Episode Summary
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.
About the Guest: Dr. Sam Graber
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.
Key Takeaways
- Career transitions in midlife are identity transitions, not just business decisions. Leaving a licensed, credentialed profession like chiropractic care means rebuilding not only your income model but also how you introduce yourself to the world.
- Undercharging is one of the most common first-year mistakes for new coaches and consultants. Without a clear sense of the time, expertise, and transformation being delivered, many women entrepreneurs price their services far below their actual value.
- Not all business coaches are a good fit — vet them like you would a business partner. Red flags include coaches who ask for large financial commitments without first asking questions about your goals, background, or readiness.
- Self-knowledge is a prerequisite for sustainable entrepreneurship. Understanding what specifically energizes versus depletes you prevents you from unconsciously rebuilding the same "box" you just left, under a different name.
- Physical health is business infrastructure, not a personal indulgence. Sleep, nutrition, and hormone balance directly affect an entrepreneur's energy, decision-making, and capacity to sustain a new venture — especially during perimenopause and menopause.
FAQ
How do you know when it's time to leave a long-term career and start a business?
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.
What should you look for when hiring a business coach during a career transition?
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.
Why do many new entrepreneurs undercharge for their services?
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.
How does perimenopause and menopause affect entrepreneurship?
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.
What does it mean to treat your body as "business infrastructure"?
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.
Resource Stack
Where to Find Dr. Sam Graber
- Substack ("Strong Over Skinny"): https://drsamroxo.substack.com
- Website: https://drsamgraber.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drsamgraber
- The Starr Institute: https://www.thestarrinstitute.org
About Build Your Own Boat
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.
What is Build Your Own Boat?
An entrepreneurship podcast for women in midlife and beyond.
What if the most powerful thing you could do right now — for your finances, your freedom, and your future — was to stop waiting for someone else to hand you an opportunity and start building your own?
Build Your Own Boat is the podcast for women in midlife and beyond who are done playing by rules that were never written with them in mind. Hosted by award-winning 3x entrepreneur Janine Vanderburg, each episode features real conversations with women in midlife and beyond who made the bold decision to bet on themselves — launching businesses and creative ventures, building wealth, and rewriting what entrepreneurship looks like in the second half of life.
This isn't a podcast about hustle culture or overnight success stories. It's a roadmap — built from lived experience, hard-won wisdom, and the kind of honest conversation you rarely hear anywhere else. Guests include founders, consultants, creatives, coaches, media makers, and civic leaders who are proving every week that midlife isn't a ceiling. It's a launchpad.
Whether you're just beginning to wonder if entrepreneurship is for you, actively building your business, or simply looking for proof that it's not too late — you'll find it here.
Every episode, you'll discover:
1. How real women in midlife launched and grew successful ventures — and what they wish they'd known sooner
2. Practical strategies for building financial independence and freedom on your own terms
3. Honest conversations about the challenges of midlife entrepreneurship, and how to navigate them
4. Inspiration that's grounded in reality, not motivational posters
The Encore Economy is booming — and women in midlife are driving it. Build Your Own Boat is where their stories live.
Subscribe now and join a growing community of women who are building something that's entirely, unapologetically theirs.
And do SUBSCRIBE to Build Your Own Boat on Substack as well, to read the full stories of our guests, and their best tips and resources. https://buildyourownboat.substack.com/