The Micropractice Mama Podcast

Season 4 Preview + Personal Updates & Announcements!

Sonia Singh MD Season 4 Episode 1

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 36:05

In this episode I share a sneak peak of what's in store for season 4 of the pod, including

  • date & time for the next free webinar followed by a sale on the Micropractice 101 E-course (register below)
  • the awesome docs that I'll be interviewing 1:1
  • a new project I'm working on with fellow DPC doc, Rebecca Berens
  • some musings and updates about what's going on with me outside of micropractice 

If you're enjoying this pod, I would love to connect! Real human feedback is so deeply appreciated. Here are a few ways to reach me:

Connect with me on IG @soniasinghMD
Email me at sonia@micropracticemama.com
Learn more at www.micropracticemama.com

The Micropractice 101 E-Course is available NOW. Learn more or enroll here: https://micropracticemama.thinkific.com/courses/micropracticemama

And if you're not sick of my voice yet, check out my other podcast with Dr. Rebecca Berens: The Antisocial Doctors on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!


Sign up here for the Micropractice Memo to get weekly tips, updates and resources on all things micropractice and motherhood in medicine: https://micropracticememo.myflodesk.com/s51y9r3knn

Speaker

Hey doctors. You're listening to the Micropractice Mama Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who are striving to practice primary care sustainably and creatively with autonomy, authenticity, and joy. I'm your host, Sonya Singh, internist, PCP, and proud mother of two human babies, one for a baby and one life-changing Micropractice. I wanna empower you to push past whatever is holding you back and make the leap to launching a practice that aligns with your values and priorities, and finally allows you to take care of your patients, your family, and yourself in the ways that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make the leap? Let's do it. Hello Doctors. It has been a minute. But I am back and this is season four of the Micropractice Mama podcast. I wanted to record a quick intro to the fourth season, share a couple of important dates and announcements, and just kinda give you a sneak preview of some of the things I'm gonna talk about in the next six to seven, maybe eight episodes. So the first big announcement is that I'm doing my next webinar and sale on the Micropractice 1 0 1 e-course. In the middle of February. So the date of the webinar is gonna be February 10th at 8:00 PM Central time via Zoom. That is going to be my, intro to micro practice is micro practice right for you Webinar. I have given that same content as a free webinar before, but I like to give it periodically for people who are new to this podcast or to this entire concept. And then typically after. Each webinar, I will do a one week sale on the course. So my 1 0 1 Micropractice 1 0 1 e course. It is 12 modules. Each is, 30 minutes to an hour and has a lot of extra resources, action items. It's really meant to be a step by step guide to take you from, just developing an idea, a concept for a practice to actually opening your doors. I try to provide a ton of support to get you from point A to point B. The course includes three, one-on-one hour long sessions of, consulting with me. So I get to know every single person in the course. I try to help you troubleshoot and get over roadblocks. I, try to personalize my advice depending on your situation and your needs. And, my goal is really for each person who goes through the course to build the practice that's right for them. It's not one cookie cutter thing, but I definitely lean on the things that I think made my practice successful. And at this point, I think I've had 20 something doctors enroll in the course. I have eight or nine practices up and running. And you've already heard from several of them on the previous one-on-one episodes. You're gonna hear from three more this season. But almost everybody that I have gotten. Updated numbers from is doing better than I was doing at those same, one month, three month, six months, one year benchmarks. And there's like the person in me that still has imposter syndrome and that tells myself like, oh. This person would've been successful, even without me. Like it's just them. They're just a great doctor and they have good, instincts and they're just attracting patients and they're doing it well. But every doctor that comes along that, keeps having this same level of. Success is convincing me that no I am offering something that seems to work and that seems to help people build things more efficiently and more successfully the first time, and maybe not make some of the mistakes that, you would make without that kind of guidance. And a lot of people will say, oh, but the DPC community is so generous, you can get this kind of advice for free, look on Facebook groups and there's all kinds of online resources that you can look at that are free. There's books out there, and I fully, encourage you to take advantage of all of those things and go to a summit, go to a conference. But I think for me, when I was on my DPC journey some of those things were out of reach for me. I did not feel at the time with my schedule, my husband's schedule, my, I had small children. I had one small child actually. And it was immediately post COVID. I the going to a conference was not really feasible for me at that time. And I also felt like there were certain things that were either emphasized too much or not emphasized enough in the DPC community that I decided to do differently. And I feel. Those things actually really worked out for me and served me well. And those are some of the things that I teach in the course. I also really like structure. I'm a perpetual student. I love like absorbing information and being served information. And I try to make the course very step-by-step and clear and organized and a real roadmap to like I said, get you from point A to point B. So anyway, that is what the course is. The other thing I wanna remind you of is, yes, you can also ping people in the DPC community who are doing things that you like. People ping me often and say, okay, can I ask you a few questions? What do you think about this? What do you think about that? You just have to remember that everyone's time and expertise has value, and so it's wonderful if they want to give you that. Information and time and energy for free. But a lot of people get to the point where it's very difficult to do that. And I think I leaned heavily on a couple of mentors in the DPC world and I am grateful that, I got the time that I did from them, but I felt very guilty every time I was reaching out and asking them questions.'cause I knew they had, a busy practice and a life and all of those things. And this is an opportunity to have an official. Person. Me, serve as your primary mentor and go-to source for information. And even once you complete the course, if there are additional questions that you have, we have monthly office hours. Virtually they're the last Wednesday of every month at noon central time. And if you're not able to attend, you can email in questions. And now I do record and send out summaries of all of those office hours. So basically you have a monthly opportunity to get one-on-one questions answered. You have those. Three, one-on-one consulting sessions. So you have lots of avenues with which to ask questions and troubleshoot if you're stuck. So anyway, next webinar. February 10th, 8:00 PM Central Time on Zoom. Of course we'll go on sale for a week after that. If you have questions about the course, not sure if it's right for you, definitely attend the webinar. It'll give you a sneak peek of what is in the course. And there will be a q and a at the end of the webinar. You're also welcome to email me if you have questions about the course or deciding if it's right. The right choice for you. Okay, so that is the big announcement. I feel like I said too much about it, but I don't know. Some of you that are listening may not be familiar with the course, and I try not to talk about it in every single episode. So forgive me, I talked about it here right now, just to give you a brief overview. Okay. So other things that I'm gonna talk about this season, so I have a few episodes on the docket. Like I said, I have two micropractice, one-on-one episodes with people that have gone through my course and have opened. I'm, there's one more pending that I haven't scheduled yet, so I'm not sure who that's gonna be, but one of'em is with. Dr. Megan Monte. I'm actually gonna hopefully release that episode today. I've already recorded it. She's fantastic. She's one of the superstar students that have been through my course. I shouldn't say that, they're all superstars, but she in particular, I think has a really good way with words and her website is wonderful. Her social media is wonderful. If you're not following her, you should go follow her. And she has just been a beacon of, hope and what the potential is of this practice model. And she's only been open for a few months, but she's doing great and I think she had a lot of good pearls and insights to share, from her experience. So that episode's gonna drop today. I have several other episodes on the docket that were actually more like listener driven. So one is an insurance, 1 0 1 episode. All the questions you're too embarrassed to ask, but must know how to answer to understand DPC and to convince somebody to do DPC. I think I got a couple of dms where someone was like, oh my God, I'm so embarrassed. But what's the difference between PPO and HMO, and like how do they work with DPC? And I, I don't. It my undergrad education, I did have a lot, I did a concentration in public health and health policy, so I had a lot of education around this topic. I can't remember now how much education we had around insurance models and payment models, in medical school, but I don't think it's shocking that a lot of doctors like don't have a great grasp of, how. Payment works in medicine. I think especially if you work at the VA or even in academics or even in FQHC, there's certain models in which like you don't have to interface that much with different models of payment. And so you can maybe know your model really well, but not really be familiar with others. So it's okay to not know those things. And I think a lot of people are just, they're like, oh my God, I'm a doctor. I should know this. They're like embarrassed to ask it. Although, now you can look everything up, but, I thought maybe it would be helpful for me to do an episode where I talk through what, what is insurance? What are the different types of insurance what is an HSA, what is an FSA, what is a health share? And then, what is a premium? What is a deductible? What are the average amounts for those things? What plan might make sense for somebody who's thinking about A DPC? What is a copay? What is co-insurance? What is an EOB? Why would somebody with insurance choose a DPC? Why would somebody without insurance choose a DPC? So I am gonna go through all of those questions and yes, you could Google all of those or ask Chat GPT, but my hope is that maybe just hearing it from me will help you figure out a way that. You can then communicate that information to potential patients or patients if you are in a position where you're starting your own DPC. And you need to have that familiarity and you need to be able to have that that sort of pitch. Okay, so that's gonna be one episode. I'm gonna do another episode on why most medical practice websites suck and how we can do it better. This is one of my personal pet peeves I mentioned at the top of the episode how. In the DPC world, there's some things that everyone does one way and everyone will tell you a certain piece of advice, and I just think oh, that's really right. So like a common piece of advice I initially got was, don't spend time or money on your website. Nobody reads it, nobody looks at it. It's not important, like just get, slap something up, put something up there and just move on. Because most people are just gonna call and that's your opportunity to talk to them. I think it really depends on who your ideal patient population is. Who is the demographic you're mostly speaking to? I'm mostly speaking to like millennial women, and they do look at websites. I'm a millennial woman and I look at websites and I do judge them. That was my experience as a person, so I just couldn't imagine putting something out there that didn't feel like it was high quality and informative and, intentional and strategic and that I had thought about. The words and all of that. So anyway I'm gonna do a whole episode on that. In my course I have an entire module, so like way more detail of the nitty gritty of like how to construct a good website. We're gonna have an episode on, so I think I mentioned in one of my previous episodes I'm taking a class that's I did a workshop that was based on the work of Brene Brown. It's like a group therapy situation, but also I don't know. I, so it was a workshop and one of Brene Brown's things is about living your life wholeheartedly, and following these tin guide posts that she has. And when we were going through that material, I just kept thinking about how traditional medicine, medical practice is, like the entire left side of that. She talks about how you wanna go from, anxiety as a lifestyle to living without fear or whatever, like it's I just kept thinking about how traditional medical practice. Holds you back from doing that wholehearted living. I'll go through her guideposts and I'll talk about how I think traditional medical practice keeps us stuck and how I think DPC and the Micropractice model really finally allow you to have a shot at living wholeheartedly. And anyway, that applying Brene's work to, this, this decision or switching to this practice model. I thought there was something very interesting there. So anyway, I'm doing an episode on that. I'm gonna do an exciting, I'm really excited about this episode'cause I feel like I get this question a lot and I get it more and more, which is marketing your micropractice without social media. Social media is awesome and it's an incredible tool. It did not exist, 15, 20 years ago in the way it does now. And so I, the ability to reach patients where they are and to advertise yourself and to build relationships, to build out no and trust factor, to draw people into your practice without spending money. Is pheno. That's really an incredible thing. But I, and I think a lot of other people are feeling more and more that social media is a toxic place. And the question is can I do it? Can I build this practice without doing that at all? And I do think it's absolutely possible. In fact, I have a couple people in my course that are building practices very successfully without social media. I'm gonna do a whole episode talking about what are some ways that you can grow and build without using socials. Okay. So those are all, that's a preview. Oh. And then I have my first MICROPRACTICE data. One of my one-on-ones is going to be with our our Soul Open. I've mentored other male physicians, but not. Specifically through the course. So it's going to be with our Soul Up and running Micropractice data. That's Dr. Greg Holton. And I think that's gonna be, I haven't recorded it yet, I'm doing it tomorrow, but I think that's gonna be a great interview that's gonna be so fun for so many people to hear. And it's just a nice reminder that even though this podcast is called The Micropractice Mama Podcast, my platform is called Micropractice Mama. It's not only for mothers, it's not only for women. I really think, there's a million different reasons that people are drawn to Micropractice or to DPC, and I am happy to support any of those people. I think parental burnout and gender inequity and the demands of motherhood, physically, emotionally, mentally those are all big factors in why there is disproportionate burnout among women, primary care doctors. And again, that is. It was a big part of my story and it's a big part of why I have focused on that population and, creating this platform. But everybody is welcome. And I also wanna make it clear that, there's this kind of, this whole trad wife movement going on where people are like, yeah, it's, women's places in the home. And it's fine to have a job, like you can have an Etsy shop or sell essential oils, but make it compatible with family. And I just wanna make it clear that this is not that. I'm not saying yeah women need like more flexible jobs so they can have families like I, that I'm not saying that at all. I actually think any parent should have the ability to have flexibility and affordable childcare and, a schedule that allows them to be present in their children's lives and to be a parent. But, the reason I focus on women is because unfortunately, society has not caught up with having, division of labor at home be equal to have childcare be equal, to have childcare be affordable. And oftentimes a lot of those uncompensated tasks and responsibilities do fall in the women. And we know that women. Everywhere, including in medicine are, facing inequitable pay. And you also bear the physical burden potentially of, carrying a child and breastfeeding all those things. So anyway, the, I don't want this to come across. I don't want micropractice moms to be like, come across as being like, oh, it's like a way to do primary care for women. That's not what I am saying at all. And everybody is welcome and I think so many different people could benefit from doing the Micropractice model. So I'm very excited to have Greg be the first one that I showcase. Okay, so that is basically, I, there's one more episode that I might do and then another 1 0 1 and I still have to schedule, but those are the highlights. Another big announcement. So I am actually working on another. Podcast. Yes, I am cheating on this podcast with another podcast. My colleague Rebecca Barons, who is a fellow DPC doc who was one of my mentors who was, a year ahead of me. And so I leaned on her so heavily and I owe her so much. She and I, every time we hang out or see each other, we're in a lot of the same Facebook groups.'Cause we both live in Houston. And a lot of times we'll see something egregious on one of these groups and then we'll text each other and be like, oh my God, this thread on the mom's group is making me lose faith in humanity. And a lot of times we commiserate and talk about how we're losing this information war on social media as a medical community. And yes, there's lots of great doctors out there trying to, put out evidence-based information trying to debunk crazy claims, but the volume of. Bad information and misleading information and, commodified wellness. It's so much, it is so much, it feels impossible. And I also think, she and I have both. We're not as much anymore, which is interesting, but. We both have been active on social media in the past, creating content of our own, trying to debunk things or trying to, give our take on things. And honestly, it's very hard to do those things justice in a tiny social media clip, in a reel in, it, it just requires deeper, a deeper level of conversation and context. And I think as doctors we've also wished there was a little bit better there were better resources that we could send patients to who were asking questions about things that were happening on social media that. That were not oversimplified, because I think a lot of times if you send them to Mayo Clinic or Web, it's just like they barely, it's it's written at such a level that it just feels so oversimplified. Like it feels like the person who's giving the bad information is telling you so many details, and then you go to Mayo Clinic and they're just barely brushing the surface of a topic. So anyway I think. We wanted a resource where people could send, go and send patients that, really did a bit of a deeper dive, acknowledge the broader context of some of these topics and issues, but also really importantly, thought about. What is driving people to seek this information or to believe this information in the first place? Because I think as a medical community, sometimes there's this tendency to be like, oh my God, this person believes this crazy thing. Or oh, they're so gullible. And I really don't think, I really think people are rational. They're trying to feel well, they're trying to do the right. Thing, and we have to acknowledge when there's gaps in the care that we provide or when we, just acknowledging like we don't have the time sometimes to go in depth and explain each thing that they're asking about. And that it, it's rational for them to go seek it elsewhere and then to feel reassured when, somebody else is providing them a very cohesive, detailed explanation of why they have these symptoms and, happens to be offering them a clickable affiliate link as the solution. That was what drove us to say, let's. Do a podcast together and let's talk through some of these big topics together and let's talk through them in a, informed evidence-based way. But let's also acknowledge like why is this thing viral? What is the truth in this? And then what does it get wrong and what can we learn from this? Not just as patients and humans, but a also as doctors. And she and I are millennial moms. We're on social media. We doom scroll like everybody else, and I think we. Try really hard to put ourselves in the place of people who are, consuming or being served this information and trying to grapple with the truth of it or the not truth of it in a compassionate nonjudgmental, non snarky kind of way. The podcast is called The Antisocial Doctors Podcast. We'll have a substack, along with it in case they're not a podcast person. We're not monetizing it right now in any way. This has been totally a passion project. We've been working on it for six months and we're both, we've got busy, we've both got full practices and we both have the little kids, just three and. It's been a challenge just to get ourselves together, to record and to, get the research done for these, each of these episodes. And so there's so many times when, she's had a sick kid. I've had a sick kid, I've been sick, she's been sick. Someone had a random, music recital pop up. So I think it, it'll be nice to finally get this thing out there'cause we've been working on it for so long. But I really do hope, I'm mentioning it here on the pod because my hope is that it will be a resource. Both for patients and for doctors like you. A lot of you who you know are still working in traditional healthcare you just I don't know how you would have the time or bandwidth to do these deep dives or to even know sometimes what your patients are talking about when they're like. What do you think about colostrum supplements or, just things like that. And I, I hope that, this will give you a quick primer on some of the topics that you get asked about a lot. And it'll also give you a place to send patients if they're looking for more info and you can feel like you can trust, hopefully you trust us to give them the real scoop. So anyway, that is launching February 2nd, and I have so much editing to do, so I'm pretty excited to have that be done and have it be out in the universe. So keep an eye out for that. Okay, so that is probably all the like, professionally relevant stuff that I'm going to say. So if you're just here for the cold hard facts and you're not curious about what's going on behind the curtain or in my life otherwise, then you can probably stop here. But now that I'm not on social media, it's left this hole where I feel like I don't have the opportunity to share other things that are happening in my life with the people who might be interested in that. So there's like a lot of thoughts or things that I'm, experiencing that I would normally hop onto Instagram and just record a story about, and I don't do that anymore and I miss that. So I'm thinking about just weaving in some more of those updates into the episodes maybe at the end. I don't know. I really enjoy that in other podcasts that I listen to just hearing about. Things in that person's life. And and of course, they're all kind tangentially related to micropractice. Everything is tangentially related to Micropractice since that is what I do with my life. But so anyway, I thought I would share some of those things here, so I. The first one is on the topic of podcasts. I if you've been following me for a while or you've listened to a lot of my episodes, you've probably heard me reference at some point that I tried to start a podcast a couple of years ago and I just completely. Froze and dropped it and got overtaken by imposter syndrome and never finished it. And so there's two episodes out there somewhere. I still get downloads on it, so some of you are finding it, but it's called the Highly Sensitive md and the whole idea behind it was that I had read, I think her name's Dr. Aaronson, I forgot her name at this point, but I had read the book the Highly Sensitive Person and was like, oh my God, this is me, and, so basically, her whole thing is that 20% of the population has this high sensory processing sensitivity, and that just touches so many different parts of your life and influences how you move through the world and can really shape your experience. And just being aware that is something that. You have that happens to you, I think is such a validating and helpful framework, for somebody who has that. So anyway, I found it, I found thinking about medicine and my journey in medicine and trying to practice medicine through that lens and thinking about, i,'cause I think a lot of people who are highly sensitive are drawn to medicine. But then you get into the actual practice of medicine and you're like, wow, this is really overstimulating. This is really a lot of sensory stimulation happening at the same time. That was definitely my experience and in light of that, I just, so many things made sense about why. Residency was so hard and why I hated the traditional primary care environment and why I love the micropractice environment. Anyway, that was the whole idea for the podcast and then I never finished it and it's a very big source of shame and embarrassment for me. But recently. I had to do an OT evaluation for one of my kids and actually nothing really came of it for him, but as part of that, I had to fill out this sensory profile for him. And if you are somebody who has always thought oh yeah, I get overstimulated so easily and I'm very sensitive to sound and noise and, it I to go through a sensory profile because it's very enlightening. So I was doing it for him and some of the things were relevant for him, but when I was thinking about myself as a child, like I would've been off the charts for every single sight, sound, touch, taste, smell. All every single. Since I, I was clearly like a over, I don't remember how they phrased it, but I was like a over. Experiencer of that thing. And again, I just found it to be so validating and I think about how now, you would fill that out for a child and it would be recognized as something that. Perhaps you need to take into account, like maybe give this kid some earplugs if they're going to a really noisy place. Or, maybe if they've had a crazy busy overstimulating day, you make sure that you give them a little bit of, a quiet, dark environment. And I, part of me is yeah, no one did any of those things for me, so no one accommodated me. So I had basically exposure therapy of having to do all of these things all of the time. Which is good'cause now I tolerate. Them a lot better than I would otherwise. But I think just having the knowledge and being able to have some compassion for myself I remember the feeling I used to get before I walked into sign out in the morning, and it was just like I would have this anxiety building as I walked closer to the sign out room because as soon as you open the sign out room door, it was this cacophony of noise and the heat of so many bodies and just the energy of people coming in for the morning and people leaving for the night. And I hated starting the day like that. I hated that. Physical feeling that I would get in the sign out room. And I know there's like people on the other end of the spectrum that are just like, you're such a pansy. That's nothing. Get over that. But I dunno, it was validating to know that in this day and age, somebody probably would've said, yeah, you have a sensory processing difference. This is. In the ca this is a neurodivergence that you have and you can be aware of and acknowledge, so anyway, it, I felt like it was a sign for me to go back and finish that podcast. I have no time to do that right now, but someday I would like to finish that podcast. And if you happen to be one of the I don't know how many people have listened to that random episode that I put out, and you want more. Episodes tell me.'cause that will make me feel like, okay, someone's actually waiting for this and someone wants to hear it. But I think it's so relevant for Micropractice because I really think it's a big part of the reason. I was so driven to practice the way I practice now. Like every single day when I walk into my office and it's quiet and serene and there's no one else there, and I can control the temperature and I can control the ambient noise and I can control, everything about it. And when the patient is there and there's nothing else, like I can totally, I can just completely focus on them. I also have a tendency to hyper focus. So a lot of signs are pointing to Neurodivergence for me, but that is just. And then they leave and usually I block like enough time that I have 30 minutes to just sit and think about them and just be completely focused on them and their case that feels so natural to me and just makes my life, just makes working so much exponentially better. So anyway, that, that was a fun little insight I had. Another thing that I've I guess hyper fo, I don't know if this is like hyper, this is probably not hyperfocused, but this tendency to go into really deep dives on something was that once I stopped scrolling social media mindlessly, I had to scroll something mindlessly. So I started scrolling Pinterest mindlessly and scrolling Pinterest mindlessly made me start thinking a lot more about fashion and how I dress myself. And I am somebody who has always just been like. Fashion is frivolous, beauty, self grooming, like all of that. To me, I'm like, Ugh, it's frivolous. I'm embarrassed by the time that I do spend on it and I don't wanna spend any more time on it than I already do. And anytime I get ex into any of these things, I pull myself back and I'm just like, no, you don't wanna be a person who is really into these things because they're frivolous and they're a waste of your time and energy. I also recently have started to think. I should probably buy less fast fashion. And I was like, maybe I wanna be a little bit more thoughtful and intentional about the clothes I put on my body and where they came from. And then I went down this whole rabbit hole of like fashion as this. Statement or what you wear as a, the way you present yourself as a statement. And there was an episode I should look up the title. I might link it in the show notes. There's a really good episode of this podcast I listened to called Money with Katie, where she interviewed a professor. I don't know if she was an anthropology professor, honestly, I can't remember the details anymore, but they just talked a lot about, self presentation, fashion, how all these things are ways that people are performing their class and signaling all of these things that, you know we, we just don't think about often and we don't acknowledge. And I don't know. I found it really fascinating and to me it comes back to this. I have this whole idea of no, stop paying the pink tax. Stop dying. Your roots don't get your nails done. And I don't really get my nails done. I dye my roots like once every six months. So I keep like having this thing where I'm like, no, I just shouldn't be doing that. I shouldn't be playing into that. I should just like age gracefully and set that example for my patients and not make them feel like they need to look. Like an Instagram model or whatever. Not that I look anything like an Instagram model, but should not be like playing into that whole ideal. But then I think about the fact that actually self presentation, it matters. I think, I remember reading a study when I was a medical student. Again I wish I had references for, this was a long time ago that I looked at this, where medical students that wore a small amount of makeup were perceived as, more prepared, more competent, better performing students than medical students who were wearing no makeup. And I'm sure there's a zillion flaws with that study. Yeah, feel free to poke holes in that. I'm sure that, I'm sure it's not like the best study, but. It made sense to me'cause I'm like, it's just signaling to somebody that this person has put time and energy into the way they have presented themselves. And that's not an argument that like people who don't wanna wear makeup should wear makeup. But I'm just making the point that. I think I beat myself up saying, why are you even doing this? Why are you even playing into this? Don't you know? But then it's okay to acknowledge it kind of matters. Like I'm a walking billboard for my practice, so if I look tired and disheveled, that says something to my potential patients and my current patients. Should they take advice from somebody who looks tired and disheveled, who's telling them how to be less tired? I don't know. So anyway, I went on this whole fashion deep dive and now. I have gotten into high-end consignment as like a little hobby. And now instead of browsing social media, I just browse the RealReal for an occasional piece that I wanna buy and I buy so few I've bought two or three things. Like I buy so few things, but it feels fun. It feels a little bit like a hunt. And then when I do buy something, I have usually thought about it for a couple of weeks before I buy it. And. I'm really invested in the product and once it comes, I'm just like, oh this is the most beautiful blouse I've ever owned. And I feel like it's so special and I'm constantly looking for excuses to wear it. And anyway, so I'm like in this new era of dressing myself and thinking about the way I dress myself and the clothes that I choose to put on my body. And it's fun. Let me think. I think there was one last thing I wanted to share that I, oh, okay. This last thing. Super exciting. I hate exercising. I like the feeling I have after exercise and sometimes I'm enjoying it when I'm in it, but most of the time I'm like, no, I would rather eat a really delicious meal and lay on the couch and watch a really good show. That is my natural state of affairs. Or like I would rather get more sleep or I would rather. Cook a meal for myself, it's just exercising for me is not one of the natural things that I am drawn to and prioritize regularly or prioritize naturally I guess. I had my first baby and then I had a period where I like got back in shape during that. And then once I was back in a body that felt comfortable, I just was like, eh, whatever. Walking is fine. I'm just gonna walk. And then I knew I was gonna have the second baby, or I was, try, gonna try to have the second baby. So I was not that motivated to get super in shape. So I had the second baby and then the second baby, I had so much more patience with myself afterwards. I was like, it's okay. The body will do what it's gonna do. I have so much more reverence and respect for what my body has done over the last. Five, six years that I just was not that panicked or eager to get back in shape. So I was like, I'm just gonna give it time right now. My body wants rest, it wants me to sleep enough, it wants me to drink water. It wants me to eat nutritious food. I'm gonna focus on that. So anyway, now my baby is two, he just turned two and I was like, I'm gonna be 40 in a few months, maybe it's time to get it together. I'm talking constantly to patients about the importance of weight-bearing exercise and building strong bones and the shift that happens in perimenopause with fat mass and muscle mass. And I should probably be walking the walk and a couple months ago, I was like, all right, I think I got it. It's time to prioritize it. I'm a big believer that you can't have all the balls in the air at the same time, and that's okay. So it's fine to say right now I'm prioritizing my sleep and my stress and my nutrition, and I'm not gonna worry that I'm not. Doing the ideal exercise regimen for myself right now. But anyway, I was like, now it's gonna be a priority. I'm gonna, I'm gonna focus on this. And so I signed up for a workout class and my husband's my husband takes my son to school most of the time. But now he is really committed to doing it when he can because this allows me to go to a seven 30 class and. It has been just such a gift so life changing. I don't think I would ever be in a position to be doing this if I was working in traditional practice. I really think the fact that I have this autonomy and level of control over my schedule, makes this an option for me. But I've been going three or four days a week for two months to the point where right now it just feels like this is part of my life. This is just a thing I do. I am just a person who exercises now, which is a crazy thing to say. And. It's just been so good for me mentally, I feel like, I don't think anything has changed for me on the skill, which is totally fine, but I just feel so much stronger in my body. I can do pushups for the first time in probably like 20 years. I dunno, honestly, if I was ever able to do a pushup,'cause I always had very spindly, weak arms and so I don't know that I ever really was able to, so now I have this new goal in my mind of I wanna be. In my best shape when I reach 40, which is in six months. So we'll see if that happens. I don't know. If it doesn't happen, I'm not gonna beat myself up, but. It's so exciting to have a new goal and to feel like, okay, at this point where you thought you, I feel like in medicine you're constantly striving for the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, and then you get to attending life and you're oh, like this, is it? Have I reached the pinnacle? Is it all down downhill from here? And I think it, honestly I don't know that I would be. As ambitious about this whole fitness thing. If I had not had the experience of being like, no, you can just build something new right now. You can just set this crazy goal and do it and then do it again and then do it again. And so I feel starting the practice made me brave enough to have a second baby.'cause I was really scared to do that. And, doing those things made me brave enough to start Micropractice Mama. And starting that made me brave enough to be like, alright, I'm gonna get into the best shape of my life by 40 and. Again, it's just, I think we've talked about it on a few different episodes with, or a few different one-on-one episodes. I did a kind of a whole episode about it for myself, but just how embarking on this journey, fundamentally changes you and the way that you think I, I. I think for a lot of people they would think, oh, I don't know. I'm never gonna be able to get into that kind of shape or I don't know. A lot of people, I think you could talk yourself out of it or you could talk yourself down from it. And I just feel like having the experience of building something from nothing. Makes you feel like anything is possible, no, actually I, yeah, I can just set a crazy goal and I can do it. And so that's what I'm doing. I dunno, I'll let you know how it goes in six months. We'll see. So anyway, that's, those are my personal updates. That's what's going on in my life. And I'm really excited for this next webinar. I've had multiple people message me and email me and say, when is the next webinar? So I always have this fear that anyone who's interested has already found my stuff and, moved on. And I, it's encouraging and exciting to see how many doctors are finding DPC and finding the idea of Micropractice on a regular basis still. And I only think that's going to continue to grow. Yeah I'm really excited for that webinar and I hope you can join us and the registration link will be in the show notes, so make sure you sign up there and I will talk to y'all soon. Bye.