Dr. Tom Walton advises students on career options and helps them create the Rags to Riches Club.
Dr. Tom Walton, a long-time business owner and associate professor at the National University of Natural Medicine (NUNM), rarely missed an opportunity to discuss business development and entrepreneurship with students.
Although class focused mainly on the musculoskeletal system and physical science, Walton posed business and strategy questions to his students to get them thinking about their future.
When a faculty position opened at NUNM to teach business development, Walton was encouraged to take on the role and began to urge students to form their own business club on campus.
“It really started as a way of answering questions they kept asking me in class,” said Walton, who began teaching at NUNM in 2016. “I was like, well, why don’t we start a club where you can bring in specialty speakers and we can discuss where you feel you’d like to take your education?”
The Rags to Riches Club, named by founder and recent graduate Dr. Johnny Lemau, brings students together to review topics such as loans, financial planning, insurance and coding.
It’s also a way for students to exercise creativity and explore the range of opportunities available for their careers, said Katie Klingensmith, club president and a fourth-year student in the Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine program at NUNM.
Klingensmith earned her bachelor’s degree in international business and managed her own consulting business since 2010.
She knew the level of effort needed to become well-versed in business and had a similar goal to Walton—to help fellow students gain an advantage in their line of work.
“What attracted me to the field of naturopathic medicine was the ability to expand my scope of practice, not just in the medical world, but also in entrepreneurship,” Klingensmith said.
Being an entrepreneur isn’t a viable path for everyone, she said, but believed it could be beneficial for students’ career longevity to at least explore the option.
“I don’t think we should be in a hurry to start up businesses. The best thing you can do is find people to help you—and if you’re not good at it, surround yourself with people who are better at it than you.”
— Dr. Tom Walton, associate professor
As a chiropractor who started several businesses of his own, Walton said he speaks candidly about entrepreneurship with students. He emphasizes the various avenues they can take within the naturopathic medicine profession and explains how multiple income streams can help them achieve an ideal quality of life, he said.
“The one thing I tell students, which I didn’t consider when I started my practice, is how exhausting it is,” Walton said. “Most docs don’t work full-time. Not because they don’t love what they do, but because it’s mentally draining.”
Walton’s business courses at NUNM focus on financial literacy and foundational elements of business creation, such as how to conduct a market analysis or design a brand strategy.
Students then had the opportunity to bring these concepts to the Rags to Riches Club and discuss how they could monetize and plan for their careers, Klingensmith said.
“Historically, ND’s tend to be more altruistic, giving, and empathetic by nature,” she said. “Therefore, a working knowledge of business is crucial to being able to become successful in an alternative medicine world.”
The club also learns from outside experts invited to be guest speakers, she said, which allows members to see both traditional and non-traditional ways to work as naturopathic doctors.
Walton said guest lecturers support his curriculum by showing students the value of job networking.
“I don’t think we should be in a hurry to start up businesses,” he said. “The best thing you can do is find people to help you—and if you’re not good at it, surround yourself with people who are better at it than you.”
Whether they choose a conventional route in clinical work or as physician, Walton said he hoped students learned to use innovation as a tool in their future profession.
“There’s that element of creativity that most naturopathic doctors have, they just might not realize they can use that same logic and critical thinking that’s ‘outside the box’ and apply it to business,” he said. “Then it’s like, there you go, now you’re doing medicine in brand new ways.”
Written by Ashley Villarreal, Marketing Content Specialist