In this episode of the Root Cause Business of Medicine podcast, Dr. Erik Lundquist, with his brother Dr. Davin Lundquist interview Dr. Jill Carnahan, who shares her deeply personal and professional journey into functional medicine and the business lessons learned along the way. Jill reflects on how early health struggles shaped her mission as a healer and how vision, intuition, and alignment—not traditional business rules—guided her entrepreneurial decisions.

She describes launching an ambitious hospital-backed integrative clinic early in her career, the overwhelming overhead it created, and the misalignment she felt working inside a system driven by metrics opposed to her healing philosophy. This led her to restart her career in Boulder with low overhead and a deep sense of autonomy, eventually partnering with functional medicine leader Dr. Bob Rountree.

Jill explains how authenticity, storytelling, and spiritual alignment helped her grow her brand, become a national speaker, write her book, and create a documentary. She encourages clinicians to trust intuition, embrace imperfection, and take courageous first steps—even before feeling “ready.” With AI poised to shift medical practice, she believes the future of functional medicine lies in deep human connection, community building, and purpose-driven care—things no technology can replace.