Dr. Andrea Maxim is a naturopathic doctor and the founder of MAXIMized Business. She’s also the creator of the MAXIMized Practitioner Method.
Her proven methodology helps outstanding health & wellness practitioners stand out with modernized marketing and messaging. She believes running the business side of your clinic should be just as rewarding as helping your patients. She does this by helping clients build simple systems and strategies to instantly give time freedom back, so they can enjoy life outside of the office.
It’s difficult to stand out in a crowd of competitors. Thankfully, early in her career, she realized what it takes to get ahead and get noticed. As a practicing ND, running two six-figure clinics, Dr. Andre Maxim recognizes the importance of taking the right steps–in the right order.
She wrote a book titled, “MAXIMized Health: A New, Intelligent System for Optimal Digestion and Hormones”, and has been interviewed by people like Sean Croxton, Danny Lennon, and Mike Mutzel. She’s also been featured in multiple online summits, been on local television shows, and has been written about in multiple publications. In 2014, Dr. Andrea won the coveted Top 40 Under 40 award as well as the Female Entrepreneur Award.
Tell us about who you are and what you do.
My name is Dr. Andrea Maxim, a naturopathic doctor and I am the founder of MAXIMized Business and the creator of the MAXIMized Practitioner Method, and the host of the Profitable Practice Podcast.
I help health and wellness practitioners learn to create simple strategies and systems which help free up time in their business, so they don’t get bogged down in only working. It’s important to enjoy life outside of the office as well.
How did you create your brand? What was the inspiration behind it?
When I first started in practice, I had zero business skills. And, after 10-years in school, I was not about to get an MBA, so instead, I immersed myself in business and marketing from the get-go.
It was an absolute grind with very little growth and even lower profits to show for it, which is a defeating feeling, especially when helping people get better is your #1 goal, but acquiring those consistent new patients is always a struggle.
After 5 years of doing it alone, I quickly became a wife and mother of 2 girls. The time I selfishly put towards my business was no longer available. Then that moment happened… that moment when you know that things need to change.
My eldest was 3yo at the time. She tapped me on the shoulder to ask me a question. I snapped back at her, “Mommy’s busy! Can’t you see that!” .. and that was the last time I did that.
I was a one-woman show–thinking that I needed to do it all and that no one could do what I could do. So I’d go to the office all day, come home, open the laptop right away at the dining table, and continue working into the night. I was stressed and feeling a lot of pressure. I started to hate my business.
Aria went over to my husband and quietly asked him, “When do you think I can ask mom a question where she won’t yell at me??” When Scott told me what she had asked, at that moment, my priorities changed.
I sought out my first business coach. With the clarity I received, I created the MAXIMized Practitioner Method. It’s a 3-Step framework which shows health and wellness practitioners, mislead to believe that “it will be ok after graduation” and yet graduating without any business knowledge, how to build their Foundational Experience attract their ideal patients, create Business Essentials to establish time freedom, and how to stand out with Modernized Marketing, the type of marketing most practitioners are afraid to do.
How does your brand work?
Throughout my journey, I could see what the online gurus and business influencers were preaching to their tribe, but it doesn’t translate to the brick and mortar owner. So the MAXIMized Practitioner Method was born!
The MAXIMized Practitioner Method is a 3-Step framework showing health and wellness practitioners, misled to believe that “it will be ok after graduation” and yet graduating without any business knowledge, how to properly build a brick and mortar practice on an unwavering foundation. More importantly, one that isn’t built on antiquated principles is still taught in school.
This methodology easily bridges the gap between offline and online, broadening the reach of a single practitioner as well as creating multiple streams of income, like an online course or curriculum, for example.
The principles were built to stop the overwhelm and sheer panic of a new practitioner literally being thrust into the “real world” after being sheltered for 4+ years.
Pillar 1: Foundational Experience (Build)
This pillar is probably the most important, but easily the one that most practitioners skip over because it requires patience. When you graduate, your skills amongst your peers and colleagues are NOT the skills that your potential patients/clients need from you.
You learned everything you needed to NOT, harm someone, but the art and skill of messaging and reframing, and articulating your value IS NOT part of the school curriculum. Post-grad, most practitioners still talk to people in “doctor speak” and think that the letters after your name are all you need to convince someone to start to work with you. Nowadays, anyone with a big mouth and an iPhone can claim to be a health expert, and because they understand the game of marketing and messaging, us experts with a 6-figure education are the ones struggling.
Foundational experience is about getting in front of as many humans as possible, in as short a time frame as possible, to really gather the confidence to speak to them. To mirror their words back to them. To position yourself as a “real person” who just happens to have a degree, and as someone with the knowledge who can help them get the health results they dream of.
This doesn’t happen from filling out an Ideal Client Avatar PDF!!
This doesn’t happen from building a beautiful website that speaks to no one!
Foundational experience is earned by DOING, not by reading or filling out forms. In doing so, you will attract your 100 ideal clients and THEN you build that into your Business Essentials.
Pillar 2: Business Essentials (Systemize)
This pillar is where we take everything we learned from Pillar 1 and NOW we create the practitioner brand (website, logo, etc). And this branding will actually work because it speaks directly to your target audience. Then we systemize and automate everything. Your Welcome sequence, onboarding sequence, online bookings, scripts for the reception, etc. Everything is linked together in a simplified business funnel from lead to conversion to delivery to upselling. No holes. No revenue is left on the table.
Here is where we leverage online tech tools to help create a consistently growing practice that is mostly hands-off. The more hands-off the practitioner, the more you get to do what you love — not the day-to-day admin… but the healing and transforming of patients/clients.
Pillar 3: Modernized Marketing (Grow)
Now that we have systems in place for growth and the audience who already knows, likes, and trusts us, we crank up the dial.
Most practitioners hate social media. Hate video. Hate Facebook advertising… but as MAXIMized Practitioners, we lean into the spaces that others won’t go. It helps us stand out amongst the crowd.
We develop your specific brand, your methodology, your keywords that only relate to you, and start scripting them and using them everywhere. Just like Paleo and Keto and Bulletproof were made up words, and now global phenomenons, we also turn our students from run-of-the-mill practitioners into stand-out personal brands. Then we use an inexpensive system of online marketing (I’m talking less than $0.05 per result) to start attracting more and more of the people you already love to work with.
What can the reader take away from this interview? Highlight something you think is worth them knowing.
Now more than ever, practitioners need to wake up and realize that medical school did NOT set you up for success. They mislead all of us to think that health and wellness education is in the same league as the conventional medical profession. We’re not. In fact, we’re being lumped in with all of the ‘health expert’ noise, and instead, it’s causing us to develop practitioner animosity, where we feel apathy towards our patients and clients.
I’m here to tell you that you CAN be successful, but you need to let go of the antiquated teachings from school and step into the real world. A world where you need to explain what you do at a grade 4 level, at all times. One where you recognize that you are an entrepreneur FIRST, who just happens to have a medical degree/certification.
The first shut down was your wake up call. To wake you up to the fact that the in-person time for dollars is NOT good enough.
However, I’m the first to put my stake in the ground and say that the brick and mortar business is here to stay. Regardless, it’s crucial to understand that you must merge your business online if you want to still be in business in the next 3-5 years. That’s why I created the MAXIMized Practitioner Method, to help you soar during a pandemic and be just fine on the other side.
Explain the challenges you went through while you were working on your brand creation. What are the challenges you go through on an everyday basis?
As an entrepreneur, you can never turn it off. Business is always on your mind.
With two small girls at home, and a supportive husband, and even my 4-ft long German Shepherd fur baby (King), I have a lot of people in my life who need me.
I am in a constant struggle between my identity as a strong, independent businesswoman going selfishly after my goals and being present as a wife & mother. I have always rebelled against the traditional role of homemaker, but as a woman, it’s easy to want to nurture and do everything for my family… which inevitably means I can’t be fully present for my business.
How do you manage your business finances through the services you offer?
I am self-funded.
Tell us about your future vision of your brand. How far do you want to take it? What is your dream about taking it to the next level?
Our mission is to help 1000 practitioners become MAXIMized CEO’s of their business so they can impact 500,000 lives each year.
Their practices are operating well into the black, allowing them to take home a decent income, and grow it to six-figures and beyond, all while helping the patients they were meant to serve.
We want less of our industry’s practitioners suffering in practice poverty and having to close their doors, and more of us creating and enjoying the financial freedom we deserve. We believe that running our business should come with as much excitement and confidence as helping our patients does.
What is your giveaway idea through this interview?
Free business tools and mini-trainings: https://www.maximizedbusiness.ca/resources/
Free Video Training on how to Merge Your Practice Online: https://event.webinarjam.com/register/6/lqxr2fq
What message would you like to give to anybody who has a plan of creating something of their own and making a living through it?
Understand that you’re entering into a marathon, not a sprint. The first 5 years are about testing, trying, grinding, hustling. The next 5 years are refining, niching, systemizing, automating, and leveraging. After that, you should have a business that essentially runs on autopilot and provides you the comforts that you can continue to live off of.
There is nothing more personally challenging than entrepreneurship. The faster you drop the ego. The faster you ask for help. The faster you become coachable. The faster you implement. The faster you execute. The EASIER the journey will be, but there will never be a point where your business is “perfect”.
And while it is challenging, it is also the most rewarding career choice.
MAXIMized Business
Website: www.maximizedbusiness.ca
Instagram: @andreamaximnd
Podcast: Profitable Practice Podcast (iTunes, Podbean, Stitcher)
