Build Your Own Boat

Dr. Sam Graber spent decades as a practicing chiropractor before walking away from disease-focused medicine to build a health and life coaching business from scratch. In this episode of Build Your Own Boat, she explains how burnout, an undiagnosed perimenopause transition, and a growing frustration with insurance-driven "disease management" pushed her to close her practice and start over — without a business plan, a mentor, or a clear name for what she was building. Sam shares the real, unpolished mechanics of that first year: undercharging for her services, encountering predatory business coaches, and slowly discovering that self-knowledge — not a perfect strategy — is the real foundation of a sustainable second-act business. She also unpacks why she now treats the body itself as business infrastructure, explaining how sleep, nutrition, and hormone health directly determine an entrepreneur's capacity to build and sustain a new venture.

Dr. Sam Graber spent decades practicing as a chiropractor before leaving the field to build a career in holistic health and life coaching. Frustrated by a conventional medical model built around diagnosis codes and disease management rather than prevention, she closed her brick-and-mortar practice and reinvented herself as a health strategist — helping clients bridge the gap between their doctors and their own bodies. Today, through her "Strong Over Skinny" philosophy, Dr. Sam works primarily with women navigating perimenopause and menopause, coaching them toward stronger bodies, sharper minds, and metabolically sound lifestyles instead of restriction-based diet culture. She offers one-on-one coaching and a membership community, writes regularly on Substack, and also serves as Board Chair of The Starr Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to youth development.

According to Dr. Sam Graber, the signal is often less about a single dramatic event and more about cumulative burnout — a growing sense that the structure of your current work (such as insurance billing requirements in healthcare) no longer aligns with why you entered the field in the first place. She describes reaching a point where the day-to-day demands were "sucking the life and the light" out of her, which became the real catalyst for change.

Look for a coach who asks detailed questions about your background, goals, and readiness before asking for a financial commitment — especially at four- or five-figure price points. Dr. Sam Graber warns that coaches who skip this discovery process, or who treat all clients the same regardless of experience level, are a red flag, particularly for licensed professionals moving from a regulated field into entrepreneurship.

Many first-time entrepreneurs, especially women, undercharge because they underestimate the time, expertise, and value of what they're delivering, and because of broader cultural conditioning that discourages women from focusing on money. Dr. Sam Graber says she "didn't know what it would even cost" to deliver her services in year one, a common gap for people transitioning from an employed or credentialed role into independent coaching or consulting.

Hormonal transitions can affect energy, sleep, mood, and metabolic health — all of which directly impact an entrepreneur's capacity to build and sustain a new business. Dr. Sam Graber notes that many women misattribute these shifts purely to sex hormones, when lifestyle factors like sleep, movement, and nutrition are equally responsible for how the body copes with midlife transitions.

It means treating sleep, nutrition, movement, and hormone health as non-negotiable business inputs rather than optional self-care. Dr. Sam Graber argues that hustle-culture advice to sacrifice health for the business is backwards — depletion eventually leads to a health or mental health crisis that undermines the very business someone is trying to build.

Build Your Own Boat is a podcast series hosted by Janine Vanderburg — award-winning three-time entrepreneur and anti-ageism advocate and keynote speaker— featuring women who have launched new entrepreneurial ventures in midlife and beyond. The series is part of a larger storytelling project that includes a Substack publication and a forthcoming book, all built around one goal: changing the narrative about who entrepreneurs are and making women in midlife and beyond visible as builders of wealth, freedom, and possibility.