Small businesses now. They are the backbone of our country and I know firsthand how tough it is, long hours, constant hurdles, and too often feeling like you're in it alone. And what I keep hearing from you is that small business owners don't feel heard. My team and I are paying close attention to our small business community and the feedback that comes to us through the Mental podcast. Now,
one thing is clear. You want to hear from more businesses beyond Sydney, from across the country, and especially those that are doing it tough. That's why my team and I are launching the Small Business call Out. The Small Business call Out, which will be under the Mentor channel, will talk to business owners all over the country every single week, no matter where you are. We want to hear from you. What's working, what's not working, What do
you need from the government to actually succeed? What are the things can you enlighten us about what it's like being in the small business community. This is your chair has to make your voice count. We want to hear from all industries, from those struggling, from those who feel overlooked, or those who have something to say but haven't had the platform to say it. I'm going to continue hosting the Mental podcast, but the Small Business call Out will
be uploaded between episodes. So let's get into this week's edition of the new Small Business call Out. What is the name of your business?
Yeah, so it's Sambo Patrick and I operate under the brand name Sambo Patrick.
And in simple terms, what does your business do?
Yeah, In the most simple terms, my business has been around helping people understand their health and more importantly the hormone So it's kind of a niche in that way.
And what inspires you to start your business.
I've been in health for thirty plus years and what I found is there's a massive gap and what people understand about their health. We're very good at managing disease, you know, there's a lot of focus medically in Australia on helping people get off the cliff unravel the disease from that perspective, but then when it comes to the gaps and hormones and health, there's a huge caveat where people really don't understand what's going on.
Inside their bodies.
I've really niche down into that space, the hormone side of things, and after twenty two years of doing this.
I have waxed in and out from helping women.
Through fertility issues, PCO and demetriosis, becoming a specialist in that space probably for the last eight years in menopause, and now I'm moving back in and rebranding back into male health and executive health.
And there's quite a few reasons for that.
But now my focus is definitely on the executive male who's hit forty five, who might be exercising, might not be exercising enough or doing the right types of exercise, who is at risk of burnout running a small business or a big operation, and needs to know, like there's so much information guys need to know.
They need to know the testosterone levels are doing. They need to know very importantly what their estrogen levels are.
Doing, their stress, cortisol, DHA, and other factors that we can measure in their body, because that is where, you know, I think that's where the strengths and business lie. Is a treat this is my It's okay to ramble like this good because I'm good at rambling. What I find is with that gap of knowledge is people can't improve
on what they don't know. And you know, the beginning of the year or different junctions throughout the people might do a swat analysis on how they're going their strengths, their weaknesses, their oppert unity threats in business and as a business owner, I look at my P and L regularly every month. I'm looking at my numbers, but we don't often translate the same science or objectivity over to our health. And we've all got currencies. We've got energy flow,
focus flow, there's different currencies. It's not all just cash flow. And if we're not doing a swat analysis on that, where sometimes just two weeks away from being burnt out. So I think as a small business owner, you know the strengths, weaknesses.
Opportunity threats.
Health has to be a strength and if the health is a threat, that needs to be moved to another quadrant. If it's a weakness, it needs to be moved to the opposite quadrants as well. It needs to become an opportunity because and a strength for people.
Because without health, which.
Is the hidden asset of running your own business, then you're not making good decisions, You're not operating from a position the power. You're being dragged through the business going day to day. And anyone who's in small business and all listen to this will know how exhausting that is.
And it doesn't just leave.
You know, a lot of us don't leave our businesses internal key and leave it.
It's in our bodies and our minds all the time. But if we're not I guess managing that, and it will spill over into our relationships, It will spill over into how we experience the world.
It definitely spills over into preventedive diseases such as heart issues, stroke, those sorts of things.
So I've really enjoyed.
Helping people break down what happens in their body from a hormone perspective and how, really importantly, how they can strengthen it and so that becomes their hit an asset in business.
Where was your business founded and where is it located?
Yeah, so it started on the Gold Coast.
So I moved up there in the nineties and fell in love with the lifestyle up there at an office.
It very I guess it's morphed over the years.
So I went online probably about twenty sixteen, and that enabled me to do my consultations from anywhere in the world. Or you know, I've raised three children on my own, so having that flexibility is being invaluable.
Now I've moved back. I've moved down to Sydney.
I actually had a couple of years here in the nineties and so now I'm back down in Sydney. And yeah, it's a global business though.
I can.
Interesting when I look at my numbers of my clients, at least forty percent, sometimes half of them are in rural areas and they can't get access to city driven businesses. So they really appreciate being able to be on zoom, having me on text or email.
It gives them a lot of support.
So yeah, demographics not so important nowadays, which is cool.
How is your business is doing right now?
Yeah, I've been in business for twenty two years and I try and be really philosophical about the different phases your business can go through. And this is an analogy that works for me. I see myself as almost a farmer, and I've got crops. Got to put the seeds in, got to wait for the seeds to grow, and help the seeds grow, and then I.
Can take the harvest.
And late last year I felt I'd contributed a lot for the menopausal woman. You know, I guess as a business I've gone through menopause eight years ago.
And it was relevant.
You're really relevant that women had a lot more information, you know. Through the podcasts and books and things that I've written, I feel I've offered that sector quite a lot.
But I decided last.
Year, for my own growth and interest in business, that I would branch into men's health, and that's always been a passion. I was a primary care trained nurse, so I specialized in heart attacks and heart diseases a nurse, and certainly I've done CPR and multiple patients in hospital.
So now I've leaned back into that.
So I'm at a planting the seed phase again, i'd say, and the return of investment will come. I think if I could say that a part of the skill set of being in business is predicting change and not waiting to for everything to change around you before you kind of go, oh, I've missed the boat a bit, and you've got to stay current, You've got to stay on
top of things. And I know moving into men's health now is the right time for me as a business, but also there's so many men that need help at the moment, not just in small business but in corporate executive positions who are struggling with weight or struggling to bring it all together. So I would say the business is going through not a renaissance, but a shift in direction.
The cash flow isn't as strong as I'm used to, so that's been a bit of a shock because you know, it's usually flown really easily, but the cash flow is still pendent on may consulting. I haven't set up turn key products like some businesses that make money in their sleep at my peril, but those are things I'm addressing and also looking at now.
What challenges have you faced as a small business owner and how do they impact your business? And how did you overcome them? Did they affect your family members, did they affect your relationships? How did you solve them?
Yeah? Look, anyone who's been in business longer than a year and tells you they haven't had challenges. I don't think it's in business like.
It just comes with the area, which makes it exciting but also stressful, and it certainly grows you as a business and an individual. Possibly the biggest challenges I've had have been a single woman, a single parent, raising three kids and managing the energy flow to give to my kids, but also being for them after school, making sure the business because the business is like a little baby as well, you know, has certain needs and sometimes those needs have
to come ahead of your needs. And I personally have struggled with burnout over the years. You know that there's many reasons why people burn out. They might have they might be overworking, they might be not switching the stress
switch off at night effectively. The people who work from home, well, no, this only too well, it's really difficult to see the delineation between work life and home life because there isn't a car drive between leaving work and coming into the home, and often we leave the file or the brain ticking over in the workspace, whereas we've just crossed the threshold into home and we've missed that opportunity to switch it down, and that delineation between my gosh, I've got to work now,
or I had these KPIs on myself, I had you know, this time frame that I put in to complete this task and I haven't achieved it, and suddenly you find I wanted to achieve it, or I had this unrealistic expectation of myself or the energy when I put that plan together was super high.
But the realities of life is that we often overestimate what we're able to do, and then.
When psychologically you don't achieve it, you start feeling like a flop or a failure. And that's the stuff that really starts to decay in your life. Like, you know, you start going on, if I'm not able to do that, then I'm also a bit of a fail.
Oh let's see if we've.
Got evidence in this arena, and next thing, you're validating that you're not wealthy and not healthy, not anything, And it can come crushing down and there's.
Shades of burnout.
You know, I'm just tired and wide and I can't switch off to my god, I need to actually pull back.
You know.
It's like we're driving along a really rocky, edgy cliff face sometimes particularly in business, between falling off the edge down into the gutter or feeling like we're a really great driver, and if we're distracted, if we're not doing on the mindset the relaxation really well, eating really well, and we bring our eyes off the road for a little minute, there might be a sign that says, hey, warning,
you're about to fall off the cliff. And because we're not paying attention to the cues, we'll go around the next bend and then before you know, it's like, oh my god, I'm off the edge and I didn't see that coming. And what I've seen is that people will push through past those signs. And those signs can be subtle. They can be poor sleep, going to bed and just finding that your legs are jerking around or your mind's jerking around and you can't bring that down to a
switch off position. It might be anger and reatability, so a little bit snitchy, or you know, someone's really driving your nuts to overreacting.
And yelling at people.
And usually the ones that wear that are the ones that we love the most. So as a parent, it might be a hyperreactivity to a little thing that kit Old has done to just bringing the house down with And you know, because we've got ourselves into such a position of low energy, we're not fueled up on I guess, calm, calmness. So it's like, my god, I had one nerve left and you just trod on it. And rather than everyone else proceeding who got me to that point, including myself, I'm going to.
Rip it out on you. So Burnout.
One of the books that I've written, so I've got eight published books in the health space, particularly around hormones, was on Burnout, And a lot of it, you know, is written from the science backed information and what I've seen work, but also from a personal perspective, because you know, there's no sick lea, there's no Matt leave, Pat leave, I don't want to work the next month, and you'll leave per se and that I have certainly found to be one of the biggest challenges over the time as
apparent as a as a business owner. What I have done to mitigate that is I spend a lot of money and time and thought around mindset and my own health because I've found that, you know.
If I'm preaching the goods, I've got to also do the goods and the talk.
But more importantly, I know when I'm coming from a place of being well rested, eating really well, exercising really well, it makes a massive difference to my deliverables and how I perform for my clients, which ultimately is what I want to be the best practitioner for my clients. I take the job very seriously. The other I mean, there's quite a few challenges. But one of the other ones that has been big over the last twenty odd years
is being in an industry. So you know, my background is nursing and I was in pharmaceuticals for nine years, but for the last tweent two years I've been a professional nutritionist, natural path and wellness coach.
Now that lane is not really.
Supported or recognized in Australia and I have found that a real difficult thing.
I've tried to various times.
I've tried to change the status quo of what I think are the best people equipped in this country to help people with wellness and preventedive health, and that's natural paths, nutritionous, personal trainers, wellness coach, food coaches, but they're not recognized in the current system we have, which is free health, which is medicare.
People outside of that.
Have to not hustle, but they have to be very good at what they do. They have to have a very good word of mouth referral database. All they have to have incredible backer that pushes them through because if they're not good, they're out of business, and because they're not subsidized by the government, so they have to be very good at what they deliver and have raiving fans and excellent results.
Otherwise there is no business for them.
So you know, that's something I've been really mindful of over the years, is how to support myself in that lane, but also how to I guess, get authority like I've been really you know, part of writing those books and being on TV was to say, actually, there is a lot of science behind preventative medicine and this is what I know. You know, I'm not just a pop up done a little course on the back of a serial
packet professional. I've got the qualifications to help people with this, and getting that recognition has been a challenge, but certainly I've stepped out of that and gone, okay, well i'll just read the authority, I'll just write some books, I'll get the results on the board and then it's irrefutable. So that's something if anyone's listening to this and they're in the wellness space, they could consider too, because getting respect from the health industry on a big mass is
really challenging in Australia. But you know, as I said, majority of people getting results and health, reversing obesity, helping people with mindset, improving their lives are actually that unsupported lane. They're not covered by any other subsidy that they're the ones who are really getting the results on the board.
How confident are you in Australian government's ability to support small businesses effectively? If you'd advise Australian government on one action to take to better support small businesses, what would it be?
Yes, the.
You know, there's many ways the government can support small business and one that I would or maybe a couple of suggestions would be, you know, burnout and stress and mental health higher agendas for the government to resolve in public sectors.
Well, guess what it certainly is in small business as well.
So maybe one recognizing that acknowledging that small business mentally and doing it tough physically. Burnout is high. So stress is that insidious that we're always flirting with and as always part of our life, and it can be very motivational, like getting off the couch or getting out of bed is often prompted by a stress response. Interesting, in the body, there are only two states. There's stressed or not stressed. Or medically that's called the sympathetic nervous system or the
parasympathetic there's only two switches. Our body is hardwired to flip into that stress state. That's our survival state, and business certainly will flick that on. You know, it can be very motivational. It can get us to a point where we're thinking clearer about the information in front of us. But where it becomes really negative is when we don't switch it off. So if it's wedged on all the time, it has a negative effect, and the negative effect is distraction, like people will be absent even.
Though they're present.
You know, that present tee is a long term over the heart. It will increase blood pressure. Wen it's the leading cause of hypertension, which is the leading cause of stroke. It can wear the heart out, so heart failure, and we see these issues in pretty young men. You know, forty five year old male is considered high risk for
a lot of these cardiac issues. Certainly, cholesterol production is prompted by a hormone called cortisol, So we release cortisol when we're in the stress state, so we're telling our body to make more cholesterol. So that's another negative of flipping and staying up in that stress state.
So I would like to see more preventative interventions going into small business.
Now, whether that looks as a tax rebate or an itemized number that all small businesses at a certain level can claim up to a certain amount to go into self care. So we're not feeling that it's coming off our profit margin, but it's actually part of how we roll out our business. Just like I'm expected to return
bast statements each year, well that's at a cost. So maybe if I'm expected also to put some money into my health, then it becomes suddenly not a negotiable or not becomes an obligation and not so we're punished for it.
But so it's an opportunity for us to look after our health. I think that would go a long way. How that looks rolling it out for the nation, I'm not too sure.
I think tax incentives or a special budget or fund that is for small business owners declared you know under maybe under three hundred four hundred k each year, whatever the Actually I'm not too I'm not across the actual statistics of what burnout are at different level points, whether it's you know the zero the self employed through to ten staff at the highest risk, or the zero to twenty staff. But you know, small to medium businesses across the board needs something in the health space.
That's for sure.
Was the most rewarding part of being a small business owner.
This makes me smile. I actually love it.
When I was nursing, I was even prior to nursing, I played sport at an elite level, but went into nursing so I wanted to help people.
I just genuinely wanted to improve people's health.
And then I went into pharmaceuticals because I thought that would give me more tools or access to the people who could impact on health, not realizing it was all drugs and surgical interventions.
Really, at the.
End of the day, the preventative side of it, improving lives is what I absolutely adore, and in order to bring my ideas or my message to life, that the best way for me to do that is to be autonomous in business because I just feel my impact by being in a small business as part of and not part of an organization with bureaucracy and having to prove the la la gives me more scope and more ability to impact on people.
And at the end of the day, I will.
Probably continue this till cut it out of the planet because there's nothing greater than people sending emails or text going. You know, last year you said this little thing and I did it, and it's just changed my whole life.
You know, there's nothing for me more rewarding than being able to help people and see them flourish or go from burnt out to thriving, or being able to have children when they couldn't have children, when it often just comes down to a couple of little tweaks with the hormones and if they go.
You know, it's just totally rewarding.
And I believe the structure for me to do that is being a small business.
So I'll stay that way.
And I can't imagine it this far into my career path that I could ever work.
For anyone else again.
Anyway, Yeah, I probably made myself quite unemployable.
What is the one thing you wish more people knew about your business? Where can people find you and your business? Let us know?
You know, I'm very passionate about helping men understand their health and also women. At the moment, there's a lot of content people can access from me through podcast.
So I have a podcast. Got two. One's called Hot Into Help.
And the other one is hormones with Sam and I'm bringing out a series specifically for men about men's health, men's resilience, testosterone, what it means in the workplace from some incredible Australian icons as well, which I think will be fantastic listening, apart from obviously listening to Matt's podcast. My website is the hub for everything that I offer am I offering. So that's my name, Sam Sambo b e Aupatrick Just dot com, so Sambopatrick dot com. Everything's there,
upcoming events, programs, it's all listed there. In terms of socials I am on Instagram, I always feel a bit of a flop bow because I don't know, I don't have millions of followers, which I would have loved just to be able to help people navigate health and be inspired in this space. But it's Sambo Patrick Official Underscore on Insta and my Facebook has a lot more people.
It's Sambo Patrick the Health Queen.
And if I can help people at any point, just reach out through my website, set up a complementary session, or purchase one of the programs however you feel you need me in your life. In that regard to the website, Styill the place to do that. So yeah and yeah, thank you for this great opportunity.
I think it's awesome.
I really have enjoyed it.
Do Do Do Do Do Do