This business spotlight is our 4th in a series recognizing local holistic practitioners and businesses that are celebrating 10 years in 2017. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Lauren Young, owner of CT Natural Health Specialists to discuss her inspiration and success.
DH: Why did you want to start your own business vs working for someone else?
LY: I grew up in Hebron and always knew I wanted to be in this area. There really wasn’t an opportunity out here to join someone, so the choice was made for me! Hold your breath and trust your calling. When I started, there was such a great network of support for me in Manchester, referrals from gastroenterologists, oncologists, cardiologist and primary care and the likes that I decided to make it my forever home.
DH: What has been your biggest success and your biggest challenge in owning a business for 10 years?
LY: There was a pretty steep learning curve for a lot of this. Being a younger field, there aren’t many mentors to help you navigate the waters of billing insurance, medical records, staffing and logistics of an office. It was a bumpy road for a while until I found my balance and my team. My biggest success has been bridging the relationship between conventional and natural/functional medicine. I am clinical faculty with the University of New England School of Medicine; I have given many lectures and grand rounds at Manchester hospital and work closely with many doctors in the area. The addition of primary care physicians to our practice continues to speak to the increasing acceptance of natural medicine in the medical community.
DH: What plans do you have for the future?
LY: We are renaming the business this year, actually this month, to Collaborative Natural Health Partners, LLC. Our old name didn’t encompass everything we are doing and where we are going. Having a team of collaborative physicians, partnering together and with the patient for their care really is a new level of medicine. We review cases daily together, bringing in expertise in different modalities like craniosacral, osteopathic manipulation, acupuncture and bowen with all the doctors having experience and expertise in different areas of medicine: infectious disease, hormones, autoimmune, pediatrics and oncology. I love how much bigger this practice has become than me.
Our new office space will be finished this spring and is going to include a teaching space–with a small kitchen–for cooking classes, nutrition, book clubs, lectures, soap making classes and more. My goal is to support a community of wellness and not only offer free lectures to the community but also highlight all the gifted practitioners and resources we have in the Greater Manchester area. If you can’t make it out to our office, we will be putting many lectures on the internet!
DH: What are you most proud of that you’ve accomplished in the last 10 years?
LY: By far, my greatest pride comes from my colleagues and teammates in my office. We pull together and share a vision of excellence in care and treating the whole person. Finding all these amazing people and pulling together as a team has been part luck, part persistence and part faith. All of my team cares about every patient that walks through that door. We have long days and have had times where we were short staffed, but we smile, support each other and roll up our sleeves to get things done. Just a few years ago, I only had myself for clinical questions, insurance claims and the rest of it. Patients really benefit from this team and their drive to make this practice and its patients the best possible. I would like to personally thank my naturopathic doctors: Dr. Ashley Burkman, Dr. Kaley Burns, Dr. Nick Edgerton, Dr. Craig Fasullo, Dr. Tonya Pasternak; my primary care osteopathic doctors: Dr. Kate Zachau and Dr. AJ Eckert; my nutritionist: Evelyn Dedominicis; as well as my office team: Debbie Lahaie, Valerie Morelli, Sally Wetmore, Chris Burroughs, Carol Albert, Sam Bolduc, Jessica Weskosky and Julia Jenkins. Each of these individuals have elevated the practice and I feel so grateful to know them. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”- Aristotle
DH: What advice would you have for practitioners/business owners about how to be successful in their industry?
LY: Love what you do and make every mistake an opportunity for learning and growth. It sounds like something you would find on social media with a beach scene behind it, but it’s the truth. Patients feel it when you are genuine about helping them. Office members feel it when you own a mistake and try to grow from it.
Interview by Dr. Diane Hayden.
Dr. Lauren Young is a licensed naturopathic physician and has a family practice in Manchester. She uses her expertise in nutrition, botanical medicine and functional medicine along with conven-tional diagnostic skills and laboratory tests to offer individualized treatments for patients of all ages. Dr. Young specializes in autoim-mune, GI and endocrine conditions as well as oncology and im-munology. Dr. Young is a board member for the state Naturopathic board, as well as an active member of the National and state as-sociation and the Oncology Naturopathic Association. In her spare time, Dr. Young enjoys being a mother and wife, gardening, yoga and raising backyard chickens. She is very passionate about rescue animals and patient advocacy. Visit: www.ctnaturalhealth.com.