Dr. Heather Bartos, MD - Broadway to Babies: Growing A Business By Filling A Gap

Welcome to the Real People, Real Business Show. My name is Stephanie Hayes and I am a business strategist and coach who loves to speak with like-minded entrepreneurs to share their real stories and the gritty details of building their businesses. On this show, you won't hear about the glamorized entrepreneurship journeys that you see online. You won't be told how to make six figures in six weeks. Instead, you can expect to hear real vulnerable and inspiring stories you can relate to that have helped create the foundation of each of our guests businesses. Goodbye, boss babes. Hello, real life entrepreneurs. Today, I am beyond excited to welcome my friend, Heather Bartos. Heather is a board certified option, us Navy veteran, former associate professor at S U HS and former chief of obstetrics in gynecology at Texas health hospital in Denton, Texas. She is currently the CEO and medical director of her village for women's health, B women's health and wellness, and the creator and host of her own podcast and information hub called the me spot. Welcome to the show, Heather, and thanks so much for taking the time to share your story today.

Aw, thank I'm so, so glad we could finally get together. Feel trying forever.

I know we've last time I saw you. I think we were in Boston. You were in Boston. Yeah. And, and, and like what, what has always been so exciting to me about you is that you're just this like Renaissance person. You've got all this stuff going on. And I know that we have, we came together in a mastermind and then in another, like writing workshop and we've been, you know, crossing paths in all these different places. And here's Heather who became a doctor at 28. I mean, like, I wanna know it all. And if you have a chance to go to Heather's website and read her about page, you're just like left going, oh my gosh, this woman. So like tell me the story. And I just love your mind and your humor and, and everything. So like, let's hear it.

Tell me the story. Well, I'm just thrilled to see you first of all. Cause I love your face and I love to see you. I, um, so yes, I'm outside Texas, so I will throw down some y'alls and maybe some Southern wisdom as well. Uh, I did not intend to be a doctor that was never part of my career path. I just, I really want really what I, okay. Truthfully, what I wanted to be was I wanted to be a musical theater actress and my dad said, uh, no,

Hey, hold on one second. You, how did I not know this about you? I wanted to do musical. My scholarships are all in theater. Really I wanna do musical

theater. This is so I feel, feel like every time we see each other, we learn more and more about how we're connected. I, yes, this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to be on Broadway and my dad said no. And I said, crap. Okay. So I decided to, uh, go, went to a liberal arts school, got this liberal arts degree. This is what you did back in like the nineties. You went and got a liberal arts degree and cuz you could do anything with it, right? Oh, just learn something and you can do anything with it. And my degree is actually in political science, in environmental science, cuz I didn't know what the L F to do. I couldn't pick a major. So I made my own major. Uh, there were two of us in my program and I just did whatever I wanted to. I just created this program. I was like, well, I wanna take smart history. I wanna take some economics. And so they go, cool, we'll call it this. And after graduation, I still didn't know what the heck I was gonna do it myself. So I thought, you know, what I'm really good at is communication. So I thought I'm gonna be, I'm gonna go into advertising in public relations. This seemed like a hip thing at the time. It was, I was young. I had energy and I was pretty creative. So I decided at the time to hit your ride to Nashville and I begged for a job. And my first job, I made $1,000 a month pretax and I worked in this woman's, uh, attic. And I worked with country music, singers and comedians, and I thought I had hit the big time. This was the big time a thousand dollars a month. Uh, yeah. And, uh, I got fired from that job because her son lived with her, her adult son and he exploded eggs downstairs and left to go to the gym and somehow is my job to clean that up. So I got let. And I thought, oh shit. So then I went and worked with another PR firm. And at that point I was doing big, like big corporate things, uh, Jack Daniels and Saturn member, Saturn car Saturn corporation. And I thought, this is great. I love this. This is like, you know, big events, corporate PR writing. And then I was at a showy. You remember the restaurant? Shawnees, I don't know if you'll still have them, but they're kind of like a cracker barrel or something like that. They're kinda like a Southern restaurant. And, uh, we were doing minority diversity training with them back in the nineties, which was pretty progressive. And we were at a paintball tournament. And I shot my boss in the nuts with a pink paintball gun. I just, I got really flustered. They were coming over the hill at me and all these guys, and they're all in camo and I was guarding the flight and I just sh sat up and I was like the guy in square face with Tony Montana. And I started spraying them and I nailed this old fat guy right in the balls. And I just remember him screaming and he's like, I'm on team damnit. And I was like, oh, that's not good. And I, I didn't get asked back after my internship. So at this point I decided to go back to Houston, which is kind of where I grew up. And I worked for some companies there and I had the pleasure of working in the Texas medical center with doctors. And I worked with Deb bakery and didn't Cooley all these kind of people that are, you know, celebs in the doctor world. And I thought, look, I can do this. Like I'd rather right. Do this and write about it. And so as my dad says, did you just decide one day to go to medical school? And I said, yes, I did. And you know, it's ironic because when I was in theater class, I won the Marcus Wellby MD award for best portraying a doctor. And then I became one

like, I'm still stuck on the shooting, the guy in the, and how you, yeah. Okay. So keep going really. So

it doesn't end here. No, I squarely shot the dude right in the right, in the peanuts, just right there. And, uh, in retrospect, you know, I yeah. Worked out. Okay. Um, I got into medical school and I was the oldest woman in my class at 28 to start. And I didn't have a way to pay for it cuz you know, I didn't come from like a trust fund baby kind of situation. And my dad's like, you know, you're old enough to deal with it yourself. We're not gonna pay for med school. And so at 28 I was like, well, how the hell am I gonna pay for med school? So I joined the Navy. And the Navy paid for med school. And so after my dad told me I can't be an actress because I'd be broke up all night and basically living a hard life. I went to medical school where I was broke up all night and essentially living a hard life. so, um, yeah, so I went through medical school, decided on OB GYN. It was not my original intention. I was going to do pediatrics. And then I realized I don't like sick kids and I don't like sick kids, mothers. And as a mother now I realized I would not like myself either. I'm like give my kid that drugs. So I was sick the whole time. So I said, I can't do pediatric. So I handed on ISS on OB G. I was like, it has everything. It's a little buffet of everything. And, uh, got done with, uh, training and went back into the military. And then I was, uh, stationed in various places around the us. And then, um, got stationed in DC, which was the mothership, as we say, and was at the president's hospital where everyone goes and you see all the presidents, they always are getting their care there. I took care of two Supreme court justices, and I took care of a whole bunch of other people and really liked it. But they were gonna send my ass to Afghanistan. They send OB gins to Afghanistan. I said, what the hell am I supposed to do in Afghanistan? Look at vaginas in Afghanistan. And they said, well, you'll just assist. And I said, oh great. That's why exactly why I did this. So I could go assist other doctors. And I had friends that went and all the friends that went. They, you know, had that whole what's that movie with Tina Faye, where she goes to Afghanistan and you get really hot because you're like, you get sand goggles, right. You're like drunk goggles. You're like, look really beautiful because you're like the only woman out there and they all had affairs and they all did things that they were not proud of when they got back home. And I thought, I'm just trying to have another baby at this point. So I, I need to get outta the military. So I, I gave my, I did my time and I got out and decided to come to Texas again, joined corporate medicine, which is a joke. It's a joke. It is. How fast can you see people? How much can you see people? How can you not engage with people and make us money? And we'll pay you a pitance of that. And so about two years in, I almost died of pneumonia. Uh, I got a really bad pneumonia was in the hospital after my, after the birth of my second kid, couldn't figure out why. And I realized it's cuz I wasn't in the right place. So I did something that people just didn't do, which was, I left the safety of corporate medicine and decided to open up my own clinic with me and like three other people. I had three staff members and we opened up a clinic and did not look back.

And so this is today.

This is today at, at some, at one point we had a staff of 20 and then the pandemic came and we kind of, um, uh, it changed medicine. It changed for entrepreneurs. It changed everything, right? We were all kind of now in a different, a different spot. And so I decided to close my first clinic and just stick in the new, uh, second clinic, which was a tough decision. I had a lot of providers left over that issue, but I, it was the right decision. You know, it was the right decision, not to try and manage two different places, you know, worried about getting, COVID worry about kids, you know, all this kind of stuff. And I was like, you know what? I didn't do this to kill myself. I did this to make a better life for myself. And so here we are today.

So what I love about, I mean, there's so many things I love about you, but what I love about what you have done is like, there's a real juxtaposition between sort of traditional medicine and the way that we experience and understand doctors and the belief that there's, you can layer that with entrepreneurship, right? So you, what you've done is you've almost created a brand within the confines of traditional medicine. So can you talk a little bit about sort of that, like, how does that exist and how does you've you've now got a container on a platform for distributing content that, you know, needs to be distributed and being a resource for that is really accessible for women that is beyond like looking something up on

web. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, when I, I didn't know things about my, I, you know, I knew that some point I wanted to use the original PR advertising form of me, the, the, the Heather 2.0, and I wanted to meld it with the current day, which was I'd gone the medical school and all this. And I thought, I thought that my zone of genius was gonna be, um, mixing the two, uh, writing books, educating women at a broader scale. And when I left corporate medicine, I got, I kind kind of brainwashed for a while. I drank the Kool-Aid and I thought I was gonna see people. I was gonna make money. I gotta make money. And. When I started my own place, what I realized is I can do whatever the fact I want. And if I wanna spend 30 or 40 minutes with someone, I can, if I wanna take off some time, I can, I didn't, I worked my ass off, but what I started realizing is is that the way that we were doing things was different. It was more holistic. And I hate to use that word cause it's such a, kind of a buzzword, but it was more about the whole woman. We had yoga classes and meditation classes, and we had a lab. We had some, we had everything in house aesthetics that you could want as a woman, you would walk in the door, we had family practice, you could do everything. And by doing so we realized that we kind of tapped into an unknown niche, which was this wasn't done. You went to the gynecologist for something, you went here for something, you went here for something. And we had kind of created this village. And I thought, you know, this is great. I love this, but I could help one woman at a time. So at the most I could help. And I did not stack my schedule up with 40 patients a day. Like I used to, I was, I'm gonna spend my time. And so I was, I could help maybe 20, 20 women a day. That's it. That's all I could really help. And I thought, but what if I could help 20. You know, thousand women, 20 million women, what if I could reach more women to advocate for themselves and their health, like we were teaching women to do here. And so I started kind of just, just was kind of a wish. I kind of thought, you know what? And I had worked with a, a woman who was a money coach. She was a money mindset coach. She was a friend of mine and we had lunch one day and we were talking about money, mindset, principles, and how you can change your mind. All the Tony Robbins, all the good, you know, the good original stuff, the OG. And I said, why have we not done this for healthcare yet? And she's like, well, I don't know. She's very Texas, very blonde, but you know, big B and she, I don't know. And I. Well, we should, I mean, we should do this for healthcare. We should start working with these same principles that we teach people for business and entrepreneurialship and everything, and work it into healthcare and have women start to take more ownership and, and rework the way that we think about healthcare from a victim standpoint and from, um, um, just getting what I get to, this is what I. And that's where we kind of started with the brand. And so I kind of launched this kind of side business of, you know, Heather Bartos MD. And I started doing Instagram and zoom and I started working on books and I thought, this is right. This is exactly what I wanted to do. And I remember I had, um, really started to do a lot of women's sexuality work. We don't, we aren't taught that. I just kind of, it kind of flowed, like I've just kind of let life like forced go up. You know, that feather just, I just kind of tried to go where she takes me. And I started having a lot of sexuality patients and I thought this is an area that's not done when I had other gynecologists telling patients, well, just fake it till you make it or just, you know, uh, you need more Lou, I thought we are missing an aspect of healthcare. And that's what I always try to, to tell people is I try to look for what's missing and fill it in. We tell EV entrepreneurs that all the time, but in healthcare, we're just kind of stuck and said, we just kinda go, this is what it is. So I started working on sexuality training and I started working on, and by saying that there's no training for doctors and sexuality. So I started working on everything I could find on this, on this topic and how I could combine those mindset principles from business to sexuality and to healthcare. And, and then I had a book and then it didn't get picked up by publishers in the middle of the fricking pandemic. My dad had died that summer. I was, I had an agent, she was pushing it and I was told sex does not sell. Yeah.

Like

that's not what we right. Sex doesn't sell. They said sex doesn't sell. No one wants to buy a book on sex. And I said, fuck you, you're wrong. I know you're wrong, but okay, I'm gonna retreat. And I think that's one of the biggest things I've learned in, in being a business owner and being an entrepreneur is when to step back. RERA your troops and then make a new strategy. And so I said, okay, all right, the world's not ready for this, so great. What can I do? So I decided to start a podcast and I said, here's a way to me, forget to get all my information out there, start helping women. And, uh, and I love doing it's so therapeutic and mine's more of a, I call it a style it's podcast, blog style. I'm trying to make that stick, but I don't know my, you know, I wanna, I wanna too, I just kind of talk about exact same things. I would say to someone in the clinic that was seeing me. I just wanted to get it out there. And, and that's where we kind of are today. I've let the brand and me kind of flow down the river together knowing I was in the right area. But I, I wasn't quite, maybe it wasn't quite the right time. Right. Cause it's all about timing and life with everything, you know, with relationships, everything, it's all about timing. And so I thought, you know what, this is what I'm meant to do. And so I have yes, big Instagram, um, page and, and I'm trying to do TikTok. I don't know. It's maybe I'm just too old for TikTok. I don't know. We'll see. But I just kind of see where the mood takes me. And that's the fun part about being an entrepreneur as you just kind of do what feels right to you?

So why is it, why is it so uncommon to see medical professionals doing what you've done and building out this whole other piece of, because one, one of the things that, that we hear a lot is that, um, We're not getting the services that we need within the medical community and we're not. And the, and, or largely because it's driven by the needs of the container, right? The needs of the corporation, the needs of, and like, whether you believe that's evil or not evil, there's just like when you have a big corporation, you start to manage for other things. And when you have kind of entrepreneurs and small businesses, which is why I love small businesses, you can make it whatever it is. And it's usually perfectly aligned with who you're serving and what they need. Right. Why do we not see this more

often? Well, it's a shit load of work. I mean, it is right. I mean, it's any small business is a lot of work. And as like an OB GYN, I'm still up at night delivering babies. I'm still, you know, a regular old OB doctor that, you know, you know, gets up at four in the morning, delivers babies and then, you know, works on social media then goes to work. And so it's a, it's a big investment. And part of the success, I think, has been that my husband works for. He actually is, he works for me. So that kind of helps because you're never off the job. One as a doctor, you're never off the job. And two, as an entrepreneur, you're never off the job. And I think that's intimidating. I think a lot of younger people want the security. I mean, it was rough CYS in the pandemic. I mean, we, I furloughed myself, so my staff could work. So I made $0 in 2021 so that my whole staff could keep working during the pandemic. And you, everyone thinks, oh, but healthcare, you're still, there's still clients. They're still patients, but there's also a lot of overhead and other things that are, you know, part of that too. So I think it's just scary. I've seen more people down here, um, do like a one, one off solo practice, but they don't manage it the way we do with the whole other component. I mean, of course the goal, as most OBS doctors, whoever gets older is that we start to kind of drift ourselves up to a different level of the business. And then we have more people that run the day to day. And I think that that's still the goal is that I can still do my kind of bigger philanthropy, whatever you wanna call it, my bigger work. And then I've trained enough staff to kind of manage the day to day stuff.

And so you have, I think part of this is that you, before you even got immersed in the medical community, you had this, this grounding inside of business, right? Yeah. And so I, I wonder if maybe, you know, you came to the medical world with an idea of what's

possible. Well, and, and yeah, I think being a, a return student was actually to my benefit. I mean, there were, there were, and I'll say kids cuz they were kids 22 years old had never had a job. Didn't know what a w nine was. Didn't know, didn't know anything. And four years later we sent them out into the world to go be doctors. They don't know anything about business. They, the only thing about personal business, personal finance, they don't know anything about the world around them. They literally have been kind of like, you know, those like gymnast kids, they've been bred for a straight shot and now they're a doctor, but they don't know anything else. They haven't experienced the world around them.

And so what, so, so talk to me a little bit about who you're serving. Like how, how do people find you and come to you and, and who is the, the, who is the, the person that is your

client. Yeah. Um, you know, we have people that come and, and, and they're not a good fit. They, they really, you know, we're a very laid back. We don't wear white coats. We wear matching t-shirts, there's usually ACDC playing overhead or something like that. And we're probably making jokes that are probably borderline on, on being goofy and inappropriate. And, um, the, the ideal client is the woman that. The whole experience is, you know, she wants, she finds out, she goes, you guys do everything here. I don't have to go to a plastic surgeon to get Botox. I don't have to go to my family, get my high blood pressure. No baby, it's all in one spot. And, you know, for some people they don't, they don't want that. They like to be able to shop around and do their own thing. Um, we've even started having a lot more men request to be patients with us. And it's funny when people go, do you see men? And I'm like, I am a gynecologist, which by nature means I am a woman's doctor, but I can see men on a few occasions for some different things. I said, so just tell your husband, if he wants to see me, I'll be his gynecologist. Um, and we always joke the guys come in and they real cool about that. Cuz we don't have pink and purple. It's very, it's very, uh, minimalist kind of nature design. But we have guys that wanna come cuz they, they don't have that for themselves. There's no PCP that's created this. There's no urologists, urologists don't do any of that stuff. And so we've started just having people that have started to just kind of through word of mouth over the years. And then I got a lot of people that find out through the podcast. That they get, they, they listen to the podcast and they realize that this is exactly how I'm run the podcast. This is exactly how I sound in everyday life. It's exactly how I sound with patients and they realize, Hey, I can come here and have a doctor that at least listens. I,

I like if I, if you were down the road and I could, in fact, I would probably just schedule my appointments in fly to Texas, just to easier appointments would be like five hours long. And yes,

they would, they would, we would, we would do all the things and we would talk the whole time. So

what I'm, what I'm, what I love and I'm super interested in is, is that there's this, there's this container for creativity in your business, which is not typically what we associate with, like the medical professionals. So how are you like balancing that load between being very like, you know, scientific and science oriented. And also, I know you have a huge creative streak, so how are you balancing, like what you're working on and, and how much you're bringing into the

business. Yeah. It's um, I love the creative part. I mean, I love that that's, you know, that's how I started in, in public relations and advertising. I mean, we've worked together in those creative writing workshops that we love to go to. It's there's something about using both sides of your brain that is kind of intoxicating mm-hmm and, you know, so what I tried now at this point in my career to give myself grace for is, is it's okay to like stick with one side of the brain for a little bit, if something's going down. So for instance, like right now, my other doctor left in December, she was not a good fit for this lifestyle in this, in this, in this system that we created, she was very rigid, very black and white and very, um, very much not about the whole patient, just wasn't a good fit. So she wasn't aligned with the brand. Um, and then I had a couple other people that left for various reasons during the pandemic that were providers. So right now it is me. A midwife and a family nurse practitioner. So I am on call as, as you know, cuz I had to cancel our last 1, 24 7, uh, I am always available to the hospital. And so what I said to myself was I really wanna get down and write, I really wanna do some stuff. I really wanna start creating some more is just not the time right now. I just need to focus on what the business is right now, which the business is getting stuff done. And I know I have help coming in July. So I have another doctor during, in July who is very much aligned with the brand. And so I, as soon as she gets here, I'm taking a little week long sabbatical to. Create, whatever that is, photography, writing, whatever. I just need to get back into it. And, uh, so that's, that's, that's how I, the container you're right. It's a container. And sometimes the container is, is full of flour. Some of those full of sugar, it just depends on what I have going on, but I try to at least do some of it all the time, but you know, sometimes life is life and just do what I can.

Well, I lo and I love that perspective and I, I hope that everyone who's listening to this understands that, um, you know, part of the permission we need to be given as business owners is to. Just let, let things be what they are. Right. We, we get really stuck in our heads about this should, should, should, and I should be this and I should be that. And I should be doing all these things all the time. Uh, but I'm the same way as you in my business. I'm just like, look, whatever's gonna flow right now. That's what's gonna happen. And I try to be consistent and I try to, you know, keep all the buckets full, but I need to follow. What's inspiring me and I need to follow what's necessary. And if that means I don't do all my social media posts this week, so be it. Right. Yeah. And I think just being really clear on what's like the hierarchy of needs inside your business is, uh, is super critical. And it sounds like that's really clear

for. It it's, it's been a lesson learned. I mean, it just, it didn't, none of that came natural. I used to just try to kill myself to do all of it. And I was just like, I think it was really the pandemic. You know, I always tell people that the pandemic gave us some good things. I realized I didn't wanna try to have all these different offices in this. I mean, I realized how, how I wanted to narrow my niche to be something that was authentic and, and not what I thought I should be doing. Like, which is, oh, you should have, if you have a successful business, have two, have three, have four. Instead I was like, you know what, no, I know what I wanna do. I wanna do this other kind of this part, this separate brand. And I said, I need to focus on how I can best get there. And. And yeah, I mean, there's the should right? Should, should this, should that, I mean, I ended up with exercise. I was like, I should be, you know what, let's just get our pants on today and let's just see what happens. Are you wearing pants right now? I am wearing pants, but I'm not gonna lie. There is a big ass hole in the butt cheek of my pants. These are my home pants. I'm not allowed to wear them out per my children. And yes, but they are, they fit and I'm just wearing them. I'm actually, I can touch the hole right now. Um, yeah. So, you know, it is when it is . Stephanie: So what, tell me about the evolution of the clinic. Because I imagine at the beginning, it was very much like operational. How do we transition into this world of like being on our own and not within the hospital or whatever it might be into, like, when did the sort of content brand start to emerge. I think that, you know, at the beginning, I just was really worried. Were people gonna show up? Uh, and that was just my biggest fear. Were people gonna show up to this new clinic? It was kind of out in the middle of nowhere. So where we started, this was, was kind of between two smaller cities kind of up north of, of, and, and I thought, no, one's gonna drive by this place. I mean, we didn't even have a Walmart, which is of course in Texas, how, you know, you've made it to the big time. And I thought, I mean, we had horses, like the pasture was outside the windows, which was really nice to see, but I was like, Hey, no one gonna come we're screwed. But I had found this location and it was, it's kind of a sad story. I was actually on the way to a patient of mine's funeral. And I was driving by in the middle of nowhere. And I saw this building that was being built. I thought I must stop. I did go to the funeral. I did go to the funeral, but I, I said, I saw, and I go, this is the place. And I found that my gut never leave me wrong. I mean, sometimes I'm wrong, but my gut says, usually my gut probably told me that it was probably not the right move. And I thought, this is it. And so in the beginning I didn't take a salary for five months and I just focused on getting busy. But then once I saw the model was working then, but then the content and I realized what we had was so different that I wanted to, to start kind of stockpiling things. I wanted to stop how all this content and, and I realized what I didn't wanna do. And I would, I would kind of begrudgingly do that in the beginning. Now. I'm like, I'm not doing that. Like, no, sorry, you can't make me do that. It's my business. I'm not doing that. And so I can offload that to somebody else, but now the content. That I do every day out to the world is the exact same content that I do on a daily basis. One on one it's the same content. And because it's the same content, just on a different scale, it makes it very doable. It makes it very, in my opinion, it makes it very organic and authentic because it's not a show or it's not a post it's literally what I might send somebody as a patient. So that's made it easier.

Do you find that, uh, you have any challenges with finding, finding clients due to, um, I mean, I know you guys have different insurance down there in the us and, um, I don't know if those rules still apply, but is it, is it challenging to get people in

door. I think part of the biggest challenge of late has been with the, the politicalness. Is that a word politicalness political? Uh, I made that one up too. Maybe. I don't know. Um, that has kind of really transpired everywhere really in the past couple of years with COVID and the, and the Republican and democratic parties down here. And I think as I started to become more comfortable in my voice and what I felt as an advocate for women, what I was comfortable, I used to hedge the line, right. I used to try not to offend anybody and as I got more comfortable in my voice and that one, I was being more authentic to my brand. I. Some people weren't happy with that. I mean, you know, they, we have very strict, strict, strict, um, abortion laws here in Texas. And I, I kind of spoke out about that and it's not even about the abortion laws itself. It's more about the fact that I can't talk with a patient about it at all, or I can be sued. And in this Texas SBA and you know, you've been to Texas, it's a very red state. And I think when I started really speaking my mind that caused some, I think some patients left, I think patients left when I wouldn't prescribe ivermectin. Um, when I just said, look, I just don't have good data on this. I'm not comfortable prescribing it. I had people leave and that's been kind of the biggest thing now is, is that people, um, are so political. They're so divisive with kind of sides of things that that's been probably the biggest. Blessing and curse one because we've lost people. We've lost clients, patients over that. And the other is, is that we've narrowed down the patients and clients that are there to be the really the right people to be there. And yes, insurance is always a factor in the states, but I, I, I fact, I kind of, I spoke of you the other day to a patient. I did not mention your name, but I, she was going on bitching about her insurance. Which everyone does down here. Right. They bitch about their insurance. And I said, yes, this I know insurance is expensive. I'm very sorry about that. I said, I have a friend who lives in Canada who would like to have a procedure done. And there was like a two year waiting list. So would you like that instead because you can pay the money and we can do it, or you can wait and that's how it is. And I think we forget how other people have it. And so, um, so yes, I was thinking of you at the time and our conversations in Vegas and everything like that. And, and that's, um, that's another thing. I mean, I am tough love about things I'm direct, as you know, and I will say, you know, quit your bitching. You're lucky you got insurance. I mean, we're lucky we have choices. We're lucky we have a lot of things. Um, and so that's, that's probably been the challenge. I forgot about Vegas. When we, well, what happens in Vegas, been all over the place. So that's probably why

that's right. We instantly forget what happens in Vegas. Um, yeah, I love this. And I, I think like we're, we're told all the time in sort of entrepreneurship that we should always kind of double down on who we are and, and what we believe in, in our viewpoints. And that's always going to attract the right people to us. And a lot of people get scared of that because, and I think on a higher level, you're even more exposed because you're dealing with things that are very sensitive, that are very polarizing. And so I imagine that stepping out and, and owning some of those viewpoints can be a little bit scary, but it sounds like over the long run that has really almost benefited you in the sense that you've got this, like when, when you have the right clients and you've got the right people around you, it just, it just feels so good.

Uh, agreed. I mean, when you, you just have someone in whatever, a client or patient, whatever that you, you just, you just don't feel like you're on the same page, it's work. And then when they completely align with you, it's, it's fine. Right. It's it's just, it's easy and why make it hard these days or someone for everyone. So if you know, if you're not the right coach for someone, if I'm not the right doctor for someone, there's someone else out there. Totally. Lot of times. And a lot of times people do come back. Yeah. They see what else is out there. And they go, oh, maybe I had it better. You know?

And I, I think it just takes that leap of faith to, to really like step into who you are and what you stand for as an individual and be a human in business, because that's what people, that's what people are attracted to. And that's what they want. And they're buying a vision for you. And I would say, I would ask you, like, what is, what is the big vision for your clients? Like, what is it that you, what's the change you wanna make in

the world? Yeah. Well, I want them to. Feel heard, you know, in healthcare feel heard mm-hmm and, and also take ownership. You know, it's as women in healthcare, as, as women patients in healthcare we've been, and you can see it in old, old TV shows, we've been part of, um, part of a patriarchy that really just kind of told us what to do. And so a lot of us, you know, even hysteria that was a diagnosis. By Freud. And, you know, that comes from hysterical. It also comes from Hyster for uterus and, you know, we haven't had a real good strong boy. So if I could have a woman, even if she chooses not to stay, but she now goes somewhere else and says, and again, it's advocating its agency's advocating for yourself and for what you want. Um, but using your healthcare providers as the means to get there. So it's not knowing more than them. It's just knowing you more than them. And

how would you like to see the work that you've done and what you've built, influence traditional medicine? I mean, you're providing an alternative to the traditional experience, but can you see making some lasting changes to the way things are traditionally done?

Hope. So, you know, I, I think that probably the generation of female providers that are in my, in my been out for maybe 20 years, we are starting to kind of we're in that we're in that space, right. We're in that perimenopausal space where we're like, Hey, we want this for ourselves. And so let's create that. So I was seeing more women of like-minded in their kind of late forties, fifties that are starting to kind of think that way. You know, I think that you can't tell the younger generation and we don't teach business or anything in med school, nothing. So we can't just tell them, I think we just have to show them and they're not gonna get it for a while. And then all of a sudden, one day they're gonna go, oh, that's what they were doing, which is how we. People have gone before us, right. The leaders, we don't always think right then and there that they did it. Right. And then all of a sudden you get to that point, you go, that's what they were saying. I get it. So I'm hopeful that, you know, it takes some Kanas, it takes some balls to like, do this. And so I'm hoping that we can kind of create that empowerment in women. So that then, you know, again, it filters, filters downwards, but I, I don't know.

Well, if there's anybody who has Coones has some balls and some lady balls, it's you

lady balls. I like that. balls.

Do you see, do you ever see a, a world where you would open another clinic where you would, you know, replicate the experience?

Yeah. Um, I had wanted that I really did want that and I didn't have the right team at the time. I just didn't have, I didn't have another doctor. I needed another doctor, not a nurse practitioner to really guide that. And I needed someone that shared the vision. And this doctor that I'm bringing on in July, she's been out for about 20 years. She's she always talks about the empire building the empire, you know, expanding services. I joke that I've always wanted to get RV and drive around to different parts of the city and provide PS like a pap bus, I think is what we were calling it. Um, the pink P bus, um, you know, and, and bring healthcare to other people, you know, and, and telehealth has been wonderful for that. Cuz I can see people from all over, but um, but really kind of maybe it's gonna be a mobile. Maybe it's gonna be a mobile second, second clinic. I don't know. That's kind of what I'd like to do. I think that, I think it'd be a good tax break too. I'm not sure. But I got,

when you start a crowdfund campaign for the pink P bus, I will be like your top supporter. I will put all my money,

the pink P bus. I know I'm gonna make it really obnoxious looking maybe like a big clitoris on the top of the photos. I dunno

like Priscilla queen of the desert except with the clitoris.

Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So, well, that kind of might be my next, I think it's just so different and kind of find that I think that might be what I would choose to do over opening another brick and mortar, you know, like, like set space. Oh, we'll see. so what about,

so let's come back to the book. I'm I'm like really, really disapp. I remember when you were working on the book and I'm really disappointed to hear that it hasn't like been published yet. Cause I kind of wanna publish it. So what's look, is there, are you taking another stab at being an author? Are you taking another stab at writing? Like

what's yeah, I really, really got into writing. I mean, you know, we were there together and I really was like, I go, this just feels good. Like, it just felt really, really right. And I love the book where it was at that time back in, in 2020, and as you know, our mutual friend, Suzanne and I had worked on it. So it was in a really good place. And I had a really good agent, but in retrospect, that agent, I don't think really believed in the type of medicine that we're talking about, the type of book that it was, it was very much about empowerment and, and taking your own sexuality in your own hands and healing yourself. And I don't think she. Sold it, well, I mean, I hate to say that, I mean, of course it didn't get picked up, but I had meetings and, and I don't think she sold that. This is why this is gonna be big, you know, this is it. And, and, you know, maybe that's not, it was just wasn't her thing. And I'm not sure it was the right time, honestly, because having worked on the podcast now for a year, uh, I've delved into so many more topics that I might wanna really expand the book even more. You know, now that I've kind of really been exploring more. I'm like, well, I could put in a whole chapter about this or about this. And so maybe it just is maybe it's what was supposed to happen. It just wasn't. Ready. It's not still incubating. It's not ready to come to fruition yet. And I think too, you know, you know, as in publishing, it's all about your numbers and growth and what you show, you know, people are gonna buy it. And so I've just been focusing on growing social media and such that I can show people that there's an audience out there that is interested in this kind of information.

Well, it's kind of interesting because I, I think of authors and the first thing I think of is how can we build a business around your thought leadership, right? And around what you've created, but you're kind of coming in it the other direction. You've already built this thought leadership, and you've already built this business, the business side of things. And how do we now bolster sort of your personal brand and bring that, that expertise into the written word and into something. So I'm a huge fan of, of, you know, the universe kind of giving us what we need at the times that we need it. And. You know, not all disappointments mean that we failed. Right? Like in fact they never do. But, uh, I, I do what I do wanna like poke at a little bit is the idea of someone else representing your ideas and how. How difficult it is, whether it's a, a publisher or whether it's someone else to, um, to have someone else sell your

passion. It is, uh, it's, it's vulnerable. And it's also scary, right? I mean, as an entrepreneur, I don't hand off the keys to kingdom very often. And when you have someone like an agent representing, even if they're a big name, it doesn't mean that they truly understand and believe in your vision. And I think that was the big problem here. It looked on paper as though she would, and then, you know, time after time, she just didn't really seem to really get it. And I remember Suzanne being, so our friend being so frustrated, she was just like, I hate her and Suzanne's like the nicest person in the world. She's like, I hate her. And I was like, well, you know what? And, and I fired her at the end. I just said, look, I go, you, you're not the, you're not the right person. And Suzanne was on the phone with me and she's like, you just told her off. I go. I told her off nicely, but I, I, I did. I was like, we're done. Like you, you aren't pushing this product the way that I would. And yeah, like you think about like, you know, shark tank and those things where you go sell your own product. I was like, that's what I, you need a shark tank for books. Right. So, Hey, this is why, why we need this. But in the meantime, the publishing world is old school. Still. I may like to have an agent, right? Unless you're self-publishing, unless you hit the nail in the head, unless I just say screw it. Like I have most of my career. And at some point decide to self-publish it.

And it, a lot of people are doing it. And if there's, there are a lot of resources available to you for yeah. For taking that route. So I would be very curious to see, cause I want

a copy of that book. Okay. Well I'll send you one.

Yeah. You know, you have to have, it would be great to be having sex in order to, you know, make it relevant, but maybe that'll come down.

That's all about, you don't have to have sex to feel sexy and, and really feel sexual. So we'll used to get so worked up, I'm a planner. I'm so type a. What's next. What's next? What's coming up next. What are we doing this? Where are we doing this? And the pandemic kind of slowed me the F bound. It was just like, dude, stop trying to direct life. Cause who thought that was coming? You know? And so now I'm just like, okay, well let's just kinda, and I still, still stresses me up and I'm like, this is what's gonna happen. What's gonna happen. Well, very strong.

I work with a lot of people who are like you, who are like these thought leaders, these experts who have like really developed kind of a practice area in their field. And one of the hardest things that they have is, is figuring out how to wrangle their ideas. Right? And in some ways I become an idea Wrangler for them, but I love hearing how you've stepped into this kind of idea of, um, of, of flow and of, of being okay with that not being structured. Um, and knowing as long as we know our priorities and I, and we know what's important to us and what's going, what has to remain constant, then everything else can sort of ebb and flow and that's okay. And there there's never an arrival, right? We're always, we're always taught that we're supposed to be arriving somewhere, but it doesn't happen. And it's not because it doesn't not happen because we're not good at what we do. It not, it doesn't happen because we're constantly in a state of change and that's fine. We should be.

Well, and that's, you know, that's why I even preach sexually. I mean, I say it's not about the orgasm, it's about the journey to get there. Right. So I was preaching it and I wasn't living it well with, well, with orgasms either probably. But I was, I was just like trying to get to the next stop, you know, like that's, that's how you succeed, right? Like that's you get to the next, the next marker, the next milestone. And, and you're right. It's about the journey. And I wanna look back when I'm 80 and go, what an awesome fucking ride. This was may not have worked out. Like I thought, but it was an awesome fucking ride. That's why we don't get

committed to the, to the end result. Right. We just, right. We commit to our, we commit to what we wanna feel.

Yeah, exactly.

So we're coming to the end of the time. There's a question that I ask everybody and I, I, God, I know you've got opinions on this, cuz we've lived it together for quite a few years. What is the diff this, this show's all about being kind of real and what's, what is the difference in your mind between what, what we learn about and see in kind of the online business world or the business world out there, and what's real about being an entrepreneur?

Hmm. You know, I think the biggest thing is, is that again, it's, it's we study business, we study something, but the truth is, is OJT. It's all the job training mm-hmm and, and the real world is, is that I, sometimes I unclog toilets. Sometimes I'm between pat Sear's calling a handyman. Cause I don't know how to reach this one thing in the ceiling. It's that it's messy. Real life is messy and that's, that's awesome because it's supposed to be messy. It's not supposed to be like a textbook. It's not like Dartmouth business school or Harvard business school. It's, it's messy. And when you're an entrepreneur, you get in there and you do whatever, you're cleaning out the fridge, you're answering the phone, you're doing all of it. And by doing that kind of leadership, your, your staff sees that too. And then they're willing to pick up that pace too. And that's what I think real entrepreneurship is, is, is it's in the trenches, but you're

also writing books. Yes. And being on podcasts. Yes. And being just in a, a, like a fucking amazing human.

You're so sweet. Yeah. It's, it's all work, right? Some days, like I said, some days I show up with a hole of my pants and some days I'm, you know, messing up and some days, and that's just fucking okay. That's real. Okay. I have to be able to tell you, I had a hole. All your viewers, listen, I have a hole of pants. They now know that I'm a doctor with hole of pants and it's not for easy access to things, by the way, it's on the back left hip. So don't think they're like fr bands. They're not, I

mean, even if they were

it, it could work. I mean, we could do that next, like, because Carolina of cross sweatpants, that could be a thing for us.

Right. And it would be something that you would launch along

with your book. Yeah. Yeah. We'll work on that next.

I like it. Okay. Hey, listen. Um, we've come up on time. Thank you so much for spending the time with me today. Of course, I could talk to you for another four hours, but can you tell our listeners where they can, where their best to find you? And we'll put all the links in the show notes, but where, where would you

send them? I'm hanging out mostly on Instagram these days, and it's at Dr. Heather Bartos V RT OS. And then there's the me spot podcast.com. And those are the big spots to find me literally. Literally, it's a new spot where I am. right. I

love you. And, uh, go and learn more about Heather. She is revolutionizing things bit by bit. She is, she's got great content. She's got very relatable content and she is providing a service to women that is absolutely critical. And I hope I hope, you know, start is, is providing leadership for a whole new generation of, um, service providers. So thank

you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's good to see you.

Good to see you too. And that's a wrap. I am so happy. We had the opportunity to chat with Heather today to hear more about how her businesses came to be her experiences along the way and what the future of her business entails. Thank you for tuning into this episode of the real people, real business show, where we get the real op entrepreneurial stories and journeys. You can relate to the show notes, resources and special offers from this episode are available on my website and social media platforms. And if you've enjoyed today's content, I would love for you to give us a review on whatever platform you're on to help us share these genuine stories with an even bigger audience until next time, keep building, keep dreaming and keep being real