Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign welcome to skin breath. I'm Dr. Ana Chacon and today we have a very special guest joining us. Get ready for some expert insights you won't want to miss.
Okay, Everybody, this is Dr. Laura Purdy and you're a physician. You're family medicine. You are from Bowling Green, Kentucky and you live here in Miami, Florida. And I had heard a lot about you in telehealth because I'm also in telehealth in addition to an in person practice. But tell everybody, you are kind of the most, I want to say, visible, renowned person in telehealth, renowned doctor. I've been following you in the media for many, many years in your footsteps. Tell everybody a little bit about yourself, where you're from, your childhood and where you are today.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: So I think you're right. So I am a more visible person in telehealth, which is interesting. And I've done that on purpose because a lot of people, doctors that work in telehealth, they choose to hide. I don't know if you guys have ever looked at telehealth websites, but a lot of times it's really hard to tell who is truly behind the operations at a telemedicine company. And even if you can find the CEO or the CEO or the chief marketing officer, a lot of times you still can't tell who the doctors are. For some reason, doctors and medical groups and physicians who do telemedicine, they like to sneak around in the corners and hide and not be found out. And I kind of thought that was crazy. So that's why I became a little bit more visible. But also when you attract attention, sometimes you attract trouble. So I don't know. I think it's worth it still. I think it's worth it. But so yeah, I'm from Southern Kentucky, so I grew up in a very, I would say like poverty stricken rural town in a family that was very self made. I mean, my dad was a police officer in a rural town and then he was a factory worker and my parents both got college degrees. During my lifetime, everything we ever had was earned by hard work and being good and never given to us. Right? And so I decided I wanted to go into healthcare because I thought it was a fascinating industry to be in, which is different than the reason why a lot of people choose it and which makes a lot of sense now. Being a healthcare administrator and being in the business of medicine is a much more fulfilling role for me than being in the practice of medicine. I have never really liked direct one on One care. I like the business of medicine. And so I went to Ball State University in Indiana specifically because I didn't see the point in spending a lot of money on college. And then I went to the military at the uniformed Services University for medical school specifically because I didn't see the point in spending a lot of money on medical school. Then I went into family medicine because I wanted to know as much as I could about as many things as possible.
And I didn't want to have to say, I don't know anything about that as much as possible. And family med was good for that. Then I ended up. So I was a hospitalist. I don't know if you knew that. I was a hospitalist in the army and I was a hospitalist on the civilian side, which I actually really loved. I loved taking care of stick sick people. But I could not stand the system. I absolutely could not stand the system. 12 hour days. I have four children and one on the way. And being away for 15 hours at a time every day was no life to live. So on my third maternity leave, I started working telemedicine as Samuel. He's seven. He's seven and a half now. So on my third maternity leave, I started working telemedicine. And when the salary that I was making in telemedicine matched what I was making as a hospitalist in the army, I said, why would I ever go back and work in the hospital ever again? And then I took a five year transition plan, overlapping getting out of the military with getting into telemedicine. And my goal was to be able to fully support myself with the telemedicine income by the time I got out of the army, which is four years ago. I'm starting to feel old. These years add up, don't they?
Four years ago, when I got out of the army, I pulled one hospital shift a month for a year and a half. And after that, my business had gotten so big that it actually was harmful to me and harmful to my business to work one hospitalist shift every four to six weeks. And so I let it go. So now I live in Miami and moved to Miami from Nashville, which is a much better place to be a working mother who works a nationwide virtual digital business.
Miami is a great place to live.
And now here we are. That's the timeline, for the most part.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Oh, awesome. And why would you say Miami is a great place to live? I mean, I agree, you know, I'm from here.
I'm very glad that you live 15 minutes away from me. But we do.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: Yeah. But how do you manage all of this? Because. Because when I heard that you had four kids, one on the way, you've had a lot of good and bad relationships with people, you know, both. I personally, as a physician, with all the moves I have had, have found it very difficult to find a mate to stay with these, even stick by, you know, stand by and just hang out or, you know, go through some of the hardships that you go through as a physician or even, you know, lend an ear to the stuff that you kind of go through. I mean, how do you manage to make it work?
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Well, you can't do everything all the time. There have been things that I've had to let go. So I think being okay with letting things go, like I just said to you, I let go of in person practice, period. I am starting to let go of medical licenses, period. Because there's only so much time, there's only so much money, there's only so much energy, there's only so much calendar space.
And you have to figure you, I, you as the person, right, have to figure out where those priorities go.
So I've decided it is not a priority for me to continue working in person because I'm never going back to that ever. In my whole life. I'm never going back to that. I've decided it's not important for me to take insurance. I have never taken insurance. There have been companies that I have been a contractor for who have had me on their insurance plan.
There have been people who have used me as an ordering physician and adjacent, you know, insurance adjacent or doctors who have worked under me who have taken insurance. But I have let that go, right? I don't try to be everything everywhere, all the time. My four year old school, school is having a Valentine's Day tea party. But guess what? Today, right now. But guess what? Right after this, we're all piling into the car and going to Great Wolf Lodge in Naples. I cannot simultaneously work my workday, go to Great Wolf Lodge, be on a podcast and show up at the tea party. So he went to the tea party and his PJs and I said, this is the best we have today. And I moved on. So prioritizing what gets to the top of the list and being okay, you know, not having guilt and not feeling bad about the things that don't make it to the top of the list, I think is. And then asking for help, asking for help and delegating when something is too much is really important.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: So relationships you now have. And I don't know if it's okay to announce this on the podcast.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: We definitely should. I mean, look, I wear the ring. I'm eight months pregnant. He can't hide it. I mean, this is a beach ball we've got right here.
It's. I'm eight months pregnant, It's a whole beach ball.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Like a number six. Just for me, because my parents are like, you know, Anna, when are you going to start this? Yeah. This is kind of embarrassing, but didn't realize I was getting as old as I am getting. But how?
[00:08:02] Speaker B: 40.
I've had four decades of life and five children, so.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Wow. Wow. And how do you like dating a fellow physician? What do you have to say about that relationship? And maybe a female physician who's looking for a mate and wondering if it's better to somebody in healthcare versus, you know, someone that has no idea of what you do and just really can't understand sometimes the complexities and stressors.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Well, you know, I think, first of all, everybody's different. Everybody is different. And the things that are important to you might be different than the things that are important to me. So for me, to my fiance, baby daddy, whatever you want to call him, is a brain surgeon. He's a pediatric brain surgeon, which could not be more of a polar opposite than family medicine, which is how I was trained. But I do not identify as a family medicine physician. I identify as a health, as a founder, as an entrepreneur, as a healthcare administrator, a modern day healthcare administrator.
So we don't really have a lot of clashing or butting of head because we're not even remotely in the same practice area. I actually know more about more things than he does, but he knows more about his area than I do. So I actually find it to be really fascinating because I get to learn new things from him and he gets to learn new things from me. Like the other day we were talking about where the growth plates in the vertebrae are and I was like, I didn't even know that vertebrae had growth plates. And he's like, oh, look, I have an article on this. And you know, sometimes he'll have like NICU babies and they don't get any obstetric education. And I had a huge obstetric education. So, you know, it'll be a question question of like, oh, well, if the patient's like, water breaks, what do they do and how does that work? And so I think it can be very intellectually stimulating, but our careers are actually very different. It helps to foster the Relationship that we can relate to each other on things like insurance being obnoxious, hospital systems being annoying patients. That can be very demanding. And I think we can relate to each other where it matters, but we also cannot relate to each other where it doesn't. You know, where it matters, too.
I think if he was family matter, if I was neurosurgery, I think it would be a totally different dynamic. But we also have mutual respect for what each other does. It doesn't matter who makes more money. It doesn't matter who works longer hours. I really have respect for what he does, and he really has respect for what I do. So if he's on call for a week and he's never around, I don't want to say it doesn't bother me. Of course it bothers me. I miss him. But it is not damaging to our relationship like it might be for someone who maybe isn't in healthcare and can't relate. And likewise, if I have to travel or be on the road or I'm working 75 hours a day because I'm a startup founder, it is not damaging to our relationship because he understands that's what I have to put in right now. So there's a lot of empathy from both sides. Definitely talk a little bit about running a business.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: We have shared a couple grievances.
Successes, but grievances. And right when I think, man, you know, some of the people can't get worse. I'm always shocked about what I hear happening to somebody else or what happens to me in my practice. But how have you learned along the way with that?
[00:11:46] Speaker B: The only way to learn is by doing. I got an MBA five years ago, and they do not teach this in school. The principles of business is not the same thing as running a business. And doctors who say to me, should I get an mba? The answer is yes. If you're interested in the business of healthcare, you gotta get an mba. Because that's where your foundational knowledge comes from and your basic terminology and your basic principles that you were never taught anywhere in all of your education.
Yeah, for sure, do that.
But it will not equip you to run a business. Running a business and being educated on business are two completely different things. And the only way to do it, I think, is to get in it, to experience it, and to navigate the challenges that come at you. It is not the same thing as just seeing a bunch of patients taking some money and doing some healthcare. It is not. Every problem becomes your problem, which means every solution you have to come up with. You don't have a hospital or an insurance company or a department chief. Nobody is going to solve those problems for you. And they don't just go away. You have to solve them yourself. So that's why I think it is important, right? Like we talk to each other, we talk to our lawyers, to our accountants, we talk to people in networking groups. It's important to have people around you who can lend advice. Anna gets to talk to her dad, right? Like she has, which is something I don't have actually. Anna gets talked to her dad about, you know, business and medicine and healthcare. Like talking to the people who've been through it before.
Even though they can't give you a blueprint on what to do, they can still share pieces of wisdom. That's really. You can't put a price on that.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: Who do you consider a role model? You mentioned your dad. Because sometimes I look at you, I'm like, where did this girl get such entrepreneurship from? Because a lot of my female friends, you know, you've met some of them. Jennifer lives with a really wealthy guy from Argentina and has no clue what he does for a living. I mean, he could sell drugs, he could have a airline business. You don't know what this guy does, but you live under his house and he pays all your bills. And clearly that's a problem for a lot of women that, you know, don't have a lot of independence or. Or don't have an ounce of entrepreneurship.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: So.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: You'Re the opposite of that.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: So my dad, I think, is the closest thing to a role model I've ever had. And the reason why for that is because I learned a lot about how to be a good business person from him. He died in 2008, which was in the midst of the recession. And a lot of the key foundational principles of how to be an ethical leader I learned from my dad. Beyond that, I have no role models. I have a lot of anti role models because. No, seriously, I have a ton of anti role models I have had because I was in the army for 15 years. I had a lot of bad bosses, I had a lot of good bosses, but none of them that I would consider a role model. And I've worked in telemedicine. We have regulatory bodies, we have regulatory authorities, and we have managers. We have chief medical officer, we have chief executive officers, but I would not consider any of them a role model. In fact, I would consider them anti role models because a lot of times I sit there and I say, what are we doing here? Right. But that's part of why I am different and part of why I'm in the position that I'm in right now is because I am not a natural follower. I cannot persist in broken systems and I don't have it within me to just change myself to continue working for someone else inside of a broken system. I must either suggest or create or define something that solves the problems. And that's why my business is so hard to keep up with. And that's why we are in a fast growth, high velocity startup in the business that I run, because I can't sit around on something that isn't working. And my business has not been working for a long time, but it is working now because I put in a lot of work to make it get there. So the bottom line is I think the best role model that I have for me is the future vision of myself. In my mind, I know who I want to be, I know where I want to be and I know what the conditions in my life for me and my future spouse and my five children. I know where I want to be professionally and personally. And that is what I strive towards.
And nobody else around me that I know of has that.
So I stay focused on what my goal is and I don't get distracted by what other people are doing because I think if I look too much at what someone else is doing, I might be tempted to want that right. Or get distracted by that or even be critical of that. Where what I really want to do is I want to get to. I'm 40, right? Like half my life is over. So I want to get to where I want to get to as fast as possible so that we can enjoy life together.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Yeah. And I know you're going to Great Wolf Lodge and I'm going straight to the practice.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: We're going to Great Wolf Lodge. But my kids have been begging me for two years. They've been begging for two years to go to Great Wolf Lodge, which sounds so silly, but. And it is pretty silly. It's Great Wolf Lodge. But that's what they want to do, right? So I have been busting my tail for three months to free up the time to be able to disconnect myself for long enough. But I'm going to work until I pick them up. I'm going to work all the way there and then I'm probably going to wake up early, I'm probably going to go to bed late and I'll try to give them as much time during the day as I can, but I will be exhausted because I can't disconnect from my business long enough to do that. So I will give them the time that I can during the day and then I will sacrifice myself eight months pregnant during the day and the night to make sure that the business doesn't die. Because that is my livelihood.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I understand.
And yeah, we have a lot in common in that. Can you tell me a little bit about the pink Bentley?
[00:18:01] Speaker B: The what? The car.
Yeah, the car. You know, the car was really interesting. Right? So you want to talk about my car? So I've never publicly talked about my car. I do own a Bentley and it is rose gold and it also is for sale. So here's the thing. A few years ago, after Covid, my business, during COVID my business was very prosperous.
And then I had about an 18 month time where it was not prosperous. We took a nosedive. Our profit dropped, our not profit revenue dropped by 75%. And I genuinely cried tears of real grief because I felt that I had lost the thing that I had poured myself into so deeply.
So I got frustrated in 2021 and 2022 because I felt like that the world of luxury, retail, luxury goods and LU cars was sexist against women who have some money but also have lives and have children. And I couldn't find. I wanted to go buy a nice car. Not because I like cars, I actually don't like cars. I don't care about cars. I don't know the first thing about cars. But I bought it based off of principle because I wanted to show that as a woman who was doing well financially at the time and who also had a bunch of children and a business that there could be something. For me, the only thing I could find was like nice Mercedes and I don't like Ferraris, I don't like Lamborghinis. I have driven in them, I have ridden in them and I don't like them at all. I don't like Ferraris, Lamborghinis, whatever. The nice ones are like even Porsche. I don't like those vehicles. There's nothing attractive about them at all. They don't feel nice, they don't sound nice, I don't even think they're pretty. And guess what? They all charge a pink tax. So if you want your car to be pink, you have to pay more. So when I was looking around at cars in the post Covid era, Bentley was the only one that didn't charge you more to make your car pink. And I said, I want that. Then When I moved to Miami, I put in a rental program. So it's like an Airbnb, not Turo, but it's in the NPH Club. It's making money, and it actually does okay. Like it makes a few thousand dollars a month, which is nice. It pays for all of its bills and there is return. But that thing's for sale. And guess what? Nobody wants to buy it because it's pink. So I bought it because it was pink, and nobody wants to buy it because it's pink. But I'm going to sell it as soon as I can. And I will probably never spend money on luxury goods ever again. I went through this phase of my life where I had designer person, I had designer sunglasses, I had a designer car. And all that ever did was bring me the wrong attention from the wrong kind of people.
And from this point forward, I have no interest in status symbols. I have no interest in luxury brands, luxury goods. I wear clothes because they look good. I buy my accessories off of Amazon. But I do have four and a half children, so what's the point of having nice things? But I see no value in expensive brands, luxury goods. I would rather spend my time on experiences, on people, on destinations, and on memories, and not on things like flashy cars. And plus, you can always go rent one for a couple days if you really want to. Just go rent one and drive it around, don't buy one.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I mean, I kind of feel the same way after time and. Yeah, because it doesn't make you any happier, right? You walk off a lot and then it's just another day. How can you protect yourself from trouble? You know, sometimes having a lot of licenses is like having a deck of cards. One falls and then the other ones kind of tend to follow it. And being a doctor, I just kind of found it striking. In school and work, they never really told us how you could get hurt. I don't ever remember this being brought up to me by even family.
My dad kind of, you know, ended up kind of with never facing a lot of the issues that I myself face. And, you know, of course he didn't have 50 licenses, but there's a lot of stuff that can happen from employee standpoint, from a regulatory standpoint. So what would you have to say to someone who's maybe interested in getting all these licenses but doesn't really have a clue about it? We know some of those people ourselves have recently become, yes, we do, licensed. It's a very expensive venture, but also a little bit risky. Hence why A lot of people don't even let other people know they have the 50 license to begin with.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: I mean, the answer is you can't keep yourself from getting in trouble. Medical state licensure is a social club, sorry, federal, you know, the dea, the FBI, the oig, all of that, you know, that stuff. Insurance is regulated and it is safer. It is actually safer to practice under federal regulations than it is to practice under state regulations. Because state medical boards are social clubs, they are self governing, they're completely autonomous. Nobody is putting into check and balance what they're doing. They make their own rules, they change their own rules in real time. And if they decide they don't like you or they don't like what you're doing, or it's the right kind of day, they can do whatever they want behind closed doors and nobody is ever going to know.
So the answer is if you're going to do something risky, then you have to be willing to accept the risk. There's you can mitigate, you can minimize, but at the end of the day, you can't protect yourself. Even if you have the best, most experience, expensive lawyers in the universe, they can't protect you from some opinionated people in a rural location who make a decision and have too much authority. So always have a backup plan. Always know what you're going to do, understand where your safe spaces are. Because losing a license here or there is okay, you're not going to lose them. All the states don't agree. Right. So I think understanding that you are in a regulatory environment that does not care about you, that will seek to destroy you and will not see you as a human or an asset or considering you or your family, you have to look out for yourself. So if you're going to do that in this regulatory environment, you have to understand it's temporary. 50 state licenses do not last forever, especially if you draw attention to yourself. If you don't draw attention to yourself, meaning you do low volume, low risk, your own clinic and you don't work for any businesses and you're completely self employed and, and then you may be able to get a decade or so without something happening to you, but you will like nobody who's 50 state. I mean I've probably had 30 at this point medical board complaints against me. I've had regulatory actions in 50 states. I mean, well, no, but like 25 states, I've started to give up licenses because it's not worth it. To me. The financial cost to maintain the license is not worth the amount of business that certain states bring in or is not worth the headache that their regulatory board is these days. If I was really doing something wrong, then the FBI or the DEA would have found out and those consequences would be there. But federal laws are very easy to follow and state laws are very hard to follow because the state laws change. So be willing to accept the fact that you will make enemies, not friends. The current generation of medical regulators, frankly is just going to have to fade away and go away and be replaced by people who understand the way the world works. The current regulatory environment does not understand the way the world works. They are outdated, they are archaic. They are irrelevant. And I would 100% say that to their face if I had the opportunity to, because it's a fact, it's not an opinion. They do not understand the environment that the patients that they are in place to protect the interests of operate in. That's my 2 cents on that.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: You talk about retiring. I know some of my professors, dermatologists, there's two. I know that they worked until, I think they died a year after they retired. So they worked until they were 90, 98. That's really common for dermatologists to do. They already had. Yeah, they already had a hunchback and the kyphoscoliosis going on because they were so old. You know, I hope to kind of work that way, but eventually I want to have a kid or have somebody who's willing, whoever's willing to have a.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Kid on my behalf.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Yeah, because I do not have the time right now and I don't think I ever will, but. So you want to retire? How soon? And what's your plan for that? And what do you want to do after retirement?
[00:26:37] Speaker B: Oh, retiring from practice. I don't need to be a doctor anymore. I love business. I love being a businesswoman, I love being an executive, I love being a CEO, I love being a founder. And I do not like being a doctor. I have never enjoyed the practice of medicine because it is so dramatic. I would rather be the leader of the people who practice medicine. And the sooner I can get myself all the way out of practice, the more successful my business is going to be. The one thing that I have learned is that the key, and this is for every founder, for every founder, for every entrepreneur, for every startup owner. The thing that your business needs is you. And whatever takes away from your ability to invest in your business and to make yourself successful needs to go. And for me, that's the practice of medicine, the one on one patient practice of Medicine distracts from my ability to make my business as successful as it possibly, possibly can be. Anybody can practice the medicine. Doctors, especially telemedicine doctors, are a dime a dozen. Or specifically, they're $10 a consult. Like anybody can do that. But I cannot replace myself in my business. So the soonest that I can retire from the practice of medicine and really do what I love, which is business, I will be so happy and my business will be thriving. So the plan is to travel, to be with the kids, to not have to be plugged into my computer all day, every day. Because I want to create a scalable, sustainable business that can support itself and that can support my family.
And I really want to make an impact in healthcare and in the lives of the people who work in the company that I build. And retiring from the practice of medicine, if I can get that done in two to three years, I'll be so happy. But we'll see how long it really takes. I say it's on the five year plan because nothing happens quickly, especially in the world of digital health tech startups. But it's already happening. I'm giving up licenses and not getting them back because I don't need them. But the plan will be to live life to the fullest and to do what I love, which is business.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Well, thank you so much. I don't want to keep you more time. Of course, very interesting. But, you know, thanks for being an awesome friend and as I say, you know, a mentor and a role model, because there aren't really a lot of women that, you know, our CEOs, especially healthcare CEOs, especially those with, with family and marriage and stuff like that. I think that's definitely been an area that I'm lacking a lot in, that people are concerned about for me, but that, you know, thanks for sharing your story.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: I'm happy to be here. Maybe we'll talk again sometime soon.
Bye.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Sam.
