Dr. Cleo Amelia came up through chronic illness — Lyme disease, autoimmune struggles, the long road that eventually led her to a doctorate in acupuncture and Chinese medicine. She opened a clinic, added functional medicine, built something real. Then she found the online space and everything changed.

In two and a half years she closed her in-person practice, built a functional medicine coaching company with eight practitioners under her, launched a second business coaching health and wellness practitioners, and hasn't looked back.

What she'll tell you is that none of it happened in spite of the medicine. It happened because of it.

This conversation goes deep on why TCM practitioners are the most resistant group to go online — and why that resistance might be the thing that kills the profession. Cleo talks about ideal client messaging, the difference between selling sessions and selling transformation, the mindset work that almost nobody wants to do but everybody needs, and why if you have a gift and you're not putting it out there, she finds that selfish.

She also gets candid about her own anxiety at the peak of her success — and the hypnotherapy that helped her understand where it was coming from.

Dr. Jordan Barber is a Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, bestselling author, pelvic floor specialist, and owner of multiple practices in New York. He took his most recent cash-based practice from zero to full and high six figures in eight months. But none of that is why this conversation matters.

What matters is that Jordan is one of the rare practitioners who has actually metabolized the medicine — not as a clinical system to deploy, but as a path of cultivation that informs everything from how he needles to how he builds a business to how he moves through the world.

What we cover:

Why the retreat from energetic language isn't a sign of clinical maturity — it's a profession-wide crisis of confidence dressed up as pragmatism.

What the Nei Jing actually says about the arrival of qi and why that should be the organizing principle of every treatment, regardless of technique.

The three tiers of practitioner described in the classics and the 13th century commentary that noted most practitioners believe themselves to be at the top when they are decidedly not.

Why graduating as a generalist is a positioning problem before it is ever a marketing problem, and how finding your specific clinical obsession changes everything downstream.

The zheng principle — uprightness — as both a clinical and entrepreneurial foundation, and why moving from a position of power is the only sustainable path in either domain.

Why scattering qi into borrowed modalities and weekend certifications is the same root pattern presenting in your treatment room every day.

And the only two diagnostic questions that matter when building a practice from the ground up.

This is the conversation the profession needs to be having with itself.

Dr. Rosanna de la Cruz is a Chinese medicine doctor, functional medicine practitioner, and owner of three women's health clinics in the New York area. She specializes in reproductive health and has spent her career helping women reclaim vitality, energy, and joy — particularly through perimenopause and beyond. She is also living proof that the second spring is real.

In this conversation, David and Rosanna go deep on what women are being told is normal — and what isn't.

What we cover:

• Why most doctors refuse to test hormones during perimenopause and what that's actually costing women.
• The symptoms nobody talks about — vagus nerve dysregulation that mimics fainting, and nighttime heart palpitations that look like anxiety but are driven entirely by cortisol.
• Why a ferritin level of 5 gets sent home with a clean bill of health — and what it's actually doing to your hair, energy, and quality of life.
• The troubling history of gynecology and how unconscious bias still shapes the care women of color receive today, from dismissed pain to disproportionate hysterectomy rates.
• Why the combination of acupuncture, herbal medicine, functional medicine, and lifestyle change is not optional — it's the whole point.
• And what it actually means to determine your own normal and refuse to settle for anything less.

This episode is for practitioners who want a sharper clinical lens on women's health, and for any woman who has ever sat in a doctor's office and been told to just deal with it.