We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dorothy Martin-Neville, PhD. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dorothy below.

Hi Dorothy, thanks for joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

My business projectory began in the midst of a marriage ending. I had just graduated with an MA as a marriage and family therapist. I knew if I was going to be able to support my children and myself, I needed a large practice quickly. In absolute fear, I wrote a two page talk and applied to speak at every women’s group, church group, book club etc. that would let me in. Within 3 months, I was seeing 42 patients a week and had developed a six month waiting list. After a few years, I recognized a pattern of particular personalities presenting with identical physical illnesses. After being told by MDs that it was coincidental, knowing it wasn’t, I took a few years and became certified in 9 modalities of integrative health care to find my own answers. Half way through, I was asked to become adjunct faculty in a graduate school, teaching Body Centered Psychotherapy and other courses.
In addition, after bringing a massage table into my office for energy healings, & losing my malpractice insurance, folks on the waiting list asked me to teach them what I knew, including the method of Energy Medicine I had created, while they waited to work with me 1-1. I created a 6-week course which eventually became The Institute of Healing Arts and Sciences offering 2 & 4 yr. programs in energy medicine, approved by the Connecticut Commissioner of the Department of Higher Education. I was teaching MDs, APRNs, PTs, OTs, PhDs, and those seeking to become healers. Students came in from across the USA, Canada, Australia and the Caribbean to study with me. I became the only school in the USA offering a 4-year program where the 3rd and 4th yr. students were required to do medical internships.
Because of the impact of my work, hospitals offered the possibility of grant funding for research so I began a non-profit. Shocked, yet it seemed a logical move.
I was later asked to become Co-Chair of the Advisory Board of a multi-million dollar Frontier Medicine Grant given to the UConn Medical School and to become a Clinical Instructor at the medical school. Each evolution of my business just seemed to lead to the next organically.
I was also offered NIH grant funding to research my work with Fibromyalgia patients so I decided to use that funding to support my dissertation in The Psycho/Spiritual Causality of Physical Disease and Disorders. It was basically the research of what is now known as Quantum Physics, Quantum Mechanics, and neuroplasticity.
After 19 years, for numerous reasons, I closed the institute and the non-profit. Having worked with visionary leaders in health care, knowing my work would impact the thousands of people they would be seeing over the course of their careers, I looked for something else that would impact thousands as well. By becoming a coach, I believed working with leaders would impact the thousands they may impact over the course of their career.
As a coach, I can now see that there are many in service as coaches, consultants, financial planners etc., who could benefit from truly understanding the multiple layers that impact their clients stories, beliefs, and possible success. Consequently, I am developing another institute but one focused not on hands-on-healing but focused on Quantum Physics, Quantum Mechanics, and neuroplasticity to support the success of the practitioners as well as their clients.
I am someone who loves diversity, learning, teaching, and growing, so continuously evolving along with my businesses is natural, exciting, scary, and yet necessary.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

For my 1-1 clients, I work with executives in transition. What I provide is a stabilizing force allowing them to see far more clearly where they are going, what their real purpose is, and what it is they want to achieve. I save them time, angst, confusion, and money. By streamlining their system, I save them expenses they don’t need to have. In addition, I make their next steps far clearer, obvious, and intentional – consequently, their health, spiritually, emotionally, and physically is greatly improved when working with me. In addition to 1-1, for small groups I offer a 10-month program for women leaders who are in transition of expanding or diversifying their business creating multiple streams of income with a focus on both professional and personal growth. I am now completing a program to support coaches and those in service professions to help understand the psychodynamics of their clients and how that impacts their work.
What sets me apart is a life of far more transitions than most, from an orphanage, to adoption into the housing projects of inner city South Boston, to the convent as a Catholic nun, to NYC and becoming an international airline stewardess, wife, mother, divorcee, psychotherapist, founder of 4 companies, and so much more. Consequently, I have come to see transition as a calling to become more alive, more real, and more productive than ever before. Passion, vibrancy, creativity, and a willingness to risk, takes you to places you never imagined and I will willingly walk that extra mile with you because I want each client to achieve their ultimate dream. Although I am highly educated the value I bring is in the life I have lived. The education is secondary. As a coach/confidante/ and teacher who we are, defines our ability to take our clients to the next level. As a pioneer and visionary, visionary leaders are my most treasured clients.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Coming from a violent home and violent inner city area, my belief was that I was very much on my own. If I wanted something I needed to make it happen. If I needed something I better figure out how to get it. Over the years, I discovered that not one of us can do it all alone. We need others. We need support. We need someone to see us. We need someone to lovingly laugh at us and remind us to keep perspective. We need someone who will willingly stand up to support us thus allowing us to feel safe and seen.
As a result, in all my businesses I have called on others to support my vision and to support me directly or indirectly in bringing my dreams alive. My friendships as well as my employees were wonderful, and continue to be. Without my teams, profession as well as personal, there is no way I could do what I do.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I had to pivot when I left the housing projects and hanging on street corners to enter religious life.
I had to pivot when I then went back to Southie to find old friends and discovered they were dead, in prison, moved, or on welfare in the projects while I had left that world, gotten a college education, and become a social worker. I knew I then needed to create a new dream and define the future I wanted. Three months later I graduated from flight school and became an international airline stewardess.
I pivoted when I left flying and married.
I pivoted when I got divorced.
I pivoted when I needed to get a position to offer my children the life I wanted for them.
I pivoted when I moved from being a medical practitioner to being the owner of an Institute. From entrepreneur to small business woman.
I pivoted when I left the country immediately after my youngest began Cornell University and I moved to Anguilla, BWI.
I pivoted in coming back to the USA 10 years later.
I pivoted when I became a professional speaker.
I pivoted when I closed three companies and began anew.
I am pivoting again in establishing another institute, going back to teaching which I love.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.askdrdorothy.com/
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• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrDorothyCt