77. Health Tech & Innovation with Maggie Bergeron, co-founder of Embodia
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How does a physiotherapist who's not "tech-savvy" turn into an health tech entrepreneur and create a product that is used worldwide?! Tune in to find out!
Surabhi interviews Maggie Bergeron, a physiotherapist with a drive to improve client care! We chat about the founding story of Embodia, a health tech platform that makes it easier for healthcare professionals to schedule, bill, receive payment, chart, send exercises, send education, host a course and more!
We discuss:
Maggie’s journey as a physiotherapist and the story of how Embodia was founded
How to take risk as an entrepreneur
Build a business the slow way
Embrace change as a profession
Ways to get outside of your comfort zone
How Embodia has evolved
Maggie’s fave features on Embodia
✨This episode is sponsored by Embodia https://www.embodiaapp.com/ - use code momstrength to save $20 off your first month’s Tier 3 membership.
✨Click here to learn more about How I use Embodia as a Pelvic Physiotherapist!
Maggie Bergeron Bio:
Maggie Bergeron is a PT turned tech entrepreneur. 10 years ago she met a chemical engineer turned software developer at a dragon boat practice that changed the trajectory of her career. Like most healthcare professionals, Maggie was not particularly tech savvy, but deeply cared about helping her patients. Over a summer of dragon boat practices, the founding principles of Embodia were formed and in Oct 2014 Embodia was officially 'born' (ie incorporated), and thus began her journey into building, growing, and scaling a health tech company - with many ups, downs, and twists along the way.
Connect with Maggie & Important Links:
—www.embodiaapp.com
—Instagram @embodia @maggiebpt
Connect with Surabhi:
Website: https://www.thepassionatephysio.ca
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Episode starts at 01:19 after ad from sponsor Embodia and intro music.
Surabhi: [00:01:19] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mom Strength. This is your host, Surabhi Veitch, and I'm really excited to interview Maggie Bergeron today. If you are a physiotherapist, you probably know Maggie or know of Maggie because Maggie is one of the founders of Embodia and we're going to find out all about Embodia.
Embodia sponsored this podcast episode and I'm so grateful for that. And I've used Embodia for the past two plus years. That's what I use for charting, billing. Setting my client's exercises and all sorts of things. So we're going to find out everything. We're going to interview chat with Maggie. Welcome, welcome onto Mom strength.
I'm so happy to have you on here today.
Maggie: Thanks. Yeah. I'm excited to be here.
Surabhi: So I want to know this whole story behind, so you're a physiotherapist, correct? And tell me how you got into creating something like Embodia
Maggie: By accident.
This is, this is like the stuff that we need to know. [00:02:44] How did this happen?
It started at dragon boat practices. Okay. And so dragon boating is a sport that requires a lot of people. Yes. And when I first moved to Toronto after graduating from PT school, I went to McMaster, uh, graduated, moved to Toronto and thought I was going into global health, international development. Yeah. I had actually just landed from Tanzania.
I did my last placement in Tanzania and landed with my backpack. It's actually not all that. Dissimilar to now, I still have
the same backpack that I'm carrying around. That's amazing. Um, landed and was like, I think I want to live in Toronto. Yeah. I have lots of friends here. So we started a dragon boat team as a way to meet new people. So you need 22 people in the boat, friends invited friends. It was basically PTs, [00:03:44] engineers.
and artists was our team. And one of those engineers was Ellie, who is my now business partner. Yes. He was a chemical engineer. Yeah. Also a recent graduate and starting to work, but was dissatisfied with his career choice.
Surabhi: Interesting. Wow. Okay.
Maggie: So he had decided to teach himself how to code on the train to and from work.
I was a new PT complaining at Dragon Boat practice about all the PT problems, and Elliot.
Surabhi: There are many very,
Maggie: oh yeah, there are many. Ellie has very much an engineer's brain and a problem solver's brain. Yeah. So he suggested that we try solving for one of my problems, which. The first problem that we tried to solve for was how to help people do their programs or get better care between their PT [00:04:44] sessions, right?
I often felt like I was repeating myself in sessions, some, and the retention varies. I'm a terrible artist, so drawing stick figures of exercises was, oh my,
Surabhi: oh my gosh. I remember those days. Yeah, I remember those days. Horrible artist over here too.
Maggie: You know, sending word documents, sending emails, spending a lot of time putting together these programs and then kind of like a mixed bag of responses from people of how much they did, how much they understood.
So we thought there must be a better way. Yeah, and that's how Embodia has started. We started by building a very simple app for my patients. Where I could upload exercise and education videos that they could then watch and track between their sessions. And I would be able to see how much they were doing.
They could share notes with me. It was essentially like this collaboration tool and really helping bring people more into the process of their own rehab and encouraging them to take control of it rather than it being [00:05:44] directed by me. Yeah. Sharing resources and being specific about what I wanted them to do, but then giving them the opportunity to do more between their sessions.
Surabhi: And I just want to say that, you know, there's many healthcare fields, but I feel like physiotherapists are a whole separate level. Like, we actually I'm not saying that other health care professionals don't care, but we truly do care about, like, how our client is doing in between sessions, what support they need to be able to do the things they need to do.
And I love that this just came about from you trying to do better for your clients and making it easier for them to access their homework or their exercises and tools. Um, so it started off with that and how has it evolved into what it is today?
Maggie: Yeah, it's been a, it's been a journey. So that was, that was how many years ago?
That was the end of 2014 was the, we had been talking about it for quite some time, but taking that step of incorporating felt like a big step. You know, you pay a couple hundred dollars to [00:06:44] incorporate your company. Yeah. Um, so that was end of 2014. Yeah. And then I realized that I was building a tech company and I'm extremely not tech savvy and don't know anything outside of the realm of PT.
So yeah, huge learning curve.
Surabhi: That's amazing. I feel like, um, all of us say we're not tech savvy and I don't believe you because I'm like, wait, you just created a tech whole platform and you're not tech savvy. So who, how do you incorporate, like, how do you, who created this stuff and how did you go about hiring people to work with you and grow this platform?
Maggie: Well, yeah, I'm really not tech savvy. And a lot of people don't believe me because I have a tech company, but... The learning curve was just huge. I think as it is in PT school too, right? You get into PT and you're like, Oh my gosh, so much information.
Surabhi: Yeah. You're like, [00:07:44] what did I actually learn in school? Like, I don't know.
Maggie: Yeah, exactly. It was very much the same thing. I drove my business partner Ellie crazy probably for the first couple of years, cause he is so tech savvy. So he's the CTO, the chief technology officer of Embadia, and he's the one So he does all the tech things.
Nice. I don't know how to code beyond like simple HTML, but like really don't know how to code. Yeah. And I was responsible for everything else, which was also an interesting few moments of realizing that I was responsible for things like marketing and sales. Yeah. And doing presentations or even doing podcasts.
I really wasn't that comfortable doing something like this. It's five, six years ago,
Surabhi: interesting. You've had to learn that skill.
Maggie: Yeah. I've had to learn the skill, many skills and, uh, leaning into the discomfort and knowing I'm an introvert, but, and so is Ellie, [00:08:44] but you know, pushing, pushing yourself, doing things outside of your comfort zone and practicing is all, but I think the excitement of life is about.
So it's been such a great. Learning opportunity, lots of difficult times along the way. Um, lots of challenges, but we've thankfully stuck through it because there were certainly times when we thought maybe. We won't continue, especially in the early days when it's hard to get your first customer. It's hard to, to sell when you don't know what you're doing and the product isn't in the place that
Surabhi: it's in.
It's not refined. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Maggie: So thankfully we had some really amazing, very early customers who still use Embodia, our first customers.
Surabhi: I don't even remember when I first heard about it, but I think it was when you offered webinars or course, like online courses and things. At that time, I had no idea that you even offered [00:09:44] exercises.
I just thought it was like, oh yeah, it's this, these people who offer, like, courses for physios, right? And so when did that start?
Maggie: So our evolution was from this HEP Product, app, uh, and then we added continuing education. We added it actually because we had a few instructors who were helping us build our exercise library.
And they asked, you can host exercise videos, so you must be able to host course content. Like, video's a video. Not quite, but hosting courses requires a full learning management. System, which is what Embodia Academy now is. Yeah, so we built that over the Christmas of 2016. Wow. It was an exciting Christmas.
Surabhi: Wow. I'm just thinking about like how long ago that was in how ahead of the Like curve you were to be able to like [00:10:44] the forethought of like, Oh, this needs to happen or this needs to exist. Like, I, I'm amazed. I'm amazed. And then we,
Maggie: one of like the big moments in the history of Embodia was actually forming our partnership with the Canadian Physio Association because it was really like a stamp of approval.
Like this is a company we worked on that partnership on. Getting to the place of having a partnership for a year, we formed it and launched it in 2018, like mid 2018. And then we started to have quite a significant amount of traffic. We started to build more courses. And one of the early challenges was this kind of empty bookstore syndrome that any kind of content company will probably experience, which is if you don't have any content, like courses.
Then people aren't going to come to your platform or your bookstore. If you don't have any books, people aren't going to come into the bookstore.
Surabhi: If you have like one book or two books, then they're not coming to your bookstore. But if
Maggie: people don't come into your [00:11:44] bookstore, it's really hard to convince people who write books to your bookstore.
Yes. So we certainly had that. We had, when we launched Embodia Academy, we had four courses, all by the same instructor, all oncology based. And like the initial emails that we were getting from practitioners was, do you have any other courses besides oncology courses?
Surabhi: Yeah. Cause that's such a specific niche, right?
Yeah.
Maggie: So our partnership with the CPA was a big, um, milestone for our company and we still have that partnership now. And that's really when we started to notice an uptick in traffic. Practitioners start to think of us as a con ed platform, which we're so much more than that, especially now. We've got a full practice management system.
We offer tele rehab and messaging and HEP, but yes, it was, uh, certainly that's
Surabhi: where it started. And so tell me about some of the features that people don't really [00:12:44] know about that Embodia has. Lots.
Maggie: Probably lots of features, but the one that we're slowly starting to be recognized more for now is our practice management system.
So we do have a full EMR and practice management system. It is, uh, used by lots of different clinicians, but particularly pelvic clinicians, which it kind of came full circle. One of our first instructors was Carolyn Van Dyken and Pelvic Health Solutions. Yes. And through them, again, giving us that stamp of approval and saying, we're working with this brand new little company, Embodia.
Yeah. Um, they developed all this pelvic content, which now has also helped us to develop a wonderful pelvic community who wants to use our practice management system, um, for charting, billing, scheduling, online booking. And, uh, probably the least known thing on Embodia is something called Clinic [00:13:44] Academy.
So we took Embodia Academy, which is our learning management system, which hosts courses, and we kind of duplicated it into something called clinic Academy, which allows clinics to host and sell their own online courses, they can include those into memberships and packages. And provide them.
Surabhi: You can see my face.
I'm like, Oh, interesting. Tell me more, right? This is what I mean. There's so many things that I knew that this would happen. I'm like, there's so many things that Embodia offers that people need to hear about because so often we get caught up in this, um, kind of narrow view of like what we need. Oh, yeah, we need somewhere to chart.
We need somewhere, somewhere to bill. And yes, those are the staples. Those are the basic needs. This is amazing. So tell me more about this, uh, Clinic
Maggie: Academy. Yeah, it's, um, well loved by those who use it, but it's the lesser known part of Embodia. So similar to Embodia Academy, you can host courses. [00:14:44] Except they're your own, hence, Clinic Academy.
Yes. They belong to the clinic. Anything that's sold through the Clinic Academy goes to the clinic. It has nothing to do with, um, Embodia financially. Yep. So you can sell courses, one off, as you see on Embodia Academy. Like, purchase this course for 100. You can include it within a membership. So, join our membership and you get these courses included.
The courses can include also discussion forums. And, uh, programs. So you can template programs. So when somebody starts taking the course, they can add like week one of the program to their, to their app and then follow it along. It'll last for however long you've set it for one week and then they'll start to the second week.
So it's also a more kind of systemized and automated way to provide programs. Like if you have a pelvic girdle pain program, then you can set it up so that there's like course material learning. And then programs that go along with it, week one, week two, week three, however [00:15:44] you want to set it
Surabhi: up. That's amazing.
I did not know
Maggie: that. Most people don't.
Surabhi: So, so listen, this is, this is really good because I know so many people, like I've, I've done workshops and webinars type things for, you know, urinary incontinence and currently sell it through my website. And so this, what you're saying is something like that could be sold directly via Embodia through the clinic academy, um, which makes it quite easy to kind of have it all in one spot.
Maggie: And your online booking page. Can become the course page as well. So we have clinics that will use our EMR and practice management system. And they'll have, you know, like the book appointment here. Yes. And then they might sell packages. So like purchase your package. They might sell courses by your course here or like view our courses here.
So it all goes on the same page. It's literally all in one. And you can run classes as well. So the buttons that appear on the booking page or the, the subdomain. [00:16:44] is going to depend on how you're using Embodia. Interesting.
Surabhi: So that's, it also makes it easy for people who are trying to find out what your, all your services are, because it's all in one page and they can explore other options as well.
This is amazing.
Maggie: Are you? It comes with easy SEO tools, because if you're courses online, then you'd want to make sure that your SEO is set up and We, because we host thousands of courses on Embodia Academy, we know SEO very well, which for those that don't know SEO, it's search engine optimization. So it's like how you show up on Google or search engines.
It's really important if you're selling anything online.
Surabhi: Yeah. I took a course on it last year, so I know a little bit about it, but it's still very new to me and I'm amazed that this stuff actually matters. Like what you input, what words you use, like how you, how you describe things. And, um, Yeah, that's a feature that I think I'm going to start exploring more because I, it [00:17:44] sounds amazing and it's already included within the system and it's, that's what I love is like it's one.
One thing I have to sign up for and sign into it's not like, Oh, I have this separate system for exercise. I have this separate thing for that. And it's all just like in one, um, one login, which I think it's for people who are busy. Like I, I'm busy. I own my own business. I'm a mom. I don't want extra things to think about.
I want it all as seamless and, um, in one place as possible. Can you tell me about if somebody is currently using a different platform and they want to switch to Embodia or they want to try Embodia, how do they go about doing that? We have
Maggie: very easy import tools. Okay. So if somebody is switching from a system, we provide import and we provide export.
So we, we believe like just as We have a few kind of key philosophies. One of them is that [00:18:44] clinicians and clinics should own their own data. That's pretty standard for a tech company. You should easily be able to join and cancel. So you don't need to contact us if you ever chose to cancel. And you should easily be able to put in, like, import what you'd like and export.
So you can pull out. anything that you'd like at any time. There's no like tricks. We don't trick people with pricing either. It's just exactly as it is on our website. There's no hidden fees, none of that. Um, and then we also believe, this is kind of a side note, but we also believe that patients should own their own information and be able to carry it around with them.
Like, yes, the Canadian health care system and the US health care system, it's really not set up really well for the digital age, but we're trying to be, Embodia is trying to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. And this means that if a clinician or a clinic joins Embodia, and they've shared information with their patient, And then the clinician, clinic close or cancel or whatever, the patient doesn't [00:19:44] lose access to any of their
Surabhi: information.
Right. They still retain their education, exercises, whatever they've received on their end. It's theirs. And I like that too, because then if they want to print their invoice, they can just, it's all there. So they don't feel like, um, they've lost anything because how many times have we misplaced whatever it is?
And it's just like, where do I find it? It's all within that same, same portal. Um, and this is really interesting because I don't, I don't work with the MVAs or insurance world, um, anymore, but for people who do, this would make it really convenient because it's all. Sounds like they're all, um, things you can just easily download or export.
Maggie: Yeah, exactly. Patients can always go in, like it's. They get an email notification saying you have a new invoice or a new receipt. The actual information is on their account, which they don't lose access to unless they told us they want us to delete their account. That's no problem, [00:20:44] but, um, yeah, they don't lose any access to their information.
It's always there for them and they can always download it or do what they'd like with it, which is how I think people should be. information should be, and ideally on like a bigger system, like not specific, but all the systems should connect. Anyways, that's a separate conversation in terms of like how we carry our health information around.
But yeah, again, trying to be part of the solution and not create more problems or difficulties for people.
Surabhi: Yeah. And it's also this sense of agency over like your own health and your own healthcare data and information, which I think is, it's great to have that transparency right up front too. Can you talk about some of the reports that you can find on Embodia?
So one thing that, for example, is like, um, clients who haven't rebooked, right? So these are easy ways to keep track of your appointments and that kind of thing. Can you share some of the other reports that people can access? So
Maggie: there's a few [00:21:44] unique things on Embodia. We actually consulted with a, um, a few clinic owners as we were building the EMR and practice management system, because we don't need another.
Just another EMR and practice management system. What we need is, which is what should be happening is like make improvements and make systems better. So yes, we, from the start, we built in clients who haven't rebooked as a report, so you can pull up any client who hasn't rebooked as well as filter between discharge patients and active patients.
We also have a feature called clinical case stats, which is one of the foundations of our, uh, practice management system. So most practice management systems, if not all, are built around reports on a patient or a client basis, right? So you can pull up a report that says, like, how many clients you saw in a month, uh, what the revenue was.
But what we added, so you can do that, you can pull by patient, but you can also then pull by clinical [00:22:44] case stats. So if you wanted to know how many active cases you have, how many self discharge patients you have, and how many successful discharges you have, then you can do that and you can manage your clients or patient list by setting up what's called, we call them clinical cases, and it tends to be like a clinical encounter, like someone's coming in for incontinence and low back pain.
That's going to be a clinical case. If they then come back a year later, you would set up a new clinical case for whatever they're coming in for then, so it provides more meaningful reports. Um, we have kind of the typical ones, and then we also have, uh, kind of generate your own report based on patient properties.
So, if you wanted to collect information on referral source, that's a common one, then you can set up referral source and then you can track like how many people are coming in from word of mouth or social media or... That's really
Surabhi: cool. Again, didn't know that. Um, this is just... I'll send you the information after.
Listen, this, yeah, this is just a [00:23:44] one on one tutorial for me, right? Um, but I do think that so much... Especially as a business owner or people who own clinics. These are important stats. These are important reports. And it saves time. Instead of you having to go through one by one, you can just pull up this information.
And then when you're putting your marketing efforts in XYZ, you kind of have that report right up there. Um, which I think is such a useful tool. And I just want to say like, Can you talk about your customer service? Because I know personally I've used them a lot and I get responses back so quickly. And, um, you know, we have done like video calls and tutorials in the past and that kind of thing.
Can you talk about what that looks like for somebody who's either new to Embodia who already uses Embodia? Yeah,
Maggie: I think we have a good, we typically hear that we have a good customer support team. We're in different time zones as well, which is helpful. Okay. That's part of the.
That's
Surabhi: why I get it. I'm [00:24:44] like, how did I get a response back this fast this like early in the morning?
Yeah, there's
Maggie: pretty much somebody's online. Um, and we have We have a wonderful team who cares about our, our customers and Embodia, and we use email as our support tool so we don't have a phone number. Instead, we do everything by email and then if needed, if somebody wants to hop on a call, it's no problem.
We're happy to hop on a zoom call. We just have chosen quite purposefully not to have a phone number for multiple reasons but one of the. Biggest reasons is, um, just a time aspect from our team and we've, when we researched having a phone number as a tech company, one of the challenges that. Is consistently cited is that you end up with one, a lot of [00:25:44] spam calls to a lot of, um, very easy things that can be answered and then yeah,
Surabhi: email.
Yeah, email. Yeah, I agree. I find that It depends, probably depending on your age and generation, but I, on my business cards, I don't include a number and people are, I just say, you know what, I don't want spam calls five times a day and need to, you need to check my voicemails. I'm like, most things, most information that you can email me about, or it's already on my website.
And I think that. That's how I feel. If I need support, I don't actually want to call someone. I just want to email them and if they're, yeah, there has been a couple of times, like, especially at the beginning where we got on a quick zoom call and that helped. But I like that approach. Um, how many countries is Embadia in?
Maggie: Oh, we haven't done the count, but, uh, lots. Yeah. We are a Canadian company, so we have definitely in Canada, the US. [00:26:44] So, um, we've got a lot of the UK, many European countries, a few Middle Eastern countries. Um, and one of the kind of interesting challenges that we are still working on is because a lot of the platform is content exercises, exercise videos, course content.
We get a lot of requests for content in different languages. Ah, and French is the most obvious for us to do first. Um, so a lot of our, or I shouldn't say a lot, but we do have some that's with closed captioning. Um, video based content can be challenging to translate, but closed captions is kind of the way that we're going to go for now.
And tech is improving at such like a rapid rate that there's probably going to be some pretty much easier solutions soon.
Surabhi: Yes. Yeah, I didn't think about that, but I guess that's the, as you. [00:27:44] As you're in more regions and countries, that's, even for like exercise videos in other languages, I have been navigating that because I currently am working out of a space at a midwife clinic locally and there's a lot of recent Spanish, um, refugees and immigrants.
And so it's like, how do I deliver this content to them in Spanish? So translating all my, you know, doc, like the papers and the information or even the emails. Um, Into different language. We have a large Korean community. So there's already something that exists for the Korean community but it's interesting now navigating that because I do think that we cannot exclude people just because they don't speak English and it's In the grand scheme, it's actually a quite simple solution because it's not like you have to recreate everything per se is with closed captioning, like you said, or, um, I'm sure there's yeah, software coming up with auto translates and this and that.
So [00:28:44] this is, this is gonna be cool. I feel like the next five to 10 years, you're going to see a lot of change. Oh yeah. Even
Maggie: in the next year, like there's going to be better. Yeah. That are you going to make it much easier. Yeah. Um, but it's definitely something we haven't solved. Yeah, but hopefully soon it's a it's a big one for sure because we don't want to exclude people based on language.
It's just, we have to think about it. Um, not just from like a, how do you do this, but how do you do it at scale? How do you do it for a thousand courses? How do you do it for 3, 500 exercise videos?
Surabhi: Yeah. Because are you going to have to go on individually? Yeah. It's true.
Maggie: The way that we currently do it is not ideal and it's very time consuming.
So um, but anyways, it's a problem that we want to solve.
Surabhi: And tell me a little bit about what you're currently up to these days. It's always [00:29:44] lost. Yeah. Are you still, um, do you still work as a PT?
Maggie: I do. I have a virtual caseload. I'm currently in California, um, but I'm a, I'm licensed in Ontario and I'm back in Canada regularly.
Yeah. Um, but I see patients virtually and it's, It's a small caseload. The majority of my time I spend working on Embodia. Nice. I love it. And I've in the last couple of years, I've also been able to just take more personal time, which is much different than it was before, like before COVID. And through the first two years of COVID, I was working like.
Non stop.
Surabhi: Yeah. Not
Maggie: healthy. Yeah. So just enjoying, enjoying life
Surabhi: more. Good. Good. And I feel like it's an important reality too, for anybody who's either starting off is you don't realize how [00:30:44] much work goes into anything at the beginning because you don't necessarily see their rewards right away. Right?
And so like, it sounds like you were clinician in the early days of And so you were probably working in a clinic, I imagine.
Maggie: I had started my own practice, so I had some control, but I was Building my own practice. So running a business, I started that in April of 2014. Wow. And then we started Embodia in October of 2014.
Surabhi: So two businesses in one year. Yep.
Maggie: That's wild. Would not recommend that. Yes.
and I was working pretty much full-time as a clinician for a couple of years in our first couple of years of Embodia because I had to pay myself and Embodia is fully self-funded. So Ellie and I. Are, um, at the two owners of Embodia it and we put in our own money to start it. We didn't take any external funding and we didn't pay ourselves for many years.
[00:31:44] So it was, uh, a big risk. Yeah. Kind of betting on ourselves that we could do this and figure it out, and all the while trying to, you know, make sure that we could, uh,
Surabhi: live. You could feed, you could feed yourselves too. Yeah. Yeah, that part. Now you, you went to McMaster, which I feel like people who graduate from McMaster generally have really good problem solving skills because of the problem based learning and the need to not just like memorize textbooks, but actually come up with creative solutions.
So, do you feel like that contributed to your, you know. The whole business and the, the idea and the creation behind this. I
Maggie: think so. McMaster's program definitely encourages thinking for yourself. Yeah. And, uh, developing those kind of creative problem solving skills. Yeah. I think, like, I think I have a pretty good risk tolerance too, which you need some risk [00:32:44] tolerance if you're going to start any business.
Surabhi: Yeah, you can't be super, if you're risk averse and if you're fearful of taking any risks, I feel like it's just not the best, um, step.
Maggie: No, exactly. And it's not for everybody. That's okay. Yeah. You can be an entrepreneur. You can be an employee. There's lots of great ways to do meaningful work. It's just finding what Works for you and, uh, what you enjoy the most, which I never would have said I'd be a business owner, but,
Surabhi: and it's, I feel like most of the business owners I know have become like accidental.
Entrepreneurs where it wasn't necessarily the like intention right from the beginning, but it ended up that way. Um, I know that's that's true for me. And what I liked about Embodia is like, I remember being on maternity leave with my 2nd and I was not really working. I wasn't even intending to work at that time and it just kind of [00:33:44] happened.
It was the pandemic and I was seeing this need. I started running group coaching programs online and then had requests for one on one clients and then I started working virtually. And what I loved about Embodia is it was affordable. People who don't have like a hundred clients a week coming through. I never, you know, I never want a, My intention is never to go back to 40 hours of clinic work and I feel like it's something that works for people who also do work elsewhere and maybe they have their own side business or they're, they see clients on the side.
So it's affordable and super accessible for those people too, which I really appreciate. Yeah. And
Maggie: that's what we want it to be. We didn't, I mean, pricing's a whole other conversation. Even pricing services. Um, I mean, as a PT, when I was, I still offer sliding scale, but I have always felt like we all have different economical status [00:34:44] and, and abilities.
So making things affordable is an important value that we have in
Surabhi: Ibadia. Yeah. And there's different tiers. As well, right, there's different tiers for people who want only the exercises or, um, want the practice management. So, I, I like that there's those options as well within, within Embodia. Um, I wanted to know a little bit more about you and some of the things that you enjoy doing for yourself, for self care, for example, um, what are three things you like to do for yourself?
I
Maggie: have a morning routine, which I will admit I don't do every morning. Okay. I do most mornings and it is always a better day when I do that. Um, it includes meditation. It includes a movement practice. It includes a bit of like dance. It's a bit of a strange combo of things that happen. Yeah. In [00:35:44] my morning routine, but it's just been something that I've done for.
Actually, I started it in the pandemic when I could no longer go to the gym and I was like, whoa. Yeah. And I was working all the time. So, and it's just become a great part of my most, most days, um, I tend to be hard on myself. So recognizing that sometimes it doesn't happen and that's okay is actually part of my self care or when something doesn't go perfectly.
Like I did a demo actually this morning at, yeah. 7 a. m pacific time. Okay. There was just like, oh, a few things that didn't go quite well. And I spoke with Ellie afterwards. He's like, don't be so hard on yourself. So that is actually part of my self care of like the, the self talk and you know, things don't always go perfectly and it's okay.
And having a wonderful business partner is also part of that. Like, I
Surabhi: feel like, [00:36:44] um, supportive. It's, it's interesting because I feel like so many PTs have this personality where we're really hardworking, where we tend to be hard on ourselves. And I think that's what helps us get into PT school in the first place, because we have to have good grades and we have to be hardworking, but it can also be really hard when we're.
Trying to just live and, you know, we're so hard on ourselves. And this is something that I'm working on too, is like releasing that tight grip of perfectionism and needing to get it right and being okay with mistakes. Because ultimately nobody's judging us as hard as we're judging ourselves. Most people don't even notice or care, right?
Maggie: And that was Eli's point to me too. He's like, you know, you probably didn't mess it up. It's just you're, you know, you know what the perfect answer was, and you didn't deliver your perfect
Surabhi: answer. Yes. And nobody knows that except for you. Exactly. And you know what? So my husband's [00:37:44] an engineer, and I feel like engineers have more of that.
Um, probably because the way they design things, there's constant, they know that they're not going to get it right the first time. They know that it's an iterative process, whereas for us, it's, we just work in a different field. We also problem solve, but we feel badly if we don't get our clients better the first time, or like if we don't give them the right, um, approach the first time, or if you know what we're doing with them is not working out and we just.
It's really hard to not internalize that and I think that what you've just described is a beautiful practice of self compassion and unlearning that sense of you know, perfectionism Morning practice. This is like my love hate relationships I hate mornings but I always feel better when I do some movement in the mornings or when I have Even like I have a gratitude journal.
I have a little journal where I'm like just jot down gratitude or something. And some mornings I just can't even be bothered with that. And I always have a first day and I'm like, why don't I just take like [00:38:44] three minutes to do that? And but, you know, this is what it is. It's compassion for like, we're not perfect every day.
And some days you just don't have it in you. And that's okay. Exactly. And so you mentioned you're in California right now. And so I take it from your Shares in your posts that you love to travel, tell me about your travel bug and your passion to travel. I've
Maggie: had it for, I've had the travel bug for quite a long time and I have made decisions that seemed risky at the time.
So for example, when I graduated from my undergrad, I chose to take four months off and spend all of my money traveling. Which all this money,
Surabhi: which travel, let me tell you, I remember going on a trip three week trip after physio school, and it was like pulling teeth convincing my classmates to go just to take even just three weeks off, because they were so like, Oh, now we got to make money [00:39:44] to pay off our loans.
And I'm like, Just take a little break. It's going to be okay. Um, so I admired that you took four months off and you went traveling. And is this something that obviously it's one of your, you know, values to travel and what kind of experiences you like when you travel?
Maggie: I'm a big outdoors person. So I'm not a very, um, like I don't travel expensively.
Okay. I'd say I'm fairly frugal. Like I definitely have a budget. I'm not, I'm not rich.
Surabhi: You're not like lavishly five star hotels everywhere.
Maggie: Oh no, I still go to hostels, like, no shame. And hostels I think are also great because even as an introvert, love people, love meeting people, getting to talk to people, and hostels is one great way to do that.
Same, yeah. Camping, big camper, big outdoor person. Nice. I typically look for like some sort of outdoor [00:40:44] adventure, whether it's hiking, I'm learning to surf in California right now.
Surabhi: That's incredible. I've only been a few times and it is hard. Just the swimming alone. I underestimated how hard the swimming against the current, like against the waves to just like get out there.
That's incredible.
Maggie: Yeah, climbing. I'm a moderate rock climber. Yes. Had a bit of a fall this summer, which Put a bit of a different spin on the summer plans. Yeah. Um, but yeah, mostly like outdoors, outdoors and adventures, new adventures and traveling to new places. I also like repeating and going to places I've been before because I think it's also different based on like your state of mind, where you're at in life and experiencing it again can be quite an interesting, um, way to
Surabhi: travel.
Do you speak other languages? Not well.
Maggie: Okay. French, and [00:41:44] I'm trying to learn Spanish.
Surabhi: Nice. Yeah, because that would make it easier to just, just, more languages the better, right? I speak French as well, although I was bilingual at the end of high school, and I don't know how much of that I remember now, like I probably could pick it up again if I was immersed in it, but, um.
I do, I do think it's valuable to even just have a few key phrases and things in another language. Spanish is on my list as well because I feel like it opens doors to just so many other countries that are, that have Spanish as a language. Um, so what are you passionate about right now? Is it traveling?
What is it? Um,
Maggie: I'm not going to be traveling as much right now. I'm developed, or I'm in a new relationship in California. Nice. So, passionate about that. It's not something I had expected. Yeah. And it happens. Yeah. You meet someone special. Yeah. Um, I'm, I [00:42:44] guess I'm passionate about surfing. I'm quite interested in learning about it, uh, and how to, uh, how to sort of do it.
Yeah. Also try not to put too much pressure, because I think that happened to me when I started rock climbing. It's like all this pressure to be like, the best rock climber. Who cares? It's just for
Surabhi: fun. It's just for fun. Yeah. I used to rock climb for years. That's actually how I met my husband is through rock climbing.
And um, I had, I was new to it. I had my old coworker who's a naturopathic doctor and I, we were meeting up because I had left that clinic and she's gluten free. So I was like, instead of meeting up for dinner, like let's do something else. So we started rock climbing together and then we both got really into it.
I got invited to this. outdoor climbing trip where I met my husband. We were friends for a while and then we, you know, eventually started dating and we climbed together for many years and then I had kids and then that kind of interrupted my whole climbing and now I'm really into dance, but I've always loved climbing for the whole.
Obviously the physicality of it, like [00:43:44] the physical, but also the mental, um, it's very meditative. Like you have to be focused in what you're doing, you can't be like thinking about your other problems and you get to explore parts of the country, parts of the world that you never would otherwise. And so that's, that's awesome.
I love that you, I love that you do that. I always love seeing pictures and adventures of other people doing things, even if I don't get to do it right now, I still. I still enjoy seeing that. Um, and surfing is hard. I don't know anyone who gets it like right away. It takes like years, I think, um, to get kind of good at it.
So, uh, I hope you're going easy on yourself with that. So it's
Maggie: a practice, but I love like the water is one of my favorite places. So getting to be in the water, I used to play water polo.
Surabhi: Oh, so you're a strong swimmer too then.
Maggie: So I'm not, I don't have that. Um, I think a lot of people who get into surfing have to, like, learn how to be in the water.
That's not a challenge. Yes, you
Surabhi: already are comfortable in the
Maggie: water. Yeah. Yeah, my balance is [00:44:44] terrible and my proprioception is not. I have Ehlers Danlos, so I'm a little bit, like, floppy and all over the place. So it's more of, like, the stability that's challenging for me.
Surabhi: If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?
Maggie: I'm gonna go, like, a little bit cheesy on this answer, because I have a lot of answers to this, but I think with all of the. Sad and, uh, difficult things happening in the world and my business partner is Lebanese. So, uh, and like, I know his family and it just makes me so sad to see what's happening in the world.
So I think the one thing I would change is for people just to act from a place of love and care. Um, the world would just be so much better and there's so many things happening in the world that are so concerning, but, uh, people were just. loving to themselves than to each other, it would be a much better place.
Surabhi: To themselves too, [00:45:44] because I feel like so much of Hate towards others comes from hate towards, like, oneself as well, and, you know, I heard, I can't remember who, some famous person from, you know, a long time ago was like, you know, if you want world peace, like, love your family, like, love, love the people in your community as well, and I think that, um, that would solve so many problems.
I'm like, how do people have so much hate in their hearts? Why? Like, what happened? What happened along the way to get, to get them there? Um, that's something that I would change too. So what do you think is your biggest strength? I know you have many, so it's hard to narrow it down to one, but if you were to say like, this is, you know, I'm Maggie, this is my, Biggest strength, what would it be?
Maggie: Uh, I'm gonna say my open mindedness. So I think I'm quite accepting and open minded to people and [00:46:44] things and just things being the way that they are. Um, which is also open mindedness is also one of my top values. So I think hopefully I display that as a strength and just, um, it's something that I've thought about even in the last year.
Cause we often get asked, like. Or are you concerned about your competitors? This is something that comes up in any business, right? Like you have competitors and you feel this competitive nature. And I think as PTs,
Surabhi: probably a little bit of that. Yeah. It's a like driven hardworking, you know? Yeah.
Maggie: So I think it's a balance of having that, but I think like my open mindedness has helped in developing a business and just, you know, there's lots of really good solutions and there's.
No reason, like competition's a good thing, actually.
Surabhi: Yeah, it drives people to be better or deliver better services or products. And I [00:47:44] think, um, I think I really hate this whole sense of, it's not even urgency. It's the scarcity mindset that we often see in the business world. It's like, you know, you have to stand out from everyone else.
There's no room for everyone else. I'm like... That's not, that's untrue. That's simply untrue, right? There is room for everyone and I think everyone, everyone provides a different value or service or approach that I don't think is any, um, reason to feel, yeah, I like the open mindedness around that because it's something that people have asked me about, you know, with being on social media is like, Oh, what about other people who have these major mommy fitness apps and this and that?
I'm like, listen, everyone's doing their own thing. It's all good. People still, people still don't know what pelvic health is, people still are peeing their pants, people are still going to get injured no matter how much education and prevention you provide, like you just hurt your foot, like it [00:48:44] happens, right?
Like it is going to happen. My neck will still hurt from time to time, I can do all the preventative exercises, I can do all the things. It's, it's important to kind of remove that scarcity mindset and I love that the way you and your business, um, your approach is very much uh, inclusive. And there's a wide variety, for people who don't know what Embodia is, first of all, go check it out.
But there is a wide variety of courses on there that are not like huge in depth as well. For some people, they can get overwhelmed, like, I don't want to sign up for this four day course. There's, there's one hour, two hour webinars that you can watch and learn a lot. from and still feel like you're getting, you're walking away with something, right?
Yeah. Um, and I want to also ask about one of the things that we had asked about in our, you know, pre podcast form was just about you and your playful side, and I think that comes out with your travel and your sense of adventure [00:49:44] and you're an aunt, is that right?
Maggie: I am an auntie to four, about to be five.
What?
Surabhi: That's exciting. I just want somebody, like one of my, I have a brother and I have, um, sisters and in laws and I'm like, I want someone to have kids so I can be an aunt because I have my own kids, but I feel like being an aunt is a special, whole special relationship that you get to have with your, um, nieces and nephews and, um, I also wanted to say that there's a lot of social pressure for women or people identifying as women to live life a certain way or to accomplish x, y, z by a certain time.
And how do you navigate that? Or do you, do you feel that pressure? I don't know what your family's like or what your social circumstances are like, but do you feel that pressure?
Maggie: I have certainly felt that pressure I think I'm also somebody who has maybe not always recognized, but has [00:50:44] always kind of marched to the beat of their own drum.
And then it does help, but I didn't realize it before. And then when, especially when we started in body, uh, I started to get more questions and comments from close friends or family or even people I didn't know, I just met and they're like, well, don't you want to have kids or don't you want to get married and do these things.
It's like, maybe, but I'm right now, I'm going to do this business thing.
Surabhi: Um, yeah. Go travel. Yeah. I think that's incredible.
Maggie: But I've certainly felt it to more, to a bigger extent at certain times, I mean, I'm 39, so I'm no spring chicken, but, um, I also, I think the open mindedness helps It's just like things turn out in different ways and it can all be good.
And it's just. Life looks different at different times and like, yeah, life looks different for different
Surabhi: people. Yeah, and [00:51:44] there's no specific order to do things and not everybody needs to do everything. And I know, I know more and more people, um, women in their 30s and 40s who don't have kids or don't want kids or don't get married.
And I think that it's important for us to recognize that as a In society because what happens is we make women feel like they're the only ones who are not doing that and it's like no no no there's a lot of people who aren't it's just that we don't hear their voices a lot and so I do think that I want to normalize that it's just and the one thing about motherhood is we often think about motherhood as like us having kids, but you can be a mom to, in a different way.
You can be a mom in a, as an aunt, as a business owner, as a leader in the community, as somebody who brings people together. And I think that all of those skills that we experience in motherhood don't have to come necessarily from having your own kids either. And I think that's [00:52:44] an important thing to, um, Just share.
So I appreciate you for taking your time to chat with us today. What is, um, I'm going to share the link by the way for embodia app. com forward slash H forward slash pelvic dash eight health. And I will share that link. So for anyone who works in pelvic health. I checked it out and there's so much good information on there.
One thing that we didn't talk about today that I do want to highlight is there are all of these, um, questionnaires and it's so easy. It's so easy. You know, if you want to send a questionnaire to somebody, there's, it's there. You don't have to do all of the work because there's extensive pelvic health, um, you know, exercises, questionnaires, and all of the tools, bladder diaries, and things like that.
So, um, for anyone who's considering Embodia or switching to Embodia, please go check it out. I have my, um, code as well, MomStrength, one word, and that gives [00:53:44] you, um, that saves you 20 off the Tier 3 membership. And so I will share the code to that as well. And Maggie, if people want to connect with you personally.
Suddenly, where's the best place to find you?
Maggie: I'm on Instagram. Uh, my handle is MaggieBPT. I'm on LinkedIn. Just my name, Maggie Bergeron. Um, or you can send an email. Happy to answer. Anyways, those are probably the three biggest ways. Email. Instagram. LinkedIn.
Surabhi: Nice. And is there anything that we, you want to share in terms of any upcoming courses, launches, services that we should know about?
Um, I don't know if you have anything kind of big releasing soon
Maggie: or... We just released this week, Carolyn Van Dyken's Sensory Motor Dysregulation course, which is a course that she has taught live, uh, live in person and live online for years. Um, but she's moving it to an on demand format. Oh, [00:54:44] very cool. So it's now up on Embodia.
It's, uh, it is a 12 hour course. It is, um, really helpful in rethinking pain, persistent pain and how we treat it. Um, so that's one kind of. Big new course. And I know it was a big transition from Carolyn to not teach live. Yeah. I'll teach this. This is like one of her like key courses. Yeah.
Surabhi: So her baby.
Maggie: Yeah, I know.
So it's a bit of a, like a letting it, letting it go into a different format, which is a big deal. Yeah. Um, what else we're hosting Mike Stewart. I think, I don't know if people know. Uh, Canada. He's a UK based pt. Okay. He is such an excellent, excellent teacher. Yeah. He's done his, um, master's in education, so he is [00:55:44] learned
Surabhi: to teach.
Okay. So he's like, knows how to teach, which is a whole, whole separate skill. He knows. Yeah. Because he's, people are just winging it. Right. And you know, in pelvic or not pelvic. And as physiotherapists, I feel like we have to pick up so many extra skills. Like soft skills or dealing with certain conditions that we may not necessarily learn about in school.
So that's very cool to have a master's of education. I don't know if I know Mike Stewart.
Maggie: He is fantastic. I actually met him at the San Diego Pain Summit, uh, many years ago. We had such a good time together. I was like, I just like this person. And then he offered for me to join him to take his course when he was teaching in Toronto.
He teaches still in person as well, but he teaches it also live online. Nice. And hands down, one of the best courses I've ever taken. Oh, wow. He teaches you how to teach. Which is a skill we do all the time with our patients, but I had never really thought about it in that way. [00:56:44] Yeah. And he's teaching, giving you these tools to talk to people, again about pain, so he teaches about persistent pain.
So we're hosting him again at the end of October, and for anybody who feels uncertain or like get nervous when somebody comes in and they're thinking, Oh gosh, they've got chronic or persistent pain, what am I going to do? Highly recommend his course. So it's a two day course over the weekend. It's online.
Surabhi: Oh, it's online. Oh, nice. I actually love online courses. I'm not going to lie. Um, I think it improves accessibility in a huge way because you don't have to obviously travel but it's also like if you do have kids or if you don't want to like be away from them all weekend, you still get to learn while also doing the other things and I, um.
I do want to say that I love Embodia off that Embodia offer so many. Um, and the other thing with this, um, Mike Stewart's course is I know many people, especially New York graduates who get really nervous, educating people who come in, especially if the other person who comes in is quote unquote [00:57:44] smart, like whether they have a job as a doctor or surgeon or their fellow nurse or a pelvic health profession or someone, people get really intimidated by that.
And I think that there is a skill in teaching and educating. Absolutely. In a way that's clear and concise and communicates at different levels.
Maggie: And Mike is such a good, like, it's so great to learn from him because from the first moment of his course, you're like, oh wow,
Surabhi: like, Now I want, now I want to take his course and see you're doing a good job at selling his course because now I'm like, I'm really curious.
Although I am away last, the, it sounds like it's end of October, October 28th,
Maggie: 29th, you need to be able to join live. He only teaches us. Uh, live. Yeah. We do have a version of it recorded. So you get free access to the on demand course when you sign up for the live, but you really need to be there. Like, if you can't attend, just wait.
We'll run it again probably next year. Yeah. But this was the course where it just [00:58:44] put a lot of things together for me and it gave me, like what you're saying, that confidence of going in and working with people where I used to get intimidated. Feeling like their intelligence is at a certain level and like, what am I going to say to them?
Yeah. And he just gives you like the tools and in some ways the confidence to be able to do it really well. And people, yeah, when I use anything that he's taught on that course with patients, they're like, Oh wow. And you can see like light bulb moments. happening. Nice.
Surabhi: That's amazing. Yeah. That's amazing. I feel like I'm such a nerd at heart and I'm like, I just want to learn everything and, you know, just like put this together.
But, um, I do. I do appreciate that now we're at a time where people can be anywhere in the world and learn things. And like you said, if you can't make it this time, there's always another time. So you don't feel like this sense of like, this is now or never, this will happen again. And, um, there are many options for people.
So again, thank you so much, Maggie, for your [00:59:44] time and sharing your story with us. I, I'm, I'm totally inspired by you. I'm not going to lie. Um, I think that it's. your sense of innovation and curiosity and expanding physiotherapy from beyond just client care to providing a service that is so needed, but also actually caters to the clinician instead of feeling like, Oh, I'm not going to name softwares I've used in the past, but you know, there's some things that you're just like, who is this designed for?
Because it's definitely not designed for me. I feel like this is designed with us in mind as clinicians and also. allows that sense of like feedback and new, new things, new features coming up all the time, which I love, um, being able to converse with your clients via the system itself. So you feel like it's all in one place.
You don't have to give out your phone number or have your clients be texting you. It's all within that app. Um, so I really appreciate you for everything that you're doing for our profession and for your time. [01:00:44] And sharing this with us today. For any physios or healthcare professionals who benefited from this episode, please go share it with a friend or somebody, um, in your field.
If you want to hear more from Maggie, go follow her at maggiebpt on Instagram or on LinkedIn, Maggie Bergeron and we will connect again real soon.
