Today we sat down with Majlinda Holmes, who is the co-owner and co-founder of Enhanced Body. I see Majlinda started this business with her husband Paul, a firefighter after they noticed a similar trend when treating patients in their prospective fields, they were often treating the same patients for the same condition over and over again, and they were not noticing any improvements in their condition.
So the goal and starting Enhanced Body out of Dunedin, Florida was to help people feel their best and thrive in their lives. They offer a wide range of services to help you feel at your best every single day. Majlinda is passionate about truly helping others be at their best. In this episode, we talk about what made Majlinda and Paul start this business why the current medical system is failing to help people live better lives and why it’s starting a business in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s tons of value packed in this episode, so share it with a friend who would enjoy it. Let’s jump in.
Listen to the podcast episode here!
Welcome to the show me Majlinda, how are you?
I’m good. Thank you for having me.
I’m excited. This has been what we were just talking about a long time coming — four years now.
Probably at least two years.
That’s crazy. But it’s cool because I’ve been able to see you guys grow and expand your business and all that kind of stuff. So I’m excited to kind of chat with you. So let’s start with why you become a nurse practitioner.
So before becoming a nurse practitioner, I was a bedside nurse for 10 years, working all that time in a hospital setting. Loved it. But as I was going through my nursing career, I was noticing just the kind of the same issues people were coming in, there was a lack of education or a lack of really preventive care. A lot of the patients that were coming in, were trying to educate them on how to manage their disease process instead of having spoken to them years before to prevent that.
So over the years, we had our frequent fliers they kept coming in and at that time, it’s really difficult to change people when they’re not feeling well. So I made it a mission of mine to do true preventive care and try to get to patients before disease happens.
Or if disease is present to get them when they’re not acutely ill and trying to just get better. And seeing them in a setting in an atmosphere that is more conducive to learning educating and empowering patients to manage their health care. So a lot of times in the hospital, I felt we were controlling the patient’s health we weren’t giving the patients the tools to get better and be able to take responsibility for their own, what they did outside of the hospital. It was easy to manage your death and do this when somebody was telling only give you this food.
But once you leave the hospital, that’s when you need to take into, they do all the things that were taught. So that’s kind of how it came about the more and more I saw these patients and where I would go home and I would be frustrated because I would see the same people coming in over and over and over again, for the same things.
So when I would talk to my husband, also the co-owner of the clinic, he was a firefighter paramedic, and he saw the same thing as well in his field. So we talked a lot about preventive Medicaid. , preventive health. So we were both passionate about that. And so for me to be able to do that would be to become a nurse practitioner. So I went ahead and got my master’s degree.
From there on out, I went into a traditionally conventional office for primary care thinking that that’s how I’m going to help patients. And I did, I worked with a phenomenal doctor who was who’s just amazing at what she does. But again, that traditional insurance-based model does not allow you to spend a lot of time with the patient and dive into those root causes. So after working with her for a little over, a year or two years, I decided to go on my own and open up my clinic so I could do it my way.
Your clinic is Enhanced Body.
Yes.
For other people who don’t know, what is a nurse practitioner what is your role in that career?
So a Nurse Practitioner is a provider. So we are providers. Here in Florida, every state is a little bit different in its scope of practice. In Florida, nurse practitioners became independent a few years ago. What that means is that I don’t have to have a medical provider above me, I don’t have to have an MD nor do I assess, diagnose, or treat all of that.
So people say, What can’t you do?
There’s not much that I cannot do besides certain classes of medications that are that I don’t prescribe. But besides that, for any acute illness, managing chronic disease management, blood pressure issues, cholesterol, issues, or weight, all I can do is all of that. So when you just primary care provider is what, what I am so cool.
So let’s talk about preventative care because it’s, it’s interesting, I’ve had a few either doctors on or I think nurse practitioners yourself on the podcast before and the whole preventative thing, it just makes sense to me. Why aren’t we doing more of that? Why aren’t we educating?
It’’s really, it’s because it takes a lot of time. And it’s and it’s not easy. You need patients who need to come in and want preventive medicine, most patients feel fine.
You’re in your 20s, maybe 30s, you’re not you don’t have anything big going on. They don’t think about taking those steps to go in and be, Okay, what am I maybe not doing, that is going to lead to a problem? The other thing is, most of the time conventional physicals, physical exams, and conventional blood work, don’t assess a patient to the degree where you can pick up on some things going on at a cellular level that might not appear yet.
And, in a blood serum blood test, but may be starting to happen. And in 10 years from now, they may develop something. So it’s a little bit more in-depth. When it comes to assessing and getting to know the patients at a level where you may pick up on things that they’re doing or not doing in their life that could potentially lead to a problem unfortunately, our insurance-based model is not designed to do that to, to pick up on things from happening.
So just to cover you when it does happen, correct?
We don’t. We’re treating symptoms. We’re not preventing anything from coming about. So it’s, I do think that, especially since the pandemic hit, I think that patients are seeking it out more. I think the pandemic is one of the silver linings it in, in my opinion, is that patients are starting to realize, Oh, my God, I need to figure out, how healthy am I.
Because there were patients that got COVID that, quote-unquote, didn’t have any chronic illnesses that didn’t do very well. And, and so now people are, Okay, well, how do I prevent these things? How do I get myself healthy enough so that, God forbid, something should happen, my body can respond? Well,
So I have seen over the past few years, a shift in mentality for a lot of patients. And I’m also seeing a shift in the younger generation I have patients that are now coming to me in their early 20s. Hey, I just want to know, am I doing things?
School health that doesn’t teach a lot of this stuff? So how do I prevent this from happening? Or, hey, my mom and dad have this I don’t want to end up that what do I need to do not to get there? So I am seeing that more and more, which makes me happy as a provider. that has always been my goal is just to make people aware of their health status.
That’s what I was gonna ask you, is it a generational thing? Because our parents and stuff they didn’t grow up in that era. It was, you go to the doctor when you’re sick. You’re sick. And that’s it.
Yep. I think and I think also just the knowledge that we have, at this point has changed. The Internet has changed people, Dr. Google. Can be your best friend and your worst enemy. So I think that having all this knowledge at the fingertips of a lot of this generation is making them question things more and ask more questions.
So definitely, these illnesses are coming up. And there’s a more focus on preventive medicine, I think, just in general, you hear it more I remember when I was a teenager. I don’t remember ever. Is anybody ever talking to me about preventing anything?
So living a healthy lifestyle?
Absolutely.
So I think just in general, it’s just the awareness is there now. Which is huge, that’s a big part of it. I wrote this question on, Why do you think the medical system is failing? I think that’s kind of what we touched on. It’s just not it’s not preventative.
That preventative? There’s no I hate saying it. But there’s especially in the insurance-based model, there’s no reimbursement for preventive a lot of the tests that I do. So I do integrative medicine, meaning that I will prescribe medications if somebody’s coming in, and they have something acutely going on, or something that I feel might be life-threatening, or the risks are way I just, to me, it’s do the risks outweigh the benefits? Where are we at?
I will prescribe, but my focus is to get to the root cause. So a lot of the functional medicine testing, whether you’re doing gut health testing, organic acid test, which focuses on that sees on a cellular level are you deficient in anything? Are there a lot of gut issues? Is there a lot of is there different bacteria that are causing you issues? Insulin resistance is a big thing a lot of inflammatory markers. Those tests, unfortunately, are not covered by the insurance model. So and, and they take, you have to have special education and how to read those testing,? It’s not a single number, you have to look at it most of these tests are pages worth of results.
You have to look at those and correlate them with the patients and the patient’s current history and symptoms and their history and their family history. And you have to look at that. And that takes a lot of time. And that’s just not how our healthcare system is set up. That is that’s why you have functional medicine providers that’s what they do, but they take a lot of time doing that.
Do you think do you think that’ll change with insurance? Is it changing?
It is changing. There are in the sense of what I have picked up and I can’t say a whole lot because I don’t i Although patients see me that have insurance. I don’t take insurance. I don’t deal with insurance companies very often anymore. But I am noticing that a lot of these functional medicine testing companies are starting to say hey, we can try to run it through insurance.
Okay, now what I tell patients is, the lab won’t know whether it’s going to get covered and I won’t know what is going to get covered, they can get sent in.
Then the insurance will choose. So that is to me a step. that wasn’t even something that functional medicine testing wasn’t allowing us to for patients to even attempt to get it covered. , it’s not. It’s not easy. I say even in some of my conventional bloodwork that I do, where I just do a little bit more extensive testing, full thyroid panel, so instead of just a TSH and even now when my patients I do have insurance go and send it to their insurance.
I’ll get it a kickback, kickback frequently. But I still think it’s headed in the right direction. I do. I think that it’s we’re getting there. There’s still just a very long way to go. It’d be amazing, that was, yes. 20 years, whatever. And it just this is the norm.
Absolutely.
You’d said I’m true to prevent — it’s true preventive screening. Let’s not wait until somebody’s 40,45, or 50 to do some of these screening tests that they have why if somebody has an extensive history of colon cancer in their family, why are we not starting to address this in their early 20s? , let’s see how you’re doing. Let’s give you the tools to make sure that nothing develops when you are that age. So we’ll get in there.
Does that put the pharmaceutical companies out of business, if you do is that the norm?
This is a touchy subject. I don’t want to get out and Big Pharma as a bad side. But of course, yes you’re, it would put a strain on. If you’re prescribing fewer medications if you’re if you’re fixing high blood pressure before high blood pressure occurs,? Most patients with high blood pressure are not on one med. They’re on dual triple therapy.
So if you are talking to somebody in their mid-20s, and saying, Hey you’re deficient in XY and Z, fix these things, do these things eat this way. And they never develop hypertension. That of course, that’s gonna take money out of Big Pharma. But that’s almost that’s the battle.
Absolutely.
It’s insurance and all that stuff. It’s crazy the world that we live in. And that even me not wanting to course Big Pharma under the table. I don’t need to get on their radar. But , but ultimately, we as a human race as a population, want to live not just to be healthy health, to me isn’t how long you live? It’s quality of life, for sure.
We have patients who are in their 60s 70s 80s, and they wouldn’t necessarily be alive if it wasn’t for medications. Now, are they taking those medications? And they are living a fulfilled life? And they’re feeling great? Or are they taking that one to two handfuls of medications and are bed-bound, or still in pain, or feeling all the side effects of those medications?
When I worked bedside nursing, that was one of the things I saw most. There was a period where I counted the number of pills that I was given to patients. And it was an average of 10 to 15 pills in the morning alone from one person. Wow. So now is that person alive?
Sure, but are they feeling all these side effects from, you prescribing one medicine, that’s treating one thing? And then there, that patient now has a side effect because of that medicine that they need for those things? Now you’re treating it with something else to combat that side effect? And that’s how you add? That’s how you add all these medications. And at the end of the day, they’re not feeling well.
is that quality of life? So to me, it’s not that medicine is bad. I believe in medication. Somebody comes in and their blood pressure is through the roof. Hey, I can’t walk you, you can’t walk around this,? So Take this, but let’s see how we can either limit the dose, or keep it to this medicine, and do these other things to help you prevent that in the future.
But that takes a lot of effort from the patient. And I tell people, I’m I could lead the horse to the water. I can make a drink. And I can tell you to do these things. But when you walk out of here, it’s up to you to do them. If you don’t, then you will ly need more medicine for diabetes.
For most diabetics, especially early on, there’s diet control. A lot of people are diet-controlled diabetics that don’t need medication. So, it’s almost, if you’re not I don’t know for me, so my experience, I am not feeling well. So if I feel sick, or I stopped drinking, when I was feeling if I had a hangover? I did not that field. ? And so that was a big part of, why I would limit certain things. Exactly.
So I don’t know where that came from. But, I part of it too, I feel they’re they’re just used to not feeling well. And they think that’s the norm? So to get off of the meds or to just get into a healthier state. And then they can have that aha moment of this is what it feels.
Exactly. And you, I mean, you, you hit it on. Many people are used to feeling fatigue, brain fog and other issues. I’ve just dealt with constipation since I was XYZ, and I’m, and that’s normal to you, or, Oh, I just eat in my stomach is bloated away, and I just feel uncomfortable for an hour or two. And I’m glad that you’re okay with that. That’s so but we’ve been told that a lot of times, I also think that because chronic fatigue, some of these chronic fatigue, brain fog, things that, they’re very difficult to find the root cause of.
It’s such a generalized symptom that if patients initially did feel concerned about it, and they went to a provider, okay, they got regular bloodwork done, and everything was what I always hear, quote, unquote, normal? So when I do bloodwork too, I tell patients, even if they’ve had it done, I’m bringing it into me.
I was, because what is normal in the sense of ranges and what is optimal or to me, I try to optimize people, you are in your let’s say your 25, a 20, fives, age person. And a 60 isn’t going to be the same, you’re not so to me. You need to be optimized. If you’re on the lower end of something, although it’s normal, maybe you’re not feeling well, because that’s not your normal.
So that’s the difference. So yes, I think a lot of people walk around just thinking that this is how it’s supposed to be. And they don’t know. I’ve had, I’ve had patients try not to tell people not to drink. However, alcohol causes a lot of inflammation systemically.
Not that people don’t know this, but I tell people to try, try going six weeks, you don’t need to make a lifetime commitment. I go, but even if it’s certain foods, try going six weeks without it. If at the six-week mark, you felt no difference, then go back to what you were doing. But most of the time, within a few weeks oh I feel I just have a little bit more energy.
I come home from work. And I’m not, oh, have to sit on the couch, I get to play with my kids. Or I can cook dinner without making it such a chore. Or possibly think about going to the gym or going for a walk. And so I tell people, just try it. I was because you don’t know how much better you could feel until you try some of these things.
The alcohol thing is fascinating to me — how our society says you’re abnormal if you don’t drink.
I listened to a podcast. I think that’s what kind of what started me to think about nondrug not drinking, and it’s kind of new for me. And he was, went through, all the things of, is it healthy is what it does to your body and stuff?
The big thing for that podcast that stood out to me was basically, if you have I think it was one drink a week or more. It is severely detrimental to your health. , your gut biome gets destroyed – the inflammation that happens systemically less.
I mean, the liver is another thing we process so many things through our liver when you bog it down, but with alcohol. It can’t process your hormones, it can’t process the other toxins that we may not have control over. I tell people I was, there’s only so much stuff you have control over what you put in your body is number one?
What you eat, and what you drink, is the one thing you have full control over. So since we can’t control everything around us, at least control that. And, it’s very difficult for people because it is such a social norm.
For sure and people look at you differently. If you go out and you don’t want I’m I’ll go out and do, you don’t want some wine you don’t I’m no, I’m good. I’m not saying that I don’t drink, I will here and there but I also know how it affects me. And, I don’t tolerate alcohol. Well, my body doesn’t it took me yours to accept what, I just saw. I’m, Oh, it’s just I’m just hungover. No, you wasted an entire day.
And you didn’t feel good? That’s not normal. And then when it became two to three days of not feeling well, I was, okay we might need to, cut this down a little bit. But it’s all go haul is. So one of the things I struggle with getting my patients to have a lot of weight loss patients.
Okay. I tell people when you’re on a weight loss journey, alcohol is the biggest factor in not getting people to lose weight.
I don’t care if you drink once a week. When you drink that one set every weekend. I’m, if you do it every Saturday, you’re just going to play catch up.
And most of my patients don’t accept that. Until I see them every week, and the weeks that they have had, they’ve consumed alcohol over the weekend, they see that scale, either stay or go up. And then I’ll be okay, now, don’t drink and see what happens. And then they’ll see it going down. And I’m sure most people need to see what their results are. You need to see the results. But alcohol is. It’s it’s our it’s our legal drug.
Let’s talk about going back into the business and you guys starting and opening up Enhanced Body. And I always ask people about, What’s one thing? You failed that before and everyone has a different unique perspective on failure? What’s your perspective on failure when you hear that word?
Well, I think failure is only a learning curve. So obviously, in the business world, especially I come from a family of business. So my parents were restaurant owners completely different than then what I’m doing now. And I vowed I was never going to become a business owner because I grew up. It’s a lot of work? It’s 24/7 people, I got your day off, I go take I don’t have a day off. I think so to me, I don’t feel we’ve had any failures in our business. I feel we’ve had some great learning curves.
Definitely and we take these learning curves now. And obviously, we’ve learned from them. And we tried to help other people out there opening businesses up to say, hey, we went here I talked to a lot of nurse practitioners, and that made me want to venture out on their own.
I’m like, hey don’t do this, do this marketing, and how to market yourself, providers are not, for the most part. This is not where I thrive. this is why I thrive in front of my patients during an office visit I did not realize before opening how much marketing I had to do. Because I am not an insurance-based practice.
I don’t come up on people’s lists of stuff. So people need to know who I am. We spend a lot of time paying for different ads doing this doing that. And realizing shortly after that, really word of mouth and these types of interactions and people getting to know me, instead of just seeing a picture of me.
You don’t know me by the picture that, to me, these types, of podcasts and going to networking meetings and getting to know people, I wish we would have put more value into that from the beginning, instead of doing more of the ads and those things, because I feel people feel more they need to know you as a person as a provider.
You feel comfortable that you’re most people are in a vulnerable state when they come to see you Sure. So definitely learned from that. , and a lot spend a lot of time and money doing other things before learning that curve.
I think that’s part of it. Even if you come from a family of business owners, there’s there’s always learning curves, always obstacles, whatever you have to go through.
Yes, yes. It was then I got it. So I just also didn’t realize, even though I came from somebody that grew up in businesses, and knew that it was a 24/7 job, you really, I was still a teenager now owning my own business, I’m, oh my god, now I see why my parents laid awake all night, worrying about things, you have a good week you’re on a high, and then the next week, business is a little slow.
Then all those fears and insecurities come up and building, for, I wish I would have had maybe me and my husband are a really strong support system. But getting, and having other providers in my network. I didn’t start building that till after I opened up, okay, when I realized oh I need, a team behind me, that’s not here, I need those to have those people that I can reach out to and be my sounding board, when things aren’t going how I want it to go or when I have questions about stuff. So, a lot of times I tell people if you’re building your business, meet people in your area who do the same thing.
Stop being competitors and work together, there’s enough business to go around, for sure. There’s not another nurse practitioner or another provider out there that I view as a competitor of mine, there’s a lot of times patients come to my clinic, and I look at them and I go, what, this isn’t my wheelhouse but this NP or this doctor or they thrive hear, this is what they do, go see them. And, and I have other providers do the same for me. learn, you’re the people in your that do the same thing as you in your area and use them, lean on them. learn from their mistakes, learn from their success.
So I love that. And then going back to what you said about marketing and people getting to know you?
As a provider, I tell people, maybe different businesses. If you’re selling clothing, you’re selling a product, just let, those pictures do. But as a provider, as a health care provider, your you need to your personalities need to match, you need to trust me. so. If you come in and you don’t me, I let you as a person. You’re not going to open up to me, you’re not going to trust my opinion, and my education, the education that I’m giving you. So that was a huge wake-up call for me to sell myself. That’s terrible. It sounds terrible.
No, that’s, that’s great. Did you ever have a fear of failure? A fear of failing when you open the business?
I still do.
How do you get past that?
My husband and my support system. Honestly, now my family, I leaned to my family, and I’ll talk to my mom and my sister and be you have that hard day and you’re, Oh, my God, he was a little slower. And then I call them on me.
They’re what’s going on. And then take that and make it your drive, hey, you had a slow week or so days what can you do differently? Look at what happened the past week, what do you think you could have done more of where could you have improved or so?
But my husband usually is, he’ll look and he’s, Hey, babe look at how this month was, to get a perspective of getting outside of that. I mean, family, family is everything to us. So leaning on them is really how I tried to, get past it and switch it from feeling you’re failing to make it a motivator. . as to how to improve on what you thought you failed on.
So because we’re very self-critical and we’re hard on ourselves and in success is so hard to determine, what is success and what is different for everybody? Is it a monetary value, a lot of times if I had a slower day I got to help my husband. You help that person out and I did and he’s like Is that not what matters?
I’m yes, it is. It’s good to have just that constant reminder of what’s important in life. We didn’t go into this to make a lot of money No, we went into it to help people that was what started this from the beginning. So you help people, you meet your goal.
So for me, I remember going back even starting this podcast, there’ll be days where I just wasn’t feeling it. I’m man, should I cancel the podcast?
Or not do it even, two years in should I end the podcast? And you just, you’re, no, you gotta keep going Just keep showing up. And it’s usually those days that feel hard. And you just push through and show up. It’s that those are the magical days.
So about two weeks ago, I had just a terrible week, it was just, that everything that I felt was going sideways, went sideways. And there’s one thing my patient will probably tell you, if you ask most of them is that I’m pretty real.
How I’m talking here is how I talk in there. I don’t sugarcoat things. I’m pretty straightforward. I’m nice and empathetic, but, I feel that’s been part of the lack in the medical field. Everybody is worried about, hurting your feelings and leaving a bad Google review, or, suing you or whatnot.
So whenever I come into a room, most of my patients know me pretty well. And can normally tell when something’s going on. Listen, I’m a human being. I have family issues. My children make me mad most days things are going on I have other stressors besides work. And this week was especially hard. And I went in and my patient what’s going on?
And I’m, man and I just laid it out there. And, and they’re, well, you’re helping me and let, this patient start crying. She says you’ve made a difference in my life. And because I felt I maybe wasn’t doing enough for some people. And that was just, I just sat there and we cried. And I’m oh my God, I just needed that. So to me, just being real with people. And I’m getting that validation from the people that you’re helping also can kind of get you over that little hump.
I love that, just being more real. And it helps when you’ve, when you find your people to write show people that you. They’re going to be accepting of your failures and struggles.
I’m human. I’m not a robot, believe it, sometimes I mess up, that is a part of being a human, just, give my patients that I was.
Hey, you’re gonna mess up but I’m not perfect either. This is life. We’re growing and learning together. And especially in the medical field. I know, it’s science. But it is a monkey science. I tell people I was, we, as much as we learn about the human body, we find out that there is so much more that we don’t know about it. Sure. Sounds like anybody that tells you that they know everything.
They’re lying, big timeline so, but, its failure is it’s a fear of all of ours. You could either make it let it let it make you stronger and get you, or you can it can swallow you. I can crush you.
So where I feel we’re gonna we’re gonna record another podcast in the future. So where can people find you to learn more about you?
Okay, so the clinic’s name is Enhanced Body. We are located on Main Street. So 2196 Main Street Suite.
We have a website. It’s just www.enhancedbodyic.com. Our phone number there is 727-330-7769. So we also have Facebook and Instagram, you can go and look up all that stuff. But stop by anytime we do IVs as well.
So a lot of people will come in and get an IV and a lot of times around there and get to see me talk to me and kind of meet me before even making an appointment if that’s but all of our stuff is on our website anymore. And anybody’s more than welcome to call the office and get more information,
CONNECT WITH MAJLINDA:
- Website: www.enhancedbodyic.com
- Phone number: 727-330-7769
- Email: staff@enhancedbodyic.com
- Facebook: facebook.com/Enhancedbodyic
- Instagram: instagram.com/enhancedbodyic/
- Address: 2196 Main Street, Suite H Dunedin, FL 34698
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