely and I'm happy to have been so blessed to be able to have those things. But the the joy they brought me lasted very short period of time before it was, like you know, on to the next, so really helped to put things in perspective that you know I thought, oh, it's okay if I don't have those things, it's not such a big deal.

Speaker 2: 48:31

Wow, wow, that's, that's, that's a deep definition of success. And the follow up question, dr Melissa, is were you expected to be successful?

Speaker 1: 48:42

Oh yes, I mean, my mom was like me huh, you have to get straight A's in third grade, because if you get straight A's in third grade you will not get a scholarship. And so, and I was like I had to get straight A's now and later. Yeah, I mean, my parents were very eminently child. I did have the the good fortune of getting a lot of my parents like energy and attention, and so it was always always very impressed upon me that I needed to have good grades, that I needed to do very well in school, extra curricular activities, go to a good college, get a scholarship oh yes, all of that stuff, wow, wow.

Speaker 2: 49:17

So thanks to the parents who poured into Dr Melissa's life that now she can pour into our lives and care for us. So it's a ripple effect, and I love it. Dr Melissa, if you have to summarize your business ownership journey in one word, what would that be?

Speaker 1: 49:36

Oh my goodness, one word Care for community, Care for community. Three words.

Speaker 2: 49:44

But yes, we'll give you a break there. There are beautiful words, dr Melissa, it's such a pleasure and honor and a blessing to have had this conversation. Thank you for everything you do for your community, for your patients. If my audience wants to get in touch with you, how can they contact you?

Speaker 1: 50:08

Yes, so there's multiple ways to get a hold of me. Probably the best way to learn more about my practice and also, if you would like to book and you'd like to find out my calendar and my schedule, is my website. So my website is thrivingwithdrgcom. Yes, of course, we're always happy to take your phone call and a lot of times I may be the one answering the phone, so our office number is 505-484-6443. And I'm also on Facebook at Thrive Medical and on Instagram at ThrivingMD1.

Speaker 2: 50:43

Awesome, awesome. And for my audience, I mean this is a full package, right? You get health, you get amazing care, you visit beautiful land in New Mexico, you get to pick your own foods. I mean it is a hard proposition to say no to, and I look forward to you having that infrastructure and that space where you envision hosting these groups of people, for them to recover their health and to connect to a deeper self. And so thank you for that. Dr Melissa, it is a pleasure to have had this conversation and until next time to my audience more to come Please remember to subscribe and share this episode if it was of help to you and those that you love. Until next time with you. Business coach Cristylda Martinez.