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[Below is a transcription of the podcast]
Cheri Landin: Hello and welcome to The Mortgage Company’s Community Partner Podcast series. My name is Cheri Landin and I am the Community Development Director for The Mortgage Company and one of the things that I get to do is interview our community partners so we can learn more about them and showcase them and spotlight them. So it is my pleasure to have with me today, Meghann Feldman. So Meghann, would introduce yourself briefly?
Meghann Feldman: Thank you so much for having us, Cheri. We’re so excited to be here. I am Meghann Feldman and I am the owner of Trivida. We integrate functional medicine, personal training, and nutrition for a complete approach.
Cheri Landin: Trivida. So is that where the name came from?
Meghann Feldman: Yeah. So Tri being three, Vida being life in Spanish. Three aspects of life: nutrition fitness and health care.
Cheri Landin: That just dawned on me as you said that. Trivida. I like it. Alright so tell me, number one, how long has Trivida been up and running? And by the way, I’ve been there it’s fabulous. And number two, where did that concept come from? Because it’s really an interesting integration I feel.
Meghann Feldman: Yeah absolutely. So we will be celebrating five years on June 4th, so we’re very close to five years, which has been really exciting for us. I feel like that’s a huge milestone, getting to the five-year mark. My husband Corey, who I own the business with, he kind of came up with this concept. So he did his undergraduate in sports medicine and went on to become an athletic trainer and he worked with the Colorado Crush and the Denver Broncos. And it’s an interesting thing, professional athletes because they have entire teams around them whose sole purpose is to keep them healthy. They are worth billions of dollars. They have chiropractor’s and athletic trainers and personal trainers and nutritionists and everybody who’s sole purpose is to keep them healthy. And Corey saw this concept and he thought, wouldn’t it be great if the rest of the population had this? If we could have a team of people that helped us with our training, that helped us with our health, that helped us with our nutrition, and kind of put everything together and was communicating on the back end with the plan for the person and just made everything so seamless. So he kind of came up with that idea. Then he went on to complete his masters in medicine and become a physician assistant and he worked in urgent care and family practice and really saw the disconnect in health and how little our current health care model allows for education and for supporting patients beyond just the 10 minutes in an office visit. He really wanted to take that and he wanted to be able to support people, he wanted to be able to educate them, help them, empower them to take control of their health so they could live healthier, longer lives.
Cheri Landin: Cool. Alright. So I think there’s some marketing in that: “You too can be treated like a Denver Bronco.” Alright, so that’s you and that’s Corey. Tell me, with all that you offer, what’s your team like?
Meghann Feldman: Yes. So we are a team of five now. We actually just brought on our fifth employee, she started this week so that’s very exciting. So as I mentioned, my husband Corey Feldman, not the 80’s child actor Corey Feldman, he is our physician assistant. He’s also one of our lead personal trainers. And he sort of manages the whole medicine- medical side of our practice. Then myself, Meghann. I had a business background and so I really manage the business, marketing, partnering and all of that side of our business. I also train. I do some personal training and then I also teach barre for our clients in our studio. And then we have Andy Adams, who is a lead personal trainer and he does the bulk of our personal training right now. Corey is really busy with medicine and so Andy came in and works with us full time. So he does the majority of our semi-private and one-on-one personal training and also he’s a nutrition coach. And then we have Megan Johnson who is a life coach for us. So she helps with the mind-set side of our clients and our programs. And then we are really excited to have Molly Colbet (SPELLING) who is joining us as our wellness assistant. So she’ll be integrating into a lot of different areas of our practice as she gets on board.
Cheri Landin: Well I did your Barre class one Saturday morning and my calves hurt the next day so I guess that’s a good thing.
Meghann Feldman: Barre is a very unique workout.
Cheri Landin: That was the first time I ever did it, but I liked it. So with all of these integrated, what really is, in your opinion, the biggest benefits of that to someone.
Meghann Feldman: Yeah so like I said with an athlete, having an entire team, you have a team that’s communicating together. So myself, Corey Megan, Andy, we’re all talking behind the scenes, making sure that each client is on track with their goals. We’re adjusting the plan. We are making suggestions, we’re identifying needs, we’re identifying areas of weakness that we need to fill a gap in, behind the scenes and so we can constantly evolve each client’s plan so that they’re getting the very best plan. They don’t have to think, “Oh I need to remember to tell Corey what Andy said in my training session about this.” Like you would if you had went to see a doctor and then a physical therapist and then a personal trainer and they were all separate. You’d have to remember to tell each of them what was going on with your plan. Where is at Trivida, we are all part of the same team, so we’re always communicating behind the scenes, making sure the plan is fit. And a lot of times we can identify areas before they become a problem. So if we can see that nutrition is getting more difficult or major job change is coming and we know that that’s going to cause a lot of new stress in life, we can sort of head that off at the front end and say, OK let’s adjust the program knowing that this is coming in. And we can do that before our clients even have to think to ask us because we’re always constantly communicating. I mean our body is interconnected right. We’re one system. And so if you’re working on the muscular system and your strength training and your nutrition and your gut health as well as looking at the root cause or looking at in-depth labs to see what your blood is telling us, if we’re looking at all of those things at the same time, you’re going to get a much better result and much faster result because we can we can kind of put it all together.
Cheri Landin: Well that’s cool. Alright so if you find that there’s a gap, so there’s several things you refer out to. Are there plans for even further expansion at Trivida?
Meghann Feldman: You know I mean we would love to grow our breadth and find more communities to get involved with. Right now we’re really happy with the integration that we have. We used to do group fitness and we stopped doing that and really focused primarily on personal training because that one-on-one approach fits very much with the functional medicine side. So we don’t have any intention of expanding within our current model. I think growth will come from different communities, different areas of Colorado we’d love to get involved with and grow that way. But we actually just expanded in November. We doubled our office space and moved from Aurora into Centennial. So we’re already kind of in the growth mode. So hopefully we’ll stay here for a couple of years and just continue to grow in this new community and then we can kind of look to expand in the next five years.
Cheri Landin: It’s such a great concept and I think it could be and would be well-received in so many places. It was a wonderful thing. So we briefly touched on the traditional doctor’s office but how is the experience at Trivida different and why would someone come to you versus going to the traditional doctor’s office?
Meghann Feldman: So a lot of our clients come to us because they’re sick and tired of being sick and tired. And they’ve gone to their regular primary care provider and a lot of times they’ll go in with a complaint of feeling overly tired or maybe some digestive issues. And then the provider will run a few lab tests, say everything is normal and just give it a few weeks and if it doesn’t resolve itself come back. We look at it differently. So we want you to come in and we are going to listen to you. So in the traditional insurance-based practice, you get 7 to 10 minutes with your provider. That’s really what they have built into their day. At Trivida, when you come in to meet with Corey for a medical appointment, you sit down with him for an hour. So you have an hour to talk about whatever you need to talk about. Anything that comes up, he’s just going to engage you in conversation, ask how things are going, ask how life is. Because what he can do is he can pull out different areas of either success that you might not be recognizing or areas that we need to look at that may be contributing to a different symptom. So things like fatigue, chronic pain, digestive issues, the root of those problems can come from a number of different areas. And so we really need to dive in and figure out where that route is. So instead of just covering it up with a band-aid or medications to relieve a symptom immediately, we want to figure out why that symptom came, to begin with. So we’re going to look for that root cause and then we’re going to try and fix the root cause of that symptom. So not only is that symptom eliminated but hopefully, theoretically it won’t come back again depending on what that symptom is. As long as we can fix it from the root.
Cheri Landin: Yeah I mean if you have a problem and you can identify the root why wouldn’t you want to fix that versus putting on more band-aids?
Meghann Feldman: Absolutely
Cheri Landin: Right. And just being frustrated with the whole process. That’s cool.
Meghann Feldman: I think the other thing we hear a lot is actually being heard, feeling like somebody is really listening to the problems and not just dismissing them. We use really advanced lab testing to be able to look deeper into the blood and see more information from the blood. There’s a lot of really great tests that are available and technology has just allowed lab testing and pharmacogenomics and so many things to expand well beyond what the basic panels are looking at. And we can really identify risk factors, whether they’re going to be able to handle certain medications, so many things, so much sooner and we can just avoid going down those pathways if they’re not going to be valuable or they’re not going to help. We can avoid that pain and suffering of going down a pathway that doesn’t work, and frustration because we identify ahead of time and we don’t need to necessarily go down that path.
Cheri Landin: And my guess is pretty much everyone out there probably has had a frustration with a doctor to some extent, whether it be the experience in the office or whatever it is, it could be so many different things. So it sounds like a much better way. It’s a wholeness versus just my head hurts, here some pills.
Meghann Feldman: Absolutely. It’s very much about the person. It’s not about the pain or the process. It’s about listening to the person and treating a person and not treating test results or symptoms.
Cheri Landin: Alright. So then all that being said, because I think it’s a wonderful place, idea, process that you have. So who would be your best patient or client?
Meghann Feldman: Like I said earlier if you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired. That’s great. We say that all the time. A lot of our clients are in their 40s and 50s, they are stressed at work and maybe stressed at home, they might have some young kids that make life stressful and they suffer from pain whether it be an old injury, bad knees, bad back, they’re constantly tired. Maybe they have a thyroid condition that they are aware of and may have been treating through traditional medicine and they don’t feel like they’re getting the same results that they used to. There’s normally some sort of pain point that’s coming up and they know there has to be a better way. They can’t live the rest of their life feeling this way. And so they’re ready to make a change.
Cheri Landin: And looking for an alternative.
Meghann Feldman: Yeah. And so those are the people that are great. They come in, they’re motivated. I will say you have to be motivated to make a change. You can’t live the same life and expect different results. So you’ve got to be motivated to make that change. But then we work with them and we figure out the right way to do it for their lifestyle and for exactly what they need and then they get success from it.
Cheri Landin: Alright so let’s say there’s someone out there listening to this now, they’re driving around in their car and they have a headache and they’re sick and tired of being sick and tired and they want to learn more how to get in touch with you guys.
Meghann Feldman: Absolutely. So the best way to get in touch is to give our office a call: 720-428-8312. And we’ve got a couple of different options. We host a regular Stress Hormones and Health Seminar, where we really love to invite people to those. They get a complimentary dinner and an opportunity to learn more from Corey and learn more about his perspective on health and see if it’s the right fit for them. See if it’s really something that they resonate with. And then at that point, we can determine if they want to come in and do a consultation with us. But that’s the best way. Give us a call, as us about our next seminar and we’ll get your booked in and have you come in and learn more from us.
Cheri Landin: Good. And then what’s the website.
Meghann Feldman: Yeah it’s teamtrivida.com.
Cheri Landin: Awesome. Alright well, thank you, Meghann, for having such a wonderful facility out there for us all and for joining me today.
Meghann Feldman: Awesome thanks so much for having me, Cheri.
About Meghann Feldman
Meghann Feldman is CEO and co-founder of Trivida in Centennial, CO. In 2013, Corey and Meghann opened Trivida while Corey takes the helm as primary medical provider and personal trainer, Meghann manages the strategic day to day marketing and operations for Trivida. Prior to Trivida, Meghann developed her career as a Marketing director with several small and large corporations in Denver. As is the nature of Trivida, all team members have a very hands on approach with clients and when Meghann is not managing the business you can find her coaching clients and supporting them in their goals through nutrition and exercise.
Cheri Landin
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