Hello and welcome to another episode of The Entrepreneurial Mindset Project, where I tease out the hidden logic that enables ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things through finding solutions.
In this episode, I’m speaking with Dr. Meena McCullough, a physical therapist who became an unlikely entrepreneur.
Frustrated by the limitations of the medical system, she found herself constantly complaining. Yet she was motivated to take action after a friend challenged her with these simple words, “Put your money where your mouth is.”
This pivotal moment challenged her to shift her mindset towards solution-driven thinking in a way that ultimately led her to start her own business.
She began with a simple solution—creating flashcards to help caregivers who worked with patients who were suffering from dementia. Once she saw that her idea actually worked, she was inspired to address larger challenges for those who suffered from chronic pain.
Today, she has a thriving practice of her own, one that is revolutionizing physical therapy.
Dr. Meena’s story is a master class in entrepreneurship: look for problems to solve, try things on a small scale, and continuously learn and adapt. And, rather than taking big risks, she began by experimenting in the margins, after work and on weekends, building prototypes and refining her ideas through customer feedback.
She also described the difficulty of overcoming self-doubt and dealing with negativity as well as the value of persistence, passion, and embracing uncertainty.
What I love about Dr. Meena’s story is the simplicity of it all. Look for problems in your everyday life. Stop complaining and start solving. The ability to identify and solve problems is something anyone can do.
So, without any further ado, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Dr. Meena McCullough.
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Listen to the podcast here
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is With Dr. Meena McCullough
In this episode, I’m speaking with Dr. Meena McCullough, a Physical Therapist who became an unlikely entrepreneur. Frustrated by the limitations of the medical system, she found herself constantly complaining, yet she was motivated to take action after a friend challenged her with these simple words, “Put your money where your mouth is.” This pivotal moment challenged her to shift her mindset towards solution-driven thinking in a way that ultimately led her to start her own business.
She began with a simple solution, creating flashcards to help caregivers who work with patients who were suffering from dementia. Once she saw that her ideas actually worked, she was inspired to address larger challenges for those who suffered from chronic pain. Now, she has a thriving practice of her own one that is revolutionizing physical therapy.
Dr. Meena’s story is a masterclass in entrepreneurship. Look for problems to solve, try things on a small scale and continuously learn and adapt. Rather than taking big risks, she began by experimenting in the margins after work and on weekends, building prototypes and refining her ideas through customer feedback.
She also describes the difficulty of overcoming self-doubt and dealing with negativity, as well as the value of persistence, passion, and embracing uncertainty. What I love about Dr. Meena’s story is the simplicity of it all. Look for problems in your everyday life. Stop complaining and start solving. The ability to identify and solve problems is something anyone can do. Without any further ado, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Dr. Meena McCullough.
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Dr. Meena, thanks for joining the show.
It’s my pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Getting Started On The Entrepreneurial Path
I know a little bit about your story. I’ve interviewed you a couple of times now. We met in Fort Worth, but your story is so interesting to me and I can’t even explain why. One of the things I love about your story is that you just seemed like you were like just a normal person in a pretty normal job as a Physical Therapist and you became entrepreneurial. It sounded like somebody shoved you in the entrepreneurial pool. I’ll just start the conversation. Set it up there. Give us a little bit of background. What were you doing and how did you get on the entrepreneurial path, so to speak?
Yeah, I was working, so like you said, I’m a Physical Therapist and I had been working in the industry for probably eight years at that point. I was working home health, so I was driving from house to house, seeing clients and I really liked the autonomy of that. Home health really is in itself entrepreneurial in some ways because I’m making my own schedule, scheduling my own patients.
However, I’m frustrated at that time with the way the system is handled. It is so many things. As with everybody else who’s been in a job for a while, I see all the problems around me, I guess you could say. The real breaking point was is that, we talked about this before, but it was talking to a friend who was also an entrepreneur and I was just venting like anybody would about their job and about how things should be done this way or that way. He was basically like, “Put your money where your mouth is.”
I love that. I was thinking about that, Meena, like all entrepreneurial behavior stems from some dissatisfaction with the status quo. Maybe you’re trying to escape poverty, maybe you’re in a job that you don’t love. In your case, you’re in a job you love, but you saw the way it’s being done isn’t optimal. Someone just told you like, “Put your money where your mouth is. Do something about it.” How did you respond to that?
Ooh, before it was said, I was crying because I was so frustrated and part of it comes from the fact that I was a patient first in the medical system because of other struggles I’ve had. I went into the medical field hoping it would be something that I didn’t quite live up to in my mind. I think we can all relate to that in different professions.
At that moment, when he told me that, when he told me, “Put your money where your mouth is. Do something. Make a change. Don’t just be a talker. Be a solution-oriented person,” I remember I stopped crying. My tears dried up and I was just taken aback. It was almost like, “What? Nobody had ever called me out like that before.” I’d always just vented and complained about things, but nobody actually gave me that tough love. It took me aback and I was speechless.
Shifting From Deficit Thinking To Solutions
There’s so much in that, Dr. Meena, like there’s a trust with that person because like a lot of people would just be like, “F you.” People who just get offended by that. I don’t know. We all need people like that in our life that’ll tell us stuff like that. I think what you’re also articulating is a shift from deficit thinking to solution orientation and it’s like which of those wolves you want to feed, you know?
Yes, that’s exactly right. We do all need people in our life like that. I do get defensive, too, very often. I think it was just really knowing that he was a friend and if it wasn’t him saying that, if it was somebody else who I didn’t feel had good intentions towards me, I might have gotten a lot more defensive. It’s because I knew he had my best interest at heart going into the conversation. That’s the reason I wasn’t just defensive.
We all need people in our lives who challenge us but who also have our best interests at heart. Share on XIt’s just left you stunned and thinking, “There’s some truth to that.” Can you walk us through like the process like then what happened?
I started asking myself a lot of questions. What change do I want to tackle first? First, I realized that he was right. As you said, it hit me and that’s what left me speechless. I was like, “He is right. There’s nothing that I can even argue about that.” He was just so right. I was asking myself a lot of questions like what challenge do I want to tackle and how do I tackle it and what are the action steps I’m actually going to take to get there? I was trying to realize that I couldn’t tackle something so huge. It’s like you dream big, but then where do you start? It’s trying to figure out, “Small steps. Where do I start?”
That’s a huge deal right there. I think what you’re saying is super important because a lot of entrepreneurs set out with the best intentions trying to solve big problems. If you don’t get some traction relatively early, you’ll probably give up. You’re trying to break it down into like what’s the actionable, what’s the thing that I can do? Start where you are and use what you have kind of thinking. Is that what you’re saying?
That’s exactly right. My passion that I wanted to solve was surrounding helping people with chronic connective tissue pain because that’s what I experienced. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia when I was 25 years old. At this point, I had already been diagnosed for ten years. I went through the system. I’ve had just the whole workup for many doctors and tests. I’ve been to many physical therapists, chiropractors, this and that. I was already starting to come up with my own ideas on how I was managing those that nobody else had taught me.
At the time, when I first had the idea to start, I hadn’t had enough confidence to tackle that problem yet. The problem immediately in front of me was that day actually that I had that conversation with a friend, I was really trying to help this lady and her family and she had dementia. One thing that I noticed was everybody was giving this lady with dementia different advice, cues and ways of doing things.
My first idea was just start with the immediate problem of my patient in front of me. I made these flashcards, so if any loved one that came by her, they would use the same exact words to tell her how to do something. She had redundancy and repeatability to hopefully help with the memory loss on simple things like how to stand or how to use her walker. That was the first thing I could do because my friend pointed out, I have paper, I have a printer, I can go laminate it and I have a patient to test it on. I had everything I needed for my first idea.
Dr. Meena, I absolutely love that part of your story. It just embodies so much. You have the paper, you have the printer, you have the laminator. Start experimenting in some small ways. That’s right in front of you start. The way I think about this sometimes, Dr. Meena, is the managerial mindset assumes we have the correct way and the entrepreneurial mindset is assuming maybe we don’t.
If you’re assuming you have the correct way, maybe you get frustrated with the way, but you feel like you’re powerless to do anything about it. That’s what I love about that part of your story. You just right here, right now, here’s a problem I could solve. Did you see a reaction from that? How did that evolve into solving bigger problems?
I think immediately I saw a positive reaction from the family, which was amazing. I would go back and see her and those cards, they would just be sitting there. The family knew how to use them. They were using them. It was really positive. I really felt like I made a difference in that family’s life. Whether it stuck when I left or not, I’m not really sure. In that immediate moment, reflecting back on it, the fact that I tried and they had a therapist who really cared enough to come up with a customized solution for their mother. That’s huge when you’re a caregiver and you’re taking care of your mother.
Becoming A Physical Therapist With Purpose
I think it shouldn’t be overlooked. The need to solve problems and use our own understanding to solve problems is powerful. That lands in your brain like, “I did this. I made something and I came up with it on my own and it was useful to these people.” Now that starts to open up the aperture maybe a little wider, but let me go back to something. I’m not clear on this. Did you become a physical therapist because of your fibromyalgia diagnosis?
Yes. It was an interesting turn of events because as I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, I was actually contemplating being a physical therapist already. I was on the Texas state cycling team at the peak of my physical fitness. I was on the mountain biking and the cycling team and I was like racing up mountain 70-mile rides and that’s when I got my fibromyalgia diagnosis.
At that time, I was contemplating what I wanted to basically do with my life. PT was an option on the list. As I went from doctor to doctor to practitioner to practitioner and found that it’s really tough when I didn’t have the understanding what I needed to do, relying on these appointments that maybe they were only ten minutes long or somebody’s like trying to offer me a $5,000 package to work with them.
At this point, I had spent like tens of thousands of dollars and even taken out student loans to pay for my medical bills. I had an OT in the family and my aunt is like, “Therapy’s a great career.” That was really all the validation I needed to then try and follow through with getting into physical therapy school at the time because I had this inherent desire as well to go do it and learn more about my body.
That’s an interesting part of the story. That’s fairly common in so far as I interview entrepreneurs and they start out by trying to solve a problem for themselves and then they realize like, “Other people have this problem.” I don’t want that to be confused because a lot of entrepreneurs fail because they come up with an idea that they think is a problem for other people and they fail because people don’t really care about their solution. The problem finding component of your story is interesting because you had the problem. You were essentially your first customer.
Yes, for many years, before I even had the confidence, actually, even after I became a physical therapist, because in the medical field, it’s almost like we’re taught what’s right and what’s wrong to a T or that’s what it feels like anyways.
Rigid.
Yes, it does give off rigid and I understand why because it’s people’s lives and it’s trying to be very scientific. It is still the art of medicine. Even in physical therapy, it’s still largely an art more than it even is an exact science. It took me many years into my career to fully realize that and have the confidence. At this point, I’ve been working on my techniques and my solutions for it must have been several years before I actually started using them on people, but there was a disconnect of what I was doing for myself versus what I was doing with my client.
How Small Experiments Spark Big Solutions
Dr. Meena, what did you do? The cue cards were your first little experiment, like, “I could start improving these situations. I can start finding viable solutions for the things I was complaining about?” Where did it go from there?
Although I was so happy to make a solution that impacted a family, I realized pretty quickly that to be able to create a solution takes a lot of effort, time and passion on the part of the creator. I did a little bit of soul searching and realized I needed to create towards the solutions that I really cared about because that was going to be the only thing that kept driving me forward to continue to refine it and make it better.
Finding Solutions: Creating solutions demands effort, time, and passion. We must create solutions we deeply care about, for that alone will keep us driving forward.
Let me just try to interpret what you’re saying, Dr. Meena. It energized you, that solution, the cue cards. They energized you in so far as you designed a solution. You saw that people were using it, they saw value in it, but it wasn’t an area of physical therapy that you were particularly passionate about. Is that what you’re saying?
That’s exactly right.
The reason I wanted to double click on that, Dr. Meena, because like people don’t understand this. If you’re not intrinsically motivated, if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, being entrepreneurial is hard work. We talked about this before you even hit record. This isn’t just skipping through daisies all day long. It’s hard work and if you don’t love it, you’re undermining your ability to succeed. Does that make sense?
Absolutely, 100%.
Developing An Entrepreneurial Mindset
That’s all I really wanted to bring to the conversation, that intrinsic motivation is a key component. Did you start now focusing on other areas where those were the table stakes that put you in the entrepreneurial way of thinking? What did you start doing next?
Yeah, that was definitely what got me in the mindset. I didn’t have an idea at first. It was just more working and noticing problems around me again. I had this gentleman that had low back pain. He was going to have surgery and they brought me in for physical therapy to do prehab. Basically, it was to get him strong for surgery.
The goal was never to fix the problem, it was to get him stronger. After I saw his situation, it basically dawned on me as I was sitting in his house. He has nothing to lose. Let me try some of my ideas that I’m doing on my body that have helped for so many years and I’ve already been working on for so many years in private at this point. Let me try those ideas on him.
Let me make sure I understand this. You have fibromyalgia, which is causing you problems. You’re not finding solutions in traditional medicine. You’re experimenting on yourself in your own life. You’re acting as your own physical therapist. That was the first time you said like, “Here’s an opportunity. Let me see if this will work on this guy who’s about to have back surgery.” Do I have that right?
Exactly right. Yes.
What happened? What’d you do?
A little bit of background about my philosophy and my techniques. It’s a set of philosophies. I’ve come up with protocols around those philosophies and ways to use them on different joints because fibromyalgia is body wide. It’s vast pain everywhere. I’ve been thinking about all the joints in the body for some time now. I had so much on my mind that I wanted to give him, but I just started with a little bit.
I just input one of my philosophies in there and it was actually surrounding training the foot and ankle and including it in movements for low back pain instead of just jumping right to low back pain strengthening. He followed it well. He seemed to enjoy the exercise and didn’t have pain from it. I added on slowly over the course of 3 weeks and then after those 3 weeks, his wife came to me and told me, “He is not going to have surgery anymore. They’re going to hold off because he feels better.”
That was had to be an a-ha moment.
That was the first validating moment that I was like, “This is powerful or it could be powerful. I need to follow this. I need to keep doing and heading in this path because it is meaningful.”
Facing Doubts And External Skepticism
I like that. It’s like you’re not 100% convinced, but you see it as more evidence like on a breadcrumb trail you’re following. I can imagine where people would say, “You’re messing with people’s lives. You’re overriding surgical advice,” or whatever. Did you ever have those doubt, first of all, in your own mind and from other people?
Yeah. In my mind, it’s like obviously because of many reasons. I felt the rigidity of the medical institution and because I felt like maybe I was stepping outside my bounds and because I don’t want to hurt anyone ever. That’s never the goal. That’s why it took me so long to even try some of my ideas and protocols on someone until I talked to a friend.
Now this was a different friend. She was a classmate of mine from physical therapy school and she told me like, “You have the education and training to do that. You weren’t just some rogue person who’s never dealt with back pain before. You’re an experienced professional with autonomy to make your own decisions.” That was really powerful because I wasn’t thinking it like that at all. I was scared to try.
It’s like, “I’m doing stuff I shouldn’t even be doing or it could get me in trouble,” or whatever. It is a great point. I’m forever saying the entrepreneur is a micro experiment. They’re not big risk takers. It’s trying things on a small scale. It’s not just going whole hug.
It wasn’t like I was conducting surgery on this man instead of having back surgery. Luckily, I’m in a profession that it’s low risk anyways. In addition to that, her words of wisdom and then me realizing that there are so many different techniques in therapy and some of them are unconventional, but I am licensed to do this. It did feel wrong at first. It did constantly feel like, “Am I doing something wrong?”
From Independent Work To Business Ownership
Dr. Meena, how did that evolve to your own business? You said you were working as an independent physical therapist in other people’s homes, so you had a sense of autonomy, but it wasn’t your business. Can you talk to me about how that evolved into your own thing?
There’s a lot of steps leading up to it. I would say the first one was really deciding that I wanted to make some tools and they were for myself at first. It was this process of realizing how to make some a physical object because I’ve never been handy and I didn’t really have the funds to go and hire an expensive engineer, so I needed to test something.
My friend helped me realize that, the original friend that gave me the tough love advice earlier on, that I needed to quickly go and build something to test it. I was so lucky to have his guidance in a way, but also, he left it up to me to figure out how to do that. He didn’t sit there and hold my hand through every step. What I ended up doing was I talked to my stepdad.
He told me about this substance called JB Weld, and it’s like this tack that can double as glue and I could put different metal on plastic. I learned to sew a little bit and got a seamstress and additionally found somebody who did 3D printed parts in their garage. Trying to figure all of that out took a little bit of time, but it was basically me frankensteining something together that I could then use to test. That was the first step.
Turning A Prototype Into A Thriving Business
Minimally viable product. I love the Frankensteining reference. I think that’s an important step. I also like the fact that your friend/mentor wasn’t telling you what to do. That’s a key for people that teach entrepreneurship. You’ve got to let people figure it out. You put together a prototype for a device. What did you do with it?
For the longest time, I just used it on myself and I tried to figure out protocols. Most of my stuff is not just to do with a tool. It’s more the method behind the tool. When I did these activations, as I call them, I would ask myself, “What would I tell somebody else that they were trying to do it?” I would write down steps, like step one, get in the right position, step two, apply 20% pressure, step three, do this other movement.
It started with just writing the steps of what I was doing naturally. I was doing these things intuitively. I would figure these things out in my body because they came natural because they relieved pain. I had been working on this and researching fascia for so long that I had developed this collection of principles and steps.
You were again trying to solve a problem for yourself. Dr. Meena, how did your Frankenstein first product lead to you stepping out and starting your own business?
I think the first big thing was after Home Health, I worked at an orthopedic physical therapy clinic and I was lucky enough to where the owner had a bit of an entrepreneurial mindset. At this point, once I produced my product, I got a patent pending on it. He found out about that and he was super excited about that. He thought it was very neat that one of his therapists was doing something different.
In a way, he fostered it, but again, still not really holding my hand, but just allowing me an open-minded environment to grow in. I think that was huge. I started testing people. I figured out that I could invite people to the clinic after hours, have them sign a waiver and just have them try to use this tool and just give me feedback on what they thought.
Did you take any entrepreneur classes to learn to do that? That seems so right on.
I would say no at first and then at some point, right during that time when I started testing on people, it might have been before, I can’t remember. Right in that time, somebody did send me information about an accelerator and it was called Smart Start. It was through Tech Fort Worth. I’m in Dallas, Texas and that was the local one. They were doing a special on women could have scholarships. I was really happy that I could get in for free, especially to try it out because I didn’t know anything about it. It was just a really nice clear entry to getting support for how I was going to do this.
You’re testing your idea and you’re working for someone who’s encouraging you, which shouldn’t go unmentioned, having people around you that are supportive because somebody else in the same position might have told you to stop doing that or you got to leave. Somebody might have been threatened by that as your potential competitor.
You’re experimenting with this, you’re bringing people in the clinic after hours, signing waivers, you’re doing what we call in the business, customer discovery. You’re trying, you’re seeing if this actually works. You’re not just going out and trying to sell it to people. Can you keep walking me down the path of how that becomes your business?
It stayed in the customer discovery phase for a long time, for years because once I realized that I really enjoy that phase, first of all, the discovery, the reactions, I think, trying to figure out the protocols and I realized that the most important moment. There were many moments where people would get instant pain relief. It’s not that it would stay forever, but in that moment, they would get instant pain relief. I had a front seat to this feeling of like something that I was doing was causing this amazing reaction in somebody else. It was just such a cool feeling every time it happened that I ended up developing eight products because I was working on all sorts of different joints of the body and that was my genius zone.
Finding Solutions: The most important moment was seeing instant pain relief in people.
I could even feel the energy when you were just talking, Dr. Meena, that excitement about like, “I’m actually solving a problem for somebody.” I don’t want people to miss that. That’s really a profound motivating factor. That’s not just in some of us. I feel like we’re hardwired to want to solve problems for other people.
The fact that it was right in front of them watching their facial expression, their body language, the change from before and after, it’s like I became obsessed with that. I think that’s always going to be, like you said, a driving force and something that’s definitely kept me motivated over the years.
Are you thinking in your mind now like you’re going to go launch something of your own? Is that in your mind? Is that a direction like you’re deliberately heading towards?
At this point, yes, because I also realized that there’s a lot of effort in the development phase. There’s a lot of money in developing something. I was seeing a lot of positive examples where many people could benefit from it. It’s like I started to understand and started to just begin to understand what this could be or where I should go with this. It’s still always a struggle to know what to do next, what direction this should go in, but I started to dream bigger at that point.
The dreaming part’s good. Are you saving up money? Are you looking for investors? Are you writing business plans? What are you doing as you’re preparing?
I’m still working a job. In a sense, I’m bootstrapping and using money, and then I’m applying for grants. I’m applying for non-dilutive funding. To this day, I’ve won about $50,000 in non-dilutive funding, which has been huge. I took a little bit of a break from it because to focus on the operations right now. At that point, that’s what I was doing. How do I continue to get money to develop?
For grant money, not looking for investors, not taking out loans.
I was always scared to take out loans. People told me that loans obviously are a little bit more risky than capital. I already had student loans and so I wasn’t wanting to take out loans. As far as the investors go, it’s complex because I see a lot of hurdles. I saw that you have to have more of a financial plan or better connections or more revenue. I saw some hurdles to putting all of my eggs in that basket.
You’re still working and running your business. You’re working a regular job and running your business. Are you full-time?
I’m full-time in my business now. At that point, when I was testing at the clinic after hours, obviously, it was like I was working my day job and then working at another job in the evening, trying to develop and test.
The Early Days Of Entrepreneurship
What was day one like? You stepped out and you decided to do your thing. Can you talk a little bit about the early days there?
Yeah. It’s community. There’s three key people that helped me. Now I have a brick and mortar. I actually wasn’t planning to have a brick and mortar, but I’ve always not been a huge planner in the sense that I never had a business plan to have this place. It became an opportunity at some point that was presented to me and it was a great opportunity. I thought I have to act on this because it would be silly for me not to.
I have a landlord who’s the mentor. At the time, I had two clients. One was a woodworker and a metal fabricator, so he built things, and another was my biggest fan. I had these three people in my corner with this opportunity presented to me to have this brick-and-mortar space. Of course, I was also pushing for it once I saw the opportunity.
When I stepped out, it was in June of 2024. I had a grand opening and the grand opening, there was so much support, so much encouragement. Here I am thinking 3 people are going to show up and we have 50. The entrepreneurial community, the dance community. I even had a patient show up that I had treated years ago that I felt terrible about because I forgot about her. I hadn’t talked to her in years, but she still remembered me. That was a really touching day and a really touching moment in a really touching day.
There’s a couple I talk about in my new book that started a restaurant. They’re both photographers. They didn’t have any restaurant experience and they didn’t have money, but they got like a literally a couple of hot plates in a pop-up tent. When they started, they were doing like vegan sandwiches, like plant-based in a little town in New Jersey an hour and a half from New York City.
They spent like 2 or 3 years going to little local farmer’s markets and building a reputation and experimenting with recipes. By the time they opened the business for real, they had a reputation. The wind’s already going in their direction. People don’t get that. It’s not, “I have an idea. I’m going to quit my job and mortgage my house and go all in.”
I’ve learned it’s a progression and I think sometimes, it is difficult to have that patience when you have an idea and you feel or you dream what it can become or you have a vision for what it can be. It’s really about the journey along the way. It’s definitely more of a slow progression than I’ve got a thriving business immediately.
You might dream of what something could be, but it's the journey along the way that truly matters. Share on XInnovations And Inventions Along The Journey
Dr. Meena, I can see these things on the wall behind you. Are those some of the things that you invented?
Yeah. This is one of my products. It’s a PressEX bar and it’s for foot and ankle activation. It goes along with my method. What’s been interesting is that I just so happen to have this sitting next to me because I used this with my clients, but having this space and developing at the same time has been so crucial in ways that I didn’t anticipate before I had the space.
I’ve been only able to focus on my stuff, my ideas without much other restriction, I guess you could say. It’s come full circle. Similar to like the cue cards, I had at first for clients with dementia because it was so helpful to have something tactile for somebody to hold and explain the method. I’ve just realized that I have this product, but how do I help people understand it and understand what to do with it and explain it in a way that they get the transformation, whether they’re working with me or they’re working at home.
I have the PressEX bar, which is like a stabilizing bar that has different end cuffs, like a vacuum cleaner. I package it with a kit. Wherever anyone goes, they can get the transformation at home. It’s been really great both having an online leg and an in-person leg because they feed each other. In a sense, I’m creating a whole new business model. I really don’t know other physical therapists that have this type of business model.
Dealing With Naysayers And Resistance
I feel that. I feel that’s exactly what you’re doing. Something I want to touch on is when you’re deviating from the norms in physical therapy, like there’s haters. Haters may be too strong of a word, but you’re deviating from a norm like not everybody’s going along with you. Some of the comments you made last time we talked about this, I thought about it many times after, you said, “I listened to some of this, but then I only have a limited capacity for it. I have to shut it off.” Can you just talk about the naysayers? You’ve talked a bit about people are helping you, but let’s look to the other side of that. Could you talk to me about that?
It’s hard to come up with words to describe this properly, but I have felt that there’s more people actually against me than for me. I don’t know if that’s common to a lot of entrepreneurs. You explained it really well, that humans have a herd mentality. When you step out of the herd, it is very alarming for people.
It makes us uncomfortable.
Sometimes they don’t even know exactly what you’re doing, but they know you’re different and they just don’t like that immediately. There were naysayers in the physical therapy community. I had a comment on my Facebook DM account where somebody was basically telling me I don’t have the most effective method, they do and here’s why. Just stuff like that as well as in the business community as well. It’s like the medical community, the business community, and the PT community.
I would say I learned that I have to listen to some of it, but at some point, it becomes maybe not constructive or it wears on me to where my self-esteem or whatever my motivation. I feel like it’s a faucet and at some point, I have to purposely turn the faucet off. I need to shut that out once I’ve gotten the feedback I needed.
Finding Solutions: Feedback is like a faucet. At some point, we have to purposely turn it off and shut that out once we’ve gotten the feedback we need.
I think that’s actually brilliant. The metaphor of the faucet is perfect because it will get you down. The way our brain works also is, this is a gross way, but I heard this. A behavioral economist talk about it like this. One cockroach will ruin a whole bowl of cherries. One negative comment just sticks in your mind and you forget all about the positive stuff.
Balancing Optimism With Pragmatism
However, there’s another element to what you’re saying that I just want to point out, Dr. Meena, that’s so important. The first rule of entrepreneurship is not to fool yourself and you’re the easiest person to fool. We get all excited about our ideas, we want to go running down the hill, and if you don’t learn to balance, you need to be a little bit crazy on one hand.
You need a little bit of hubris, let’s say. I don’t know of a better word. You need to be a little bit full of yourself, maybe overly optimistic, however you want to put it. You need to balance that with some pragmatism because you’ll fly that plane right in the side of a cliff. I just think the way you thought, like, “I need to be open to feedback,” and you’re not only sorting between who’s just trying to hate on you and who’s trying to give you good feedback. That begs the question. Now, do you have mentors? Do you have people around you that are other entrepreneurs?
Yeah. I think that you need a community of people experiencing the same thing as you. It’s not like I could talk about my entrepreneurial struggles to people who aren’t entrepreneurs because you don’t have that understanding and you don’t have that back and forth empathy and you have to have that. Yes, of course.
You need a community of people experiencing the same thing as you. Share on XI think about this a lot, Dr. Meena. One of the things that occurs to entrepreneurs without them necessarily being aware of it. I think by default, we tend to surround ourselves with people who think and act more or less like we do. It is kind of a comfort zone that keeps us in our comfort zone. It’s a self-perpetuating thing and it’s intimidating to put ourselves in a room where everyone else is smarter, more successful, richer, whatever you want to, and that’s available to anyone. I just think that’s something that happens to us as entrepreneurs. We’re trying to get somewhere, so we tend to surround ourselves with people that are also trying to get somewhere. Some of those people are a little further ahead than we are.
One time, I heard a statistic that seems so true, not just an entrepreneur, but anyone who wants to get ahead in life. I think it was said 5, but I think 3, the top 5 people that you spend the most time with is so important because you basically, in some ways, become a version of them.
Lessons In Self-Discovery Through Entrepreneurship
It’s true. I’ve looked at some of the research on this. It’s like not only do your direct friends influence your behavior, but your friend’s, friends’ behavior. If your friends’ friends smoke cigarettes or are obese or whatever, you’re statistically way more likely to smoke or be obese or whatever. It’s freaky, but I think it’s an important part of the entrepreneurial journey. Just be aware of the people you’re hanging around. Dr. Meena, I want to be respectful of your time. I’m forever saying that through the opportunity discovery process, self-discovery is a byproduct of that. What have you learned about yourself through this journey so far?
So much. I think, like I mentioned earlier, like what my genius zone is, that I never really thought I was maybe going to be that great of an entrepreneur, but I give feedback from people that I have grit and I’m innovative. Those are two things that I didn’t really like. Nobody told me that. That’s something that I’ve definitely discovered as an entrepreneur.
I think that the grit comes from the story we tell ourselves. People don’t aren’t aware of that. Grit is really resilience. It’s the ability to keep getting up when you get knocked down. We talked about this before we got on the call. This is not by any means a walk in the park. Being entrepreneurial, running your own business, you’re faced with challenges every day, but the compelling nature of the work keeps you in the fight, so to speak.
Some days, that’s the only thing.
Dr. Meena, where can people learn more about your work?
Right now, we’re changing our website over, but we have a website that’s FootFitness.Bodyspring.fit. Also, people can email me at MeenaM@BodySpring.Fit or they can come by because we have a brick and mortar in Carrollton, Texas.
Dr. Meena, thanks so much for sharing your story with the world. It’s the epitome of the everyday entrepreneur. I love it. Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed it.
Important Links
- Dr. Meena McCullough
- PressEX
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- Body Spring on Instagram
- Body Spring on LinkedIn
- Body Spring
About Dr. Meena McCullough
Dr. Meena McCullough is a Doctor of Physical Therapy with 14 years of experience, specializing in movement science, fascia research, and pain relief. She is dedicated to helping active adults maintain mobility, improve stability, and address movement challenges that arise with aging.
As a 2x Patented Innovator, she has contributed to advancements in foot control and biomechanics, particularly in the connection between fascia and movement efficiency. Her research and clinical work in fascia-based activation have earned her four Movement Science Awards, recognizing her contributions to the field.
Dr. McCullough is also a University Lecturer & Cadaver Dissector, educating professionals on anatomy, biomechanics, and the role of fascia in injury prevention and recovery. As a Fascia Expert & Field Researcher, she has developed techniques that provide instant pain relief, helping individuals regain comfort and confidence in their movement.
Her work is deeply personal—after being diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, a painful condition affecting multiple joints in the body, she embarked on a 15-year journey to understand how to release connective tissue and restore movement. This search for lasting pain relief led her to develop a unique approach that not only improved her own mobility but also transformed the lives of her clients. This journey ultimately led her to found Body Spring, a movement system designed to help active adults build strength, flexibility, and resilience as they age.