How Scaling a Brain Health Program is Like Learning to Bowl
TL/DR - Use the bumpers with the newbies to build confidence
Last week, during our Deliver the Brain Health Care of Tomorrow… Today session, I shared an analogy that resonated with a lot of clinicians tuning in. It was a simple metaphor, but one that perfectly captures the core tension in scaling a functional medicine clinic.
Scaling a functional medicine clinic is like learning to bowl.
And the key to doing it well?
You have to use the bumpers when new practitioners are learning.
The Scaling Problem Nobody Warns You About
Let’s set the stage.
You started your practice because you were obsessed with functional medicine. You went to the conferences. You did the mentorships. You saw patient after patient. You broke through the old models and took a stand for root-cause care.
It was the journey I documented in my book The Evolution of Medicine. You swam upstream while the rest of the healthcare world was consolidating and standardizing. You built something real. And guess what? You made it work.
But now, it’s time to grow.
So what do you do?
You hire another practitioner. And this is where it gets messy.
The Second Practitioner Problem
One option is to find a well-trained and experienced provider. They’re great—but expensive. Experienced talent with a proven track record and clinical experience doesn’t come cheap. Reversing cognitive decline is especially intellectually and clinically taxing.
Or you go the other route: you hire someone early in their journey. Maybe they’re passionate. Maybe they want to learn like you did. But here’s the problem:
You’re operating at 80–100% of functional medicine’s potential
They’re operating at 20%
And the patients can feel it. They're not getting better. They’re asking for you instead. And morale dips for everyone.
This isn’t just a clinical problem. It’s a business-killer.
And it’s why so many practices get stuck trying to scale.
So How Is This Like Bowling?
Let’s say your new practitioner is bowling for the first time. That’s what doing functional medicine for the first time really feels like.
They’re holding a heavy ball full of lab data, patient history, psychosocial dynamics, and personalized protocols. And then—they roll it straight into the gutter.
Why?
Because they don’t know the fundamentals yet. And you can’t transmit 10 years of experience, intuition and pattern recognition in a week of onboarding.
Here’s some of what gets missed:
Patient Participation – Can they consistently activate the patient as the leader in care and recovery?
Data Synthesis – Can they make sense of a mountain of labs, intake and stories in a 60-minute intake?
Pattern Recognition – Can they see what's really going on beneath the symptoms?
These are the skills you’ve honed over thousands of hours. And they’re not easy to pass on.
What You Need Are the Bumpers
When my kids bowl, they’re not interested unless the bumpers are up.
And honestly? Neither is your new practitioner.
Because without bumpers, the likelihood of success is low, and the confidence never gets built.
So what are bumpers in a functional medicine context?
TruNeura.
TruNeura: The Bumpers That Let You Scale
We didn’t build TruNeura just to help you do functional medicine better—we built it to help you scale what you’ve built.
Here’s how it puts up the bumpers:
🎳 Bumper 1: Patient Participation Is Built In
Every TruNeura care plan includes structured lifestyle pillars, wearable tracking, and behavior accountability. Whether it’s you, a coach, or your new hire running the protocol—patients are supported to take action.
🎳 Bumper 2: Data Synthesis Is Automated
TruNeura takes 450+ biomarkers and scores them into root cause categories. The software surfaces the top drivers—so your new team member can make informed, aligned decisions without getting buried in PDFs. Most importantly can communicate with confidence and alignment to give the patients confidence in their ability.
🎳 Bumper 3: Pattern Recognition Becomes Visible
Instead of relying on intuition, TruNeura tracks trends, flags risks, and visualizes improvement. Also, a key part of the practitioner facing software is that all the labs are always visualized in the same order which speeds confidence building. You can monitor outcomes across patients and providers—and intervene when things go off course.
Bowling with Confidence
Let’s be real: your new hire will throw a few gutter balls.
That’s part of learning.
But with the right guardrails, those balls will still hit some pins.
And over time, they’ll learn to bowl on their own—just like you did.
So if you’ve been stuck at one provider and wondering how to scale without sacrificing quality, morale, or patient outcomes, remember:
Scaling functional medicine is like learning to bowl.
And TruNeura is the bumper system your clinic needs.
Good analogy. We need FM scaled up. And if TruNeura can help conventional clinics move toward FM, that is also much needed.