"You can get past the dead end. You can break through the ceiling. I did and so have countless others."
In this episode, Justin talks with Claire, a family nurse practitioner ready to break out of traditional employment and launch her own functional medicine practice. Like most NPs considering the leap, Claire faces imposter syndrome and fears about starting a business from scratch. Together, they cut through the uncertainty and get real about what it takes to move from employee to business owner.
You’ll hear actionable advice on structuring a lean, cash-based practice, how to price and package services without overcomplicating your offer, whether insurance is worth the headache, and why you don’t need thousands of patients to build a profitable clinic. They cover how to leverage your current skills, keep overhead low, and use your 1099 income to fund your startup smartly. Justin calls out the most common limiting beliefs, offers practical steps to get started part-time, and explains the right time to scale or bring on extra help.
If you’re stuck in overwhelm, worried you’re not “ready,” or just want a blueprint for building your practice the right way, this episode lays out a clear, honest path forward.
Justin Allan Montgomery (00:00.908)
Okay, we are recording. Everyone today we’ll be talking to Claire who is a family nurse practitioner. Currently she is working at a functional medicine and primary care practice full time. She’s wanting to start a similar practice so she can do her own thing. She’s needing help with the startup process, how to transition from nurse practitioner to business owner and how to market this practice effectively. Hey Claire, how are you?
Claire Draudt (00:22.946)
I’m doing well. Thanks for having me.
Justin Allan Montgomery (00:24.91)
Yeah, for sure. Thanks for up on here on a Saturday morning. So, um, yeah, this is the beautiful thing about being a business owner. You just do whatever you want. So it’s Saturday morning and we’re recording a podcast. Yeah. So, uh, anyways, tell us a little bit about yourself where, uh, know, how long you’ve been a nurse practitioner for, what sorts of things you’ve been doing.
Claire Draudt (00:32.417)
That’s right.
Claire Draudt (00:41.014)
Yeah, so I’ve been a nurse practitioner for four or five years. I started in a bigger organization and did not enjoy it, but I got my basics there. I learned how to do IUDs and explodons and other skin biopsies, small procedures, was mentored by some.
physicians and then really just wanted to be out of my own and not be under the umbrella of you know bureaucracy and Kind of set protocols. I wanted to be able to practice medicine the way I wanted to practice and Functionally, I’ve been able to do that I think one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is because I’ve been listening to your podcast and and I understand how
the glass ceiling works when you’re working under somebody else. And I am definitely curious about how to get out from under that. And also, you know, it’s scary and it’s a risk. And I know that, you know, it’ll pay off, but just kind of wanted to talk through that a little bit more.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:46.638)
So you’ve been a British practitioner for how long? Four or five years, yeah. And you’ve been pretty much doing primary care stuff for the most part and some functional medicine now. Did you obtain some functional medicine training or is this kind of just learning on the job sort of stuff?
Claire Draudt (01:48.78)
four or five years.
Claire Draudt (01:54.976)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Claire Draudt (02:02.454)
A little bit of both, I have access to IFM, the Institute of Functional Medicine trainings, and I’ve done those and kind of learning on my own, listening to podcasts almost every day, nutrition, peptides, hormone replacement, yeah, just kind of trying to educate myself. And then I work with functional medicine providers, so they’ve been really generous in coaching me as well, which is great.
Justin Allan Montgomery (02:29.336)
Yeah, so you got a pretty solid background here then in terms of wanting to start a functional medicine practice or whatever you want to do. Yeah. So then you’re still working. You haven’t started yet. So what’s been, I guess what’s been your biggest hang up.
Claire Draudt (02:47.276)
Well, I think initially, you know, imposter syndrome, the idea of do I have what it takes to do my own thing? Will I have patients? Will I have a business? And I think that now I feel confident that I will just with the feedback I’ve had from my patients and the successes I’ve had. I think, yeah, there’s the overhead of wanting to open a space. I think it can start small and grow.
I think from that perspective, yeah, I’d love to talk more about that. yeah, and then what it takes from your perspective to have a successful private practice with my name on it, I guess.
Justin Allan Montgomery (03:31.96)
Yeah, so mostly just fear and imposter syndrome. That’s what it sounds like.
Claire Draudt (03:37.154)
Probably.
Justin Allan Montgomery (03:40.462)
I mean, I’d say that’s probably a pretty prevalent issue amongst most people who want to start a business, not just nurse practitioners, but a lot of people in general, you know? I mean, there’s a lot of people out there that, you know, they have some information, they know what they’re doing, you know, their skills, their knowledge are pretty valuable, but yet they still have this roadblock of thinking to themselves, I can’t do that, right?
In fact you can, anybody can. We live in the United States, you can do whatever you want. Within reason obviously, but you can start any business that you want. I’d say that, I my biggest piece of advice for you is just realize that you’re not the only one who has had imposter syndrome and every single business owner
starts from scratch, right? No one’s born a business owner, right? I mean, some people are born into families where, you know, daddy owns a business and teaches you some stuff, you know, while you’re in high school or whatever. It’s going to be the case with me and my boys, you know what mean? They’re going to grow up becoming a business owner at a very young age. I’m going to teach them these principles and stuff. But most people don’t have that privilege. I didn’t. Most people that I talk with didn’t. Most people who have started billion dollar businesses
Started from nothing at all. So Everyone is a newbie when they start a business. Everyone has their first business, right? Everyone does Unless you just inherit a business from someone but like but most people they have to start their own business so like you are not alone in this whatsoever everyone has gone through this process and what separates the People from that don’t do it and the ones that do it are the ones that do it just they literally just do it I mean, I don’t know what other way to explain
Like you just you just have to take a risk and take a gamble on yourself because At the end of the day, who do you trust more than yourself? Really? You know what I mean? I mean if anyone can do anything it’s you, you know So you just have to basically just empower yourself to say, you know, I’m okay What’s the worst that’s gonna happen here? Like always ask yourself that question. Like really what’s the worst that’s gonna happen here, right? The worst that’s gonna happen
Claire Draudt (05:43.074)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (05:59.042)
Thank
Justin Allan Montgomery (06:01.072)
is that you start a business, you put some money and time into it, maybe you put $10,000 into it or $20,000. It’s a lot of money. It’s not the end of the world if you lose it though, right? And the worst case scenario is the business fails and you have to close shop and you go back to work making six figures. Like that’s really not that bad of a deal. mean.
Claire Draudt (06:09.6)
Okay.
Claire Draudt (06:18.071)
Yeah.
Yeah.
That’s true.
Justin Allan Montgomery (06:25.462)
Yeah, so I would say just realize those things. If you realize that, then it’s really not a big deal. And you just said yourself that…
you have patients that love you and that want to see you. So if you own your own practice, it’s gonna be the same thing and it’s gonna be even better because they’re your patients and it’s your business. You’re actually gonna go probably even an extra mile. So patients will really, really love you. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
Claire Draudt (06:51.298)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (06:56.45)
Okay. The other thing and piece that I work through is like, right now I don’t do any of the billing. I mean, I submit my codes or whatever, but I’m not submitting them to insurance directly. And I think that’s the piece that I’m nervous about because I’ve never done it. And I also don’t know how I would feasibly have time for that. Plus seeing the number of patients that I’d want to see. So I think.
Yeah, maybe I just need to learn how to do that and see if it’s something I can add in and if you have experience with that, that’d be helpful. Or at what point do you hire someone and how do you, like, do they have to work full time? Do they have to work the hours that you work or do you just pay them like eight hours a week and that’s enough? You know, trying to find that balance of how to…
Justin Allan Montgomery (07:45.816)
Okay, so let’s tackle those two things first. Number one, let’s talk about billing, right? So a critical component of starting a practice is, like before you even start it, like when you’re creating the just idea of it, that idea is, number one is, are you gonna accept insurance or are you going to do cash? So like, where’s your mind going?
Claire Draudt (08:12.896)
I think with the population that I work with right now, having insurance would be beneficial. I think that there’s definitely room for cash pay in the future. And ideally I have, I mean, my dream is to have my practice be a part of a business, but not the only piece of the business. And that by that I mean having like,
maybe a form of like a sauna soaking situation going on outside of and my practice being a part of that. And so and then eventually hiring on other 1099s and kind of recreating what I’m doing right now for somebody else. go ahead.
Justin Allan Montgomery (08:57.39)
Don’t be thinking that far in advance right now, okay? Like hiring providers and stuff, you are not anywhere even close to even be considering that. I’m glad that you’re thinking about it, but I would leave it at that. Leave it at a thought. That’s literally all it is. Jot it down. You will be dealing with that problem a year from now, okay? Maybe two, who knows, okay?
Claire Draudt (09:07.978)
Okay. Yeah.
Claire Draudt (09:18.018)
Right.
Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (09:21.908)
So I wouldn’t worry about that quite yet, but in terms of the insurance cash thing, that’s something you do need to worry about, right? So you said that with the population of patients that you see, you feel like you would have to take insurance, why?
Claire Draudt (09:28.374)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (09:38.72)
I mean that’s just how it is now, I guess. That’s kind of it.
Justin Allan Montgomery (09:45.422)
Okay, yeah, so many of us are brainwashed in this idea that you have to accept insurance, right? And then many of us, when we get out of NP school, we get jobs where we bill insurance, right? And so it’s all you know, like you don’t know anything else, right? You only know what you know. And so I had the same issue as well when I first started, the first practice I ever started, I did accept insurance.
Claire Draudt (10:13.173)
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (10:13.198)
and I got rid of that headache within six months. I was sick and tired of it. Because when it’s your business, you care about…
Claire Draudt (10:16.297)
Okay.
Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (10:23.596)
getting the collections, getting the billings, charting appropriately, all that kind of stuff. And when it’s your business, you will realize how much the insurance companies will try to fuck you over, okay? And so you’ll realize that very, very quickly, because now it’s your money. It’s not the business you’re working for money, right? Now you have to go chase those $80, that $100, and stuff like that. You’re spending an enormous amount of time
Claire Draudt (10:35.222)
Okay.
Claire Draudt (10:43.212)
Right. Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (10:51.85)
Trying to argue with an insurance company that you should you know that that this visit justifies a level four visit And it pays out 120 dollars or whatever and now you’re spending an hour on the phone Submitting paperwork doing all this bullshit to get 120 dollars, right? And now you’ve just spent two or three hours chasing 120 dollars. Okay, it’s not worth your time. It’s just not so
Claire Draudt (10:58.945)
Mm-hmm.
Claire Draudt (11:10.626)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (11:15.521)
No.
and health.
Justin Allan Montgomery (11:21.034)
I guess the only reason I would foresee that you have to accept insurance is if you’re providing a service that is predominantly insurance-based. Now, primary care in general is usually more of an insurance-based kind of a thing, right? There’s very few cash-based primary care practices. If they are, they’re typically more like the DPC model, okay?
Claire Draudt (11:44.448)
Thank you.
Justin Allan Montgomery (11:51.286)
where they charge a monthly fee and you pay cash for it and then that’s it. Those are usually the primary care practices that can get away with it. Strictly fee for service usually doesn’t work very well for primary care, right? And then other specialty stuff. You are not opening up a cash only cardiology practice. It’s not gonna happen.
Claire Draudt (11:55.926)
Ready.
Claire Draudt (12:10.914)
party.
Justin Allan Montgomery (12:12.076)
Right? Or a cash only, you know, orthopedic office. Like, it’s probably not going to happen. Okay? Now, functional medicine and wellness services and these kinds of things, you can get away with cash. Alright? Now, unless you live in just an absolutely, just absolute impoverished area where everyone lives in tents and trailers and nobody has money whatsoever,
then the cash practice should work, okay? I mean, I’ve even seen cash practices work in the poorest areas. I mean, my first men’s health clinic was in one of the poorest counties in the country, and it worked, okay? There’s always people with money. I don’t care where you’re at in this country. There’s always someone, okay? Always. So,
Claire Draudt (12:53.666)
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (13:04.062)
And even if there isn’t a whole lot of people with money, there’s still people who are middle, upper middle class who can afford $70 a month. Okay? So, in my opinion, I really would try to avoid insurance if you can. It adds another layer of complexity to your business that will just, it will do nothing but give you headaches. Okay?
Claire Draudt (13:13.249)
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (13:28.754)
And you are seeing functional medicine patients. These are complex patients. These aren’t 15 minute visits, right? These are hour, two hour long visits. You build level four, level five, I’m sure for most of these visits, right?
You are still not getting paid what you really should command here. you’re, yeah, yeah, yeah, you are not getting compensated for the amount of work you’re putting into this, right? Even if you build a level five business and get $200 for it, that takes you an hour and a half. You are s-
Claire Draudt (13:49.666)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (13:54.977)
No.
Claire Draudt (14:02.37)
plus I’m working for somebody else, so what I’m being reimbursed for. I, as a 1099, I get paid for how many I see in a week or every two weeks. And they’re taking 46 % off the top of what’s being reimbursed from insurance. So it’s significant. I know that.
Justin Allan Montgomery (14:23.81)
Yeah, how much how much I mean if you don’t mind how much do you make rough?
Claire Draudt (14:29.186)
Probably 160, 175, which is good. I’m happy with that, I think the entrepreneur in me wants to just see, like, I’ve done this, this was a big leap for me to get from a corporate organization who really was not building me up as an MP, like they don’t value MPs.
Justin Allan Montgomery (14:32.397)
Okay, if it was your
Claire Draudt (14:51.906)
to jump off into something that felt pretty risky at the time and it’s gone well and I think that I want to be grateful for that and I don’t want to rock the boat too soon and I’m happy with where I’m at but I’m just curious what else it could look like and my boss, so to speak, did the same thing at some point and jumped off and created what I’m working for now and so it’s kind of like, well, if he did that…
Justin Allan Montgomery (15:22.222)
I can’t hear you.
Claire Draudt (15:22.23)
What would it? Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (15:25.388)
Yeah, so just imagine if it was your business, you’d be making $300 to $350 a year.
Claire Draudt (15:32.706)
just off of me. Oh, sorry. I’m thinking about, yeah, yeah, right.
Justin Allan Montgomery (15:34.52)
Correct, just off, yeah, just off, now obviously you have some expenses, right? So I mean, you have to pay for an office space, et cetera, but you still be making more than you’re making. You’d probably be making closer to $250,000, right? So, because I mean, your margin on this should be pretty high. You you should have a margin of probably 60, 70 % with a practice like this, because it’s predominantly service-based. It just really requires your time. So you shouldn’t have a whole lot of expenses.
So yeah, so yeah, just realize that, you know, I mean, you could accept insurance if you want to. An insurance-based practice will typically make more money than a cash-based practice under certain circumstances. Now, with an insurance-based practice and you are a solo provider, okay, you are going to cap out.
You can only see so many patients, right? You only have so many hours in a day. So you will reach a ceiling as a solo provider in an insurance-based practice. You will never ever be able to get past that ceiling accepting insurance. You’re just not going to, okay? Scale it by having another provider, right? That’s how you scale an insurance-based practice.
Claire Draudt (16:36.652)
Right.
Claire Draudt (16:45.346)
Bye.
Yep.
Justin Allan Montgomery (16:53.58)
But you can scale an insurance based practice quickly because people want to use their insurance. And you’re okay with adding those complexities. Insurance billing, more employees, more bullshit. Okay, so if you go cash, you can scale that to whatever you want.
Claire Draudt (16:57.973)
and grow.
Claire Draudt (17:08.296)
Right.
Justin Allan Montgomery (17:16.874)
especially as a solo provider, as a cash-based practice. I know cash-based practices with one provider that does a million dollars a year. I know practices that do that. You’re not making a million dollars a year. Yeah.
Claire Draudt (17:27.394)
And what do they do? Are they primary care or are those practices?
Justin Allan Montgomery (17:32.502)
Mostly wellness, wellness service stuff, subscription based stuff, hormone replacement therapy, peptides, functional medicine, know, stuff that scales, stuff that grows. So, you know, they do a million dollars a year in their solo provider, okay? If they accepted insurance, they would cap that at $300,000 a year. They would not make any more. You can add some things in there, sure, maybe get it up to four or 500, but that’s it. That’s all you’re ever gonna do.
Claire Draudt (17:36.001)
Okay.
Claire Draudt (17:41.858)
Great.
Claire Draudt (17:57.974)
Right.
Justin Allan Montgomery (18:00.69)
So if you want to scale this thing and avoid headaches, I would maybe try cash and think more about the DPC kind of model, okay, versus fee-for-service. Now cash-based functional medicine practices, they will operate under three models, pretty much. Model number one is fee-for-service.
I see you it’s 200 bucks
Claire Draudt (18:31.382)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Allan Montgomery (18:31.598)
I see you again for follow ups, it’s $100, whatever. It is a strict fee for service, that kind of thing, right? Number two is a subscription based kind of thing, a DPC, concierge care sort of a thing. You bill $99 a month and the patient can see you however many times they want. You can cap that though, because I’m sure there are some weirdos out there who have anxiety problems and stuff that want to see you all the time. So you can add stipulations.
Claire Draudt (18:50.325)
Great time.
Justin Allan Montgomery (19:01.552)
to that you know what I mean one visit a month for your functional medicine needs and then any and then an unlimited amount for acute urgent needs via telemedicine oh I got sore throat okay well shoot me a call what each synergy you got oh you expose the strap you got sore throat okay something you got strap I’ll send a z-pack in whatever right takes you five minutes it’s five minute phone call right okay there’s that model and then there’s the model where
Claire Draudt (19:12.726)
Mm-hmm.
Claire Draudt (19:16.46)
Yeah. Yeah.
Claire Draudt (19:22.742)
Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (19:29.518)
It is an upfront fee to become a member and that member, you know, you’re a member for anywhere between three months, six months, 12 months, and within that are unlimited visits, these vitamins, an IV infusion, maybe compound hormones, however you want to structure it, okay? And that’s gonna be upfront, like…
Claire Draudt (19:33.826)
huh.
Justin Allan Montgomery (19:53.774)
for a year it’s 10 grand, you know what mean? For three months it’s $4,000, for six months it’s $7,000, whatever, okay? And then there’s that model. So those are the three models, okay? So it’s really up to you on which one you wanna pursue. A lot of functional medicine practices that I’ve talked with,
Claire Draudt (20:00.802)
interesting.
Justin Allan Montgomery (20:13.314)
Most of them do just the fee for service kind of a thing. That’s what most of them do. But again, it’s hard to scale that as a single provider, because it’s still tied to your time. So you want to create a business that scales, that isn’t tied to your time. That’s how you build a scalable business that has infinite runway to it.
Claire Draudt (20:16.502)
Mm-hmm.
Claire Draudt (20:27.778)
Great.
Claire Draudt (20:35.391)
and yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (20:42.254)
and the way you do that are the last two. That’s how you would scale it as a single provider, okay? Because the DPC route, a lot of people aren’t gonna take advantage of it. They’re gonna pay for it, and you’ll see them every three or four months, right?
Claire Draudt (20:45.058)
So, okay.
Claire Draudt (20:57.25)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Allan Montgomery (20:58.348)
Some people will be a pain in your ass. That’s just gonna be part of it. But for the most part, most people will not fully take advantage of that membership. Okay? And you can just keep taking patients on. You can keep taking them on. can keep bringing them on, et cetera. And then once you hit a point where, shit, someone’s calling me and they want to make an appointment and I’m booked out for three weeks. Now they’re pissed. Now they’re canceling their membership. Okay. Yeah. Now it’s time to bring another provider on, right? Same thing with the other
Claire Draudt (21:06.782)
Okay.
Claire Draudt (21:22.594)
you can take a break from later.
Justin Allan Montgomery (21:28.272)
model as well. Okay so you can do a hybrid of those two models as well if you want to. Okay do DPC or you can do you know we also have these packages. This package includes this mini visits over a period of three months. It also includes your hormone replacement therapy and also includes these vitamins. You create different models a platinum, a gold, a bronze, a silver, whatever you know I mean. So you can really play with it and be creative.
Claire Draudt (21:30.274)
Bye.
Claire Draudt (21:35.734)
Mm-hmm.
Claire Draudt (21:56.588)
So with the compounding hormone medications, I’m guessing that’s something that you do with men’s health or the right is not.
Justin Allan Montgomery (22:05.772)
Yeah, you’re gonna wanna use compound and meds as much as you possibly can. It’s just the markup on it’s so much better.
Claire Draudt (22:11.914)
And so would you order those in bulk from the compounding pharmacy of your choice and just have them? Or how would you like offer that as part of a package? What you need. Right. Got it.
Justin Allan Montgomery (22:22.028)
Yeah, yeah, I would only order certain things in bulk that I know the majority of patients are going to get, right?
Methylcobalamin everyone gets a b12 shot. So I’m gonna order a shift to the b12 shots, right? Like at my men’s health clinic We order 30 ml bottles of testosterone because well, that’s what we provide, right? I mean You know a nestra Zal and to dalafil and sildenafil like these are things that we know Most right. Most of our patients are gonna be taken. So we order that stuff in bulk, but like certain peptides We don’t order that bulk right growth hormone
Claire Draudt (22:34.006)
Amen.
Claire Draudt (22:41.474)
Right.
Claire Draudt (22:50.614)
know yourself.
Claire Draudt (22:59.681)
Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (23:00.976)
or that in bulk, you know. So for your hormones though, for the most part, you will just be sending a script to the compounding pharmacy and get shipped their house, okay? So yeah, so you really…
Claire Draudt (23:02.58)
and.
Claire Draudt (23:10.57)
Okay, and you take that on as a business, like that cost is, like what you’re saying is that if you do packages where you’re saying this includes X amount of visits plus compounding medications, you’re paying for that as a business owner and then just shipping it to them. don’t ever see, the patient doesn’t ever see the cost of that, okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (23:30.83)
They never see the bill, correct? So they have no idea that bottle of testosterone only costs you $15. They have no clue, okay? They don’t need to know. It’s none of their business. They’re paying for the service. They’re paying for the whole thing, right? So yeah, so you have to figure out your costs when you create these packages. So as an example, if you wanna create a package both for functional medicine for men, functional medicine for women, then create different packages within them.
Claire Draudt (23:38.146)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Justin Allan Montgomery (23:59.086)
You know, then you basically are like, okay, well the base package is, you know, you’re gonna get your testosterone replacement therapy or your compounded three hormone cream of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone or whatever. You get those costs from the compounding pharmacy and you gotta make sure that you’re accounting for those costs within the price. Okay, so you’re striving for a profit margin of all of this, okay? If you create packages, if you go that route, you’re striving for a profit margin of 50 % at least.
Claire Draudt (24:15.798)
Right.
Claire Draudt (24:27.99)
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (24:28.27)
Okay, that’s what you’re gonna be striving for. So if you create a package for six months and you charge, I don’t know, let’s just call it $4,000 for that package, right? You better make sure 2,000 of that’s profit, okay? At least, and it probably is gonna be more than that, to be honest with you, right? These compound hormones don’t really cost that much. I mean, you know, overall, when you’re doing like a…
Claire Draudt (24:30.634)
Mm-hmm.
Claire Draudt (24:34.988)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (24:44.904)
Mm-hmm. Okay.
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (24:57.07)
package of stuff with peptides and hormones and things like that usually only cost you $50 a month in cost and you’re charging $150 a month or whatever. Okay, So yeah, just kind of keep that in mind So those are really the three routes that you need to be considering If you want to avoid insurance if you’re gonna go the insurance route You better start the credentialing process right now because it’s gonna take six months to have it complete So your business will be up and running for six months probably
Claire Draudt (25:21.623)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (25:25.216)
Okay, I mean it’s yeah, it’s desirable to not do insurance, but it’s also a little bit risky, but not, I mean I hear what you’re saying, that there are people that will pay for this and there are people that want to have a service that is offering them the simplicity of not going through insurance too, because at the end of the day, premiums are going up next year. People are already frustrated with their insurance, so.
Justin Allan Montgomery (25:26.862)
If you go cash, you can open up next month.
Claire Draudt (25:54.388)
Yeah, it’s up to them if they want to.
Justin Allan Montgomery (25:55.406)
Yeah. Yeah, I pay $1,800 a month. I’m self employed. right. $1,800 a month for four people with a deductible of $12,500. I’m like, what the fuck am I even paying for? Like, you know, it’s just in case I get into a car wreck. Yeah. Right.
Claire Draudt (26:00.77)
It’s crazy.
Claire Draudt (26:08.162)
That’s crazy. Right.
Claire Draudt (26:14.422)
Yeah, right, if you have to go, they were in the room. Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (26:18.194)
I get cancer or something, you know, like that’s what I’m paying for is the what if that might not happen 30 more years, you know what I mean? So it’s like, yeah, it’s a total ripoff. So yeah, it is. So and another thing to consider here as well is that if you do a cash based practice like this, you’re not competing against your employer. Your employer takes insurance.
Claire Draudt (26:22.114)
Okay, right.
Claire Draudt (26:28.898)
It is.
Claire Draudt (26:41.558)
Mm-hmm. That’s true.
Justin Allan Montgomery (26:41.582)
So stepping on, yeah, so you’re really not stepping on toes here. It’s a completely different kind of business model, right? Yeah. So, you know, if you want to do…
Claire Draudt (26:45.472)
Right. That’s a good point.
I guess my other, sorry, my other thought there is like, that’s a lot to manage in terms of ordering, seeing the, I mean, it’s totally plausible. I think it would just have to be like a population size limit, you know, of like managing people’s packages for compounding plus seeing them as a functional patient. I’m just thinking about having somebody else do the ordering for me, you know, setting up the, cause that takes time.
Justin Allan Montgomery (27:20.75)
Listen, it doesn’t take that much time, okay? Someone’s paying you for a package, right? They pay you for three months. As soon as the visit’s done, you go to the Compounding Pharmacy website, click, click, sign, and they get the whole three months in the mail. That’s it, you’re on time, that’s it. Then you’re done. It take much work. It’s gonna take work when they refill, but when they refill, they’re paying you again for another three months.
Claire Draudt (27:20.958)
Okay.
Claire Draudt (27:32.844)
He’s headed out. That’s true.
Claire Draudt (27:38.198)
Right, that’s true. Yeah.
Okay. Right.
Justin Allan Montgomery (27:49.986)
So it’s easy. You follow up with them. You should make that part of your visit flow. You know what mean? You could do that yourself for a while. And you know, the thing is too, is that these patients are gonna be paying you a premium, you know? And so you can take your time and you don’t need that many patients to have a pretty profitable practice, right? So like, let’s just say as an example.
Claire Draudt (27:50.081)
Right.
Claire Draudt (27:54.21)
Mm.
Claire Draudt (28:04.098)
Mm-hmm.
Claire Draudt (28:13.314)
sure.
Justin Allan Montgomery (28:17.23)
you know, with a general functional medicine patient or some kind of wellness integrative pay patient, you know, you’re going to be making anywhere between $1,500 to $5,000 a year off of each patient, right?
Claire Draudt (28:35.074)
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (28:36.334)
And that’s about probably what you’re gonna give or take depending on what kind of packages you create, what you’re offering, et cetera. So you do the math there, right? I mean, 100 patients at an average yearly value, I mean, it’s $150, $200, $300,000 and 100 patients. How difficult is it to manage 100 patients by yourself? Ain’t that hard, right?
Claire Draudt (28:49.772)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (29:04.002)
Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (29:06.348)
So yeah, like try to, yeah, I’m just, this is just the reality of it. It’s really not as hard as you think.
Claire Draudt (29:11.574)
Great. Okay, well that’s reassuring. I another question. Shoot.
Justin Allan Montgomery (29:20.718)
Alright, well another thing think about then while you’re thinking about that question is that, um, think about a high level of service here. So, you can have the cheap monthly whatever, okay? That is a concierge based functional medicine practice or integrative medicine, whatever you want to call it, okay? You have this cheap base that’s $100 a month or whatever. That’s basically visits.
maybe give them some B12 shots, know, give them something cheap, right? You have that, that’s gonna get just revenue in the door, all right? Those are very low value patients though. Those are the patients that you really don’t wanna focus on, cause you have to have a little.
Claire Draudt (29:54.386)
no.
Claire Draudt (30:00.374)
more.
Claire Draudt (30:06.41)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Justin Allan Montgomery (30:10.062)
to make a lot of money, right? A lot of okay? If you’re charging $100 a month, it’s gonna take a thousand patients to get to $100,000. I mean, like, you know what I mean? Like, yeah. So, wait a second here. Let’s see the math here. I’m gonna just do some math here just real quick. So.
Claire Draudt (30:20.652)
Right? Right? Yeah.
Claire Draudt (30:28.8)
No.
Claire Draudt (30:42.754)
All right.
Justin Allan Montgomery (30:43.758)
Okay, so like I said, if you have 100 patients, it’s $1,000, $100 a month at 1,000 patients, it’s $100,000, right? Now, start doing the math, on what if you have higher value patients where they’re giving you $3,000 a month, or $3,000 a year, rather, okay? Now,
Claire Draudt (30:51.746)
Okay.
Claire Draudt (31:00.482)
you
Justin Allan Montgomery (31:08.75)
to generate the $100,000, right? You literally only need 33 patients.
Claire Draudt (31:20.044)
Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (31:20.468)
You don’t need very many to generate the exact same amount of revenue with less headaches. So just be thinking about that. Think about a little bit more higher value stuff and you just need less patience to make the exact same amount of money and a hell of a lot less work.
Claire Draudt (31:23.884)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Claire Draudt (31:37.698)
Sounds really nice because like right now I have I don’t even know how many people I have on my panel, but probably a couple thousand and I’m responding to email. We don’t have support staff. So I’m responding to emails of those patients that are super anxious or whatever it is strep throat and I’m seeing about 30 to 40 patients every week. So I’m doing a lot. Like I work. I see patients three or four days a week depending and most of the
probably 60 % are telehealth. But then I’m responding to patients on email or catching up on charts or getting insurance stuff or imaging stuff every day. I work every day.
Justin Allan Montgomery (32:19.052)
Right. So out of the two, let’s just say you have 2000 patients on your panel, you know, give or take or whatever, 2000 patients. If 10 % of those people decided to follow you and pay you cash, okay, immediately you already have 200 patients, okay.
That’s just 10%, all right? We can even drop that down even more. We call it maybe just 5%, okay? So if 5 % of those people decide to follow you because they like you and they’re willing to pay you cash, and the value of those people, let’s just call it, $2,000 over an entire year, right?
So 5 % is 100 people, right? And let’s just say that the value is $2,000, $3,000. I mean, you do the math there. You’re already making just as much money as you’re making right now, working your ass off every single day, and you have 100 patients to manage. How much time does that take you? One day a week? One day a week?
Claire Draudt (33:19.436)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (33:23.168)
Yeah, not much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds pretty good.
Justin Allan Montgomery (33:30.412)
Yeah, at my men’s health clinic, I have never seen patients more than one day a week, ever. Never. I’ve never seen patients more than that, ever. Not once. Yeah.
Claire Draudt (33:35.232)
Really?
Well, NRU, do you have other practitioners or is it just you?
Justin Allan Montgomery (33:42.99)
Well, mean, I a lot of practitioners now. Yeah, but even like for the first two years when it was just me, I still only ever saw patients on Fridays. And it was usually in the afternoon from 12 to five. That’s it. That’s literally it. I’d work five hours a week seeing patients. Now, I had another five hours to do to do it for the patients. I had a medical assistant that did a lot of the work for me, the busy stuff or whatever, you know what I mean? But I would work five hours a week.
Claire Draudt (33:56.098)
Okay.
Claire Draudt (34:04.834)
Right.
Justin Allan Montgomery (34:12.494)
And within two years, I was making just as much money as I was working full-time out in urgent care.
Claire Draudt (34:21.154)
Did you work at urgent care while you were seeing the patients? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, the consideration is like that. What point do I kind of split time maybe and still do the primary care thing or do I just full send into cash pay and cross my fingers?
Justin Allan Montgomery (34:23.522)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was still working full time. Right.
Justin Allan Montgomery (34:41.164)
Yeah, that’s a difficult question to answer. It’s a difficult decision to make because you have, you know, you have this buffer, you have this safety net of this salary that you need to live off of, right? So you never ever want to just quit your job and start a business. You never want to do that. So, you know, you look at this business as something that’s extremely part time at first. Okay.
Claire Draudt (34:53.9)
All right.
Claire Draudt (35:09.09)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Allan Montgomery (35:11.262)
and you continue to work full time and then you focus on your business one day a week, that’s literally it, okay? So it could be on Fridays or Saturdays or whatever. I you’re gonna be a busy girl for a year or two, okay? That’s part of the sacrifice if you wanna avoid debt. You know what I mean? And you wanna avoid debt, don’t take up business. I think business debt’s the dumbest fucking thing you can ever do. The interest rates are ridiculous.
and there’s no guarantee on it. You know, when you take a mortgage out on your house, the house is still worth what you bought it for, right? Take it a $100,000 business loan, that business can take and you’re still on the hook for that $100,000, right? And the interest rates are like 10%. It’s something stupid. yeah, the way to do this is you just continue doing your job.
Claire Draudt (35:45.964)
Mm-hmm.
Claire Draudt (35:52.64)
That’s true.
Justin Allan Montgomery (36:03.402)
start this and do it on Fridays or Saturdays or whatever day you have off, patients will see you on the day that you schedule them, okay? You don’t have to be available all the time for these people. You just don’t, you don’t have to, okay? At first, and then once the business is generating approximately 30 to 50 % of what your salary is, that’s when you tell your job, hey, I wanna go part time, right?
Claire Draudt (36:13.718)
Yep. Yep.
Claire Draudt (36:28.565)
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (36:29.614)
Now, like, you’re not taking any kind of financial risk here. Now your business is compensating you for part-time, you know, for half the work that you’re doing this other job. You know, getting a practice like this to $80,000 a year in profit is really not that hard. It’s not a difficult thing to do. You should be able to hit that in the first year, okay?
Claire Draudt (36:36.599)
Right.
Claire Draudt (36:39.97)
Mm-hmm.
Claire Draudt (36:48.277)
Okay.
Claire Draudt (36:51.595)
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (36:52.938)
And then once the business is to a point where it’s getting close to what you make in the part-time job and now you’re sacrificing your business because you’re having to spend time over here in this job, that’s when you call it quits because the business is what’s gonna make you wealthy. The business is what’s gonna give you your freedom. That job never will. So stop focusing on it and go in on your business. It’s an anxious moment in your life.
Claire Draudt (37:05.995)
No.
Claire Draudt (37:18.05)
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (37:21.75)
It is difficult. It’s a difficult thing to do. But once you do it, three months after that, you will look back and be like, I should have quit that damn job a year ago. What the hell was I thinking? Like, I’ve never heard anyone say they regret leaving their job. I’ve never. The only regret that I hear is that I should have left my job earlier. That’s the regret I hear. Yeah. So that’s how I would structure it.
Claire Draudt (37:33.362)
Thank
Claire Draudt (37:41.089)
Mm-hmm.
Claire Draudt (37:50.178)
Okay, I like that. Yeah, I think I also like having just some things in a clinic space and it doesn’t have to be a big clinic, I think, to start, just maybe like a room rented in a building or something. And then maybe having some extras, like if it’s the B12 shots or something just to like give to my patient while they’re there.
Justin Allan Montgomery (37:52.206)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (38:14.338)
to kind of start that relationship and then grow from there in terms of hormone packages or peptides.
Justin Allan Montgomery (38:20.75)
That’s exactly what you do. You start very, very small. But when you go, when you start it though, you have those packages. You have it all set up and ready to go. Okay. Don’t start that later down the road. Start it right from the get go. You know, you know how to do HRT. You know how to do peptides. You know how to do functional medicine. Why not offer all that at the exact same time? It’s stupid not to. Okay.
Claire Draudt (38:28.61)
Okay, bye.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Claire Draudt (38:42.348)
Great.
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (38:45.826)
But yes, a very small office, that’s 500 to $1,000 a month, something cheap, you know? Yeah, so that’s kind of the way you do it, you just ease into it. Yeah, but how much, yeah.
Claire Draudt (38:56.108)
Great.
Claire Draudt (38:59.992)
I remember the question. Do you use Quest or do you do your own, how do you do labs?
Justin Allan Montgomery (39:07.15)
do it or whatever way you want. Most these people will probably have insurance, so I usually will let them use their insurance for the lab work because it prices in more people who can pay you cash for the services. If they pay cash for the labs, then they might not have enough to actually pay for the service. You don’t make money off labs, you make money off the service. So yeah, you can just use any lab you want. Here’s your lab order, go.
Claire Draudt (39:09.794)
Bye.
Claire Draudt (39:21.855)
Mm, I know.
Claire Draudt (39:26.178)
Right. Yeah. Right. Okay.
Claire Draudt (39:34.336)
Hmm. Yep. Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (39:35.854)
and then the insurance and then the lab deals with the insurance. you don’t have to worry about it. You just give an order form, you put some ICD codes on it, et cetera. But you should also have a cash option though that you can do in-house. So you can just create an account with like Access Medical Labs and they will send you all the, you know, all
Claire Draudt (39:49.877)
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (39:53.166)
and the tubes and the shipping labels and stuff like that. You can just draw it right there in your office, drop it off at UPS on your way home, call it a day, and you get the results in 48 hours, okay? So when you create that Access Medical Labs account, just say you’re with the lead MP so you can get some discount pricing on it, okay? But yeah, it’s a pretty straightforward process. Have you taken any of our courses before?
you never have, I would highly advise taking at least just one of them because it’s going to talk to you about how to start the business. Okay. So like if you know, you, you know about functional medicine. So, I mean, you can take our foundational functional medicine course. You might learn some stuff, but the last section of it is talking about how to start the business. Okay. Or you can take one of our HRT courses or whatever.
Claire Draudt (40:19.542)
No.
Claire Draudt (40:23.467)
Okay.
Okay.
Claire Draudt (40:39.733)
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (40:44.814)
and just make sure you take one of our courses that talks about the business components of it, because it will walk you through the process on the compounding pharmacies and lab work and getting an LLC and doing all this other stuff. Okay, so it’s worth the $400 or whatever it is, okay? Like it literally give you a blueprint. I’m not trying to sell you one. I’m literally just give you a blueprint on what you need to know, okay? And then a question for you though. This is just something I thought about. So you are a 1099 employee?
Claire Draudt (40:44.823)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (40:55.564)
Great. Really helpful.
Claire Draudt (41:02.656)
Right.
Claire Draudt (41:12.204)
Right.
Justin Allan Montgomery (41:13.998)
Do you have an LLC that it pays?
Claire Draudt (41:17.01)
I have an LLC and that’s been something that I haven’t quite set up yet. That’s my 2026.
Justin Allan Montgomery (41:24.366)
Okay, so the 1099 is paying you directly? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Claire Draudt (41:27.778)
Perfect.
Claire Draudt (41:32.982)
Tell me more.
Claire Draudt (41:40.812)
Bye.
Claire Draudt (41:45.396)
I have one.
Claire Draudt (41:52.727)
No.
Justin Allan Montgomery (41:53.55)
Okay, go to a bank and get the bank account opened up. That’s literally all you have to do. That’s it. Now you have an LLC and a bank account, okay? Go to your employer and say, I don’t want to be paid anymore. I want my LLC to be paid.
Claire Draudt (41:59.584)
Okay.
Claire Draudt (42:06.06)
Pay me this.
Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (42:09.326)
They’re gonna say, okay, it’s whatever to them. They don’t care. It’s filling out one form. It’s nothing. Now you have all the money that you’re making going into an LLC account. All that money is tax free right now. It’s sitting in a bank account under your LLC. It is free from taxes. You then use that money to start your practice. Everything that you do through that LLC to start this practice is 100 % write off.
Claire Draudt (42:12.61)
Thank
Claire Draudt (42:36.802)
Great.
Justin Allan Montgomery (42:37.666)
That’s what you need to be doing, all right?
Like, you need to be tax efficient here. It’ll save you 30, 40%. I mean, it’s gonna save you significant amount of money. If it’s just paying you, then you transfer money to the bank, you know, to an LLC and stuff, then there’s a bunch of other stupid laws with writing off business expenses that you have to deal with. Don’t deal with that. Just have your LLC paid and then just start the business and start writing that shit off. Your rent, the furniture, a computer, all of it, okay? It’s a business expense now. It’s 100 % write-off. Start this business.
Claire Draudt (43:05.398)
Okay. Yeah. Okay. Wait, so what you said in the, so that stuff is a write off to start the business using the LLC money, but then I also should pay myself still, right?
Justin Allan Montgomery (43:09.358)
Okay, so.
Justin Allan Montgomery (43:19.884)
Well yeah, you still need money live off of, right? Yeah, so just take out whatever you need to live off of. Leave as much as you can in that bank account so you can operate your business with it. Okay, so you might need to go little lean for a little while, okay? Be a little bit more frugal with your money, be a little leaner. That’s just part of the process.
Claire Draudt (43:21.993)
Alright.
Claire Draudt (43:25.846)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Allan Montgomery (43:42.976)
And then once your business starts making money, the money will then start coming in that LLC. And now you don’t have to really worry too much about it. Now it’s paying for itself, right? But continue to have your 1099 job pay that LLC still. Keep doing that.
Claire Draudt (43:51.426)
Okay.
Yeah, okay, perfect. And then this is more of an aesthetic question, but like a branding thing. Does the LLC and the business have to match in name?
Justin Allan Montgomery (44:06.83)
In most states, no. You just do a DBA, just doing business as. In most states, you only even need to register the DBA. You just do it. You have to check your state’s law to see if that’s applicable or not. Yeah, so just check that. But yeah, would, if you have to register a DBA or if the law’s a little kind of ridiculous surrounding it,
Claire Draudt (44:10.274)
Okay. Okay.
Claire Draudt (44:17.484)
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (44:34.946)
then you can always just go form another LLC. And it’s only a couple hundred bucks, doesn’t cost much. So you can do that, or you can just do a DBA. So basically what you would have to do is that your name, the branding on your website and all that stuff will be the DBA. And then at the very, very bottom of the website, you actually put your LLC name there. And then on all the consent forms and stuff like that, it would be.
Claire Draudt (44:55.307)
Okay.
Claire Draudt (44:58.86)
No.
Justin Allan Montgomery (45:00.14)
this LLC DBA, the name of the business, and then for the rest of the consent form, you know, can use either LLC or the DBA, doesn’t matter, you just have to identify that to the patient, be transparent. Yeah, that’s it, that’s all you gotta do.
Claire Draudt (45:04.811)
Okay.
Claire Draudt (45:10.946)
Okay. Okay. Okay. Makes sense.
Justin Allan Montgomery (45:14.734)
Yeah, so I think that what you really need to be thinking about here is though is how you’re going to package your services as cash based. What packages do you want to offer? What things you want to offer within those packages and really come out with a variety of different packages. Now you don’t want to create 20 different packages and it complicates it. It’s confusing patience. Keep it simple. Yeah.
Claire Draudt (45:25.334)
more.
Claire Draudt (45:36.29)
Right, just like five, five max. Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (45:42.222)
make it like six different packages and leave it at that. Okay. So think about what you do from a functional medicine standpoint and what services and what meds that you typically use and create packages and then do an HRT one and you know, keep it relatively simple. And you can always have a little, all a cart menu where, okay, well, if you want growth hormone or you want a peptide, it’s this. That’s the price. Yeah. You just basically 1.5, two extra cost on it. Just general rule of thumb.
Claire Draudt (45:54.434)
you
Claire Draudt (45:59.262)
Mm-hmm. You can add it.
Right, okay, okay.
Claire Draudt (46:09.346)
With HRT, and I do think I’ll probably take that course, I function with HRT very personalized. And so I’m thinking about the packages and how I would do that. And maybe they’re still personalized. Like they’re not set dosages per package, but it’s just like you’re getting these hormones. And then I figure out the correct, okay, so that’s what you’re saying.
Justin Allan Montgomery (46:34.166)
Yeah, don’t have dope. Like, well with this package you can get 100 milligrams of testosterone. With this package it’s 150 milligrams of testosterone. It’s this much more. No, no, no, no. It’s the same price. You have a woman’s package, a men’s package, a functional medicine package. You want to try to keep this as simple as possible. Okay? Yeah. Some patients will be at a higher dose.
Claire Draudt (46:43.094)
Don’t do that. Just do it. Okay. Right.
Claire Draudt (46:51.682)
Great, okay, that’s smart, yep.
Justin Allan Montgomery (46:56.334)
You will make a little less money with those patients compared to the ones on a lower dose, but it’s not gonna be, it’s not gonna impact your profit margin significantly. You’re talking about $20. Yeah, it’s not a big deal. Yeah, yeah. And then I think one thing you wanna talk about too was marketing, right? So.
Claire Draudt (46:56.353)
Right.
Okay.
Claire Draudt (47:09.154)
Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
Claire Draudt (47:22.742)
Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (47:23.566)
You know, you said you were talking about transitioning from NP to business owner. Do you have any questions with that?
Claire Draudt (47:30.772)
I think there are steps that will take care of that. Like the things that we’ve just talked about in terms of what does the overhead look like, what do the packages look like, it cash pay, is there any insurance? Like I think that transition will happen kind of naturally when I step into the role, which I think is what you’ve kind of said in other ways of like people leaving their business, leaving their job and never looking back. I think that will happen organically.
Justin Allan Montgomery (47:57.132)
No it should. I mean you will like, you become a business owner. You’re just not a business owner. You become one. One thing that you need to make sure that you separate between being an NP and a business owner is the care aspect. Okay? You are an NP when it comes to the medicine component. Okay? You are not an NP when it comes to business. Okay? You have to throw out
Claire Draudt (48:03.074)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Allan Montgomery (48:26.338)
I hate to say this, but you gotta throw your heart out a little bit in terms of being a business owner, okay? Like, these are the prices, this is what it is. well, can I get 50 % off? I’m having a hard month. No, you can’t, because then I’m working for fucking free, right? So you have to, you have to kind of throw your heart out a little bit.
Claire Draudt (48:45.11)
Right.
Justin Allan Montgomery (48:52.728)
when it comes to being a business owner. You can put all your heart into the care. That’s fine, you should, but the business component of it, you’re gonna have to get out of your head with that. is this right? Am I doing the patient wrong by charging this much? Am I like, this shit’s gonna go through your head. Throw it out. You are a business owner. Your goal is to generate a profit.
Claire Draudt (48:57.474)
Thank you.
Claire Draudt (49:19.074)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Allan Montgomery (49:19.31)
That’s how a business runs. That’s how it survives. If you’re not generating a profit, you’re working for free, right? And I’m sure you’d rather go on a hike. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. So just make sure you make it separate those two things out. It is a separate thing, okay?
Claire Draudt (49:22.85)
Right, right.
Mm-hmm.
Claire Draudt (49:38.216)
any tips on how to do that because I feel like we are like inherently givers as
Justin Allan Montgomery (49:43.598)
Yeah, it’s a process. You just have to keep telling yourself that, I can’t be too nice when it comes to the business part of it, you know? You can… The more you bend the rules for patients, the more it will happen, okay? So if you start giving this person over here a discount…
Claire Draudt (50:05.268)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Allan Montgomery (50:09.858)
You’ll start giving more people discounts and you’ll start bending the rules and bending your pricing and you can’t run a business that way. most people who start a practice will bend the rules a little bit at first just because they want some patience. Then you get some people in the door. You need to generate some revenue. So like it is okay to do it a little bit at first just so can get some patience in there and start making some money. But
You have to stop doing that at some point. You’re gonna get patients to say, oh, I don’t want to pay for that package. Well, and why, you know, why can’t you just send the hormones to Walgreens? Because we don’t do that. You just, you just have to say no. Like this is what it is. If you can’t afford it, then okay, I’m sorry. Like you can go somewhere else or you can go our $99 a month package here for, just for care. You know what I mean? Yeah. So.
Claire Draudt (50:49.367)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (51:00.747)
Yeah.
Right, Okay. So you would never, so just a quick question about that. So if you’ve if you’ve set up HRT packages, men’s, women’s, whatever, and then you have a patient that’s doing the $99 a month, but you know that they would benefit from hormones, you would not prescribe them through their pharmacy.
Justin Allan Montgomery (51:07.918)
But be aware.
Justin Allan Montgomery (51:27.534)
And okay, that’s literally exactly what I was gonna say next. So I’m glad you were thinking the same thing. So yes, the $99 a month, you can’t finagle your way into this and think you’re tricking me.
Claire Draudt (51:41.44)
You just say, it looks like you hormones, this is the way we do that here. Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (51:45.39)
This is the way we do it. Oh, well then why can’t you keep paying $99 a month and you just prescribe it to the pharmacy? Because I don’t do it that way. I don’t do it that way, I’m sorry. I’m happy to call your antibiotic in. I’m happy to call in your fucking blood pressure medication or whatever, you know what I mean? But like, no, those packages are, you have those packages for a reason, right? It’s to generate revenue. That’s how you scale the business.
Claire Draudt (51:51.436)
So then you can get this package.
Claire Draudt (52:14.946)
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (52:15.106)
Yeah, you have to have a clear line and be strict when it comes to the DPC kind of stuff and the packages. Don’t deviate, don’t mix them. Yeah.
Claire Draudt (52:22.102)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. That’s a good thing to think about. And then the other thing I was thinking about is that, you know, inevitably things become more expensive with inflation and everything that happens over time, but also scaling your business. not that I would ever, I wouldn’t be thinking about doing this within the first year, maybe not even the second year, but when would you or do you increase the prices of the packages? Ever.
Justin Allan Montgomery (52:47.662)
No, don’t, it’s not necessary. Like, the pricing that you set when you first start, stick to those prices, okay? You only need to increase the costs when your costs go up. You know, with inflation or whatever. Now, the prices that you set when you first start, okay? Those aren’t necessarily set in stone. The…
Claire Draudt (53:01.58)
Right.
Justin Allan Montgomery (53:15.214)
Initial three to six months with a business like this is very experimental Okay You will change the prices around a little bit, you know Let’s just say God 90 % of the patients just say this is too expensive Well, if you’re getting that kind of feedback, maybe you should drop the price a little bit. You know what I mean? With you have to maintain that 40 to 50 % profit margin though. Okay 40 % minimum
Never get below 40 % margin because if you do you just you stop making enough money to make this worth your while. Okay? So come into it with a margin of 60-70 % and then you can drop it down to 40 if you have to. Alright? But you probably won’t. You’ll probably settle in around 50 % or so or you might not change your prices at all. You never know. But yeah, so don’t worry too much about that.
Claire Draudt (53:45.847)
Mm-hmm.
Claire Draudt (54:06.146)
Okay.
Claire Draudt (54:13.344)
Okay, great. So marketing. I’m thinking about location in the city as an important piece of that.
Justin Allan Montgomery (54:27.01)
Yeah, for sure. mean your location matters. Absolutely. So you gotta focus on the free stuff first. I talk about this probably in almost every one of these podcasts. You know with your Google business listing. I mean that is just something that’s not, it’s not negotiable. You know you have your Google business listing and you make sure the name on that Google business listing clearly states what it is that you do, right? Blank integrative medicine, whatever. Hyphen.
Claire Draudt (54:27.266)
What? Yeah.
Claire Draudt (54:53.826)
and
Justin Allan Montgomery (54:56.706)
functional medicine, direct primary care, HRT, whatever you want. Have your website, make sure your website clearly explains what it is that you do. Don’t put a bunch of rainbows and fucking unicorn stuff on your website. Make it crystal clear on what it is that you do. Don’t make people guess. People don’t care about a bunch of fancy, fun, progressive language. They don’t care, all right?
Claire Draudt (55:02.539)
Okay.
Claire Draudt (55:17.25)
Okay.
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (55:25.858)
The simpler the website, the better as far as I’m concerned. So make it crystal clear what it is that you do on that website. So you spend a little money on a website. There’s AI tools out there that make websites for you now for nothing. So have a website, have your Google business listing. People who are searching for this stuff will find you. And you’re going to go into this
Claire Draudt (55:28.588)
Okay.
Okay.
Claire Draudt (55:48.297)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Allan Montgomery (55:54.754)
slowly. Okay, like you’re not wanting to open the floodgates as soon as you open this practice up. So you don’t spend a bunch of money marketing this thing. In my opinion, what you should do is I would probably spend nothing on marketing at first. All right. I would utilize the resources that you have in front of you.
Claire Draudt (56:00.738)
Yep.
Claire Draudt (56:12.578)
Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (56:18.774)
Now, I’m not telling you to poach patients from your business, from the practice that you work at, okay? Don’t do that. That’s solicitation, you can get in trouble for that, all right? But it is okay every once in a while, if you have a patient, you you can say something along the lines of, hey, just FYI, I did open this practice up over here, you’re more welcome to come see me over there if you want a little bit more of higher standard of care or something like that.
Claire Draudt (56:25.602)
Right.
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (56:42.55)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Justin Allan Montgomery (56:46.51)
but don’t actively solicit patients. Hey, you know what I mean? Hey, I have this other practice up over here. I you to follow up with me over there. Don’t say shit like that. OK? Yeah. But you can mention it to some people here or there. Right? Yeah, exactly. And then any kind of other resources that you might have in the community, other referral forces, other places that you go to, whatever.
Claire Draudt (56:49.686)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Claire Draudt (56:54.966)
Yeah, right.
Claire Draudt (57:00.65)
who might be interested.
Justin Allan Montgomery (57:12.406)
local Facebook groups that talk about specific healthcare topics and stuff. You can go in there, start contributing. People will start coming to see you. You know what I mean? So I wouldn’t spend a whole lot on marketing at first, okay? Yeah. When you get to the point where, let’s just say you’re not generating a whole lot of leads, you’re not generating a whole lot of customers or patients and that kind of a thing, let’s do another podcast.
Claire Draudt (57:26.944)
Yeah, makes sense.
Claire Draudt (57:41.92)
Okay. Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (57:42.414)
They talk a little bit more specifics there in terms of marketing. But my advice to you over the first three months is I would not spend much on marketing at all. Get a good website. Get a good Google business listing. Utilize the resources, bootstrap stuff, at first. Do that first. Sorry, I some people coming in the door.
Claire Draudt (57:50.838)
Okay
Justin Allan Montgomery (58:05.774)
They tell their friends, little word of mouth starts, all right? You might see four patients the first month. Fine. It’s okay, okay? At my men’s health clinic, I think we saw like four or something like that. I don’t even remember now, like seven years ago, but like, I remember we only had like a few patients. And then the second month we had like 10. Then the third month we had like 15. Like, you know, it just, it gradually snowballs, all right?
Claire Draudt (58:07.265)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (58:12.854)
It’s okay. Yeah.
Claire Draudt (58:25.366)
Mm-hmm.
Claire Draudt (58:34.882)
Okay.
Justin Allan Montgomery (58:35.886)
This is a longer game. This is not something shorter. All right, so that would be my advice for you. If you want to put a couple ads out there, you certainly can. A Google search ad works pretty well. Someone looks up functional medicine in your area, maybe a Google search ad for that keyword wouldn’t be that bad. Someone searching for a home replacement therapy in your area, a Google keyword search ad might not be a bad idea. But if you put those services on your Google business listing,
Claire Draudt (58:37.536)
Yeah. Yeah.
Claire Draudt (58:47.586)
you
Claire Draudt (58:57.194)
Okay. Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (59:03.81)
then your Google business listing will show up on the map. And that’s where most people go. Yeah. When you look for a new restaurant, you go to Google Maps. Yeah. So utilize Google Maps. Put your Google business listing out there. And if you’ve got to throw a few kind of bullshit reviews on there at first, so be it. OK? If you treat family and friends for free, I know I do.
Claire Draudt (59:06.38)
Right. OK. That makes sense. Right.
Claire Draudt (59:31.233)
I’m gonna…
Justin Allan Montgomery (59:32.27)
Dude, listen, man, I’ve been prescribing you this shit for a year. Give me a five-star review. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, okay? Like, use that, all right? Get some reviews on there. You need to get as many reviews as you possibly can on that Google Business Listing. That’s what’s gonna rank you on that map.
Claire Draudt (59:44.841)
and
Yep. Okay. Awesome. Cool.
Justin Allan Montgomery (59:50.574)
Alright, like I said, let’s do another podcast on marketing though. Get the thing open first and then three or four months now let’s talk about some more specific stuff we can do.
Claire Draudt (59:54.464)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (59:58.39)
Great, I’m going to do the HRT training as well. I think that would be helpful.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:00:02.414)
Yeah, yeah, and like I said, it’ll guide you through the business process of it too. So, give me other questions.
Claire Draudt (01:00:10.102)
I think that’s it. Thank you.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:00:12.066)
You’re welcome. It a pretty solid episode. talked about some good stuff. All right, well, I have to end the episode with you asking me a question. A personal question or a curiosity.
Claire Draudt (01:00:14.743)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (01:00:18.796)
Okay.
Do you have a sauna?
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:00:24.067)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (01:00:24.906)
Okay, okay. How often do you use it?
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:00:27.426)
I actually, I was literally in it about two hours.
Claire Draudt (01:00:31.778)
I thought maybe that was the case because the way our emails went.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:00:37.056)
Yeah. Yeah, I was, I was literally in my sauna two hours before our call. So what I typically do, my morning routine, and I try to do this every morning. so I recently started, intermittent fasting protocol and, I feel, I feel great. Like it is crazy how well it works. Yeah. So my feeding window is from one to two o’clock in the afternoon till about seven.
Claire Draudt (01:00:43.649)
Nice.
Claire Draudt (01:00:57.228)
Good.
Claire Draudt (01:01:04.79)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:01:05.486)
outside of that I consume zero calories and little coffee you know I use some coffee I got a fucking bad habit with nicotine pouches but you know whatever yeah you know I use a nicotine pouch and some coffee and then I’ll drink some water or whatever all zero calorie right and then so what I typically do in the morning is it’s crazy I started intermittent fasting about a month ago
Claire Draudt (01:01:07.872)
Are you drinking coffee in the morning?
Claire Draudt (01:01:16.508)
Ow.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:01:32.566)
two months ago and what I’m finding is is that I wake up at like 430 5 o’clock full of energy like I am just up I’m not groggy nothing and I usually sit in front of my computer I’ll work a little bit for an hour or two and then and then I work out I got a gym downstairs in my basement and I got a power rack treadmill and elliptical it’s kind of ridiculous honestly free weights set and all this stuff
Claire Draudt (01:01:59.82)
Great, you never have to leave.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:02:01.486)
I don’t go to the gym, screw that. I’m 41 years old, I’m too old for that. I’m too old for a gym. I ain’t going to gym, hang out with a of 20 year old punks. Yeah, so anyways, then I work out. I’ll lift or I’ll do cardio, stretch and do some ab stuff, core stuff, whatever. And my sauna is in my gym as well. So then I work out and I go straight into my sauna. Now, I have a sauna that’s infrared.
Claire Draudt (01:02:29.218)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:02:29.294)
red light and some electromagnetic wave kind of thing that’s on the ground. Yeah, so it’s like a full thing. So I get in there, I put a red light mask on too. So it looks ridiculous. Yeah, I a red light mask on. I’m sitting in this red light sauna and I’m in there for 40 minutes. So I try to do it. I try to do it every day, but just some days I just don’t have time for it. But I do it at least four days a week and
Claire Draudt (01:02:33.73)
Nice. Yeah.
Claire Draudt (01:02:56.78)
What about a cold plunge? Any contrast therapy?
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:03:00.556)
I just go stand outside.
Claire Draudt (01:03:02.026)
Okay, fair enough. Roughly, yes.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:03:03.778)
same thing. Yeah, you know, it’s in the morning. So it’s like, you know, I live in Colorado. So like, I will go I will literally so I will I usually will do the cold before I’ll do I usually do the cold first thing in the morning. So I’m like, when I wake up, I’ll let the dogs out and like, I just go out with my porch. I just take my robe off. So I’m just sitting. So I’m just standing right underwear on my porch. And I’ll just sit there and try to endure it for like
Claire Draudt (01:03:21.942)
Yep. good for you.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:03:29.234)
minutes and so I just do that first thing yeah I don’t I cold plunge I can’t do it I just I can’t yeah so yeah which is I just can’t do it the cold air is fine the cold water I can’t do yes and I do my sauna then I get out rinse off all the toxin take a shower and start and start my day
Claire Draudt (01:03:35.884)
Okay, some people can’t, yeah, some people can’t. definitely…
Claire Draudt (01:03:50.242)
start your day. Are you changing what you’re eating while you’re fasting? Like on the eating window, have you been eating as much gluten or carbs or if you cut that out do you eat those things?
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:04:01.102)
so.
Claire Draudt (01:04:02.498)
I’m just curious about the wake up time being so much. I know that intermittent fasting, because you’re filtering and you’re processing, you’re giving your gut time to break things down and remove excess and toxins. But I’m also curious about that 435 AM wake up time in correlation with what you’re eating.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:04:19.586)
Yeah, so it’s interesting. I’m 41 and once I hit 40 I’ve really begun to notice how food makes me feel. Like in my 20s you can eat whatever you want. You know what mean? 30s pretty much eat whatever you want but then you start kind of noticing some stuff as you’re getting in your mid to late 30s you’re like I feel like shit today. Huh. Wonder…
Claire Draudt (01:04:32.802)
Totally.
Claire Draudt (01:04:42.326)
Yeah, what did I eat?
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:04:44.526)
You know was it was that pitcher of beer and that pizza that you know last night like you know what I mean Yeah, probably right But then 40 hit and I start I realize now I’m like man if I eat anything Super carbohydrate, know like really high in carbs sugary kind of a thing within just two to three hours before I go to bed I feel like shit the next day like feel like shit so
Claire Draudt (01:05:07.778)
I don’t know.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:05:12.046)
And I’ve also developed some like this weird gut stuff lately. I’m not too sure what’s going on there, but I’ve cut out dairy as well and it pretty much kind of fixed the issue. So I’m not really doing a whole lot of dairy. I’m not really doing a whole lot of sugar. So it’s mostly like very high protein meats. You know, I bought half a cow. So, you know, I mean, I eat a lot of beef, chicken, salmon, whatever veggies through.
So, I I still eat. I was eating clean before, but with intermittent fasting now, I basically, I still try to eat fairly clean within that window, but what I’ve noticed is that about one o’clock comes around and I’m really not that hungry. Like, I have to force myself to eat. I’m hungry around eight or nine a.m.
Claire Draudt (01:05:54.785)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (01:06:00.599)
Right.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:06:01.442)
And then after that, like right now it’s 11, it’s 1120 mountain time. I’m not hungry whatsoever. So I’m gonna have to force myself to eat at one. And what I’ve noticed is like, I can just get away with just kinda eating like a rabbit at first. You know what I mean? And then, and then I eat a pretty good dinner and then, then I’m done. Yeah, it’s great.
Claire Draudt (01:06:14.327)
Yep.
Claire Draudt (01:06:19.354)
Your metabolism has shifted to be able to do that. Yeah, it’s pretty amazing the body can adapt so quickly. I mean, it probably takes maybe two weeks comfortably to get to that point, but it can happen within a number of days too.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:06:22.018)
Yeah.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:06:26.572)
It is.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:06:33.92)
Again, yeah, for me, probably about three or four days. That’s when I started feeling pretty comfortable with it, yeah. And yeah, like I’m super lean now. Like it’s crazy, like within a week I had six pack abs. I’m like, shit.
Claire Draudt (01:06:36.704)
Yeah.
Claire Draudt (01:06:45.762)
It’s super effective. I know, it’s wild.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:06:48.974)
It’s super effective, you know what I mean? So like, I was 185 pounds and now I’m hanging out about 178. I’m just, just maintaining. So I mean, am on testosterone and nandrolone and shit, but whatever.
Claire Draudt (01:06:56.962)
Good.
Claire Draudt (01:07:02.21)
Yeah, but that’s for other reasons, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool, thank you. Thank you so much. This was really fun.
Justin Allan Montgomery (01:07:05.742)
For other reasons, I’m 41 years old. So I’m cool.
Alright, you’re welcome. Holler at me in a few months if want to do a marketing podcast, okay? Cool. Alright, take care. Alright, bye.
Claire Draudt (01:07:17.932)
That sounds great. Thanks, Justin. Bye.
