Data, Integrity and the Sexiest Beast

Guest - Sarah O'Leary (she/her), Founder and CEO of Mend Acupuncture
---
Imagine entering a dimly lit room. It's vast and yet you immediately feel tucked in. Soothing sounds swirl around you with a "whoosh, whoosh." You sit down in a dreamy recliner. After you settle in, you notice others quietly resetting their nervous systems. And just as you ask yourself "Could I be next to go on this journey?" you are approached by an open, capable and trendy practitioner. They speak first, offering both expertise and partnership delivered in a dulcet tone "What would you like to work on today?" Then, excited that the next words you offer will start you on the path to wellness you say...

"I gots the trots! Where can you stick me for that?" in the least discreet way possible.

And just like that, you wake up to the sound of your "Radial" iPhone alarm. Why?

Because it's after 6am and you know the latest episode of Proofing Stage comes out WITH NONE OTHER THAN SARAH O'LEARY! That's why!

For long-lasting effects, let Joan, Michelle and Sarah plant a seed or two on your earlobes with these here gems:

• Sarah spills the (chaga) tea on all things community acupuncture
• Our verbal cupping will suck out any desire for "move fast and break things" growth
• Joan argues for adding a "Sexy is..." sentence completion segment to the pod
• We dispense indispensable advice for young people entering the work world
• If you smell what Michelle is cooking...  it's #integrity
• And, when taken regularly (and seriously) data decreases your risk of making bad business decisions

Now peep that through your #windowpoints, son!

More on Mend Acupuncture:
Website: https://mendacupuncture.com/
Instagram
Facebook

Faux Sponsor: "The iFOAT Diet"
- written by Joan Kanner
- performed by Michelle Bond, Sarah O'Leary and Joan Kanner
- music: Lady of the 80’s by Grand_Project (via Pixabay)

Theme music by Thorn Haze
Additional music
Ocean by Oleksii_Kalyna (via Pixabay)

Podcast cover art by Lisa Orye
Executive Producers, Joan Kanner and Michelle Bond
Podcast production provided by HiveCast.fm

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Transcript

Joan Kanner (00:00.078)
I feel refreshed. I mean, that interview with Sarah was like snow on my face...

Michelle Bond
[laughs]

Joan Kanner
... or a bunch of needles in me. 

Sarah O'Leary
Oh, no...

Joan Kanner
What's the name of the, what's the point, Sarah? Like this is what Alex gave me the other day. I call it "The Frankenstein." I would like to call it that going forward. They were both in my neck, like where the bolts should be. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah, maybe there's a lot of, there's a lot of points in the neck, but maybe, yeah, there's some, what we call like "window points." They help with like clarity, like seeing and, and speaking clearly, perfect for the profession you're in now. 

Michelle Bond
Yeah. 

Sarah O'Leary
Window points. 

Michelle Bond
She must have known. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah. 

Joan Kanner
I'm hashtagging that for the show notes. 

Michelle Bond
Window points. 

Sarah O'Leary
Window points. 

Michelle Bond
I love it. 

Michelle Bond
This is Proofing Stage with me, Michelle Bond. 

Joan Kanner
And me, Joan Kanner. We're queer female founders who over a decade ago envisioned and created products and services designed with end users in mind. Go figure.

Michelle Bond
Frustrated in our prior careers, we began to consider what all our energy and passion can do if we use it on our own terms. A company with karma as its driving force, a music app that put users in control, and for the last eight years, a bagel business. 

Joan Kanner
This podcast is about our experiences and the nitty gritty of being an underrepresented small business owner.

Just like we've worked to fill the gap in quality bagels, lox, and schmear, these conversations fill the gap of knowledge, mentorship, and straight talk that are missing from other business pods and success stories. I come to the table with a ton of customer service and compliance experience, from a sports complex startup to new university centers to many years in grants and contracts administration, not to mention social science research, including focus group and survey work.

Michelle Bond
And I've combined a passion for hospitality, communications, and PR with community development and diversity training, all with the aim of engaging others to actively show up in the spaces we all occupy. Together, we have a lot to offer, and we have a lot to learn. So join us and our brilliant guests in this space between "Atta girl!" and "I told you so."

Joan Kanner (02:19.982)
Today we have with us Sarah O 'Leary, founder and CEO of Mend Acupuncture. Sarah, welcome to the Proofing Stage pod. 

Sarah O'Leary
Thank you. Thanks for having me. What a nice way to start the day. 

Michelle Bond
No, we're really excited to have you. Thanks for agreeing to be on with us and talk about Mend and your journey to get it started and to grow it. And yeah, we're excited to get into it.

Joan Kanner
And I think I need to let people know how I know Mend, and by extension, how I know Sarah. So I have been going to Mend Acupuncture and taking advantage of the community acupuncture aspect to it for years now. It predates any type of entrepreneurship that I have worked on. And it's been a great touchpoint for me because I'm someone who tends to go drug-free whenever possible in terms of treating different things. And I've really found it important for resetting of my whole body and my thinking. For me, going seasonally is very important, too. I find myself feeling the seasons and transitions very differently and then going into Mend as a touchpoint to help reset has been impactful. So thank you, Sarah, for like making this happen. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah, again, thanks for having me and thanks Joan for that organic plug. You know, you and I have gotten to know each other over the years in a couple of different ways and it's always nice to see you around the clinic.

Joan Kanner
Awww.

Sarah O'Leary
And to, it's, I don't, you know, as a business owner working in the business, it's always sort of reassuring when other entrepreneurial folks come and go, cause I know that they get it. It also means they might be able to like peek behind the curtain in a little bit of a different way than people who don't operate businesses. And, I feel like a sense of grace in the presence of entrepreneurs. Like I know that they know what it takes.  I also know that they can sort of see behind it all and know that there's probably like a managerial issue happening at the same time that they're coming in for services. And, you know, it's just a funny thing. You can't forget what you know, you know, from your previous experiences, right? You like know what it takes to run something. And then when you step into any operation, I know I do this, when I step into any operation, I'm thinking like, "ooo, I wonder what their payroll looks like." And "I wonder what their rent looks like." And "I wonder, you know, what their management structure is." And I wonder how they, "what are their SOPs?" You know? So I've...

Sarah O'Leary (04:39.63)
I wonder if you can relax Joan at Mend, knowing as much as you can? 

Joan Kanner
That's a lot. I actually, oftentimes I do think about what skits or fauxcommercials I can do in your space, which would be a next level of ask for you. I promise to compensate you accordingly. I do think about - I so appreciate you saying that - but I do think about operations, I think about how much do you make per square foot. And I do also realize that - to your point about peeking behind the curtain - staff can be great with me. And we've had staff be great with customers. And then in terms of what you get internally, it may not be that; some of the stuff is performative. And I can appreciate that there is a theater. There's a theater to food. There's a theater to what you all do. And I'm very mindful of that. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah. Yeah... right. And you know, whatever, then we could head in a whole different direction with the podcast, if we want to talk about customer service, right?

Michelle Bond
That's true.

Sarah O'Leary
But it's interesting. I have a 16 year-old who just entered the workforce at like a pizza place nearby and performance has been coming up a lot and she's learning it quickly. You're right. 

Michelle Bond
Oh.

Sarah O'Leary
You like kind of almost have to create an alter ego to survive like food service. 

Michelle Bond
Yeah. 

Sarah O'Leary
That's interesting. 

Michelle Bond
I mean, professionally too, just in any direction sometimes, but... 

Sarah O'Leary
Professionally. Yeah. No, you got to have a little, a little armor sometimes. I don't know. Is that the right word? Armor or, yeah, alter ego or just a little layer of protection, you know, when we're serving personal services, customer service, food service. Yeah. Yeah. 

Joan Kanner
There's personas and then there's also code switching. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah.

Joan Kanner
You know, I, you know how I sound in this podcast. It's very much me. When I would like present on different things. That's also me. When I interact with people back from like old neighborhoods in Jersey, I sound different. That's also me.

I think people have to like, I think it's something, it's a really good lesson for a younger person to realize that you're not being phony, unless you are being phony. And then just do a zone check and go, "well, no, this is like an older person or this is a person who is not a non-native English speaker, how am I going to speak to them? And that's still genuinely who you are. Right? 

Sarah O'Leary
Well said. It's adaptive. It's adaptive. Yeah, you're right. That is interesting. It does take some getting comfortable in our own skin to sort of be an acceptance of that. Right? Whereas maybe, yeah, maybe for the 16 year old...

Sarah O'Leary (07:04.91)
It's like, "yeah, it feels like I'm not being myself." And you're like, well, it's good to stretch our definition of self, right? It's good to stretch. 

Michelle Bond
[laughs]
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's also newer that you can be completely authentic in every aspect of your life, right? I mean, we should be, right? That's what we're all striving for. But that whole, even just like that concept is only a generation, you know, old if that. And so it's interesting. But...

Sarah O'Leary
I had a therapist once who's, can we talk about therapists? I think they're like, I always love sharing. 

Michelle Bond
It seems to be a trend of this podcast with our guests. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah, I'm like, if I'm going to pay $175 an hour, I'm going to share those nuggets, right? I paid for those nuggets. 

Michelle Bond
That's right. That's right. 

Sarah O'Leary
She said, she was talking about the word "integrity," which I kind of prefer over "authenticity." 

Michelle Bond
Hmmm...

Sarah O'Leary
Integrity, if you break the word down, integral is like the whole, right? So we have these parts of us that we need to pull out at different times. And as long as they're all, you know, parts of a whole that feel true to you, then you're in integrity. You're being authentic. 

Michelle Bond
Mmmm...

Sarah O'Leary
Authentic is a tricky one. But yeah, integrity I like. 

Michelle Bond
I like that a lot, especially as that's like one of my rocks, you know? Having integrity and it, and how we all show up in the world and stuff like that. So, I like that. I'm gonna hang on to that nugget. 

Sarah O'Leary
Definition. Yeah. 

Michelle Bond
I did want to, I don't regularly partake though I have partaken of Mend's services and I remember hearing about it many, many years ago. And for me, and I don't know if it's new to you all, I would love to hear you just talk a little bit about it. But the community, the aspect of community acupuncture, I mean, to me that was mind blowing, especially at a time when I couldn't afford, you know, what traditional acupuncture services cost, but did know the benefits. And so I remember walking up the stairs in Hampden and having a few sessions in there and then obviously later in Remington. But I would just love for you to just, if you want to share, you know, how you birthed Mend, and what it's all about for folks who are not aware. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah, I'd love to...

Sarah O'Leary (09:29.71)
... talk about community. I mean, community is what I thought I was going to be doing almost all the time. You know, when I came out of grad school, it was, I thought I was opening a community acupuncture clinic, but I had, you know, since we're going to at some point talk about space design leases and build outs, I had it all wrong. And the space I had leased wasn't big enough for that. And also, you know, a funny thing was happening around the same time, which is that insurance, was growing in access to acupuncture. 

Joan Kanner
Hmmm...

Sarah O'Leary
So, it became this sort of interesting awakening that accessibility of acupuncture is, which I'll say more about as sort of one of my core missions with Mend, that it could be more accessible through insurance at times than it can through community. And my entryway into the profession, I was a social worker very briefly before I was an acupuncturist and I worked in the men's detention center in Baltimore City and I saw acupuncture being delivered in their drug court programming. So folks who had repeat incarcerations that was identified as related to addiction, there's a pathway to shorten incarceration and offer meaningful rehabilitation and acupuncture is just a small part of that program. But I really enjoyed watching the acupuncturists interact and deliver care and watch the inmates receive care. And it was really inspiring. I was struggling with my choice of professions. Again, talking about having a teenager and how we pick our professions. I sort of knew quickly that social work probably wasn't the right fit for me. It's like a little too macro. You're just trying to solve so many problems. And I felt pretty ineffective as soon as I got started. 

But I really appreciated watching this acupuncturist go into a very full room. She might see 30 or 60 men - and Joan and Michelle, since you've seen community acupuncture - you realize that's a huge ask of her, but she would see so many men over the course of three hours in the morning. And there was just this really palpable sort of peace and nervous system regulation that would occur and no words were exchanged. There was no therapeutic verbal interaction. It was just her using points that help regulate the nervous system. And people seemed to really respond. So I took a leap of faith.

Sarah O'Leary (11:56.526)
I went and got my master's in acupuncture. 

Michelle Bond
Wow.

Sarah O'Leary
And again, from that experience, to me, it was like, this is a really interesting medicine. How does this medicine get further in its reach? Because right now it was at that time, so this was in 2006, it was reaching white women with double incomes, right? 

Michelle Bond
Mmmm... Mmmm, hmmm.

Sarah O'Leary
And, you know, and someone has to care for the worried well, and that's great. And this is a really accessible form of healthcare. Like, why are we not seeing more of this out in the community? So that was my sort of entryway and community was my love. Yeah. So, I mean, I could talk all day about how it works. I mean, and maybe for the listeners, just a really quick...

Michelle Bond
Sure. Please.

Sarah O'Leary
... just a quick sort of understanding of what it is, is that it's one, we can bring down the, the cost of care with one acupuncturist overseeing five or six chairs. So every 15 minutes a patient comes in, grabs a reclining chair. It's like a large open studio. The lights are dim. There's music, sort of hushed voices, it's very relaxing. It's not group-oriented in that, no one's actually talking to each other. Just the acupuncturist will have a quick conversation with the patient. They'll find out what they're coming in for. They'll deliver a treatment that can be done with clothes on: so elbows down, knees down, head and ears. And then let them rest for 20 or 30 minutes or so while they start with the next person. Our fees are $35 per session, so they can vary depending on the region you're in, but obviously a very accessible way to get care. But again, the insurance companies have expanded to cover acupuncture pretty incredibly over the years. So, for some people it's a $0 copay, which is cheaper than a $35 session. So we have both. 

Michelle Bond
Yeah. Yeah. 

Joan Kanner
And I will say like, $35 as of the taping of the show, which is the kind of stuff I'd like to add for our guests. As of this date and time. And there's, as someone who has traveled a bunch, whenever I travel and I have a couple extra, like an after, an extra afternoon, I do look into community acupuncture wherever I am, whether that be like Colorado or other places.

Sarah O'Leary (14:22.838)
That's cool.

Joan Kanner
But this has to be a "Joan throwing shade moment", much more expensive. And I don't know what else extra you're getting for that. 

Sarah O'Leary
You found community acupuncture in other states to be more expensive? 

Joan Kaner
More expensive. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah, interesting. 

Joan Kanner
But like a lot more, right? I'd rather just go in for like a one-on-one [appointment] at that point, if it's going to be like 70 bucks. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's challenging. I'll say there's a really strong community of community acupuncturists in the US who sort of trade, you know, resources and it's a very open community. And it is difficult to run a community acupuncture clinic unless it's like the owner has no staff and they're delivering all the acupuncture. 

Michelle Bond
Right, I'm sure. Yeah.

Sarah O'Leary
So we're seeing, you know, just as costs, you whatever, just like, so can we talk about how costs are going up? And is everyone tired of hearing about that?
As costs are going up, you know, and what it takes to make a living. And there's so many parts of the day that we call them like "donuts." Like you might be busy from three to seven, but you're not able to really fill that first part of a day. You know, a lot of people who come to community, I'm sure very like practical users that got jobs. They may not be remote jobs there. So, you know, it's hard to work long shifts because of maybe the patient population. 

It's hard to work a long shift because, well, it's really demand, it's physically more demanding than working one-on-one. You're like bending over chairs and being a lot of volume, you know, you kind of want to be on. But that's cool that you go, Joan, to other community clinics. I like to do the same thing because I think community is really, I think community acupuncture, is pointing to potential for a lot of health care. How health care could be delivered accessibly for a lot of services. Like, can we do PT in groups? Like, why don't we do that? 

Like when you know the group model is really smart for a lot of things. And why are we not doing more of it? So I don't know, I think it's really interesting to look at and see what other clinics are doing. And yeah. 

Joan Kanner
[I feel] like it helps me focus more. This is like my random thing to mention because as someone who throughout my life has gotten more increased stimuli and had to focus, I'm a Gen Xer, which I'll mention many times on the pod. But I've gotten to like be part of this "a lot of information in your face" type of world...

Joan Kanner (16:49.518)
... oddly enough, between the settings that you have in your clinic, Sarah, and seeing other people get stuff, it kind of like tunnels me inward differently than if it's just me in like a massage room, you know, like somewhere else. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah, I like to think of it as like some of us in college, we studied well at a busy - or in high school - you know, at a busy coffee shop, like the stimulus is helpful for zoning in. 

Michelle Bond
Yeah. 

Sarah O'Leary
And for some people, I think that's true in your own like processing is like it's the distractions are helpful. You know, sort of a distraction meditation in a way versus just being in your own crazy brain. So I also, I also do community for that reason. 

Michelle Bond
I think it's also a helpful tool, like the act of doing it in that way also, I think is a training for when you're just out in perhaps another situation where you need just to, you need to kind of go inward to like either like bring down your anxiety or just focus your thinking or, you know, it's kind of like a helpful practice for other settings where you can be like, "okay, I can, I can interact with this like larger activity going around me at times. And then other times I can just like do a self check and like take care of what I need to take care of. And then go back out into the world literally and physically figuratively to, you know, a little bit stronger, a little bit more focused, a little bit less stress," whatever the, you know, the thing is.

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah, we ask kids to do that in the classroom environment all the time. But as adults don't have as much opportunity to be like, okay, how do I, you know, sit in my seat? 

Michelle Bond
Yeah, good point. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah, like what's the where's the bridge out and then the bridge back in? And yeah, that's really interesting. I'll say too from a, this is just a fun tidbit from a, from the acupuncturist perspective. What's fascinating is because we don't have any control of how people schedule or when they come in, they just they select their own spot. And you will
get a lot of trends. So like in the same hour, you might have like five people with like shoulder pain or like all your fertility people come in this wave. It is really...

Michelle Bond
Wow.

Sarah O'Leary
I don't know. I don't want to get too woo. I'm like, that's weird. 

Michelle Bond
In terms of energy.

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah. You're just like, and you know, you don't, no one knows what the person next to them is coming for unless that person decides to be really loud about their diarrhea or whatever. 

Joan Kanner
Girl, yeah.

Sarah O'Leary
So that happens, you know, can't control the volume of your voice. But the...

Sarah O'Leary (19:11.374)
... when you're like, this person is grieving and I wonder, and then the person in the corner also has just had a loss. And there's something, I don't know, really interesting about just being in a space, having a hard time, someone across the room, they also will be having a hard time, don't need to know the details. I don't know, comforting. I don't know. I remember hearing, reading that like when cats purr, like there's this like, has this interesting effect on our beta waves. I think we're just kind of purring together in that space. 

Michelle Bond
Yeah. I love that. I mean, I think that's true. That's just how... I mean, even on a less impactful way, but we would even notice that in the shop. It's like, you have a day when everybody wants a Kimmelweck bagel with veggie cream cheese. And not because it's on the special board, but just because that's on your menu every day of the week. But for some reason in a given four-hour period, you have 70 % more of that going on in a day with a bunch of people coming in and out and they don't know each other. 

Sarah O'Leary
So interesting. Yeah. I'm sure like astrologers could help us crack this one: "It's because the moon's in Aries." I don't know. You're like, you know, "Scallion Day." 

Michelle Bond
Yeah. That's right. That's right. 

Joan Kanner
Well, woo is welcome here - to be clear - in terms of the pod. 

Sarah O'Leary
Okay. Cool. All right. 

Joan Kanner
We had to pass it... It's more, you know what I mean? It's like not to still focus, but you've got to, like these things aren't just coincidence. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah. I don't know what they are, but it makes it fun. 

Michelle Bond
It does.

[musical interlude]

Joan Kanner (20:47.822)
When did you know you wanted to expand your business? Do you know yet? Has it happened? 

Sarah O'Leary
I mean, okay, let's see. I figured it out pretty quickly. You know, so I worked by myself at first. 

Michelle Bond
And what year was that? 

Sarah O'Leary
So 2006, 7. 

Michelle Bond
Okay. 

Sarah O'Leary
I came out of school and was like, well, there were no acupuncture t jobs really in this region that I could find. I would have taken a job if I could have, but I couldn't, there was no job. So you rent space, you rent space from, you know, you sub lease or you take up a lease, which is what I did. And you get, you know, you start working, right? And I realized what that first two years looked like was so silly.

I'm like the acupuncturist. I'm the office manager. I'm the receptionist. I'm the biller. I'm the marketing person. I'm the interior designer. I'm the janitor. I'm the whatever you... Right? This is this thing that some of us do when we first open a business is you're just like, I can't, I can't. How hard can this be? Yeah. Yeah. 

Michelle Bond
All of the hats.

Sarah O'Leary
And then I'm like crying over MailChimp at 10 PM. With an infant, by the way. It was like same year I had my first baby. And so I was like, this is silly.

And I'm looking around and every other acupuncturist I know is doing essentially the same thing. 

Michelle Bond
Right.

Sarah O'Leary
So I went on a maternity leave the first year and I didn't quite get the lesson then, but the second time I went on a maternity leave, my second one was just a few years later. I had to enlist help. I had enough of a book of business that it didn't make sense just to shut down for three months. I realized there was going to be a financial impact and impact on the business. So I recruited a few associates to help keep things running while I was out and it worked really well. And so, and I saw then that if I was going to have folks coming in to do support, I couldn't ask them to do the same things I was doing. There was no reason that they also had to be the janitor and the marketing person. So then I started to build out a tiny little support team of contracted help. And then I, and then, and then we, I just slowly just started adding other associates, mostly because there were just people in the community that I really liked. That I wanted to work with.

Sarah O'Leary (23:08.334)
And it was like, "hey, you want to come join this club?" 

Michelle Bond
Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah. So it kind of happened out of a necessity to start this growth, the scaling happened out of necessity. And then it was like sort of the wisdom of like, "we could share resources." Like acupuncturists could share one biller. We could share the burden of the lease. We could share just whatever, all the resources that it takes to run a business.

And that would allow the acupuncturists to do what they went into their training for which was just see patients and not necessarily have to hold the burden of administrative and business burden. I liked, I happened to like some of the business, I wouldn't even call it burden, business operations. And some acupuncturists do, most do not. And so then I eventually, now this fast forward 10, 15 years, spent less and less time in the treatment room. I always say I'm Mend's worst acupuncturist. I'm like not in the treatment room much anymore. And I'm really mostly just running the operations and those acupuncturists who also enjoy operational management sort of things have opportunities within Mend to break up their clinical load and help support the business as well. So it's kind of just grown organically. I mean, it's an old dog at this point. It's almost an 18 year-old business. It's three locations. I call that slow growth.

It's just when there's need, we've kind of overstuffed ourselves at one location. We move on to the next. And I don't, yeah, it's been a nice pace, especially like this stage of life where my kids were little at the beginning of it. And now, you know, it's like my, my 17 year old that sort of paced the whole business. Like now she's getting ready to leave the house and I have more energy and I don't know, maybe, maybe it will be another location now. You know? 

Michelle Bond
Yeah. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah. 

Michelle Bond
Incredible. Congratulations that the slow the slow growth is a piece we've touched on a couple times just in sharing our story and speaking with folks because I feel like it's very easy to not get that early enough. And I think that the most successful ventures that we see are ones that pretty early on say, "okay, this is a long game. And how do I..." especially if you're either a sole proprietor or...

Michelle Bond (25:30.35)
... like you, you know, I mean, you're doing this largely on your own and you've grown, but it's, it's meeting the rhythm and the cadence of your life, as you say, and I think that's really important. 

Sarah O'Leary
I think business is changing in this country really quickly. And the new norm and the like, the folks that we idolize are fast. 

Michelle Bond
Oh, for sure. Yeah. 

Sarah O'Leary
It's not our grandparents', like Main Street anymore, where you open shop and you keep it till you retire. It's like churn and burn. And so it can at times, get in my head, like, has Mend done enough? Are we growing enough? Like if accessibility really is the goal, like, are we accessible? Where really all can come to us here in Baltimore, you know? So it definitely gets, it's good, you know, you look around at this fast growth, heavy investment dollar growth, where you can afford to be nonprofit for years on end or lose profit. And that's not our situation, right? So it's, I've had to like really continue to ask myself, like, is this? Yes, it's... "am I getting this right?" You know? 

Michelle Bond
Sure. Well, and to be clear, I say that as, as, as someone who didn't do that, you know? Who did, who really was all caught up in the hustle of it all. And, and the burnout associated with that and also just the limit, you know, this constantly doing a check, like who are we against what the culture is saying we should be? 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah. 

Michelle Bond
You know? 

Sarah O'Leary
Yup.

Michelle Bond
And some people are able to successfully do that better than others and industry plays a role in all that stuff. But that's why I just, I say, I can only imagine, right? That you're, you know, you've second guessed yourself here and there, but you know, you have the, that you have the longevity now to, to prove it. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah. Yeah. In the end, it's not been a bad thing. I don't think. 

Joan Kanner
There's so many fucked up ideas in terms of, well, there's so many fucked up ideas in terms of what a business hero is like - which is another reason for the pod. I'm like, maybe we'll all do TED Talk someday. But to me, that's not the example that most people need to follow. Those people can also fizzle to your earlier point, Sarah. And I think it's interesting, too, sometimes people hide their access to capital, their supports. But they will also buy their own Forbes article - you can do that, by the way -

Joan Kanner (27:54.766)
... to like help promote, you know, their businesses. And, you know, I think it's interesting to me, like what consumers know and don't know. And I wish there was a, I want more information out there for consumers to know, whether or not they're just consuming things or want to have their own business, there needs to be more information for people to understand. There will always be people who just don't care. It's a tasty sandwich, it's a good treatment. Whatever that thing may be, it's like a really cool widget that uses AI.

But we've also seen it in food so much. People you'd be used to wholesale to would just say they wanted to have 200 bagels a week and we're just like, "let's start with two dozen or four dozen" and then they immediately fizzle. So there's also that reality to it. And I think by being around for a while in different ways, we can see those patterns. But I still don't know why people want to praise the non-profitable poof of a business with all of the fame and fortune with the same looking people and acting people.

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah, it's I, I'll be curious, you know, if we could fast forward 20 years, maybe even less, like what will you know... Because some of them, you know, some of them go on to become profitable. And, you know, Netflix or whatever Uber, you know. But they, you know, they have, I don't know, it's such an inauthentic, here's that word, right? It's such an inauthentic start where it's like this, the prices aren't actually what's the sustainable set point, set point for pricing later, the way they staff isn't sustainable.

And then they have to recalibrate later. It looks really stressful and you see most of them collapse. Right? But every now and then you get one of these unicorns and those are the ones we celebrate, but it's really terrible messaging for the average small business startup. I say this all the time. I end up doing a little neighborly, friendly free consulting when someone wants to start a business. "I'd love to hear more."

And they're like, "yeah, I've got someone who's willing to invest to me." And I'm like, "Stop! Why? For what? And then you got this monkey on your back. Why do you need an investor? Why do you need that kind of quick capital infusion?" So yeah, it's funny. There's a book that I really love. The Messy Middle is the book. And I picked it up at the airport. This is my favorite bookseller. And...

Joan Kanner
[laughs]

Michelle Bond
[laughs]

Sarah O'Leary (30:23.086)
And I feel like we've been in the messy middle. You know, the messy middle is right. You're not your startup stage. You're not your like exit strategy stage. You know, you're not sold or transitioned your, your legacy to your family or whatever. You're in the middle, which is like the hard, I think is the hardest stage of business, honestly. Cause it's one thing though, the momentum of startup is really interesting, but the momentum at some point falls back into like pragmatism, which is a lot less sexy. And...

Michelle Bond
Oh, gosh.

Sarah O'Leary
Right? Not sexy. And so I feel like we've been in the messy middle for probably 12 or 15 years. And I'm like, we might just stay here until the very end, whatever the end is. And there's so much learning, the deeper you, the longer you have your business, the more learning there is. There's never a week that I'm not like surprised by something. 

Michelle Bond
That's amazing.

Sarah O'Leary
Which is great. Which is great. I mean, sometimes on Fridays, I wish there was a little less learning.
[laughs]

Michelle Bond
[laughs]
Yeah, you're like, "I'm tired." 

Sarah O'Leary
Really? Another lesson, another hard-earned, humbling lesson. 

Michelle Bond
God. It's so true. 

[ad for Proofing Stage podcast]
Joan Kanner
I'm Joan Kanner. 

Michelle Bond
I'm Michelle Bond. Welcome to Proofing Stage...

Joan Kanner
... where we found food to be a conversation starter. 

Michelle Bond
You need an egg and cheese and some sort of pork product on a bagel. You need it, right? 

Michelle Bond
Mistakes? Yeah, we've made a few. 

Joan Kanner
But I still like kept hearing them out. I feel like, I...

I should have either walked out or been like, "why are we doing this?" 

Michelle Bond
But I feel like without that, we would have probably been able to have a workable renewal. But it just brought so many things to a head that I don't know, or maybe you just see people's true colors sooner or more clearly. 

Joan Kanner
So here's your opportunity to learn from ours. 

Michelle Bond
And when you're running on four hours of sleep, half your team quits and there's a line down the block, what motivates you?

Joan Kanner
I don't need as much sleep. I don't need as much. I don't need fancy clothes or to buy a chef outfit. I need witty comments, that feedback, and money. That's the drug. 

Joan Kanner
Above all, don't ever let them see you sweat. 

Michelle Bond
And I, you know, per usual, I'm like, "God, I mean, I don't want to back out, but practically, how are we going to do this? How are we going to do it well? How are we going to be fair to everybody involved? I don't think it's possible." 

Michelle Bond
Still, being a business owner...

Michelle Bond (32:43.182)
It's the toughest job we've ever loved, not just because one of us was in the Peace Corps. 

Joan Kanner
So catch up on season one and then join us as we, along with our guests, take a deep dive into the issues - and solutions - faced by female business owners. 

Michelle Bond
Proofing Stage is out now, so listen and subscribe wherever you get your pods.

[end of ad for Proofing Stage]

Joan Kanner (33:05.742)
There should be like a sentence completion for every guest, which is "Sexy is..." At some point I realized that sexy is: when someone shows up. You know what I mean? Like there's just like, shows up and is present and it's just like, "where do you need me?" 

Sarah O'Leary
Hmmm...

Joan Kanner
You know, I thought there's, there's a, it's like the idea of someone coming in like Fonzie on a motorcycle and like they're whatever gender like excites you - or all of them, you know. And they show up and they're just kind of like, "man, God, like they're so dangerous." And just, I'm thinking like, [they're] probably flaky. Can you trust like, is it just about you - if you're monogamous? Like what's going on? And at some point I just realized that really, it's like when I show up to any type of thing I do, I'm like, "well, I'll show up and I won't bullshit you." That's, that's part of the Joan Kanner brand. And to me, like at some point I realized that just having people there consistently is like, it's wildly sexy. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yes, that's great. Yeah. I read something along the way. It was like: you have in your organization, you have superstars who just come in and they kill an interview and they crush it and they usually connect really quickly to everyone in the organization. And then you've got your rock stars. And your superstars typically fizzle out, and maybe are built to move from job to job or career to career quickly, like it's just in their personality, right? Usually come in and like a free radical and make changes and go. And then your rock stars, oh, God bless, are just the people who stay and get have a depth of understanding of the project and just keep showing up. And boy, that Mend is built on a few key rock stars. I'll say that. I'll say that. 

Joan Kanner
[pretends to cough] Alex. [pretends to cough]

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah. Alexandra. Alexandra McElwee was one of our first, you know... We had like a contractor model for a while. Then don't do that. You'll get audited like we did. 

Joan Kanner
[laughs]

Sarah O'Leary
And she was our first acupuncture hire. Yeah, she's a rock star. Kim Hennessee, yeah, joined the organization early on in those days I was talking about, like babies when having babies years, and she also was having babies and she is [the] secret hero behind men. Anyway, I could go on, but yeah, the rock star is the sexiest beast, Joan. 

Joan Kanner
And I also say, that to me, like, it's a true gift to be able to define like your own end for you.

Joan Kanner (35:33.358)
To your point about being in the middle and the end. And I know Michelle, like I'm going to try to get that woman who has a business and a podcast about mergers and acquisitions. And how to think about those things from jump for female business owners to be able to like plan certain ways and to be able to pivot and sell everything from like your mailing list to like your IP and even to like sell a podcast. You're so hoping.

[musical interlude]

Sarah O'Leary (36:07.214)
This just took me a while to learn, but I'm a big believer in just following data. Like, don't do not... I get real excited about certain things and I cannot trust myself. I've like started to pull myself out of interviewing people because I just fall in love with everybody, and want to hire everybody. And I'm like, "okay, hold on. I'm not like being practical here." So when it comes to lease space selection, zip code selection, we follow the data at this point. So we look and see where are people moving from. Interestingly, in our field of work. I mean, specifically for Mend, I don't know what's happening for others, but 50% of our users at one location are coming from one to three miles radius of that location. So, and we see that if we live close to someone, they're more likely to visit us more. And I get that. I'm like, for someone who's busy to seek out personal services, you better be in my triangle. And if you're not, I just can't, it's not going to happen. 

So, you know, accessibility being core to the mission, we do try to be in front of people or available to people. And we try to have really accessible spaces for street level. There's a parking lot. You can see us. There's no complicated corridor to get in. and then we just use zip code data to see "like, interesting, we see this movement of, people coming from, you know, this corridor of the state. We should probably be there."

And that has proven successful. So we have three locations, but we're in our sixth lease. So we have moved around a bit and trialed a few things. And that's, I would say, it's been a hard-earned lesson over the years. It's like, don't just get excited about a town and head there. You may not, this may not be a population that's interested in acupuncture. Just follow the data. 

Joan Kanner
Data is sexy. Also adding that to the "Sexy is..." 

Sarah O'Leary
It is sexy. And it's, and it's true. It's rarely wrong. Yep.

Michelle Bond
That's how we found our [BUB] Roadshow spots. You know, same thing. It's like where are people moving to? What are up and coming food cities? What are the demographics? I mean, we have a whole, you know, is it walkable? How hard does for, how difficult or easy is it for staff to get there? Is it is it walkable or on a transit line? Like, is there you know, is it a bagel desert or what are the other competitors only chains like all, you know, all that stuff and?

Michelle Bond (38:30.958)
You're right. And I think it is easy to get a feeling about a place and want to jump to and then, you know, the, the sunk costs associated with that. But, that's part of the learning, right? 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah. 

Joan Kanner
And the analysis, you could have analyzed stuff, Sarah, and been like, "wait, people are traveling from this zip code to come to us." And then like your decision to come to them - they're just kind of like, "no, I like the drive." I mean, that was also a possibility, but you gambled right.

Sarah O'Leary
Hey, listen, when my kids were little, I loved to drive. I call them "mini vacations." Like not a drive with my kids, like a drive without my kids. Yeah, I get that. It's so funny.

Joan Kanner (39:12.11)
And now a word from our sponsor. 

Michelle Bond
People often ask me, how do I stay Jersey Strong? 

Joan Kanner
Michelle, how do you stay Jersey Strong? 

Michelle Bond
With a combination of exercise, a device known as "The Hose," and my very own, "It Fell Off a Truck Diet," that's how! 

Sarah O'Leary
Wait, does that mean I can still eat smoked beef brisket? 

Michelle Bond
Yes, if it fell off a truck!

Joan Kanner
Hey Michelle, what about a bagel sandwich?

Michelle Bond
Sure can, if it fell off a truck!

Sarah O'Leary
How about these latkes with both applesauce and sour cream? 

Michelle Bond
Those latkes? No problem, because they fell off a truck! Now, do you see this big ass cabbage? No, it didn't fall off a truck. It came from our local community garden. Composting. Know about it. 

Sarah O'Leary
Now that's a diet. I mean, an eating for wellness plan that I can get behind. But what can I do about my jacked up pores? 

Joan Kanner
Yeah, Michelle, your pores are tighter than the clams ass. How can I get skin like that? 

Michelle Bond
Bonus: order now and get my Loxed Up Facial Scrub for only $30 plus tax - because sometimes you just need to scrub away the day. And with a combination of omegas, peppercorns and scales, my scrub gets it done. 

Sarah O'Leary
Sign. Me. Up.

Joan Kanner
Let's get grifty with it!

[end of ad]

Michelle Bond
So one of the things we like to ask folks, given the concept of the pod itself about proofing - is something that you and/or Mend might be proofing on right now. Whether that is the stage of the business, kind of - you mentioned a couple of things earlier about, you know, the messy middle. "Or maybe we'll be there forever" or maybe, you know, or if there's like a new service or offering or collaboration.

Michelle Bond (41:12.014)
And just how you're feeling right now in the space that you're currently in. And that could be any way you want to interpret it. 

Sarah O'Leary
Yeah, I'm so proud of where we are right now as an organization. I think we have some incredible talent and I think the timing, the time for acupuncture is really right. I think, you know, healthcare is tricky right now to navigate as a patient. And so to be able to get from one place, mental health support as well as physical health support is... I just am like very proud of what our team gets done in a day. It's pretty incredible to me. And, and so in terms of what we're working on, our biggest challenge, frankly, is our relationships with the insurance companies. And we are, you know, 85% of our... while the community clinic is such a heartbeat, 85% of our revenue comes from the insurance company. 

Michelle Bond
I'm sure. Yeah. 

Sarah O'Leary
Really locked in and kind of in bed with these other entities that we don't have a lot of control over. And our reimbursements, what we get paid for a session has not changed since 2011. 

Michelle Bond
Wow. Oh my god.

Sarah O'Leary
So our costs to operate have increased by almost 30% in that time, but our revenue from our reimbursements for a session have not.

And we, so this is sort of for the last two years, been really top of mind, you know, the last two years being kind of the peak of, you know, the most, most of that 20, 30% growth occurred in the last two years. It just became really obvious. This is going to be a sustainability issue. So, you know, you've, you've seen, you may have seen in your own like Rolodex, how like a small physician used to see got, gets thought up by a large healthcare organization. This is why this happens.

Large healthcare organizations have the ability to negotiate with the insurance companies in a way that's really challenging for small healthcare organizations. Now we're technically the biggest supplier of acupuncture in the state... 

Michelle Bond
Oh wow.

Sarah O'Leary
...which in theory should give us leverage. So, we've been in negotiations for a year with a few key payers with not a clear end in sight. and not sure that it's going to work, frankly. And then that puts us in the question of like, you know, what other...

Sarah O'Leary (43:33.614)
Dentists and mental health workers have had to figure out over the years, which is, are we doing something different here or are we going to stay in this relationship? I would say that's our proofing project right now. What's this contract relationship and how do we maintain the thing we're here to do? Our mission is to make acupuncture accessible within this structure, within this current structure.

And this is not a, you know, I have to remind myself, this is not a Mend problem. This is not just an acupuncturist problem. This is every healthcare provider. You know, the AMA put out a really interesting graphic this past, you know, in January and it showed the cost of delivering healthcare, you know, upward line with, you know, Medicare and private insurance reimbursements having been flat for like the past 10 years.

So I think we're in the, you know, this is part of why healthcare is so stretched. It's a big part of why healthcare is so stretched. So it's interesting to be a part of that trend. And I'll be really curious to see, humans are clever. And if it's not working, and I don't think it is, I don't think our healthcare, most of our healthcare systems are working for the, for the physicians, for the patients. If it's not working, something else will emerge in a free market. 

Michelle Bond
Yeah.

Sarah O'Leary
So it's interesting. It's also, it feels like an opportunity - when I can get out of victim mode, it feels like opportunity. You know? 

Michelle Bond
Yeah. Yeah. No, I love it. Well, really well-said. And it's, and it's an important reminder because I think your, your practice, your values, the, the care that you get from your facilities, you know, it feels, it feels very grassroots and it feels very, you know, it's very human-centered as it should be. And you kind of forget that there is this systemic, you know, monster machine that you also have to navigate in order to just make it work. And so I appreciate that. 

Joan Kanner
The option for when you have policy or procedures that don't make sense, someone who worked at universities for like 15 years and grants and contracts and other shit is just like, you pile on a new rule versus looking at the existing rule and removing the layers that don't make sense and inserting new things; a lot of it's done by committee. So I can only imagine...

Joan Kanner (45:51.15)
...insurers who then also have to communicate like with government and other entities just for taking a second to like, think, "okay, like, how can we streamline this for people" because not like, it's not like, you know, like Mend offers a suite of services. And yet, like, I feel like they're very, you know, they're distinct. And there's not a bazillion of them like you would have for other practitioners of who's, are going to have that be like a streamlined bit of work to info paperwork wise.

I don't know. I think humans are clever and we should be able to deal with this better and improve these processes. And at some point, Sarah, I thought you were maybe going to suggest that everyone do crypto because you're just like, "people are smart. They develop their own systems." I was just like, "where is this evolving to? 

Sarah O'Leary
[laughs]

Michelle Bond
Anarchy.

Joan Kanner
What would Mend's crypto be? I'm trying to think what it would be called. "Sarah Bucks?" 

Michelle Bond
Sarah Bucks? Is that what you just said?

Joan Kanner
$arah Bucks, but the S is like, of course, a dollar sign or whatever currency you wish. Follow her journey...

Sarah O'Leary
So funny. Yeah. If we didn't say crypto within a podcast, is it a podcast? 

Michelle Bond
[laughs]

Joan Kanner
[laughs]

Sarah O'Leary
[laughs]

Michelle Bond
Sarah, well, thank you so much. It's really been a wonderful conversation. And for everyone, you can follow Mend on Instagram and Facebook at Mend Acupuncture. And I hope this is only the beginning of the conversation.

Sarah O'Leary
Thank you, Michelle and Joan. It's so nice to talk to people who know what they're talking about. Thanks for being in it. Thanks for being in it. 

Joan Kanner
People will expect more from me now. Watch it! They know I'm competent, I only get more work. That's how it goes down. 

Sarah O'Leary
[laughs]
That's right. That's another good lesson I'll bring to my teenager. Don't act competent.

Joan Kanner (47:50.35)
You've been listening to Proofing Stage. Our theme music, Bagels for the Kraken, was written and performed by Thorn Haze. Additional music from Pixabay. If you're looking for a transcript, show notes, disclaimers, and additional credits, they can be found on our website, proofingstage dot com. Want to join the conversation? Email us at proofingstagepod at gmail dot com. You can also find us on Instagram, threads, and TikTok at Proofing Stage.

[the following is an outtake]

Michelle Bond (48:21.87)
Any preference on the way I say "Jersey Strong" the first time? 

Joan Kanner
Sarah, what are your notes? Cause you're so brilliant at this. I'm so impressed. Like you have no idea. Like my head is just like, "AAAAH!" like Pop Rocks in my brain. 

Sarah O'Leary
I don't know. I'm married to someone from Long Island. So it feels a little too close to home. 

Joan Kanner
[gasps]

Sarah O'Leary
I think you just need to trust your, trust your own "Inner Jersey," Michelle. 

Joan Kanner
Yeah. And the way you [Sarah] say latkes [lat-keys] was like how my grandmother said it. Maybe it was never latkes [lat-kuhs], it was latkes [lot-keys]. 

Sarah O'Leary
I know that's how I grew up in like a very Jewish neighborhood in Howard County, which is weird. And everyone, I always heard latkes [lat-keys]. 

Joan Kanner
Yeah. I mean, it's like the immigrants, but. Yeah. No, I think it's. Yeah. I was raised by Holocaust survivors and they were Polish immigrants. And that's when they said it, latkes [lat-keys]. 

Sarah O'Leary
Okay. 

Michelle Bond
Would you prefer for me to say it that way? 

Joan Kanner
No, I think it needs to be, per Sarah's point, like from your spirit. 

Sarah O'Leary
[laughs]

Michelle Bond
With integrity. 

Joan Kanner
Just don't say like "potato pancake"... 

Michelle Bond
Right. 

Joan Kanner
...that's fucked.