Welcome to another edition of the Dr. B show. I'm your host, Dr. B I have the lovely pleasure of having Maria Trusa Maria, how are you? I am doing great. Dr. B. It's nice to be here with you on it a beautiful day. Um, thank you so much for allowing me to come here and talk about my mission.
Thank you. Appreciate it. So tell everyone about yourself. I know you, but I want the rest of my audience doesn't know you, so. So, um, I am the CEO of four main medical center, urgent care, and I happen to have a few missions. So, uh, my first mission, uh, it started five years ago at, um, when I joined Gina Capelli my business partner, uh, with the mission to help the uninsured community, a very strong focus on the undocumented population in people that.
Did they have insurance? So that was my first mission. I've been in healthcare for over 35 years. I know I started when he was worried, how could it be 35 years? Right. So I am in healthcare. I knew that I wanted to help people after being in a medical practice for 26 years, where I moved from being. And medical assistant to an office manager a few years later. And then four years later, I was the executive executive director in lasted 26 years in this practice.
I obtained tremendous amount of experience in healthcare that actually allow me to build the, this amazing practice. With, uh, Jean on my partner, Gina, and we're serving over 30,000 people already believe it or not after five years, but gyro, that is one of my mission. I mean, my second mission is, as you know, I wrote a book.
The book is I say no more, it's in Spanish. and I also have a social movement that. It is my biggest passion. I would say I am bringing awareness of sexual abuse in the Latino community, which is something that I call it a silent pandemic. It is, it is a pandemic that is. Destroying our community that is suppressing our Latino community.
And it is an unspoken a pandemic because there is so much shame and many, many other issues. So in my book, I talk about. My story. Um, and we'll get into it a little bit more, but in a nutshell, that is who I am. I am a woman with a few missions. I love it. I love it. I love it. So tell us about the book. Why, why did you write it?
Uh, what inspired you to write the book? Um, I was, uh, in co Colorado skiing with my boys. I, uh, for those of you that don't know me, I have three children. I have it Franco who's 36 in Jeffrey. Who's 31 and I have a 13 year old daughter. Gotcha. And I always tried to take a vacation with my boys alone and we went to Colorado to ski, and I remember waiting for my son Franco to get in and the plane got delay.
So it was like two o'clock in the morning. I was talking to my son Jeffery and they know my story. And my son said, Mom, you have to tell your story. You cannot leave this world without telling your story. You can inspire so many people. He's like, I don't know many CEOs that have a story like yours. And so he planted this.
See, and from there, there is, um, somebody reach out to me a week later or to do a documentary that still has not come out. Um, and then a week later, two weeks later, I get a friend of mine that says you have to write a book. You have to write a book. And I stopped. I took that sign. I'm very aware of signs.
I took the sign and I said, I have to do this book. Um, I, and if I was going to do it, I knew that I was going to be completely. Uh, open, authentic, uh, and tell the story, the good, the bad, and the ugly, my mistakes, my success, all the tools that I've used to get to where I am. And, um, you know, the book talks about my story as a child, and then it brings it to the age of 55.
Awesome. Amazing, amazing story. So I wrote a book as well. So tell us about your actual process. Did you get to have a ghost writer? Did you S time block? You know, some people that listen to are a spot, aspiring authors, everyone has their own personal journey. So from the actual, you know, from obviously from typing it up on word until print, what was some of the, when you explained some of the process or how did you go about finishing the book?
So I actually, uh, recorded, um, most of my book, uh, I went in and really, I was, I did the documentary and I, as I stopped, uh, I'd say ended filming the documentary in the Dominican Republic. It was the last. Um, filming. I realized that I've sort of have gone through the journey of my life, uh, for the documentary.
So in a way, it made it easier for me. Cause I had to really dig into my past, get in touch with a lot of the feelings and, um, I started to, uh, dictate. My story. And I did use someone that edit my book. I had an editor, so, um, there was like 25 hours of my voice telling my story and I took it on, you know, from the beginning.
So it was chapter by chapter. And, um, before I even started the process, I went and I spoke with my aunt. I spoke with my cousin who was, um, That knew my mom even more, uh, than anyone else in my mom had passed away when I started writing the book. And I wish if she would have been alive, I think I would have gotten a lot more from her, but my goal was to really interview as many people from my past as possible because I ended up blocking.
A lot of my past, my childhood was a childhood of trauma. And when you go through the trauma, you, for me, at least, and I know this happens to people that go through such a traumatic experience, that they tend to block certain parts of their past. And that's what happened to me. So I did a lot of homework and what I did was I knew this was going to take me a while, you know, and I picked every.
Uh, we can, uh, when I did have my daughter, because I'm divorced and my daughter goes every other weekend with my ex-husband, when I didn't have her, I actually worked on the book. If we day like Saturday hours, Sunday hours. And I tried to get as much as I could because then I did, I had all the time in the world.
That's how I felt. And when I had my daughter, then I would wake up really early at six o'clock in the idea was that three hours. Prior to her waking up, I would have already have worked on the book. So I made a commitment and I think, you know, this is for the people that are inspiring to write their book.
I think everybody should write their, their own story because guess what? This book is being left. For my children, my, my grandpa, my grandkids, my great-grandkids will get to listen to my audible book or read my book and the lessons that I've learned throughout my life, if I was able to, to, uh, get inspired and give it to everyone, uh, so that hopefully people could get.
A lot from the book and, but it's a journey and it's, it's a major commitment, but the idea is little by little, you start putting those deposits into the book account and before you know it, the book is finished and obviously. There's editing you. It does cost money. You know, this was not a cheap, um, undertake, but it was part of my mission.
So to me really, um, I've been blessed, you know, I, I, I am financially free and I talk about this in the book, because coming from where I come from, I really shouldn't even be financially free because when you go through this traumatic experience, you develop relationships in every front of your life, which I call your body.
Your family, your financial, even fun. All of it gets affected. And so I talk about all of these different fronts of my life in the book. So it's, it really is an interesting journey. You learn a lot about yourself. I mean, how was your experience writing your book? It was amazing. It was amazing. Uh, you know, I had all this knowledge in networking for so long.
I wanted to, you know, pass on this knowledge and I don't want it like similar to you. I don't want to leave this earth, you know, containing all this knowledge, but I love to give back similar to you. So I just like similar to you. I just, I didn't, um, I never recorded. I actually typed every night, a chapter.
No the chapter day chapter and in the evening. And eventually, yes, I did hire a, an editor and a PR person to help me with the promotion of books. So, yeah. So it's very interesting process. So good. So, uh, I have a question for you. So as far as, uh, takeaways, so what do you, what do you hope that people take away from, uh, or learn from, you know, from reading the book?
So as I talk about, so let's get into the tram, right? I think people would understand a little bit deeper. Why the book? So I come from, I'm a dummy I'm from the Dominican Republic. I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic until the age of 15. That's when I came to the United States. I, uh, my mom, uh, I come from a family of five and my mom had to get divorced from my dad because my dad unfortunately became an alcoholic and, uh, became very responsible and we struggle.
We struggle a lot in the Dominican Republic. I talk about in the book, how we moved in a matter of, I think it was not even a year, 17 times. We were kicked out of houses because my father would not pay the rent. So my mom decided to come to the United States and that's when my, really my journey of, of trauma began.
Uh, I was eight years old and I had a little brother that was four in my belly was, um, 11 when she left. And then I have two older brothers that came with my mom to the United States to work and support us there, but they had no means of, you know, leaving us in a house. So what they want my mom did was that a cousin of mine, my mom took me and then another, a friend of my mother to belly.
And then my little brother stayed with my father's grandparents and parents. So we have to separate in, I lost my mom in a way, you know, at that age. And I was really struggling. I miss my mom. I miss my brothers. I got to see them every few weeks because we, you know, there was nobody driving us and I go through all the, all the challenges of being like an independent child at the age of eight.
So I definitely, I I'm someone that have to deal with abandonment issues. Because no matter what, obviously my mom mentioned to the best that she could for us. And later on in life, I realized that in, but I resented my mom for everything that happened. So a year later, my mom is able to get a house with my brothers.
They got us a house, so that the family, my, my two brothers and I can come together and they got someone. That it was going to take care of us in the only thing my father had to do was actually buy food. And unfortunately many times, you know, I remember, and I talk about it in the book one Christmas, where we ate bread and butter because my father never showed up to bring us food.
And, um, but the worst thing is that one night my father, um, decided. This is when I was nine years old. My father came in the middle of the night to, to take my little brother. And, um, with his witchcraft men that we call him the blue hole in the town where I come from, which is a very small town. And, uh, they were taking my little brother and in that in era, believe it or not, they weren't sacrificing kids.
So. I had no clue what was going to happen with my little brother. All I knew is that I was screaming for my father, not to take him. Then my father said, then you have to go. And my father, um, took me, drove me with this man to where he was doing the witchcraft. He took me inside there, forced me to drink a bottle of whiskey at the age of nine.
Hmm, gave me some pills. I don't know why he gave me. I had to Chuck a bottle of whiskey at the age of nine. And then he took me out of where he was doing. His witchcraft, told me that he will kill me and kill my family. If, um, if I said anything of what was going to happen that night, he took me to a motel.
And he poorly right to me the entire night poorly. He destroyed my body. Um, he destroyed my soul. That night. Um, it was, um, people will read the story. I, I always hear how the first chapter where I talk about the, the whole experience and I go into a lot of details because I wanted to, I wanted the people that would read the book to get really in touch with the pain.
So that they could understand that I could come from such a broken place and I could build my life and rewrite my story to where I am today, because the book is about preservatives. It is about the commitment that I made to my life in how I had so many struggles because of that night. This man stole my innocence.
And unfortunately, gyro that this is a story that is extremely common, different stories, but when it comes to child abuse, sexual abuse, it is something that happens more than we know. Um, it is something where. We are so ashamed. It took me 47 years, 47 years. To tell my story. My, even my nephews and nieces, no one knew what happened to me that night and the entire, uh, the saved.
This is where I come from. Everybody knew what happened because this was big news in the town. I had to have surgery. I, they thought I was gonna lose my right ovary because he destroyed me internally. And, um, and destroyed, like I said, you know, my God, my whole life for so many, so many years, but at one point I said, no more.
I decided, and I talk about it in the book. We would have to talk for hours to give you all the details. But I had catalyst in my life that actually propel me to, to say no more. Where I knew that if I continue with it, this drawing myself, I was not just destroying myself, but I was destroying my children.
So the book tells you the entire story, my relationships with my toxic relationships. With my ex-husband's, you know, I was married twice. And, um, I talk about how I took abuse because I ended up being someone that got comfortable with abuse, abuse from my father abuse from this man. And it just became toxic relationship after toxic.
But the idea of the book is that I can show you. That you can change your life, that you don't have to stay stuck in victim mode. And in, I I've love when I hear from people when they read the book and they tell me exactly the message that I wanted. They get it and they can inspire. So I'm an emission to really inspire and change this vicious cycle because I know I broke the cycle.
I want other people to start breaking the cycle as well. Amazing. Amazing, amazing story and unfortunate instance, but he was able to turn and turn that around and change the narrative, right. And say no more. Right? No, most amazing, amazing. Do you want to promote your product or services to your target audience, but don't know how.
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For more information, please visit. Get more clicks media.com. That's get more clicks media.com. Um, so just shifting gears a little bit. So tell us a little bit more about, for me, um, uh, medical center, urgent care, and what you do there. I know you kind of alluded to it a little bit earlier. Um, you know, in the beginning of the interviews, tell us a little bit more about what you do there.
So, uh, for me, you know, our main focus is, like I said, the uninsured community. We do have a lot of insured patients. Um, we have a medical center that treats our community with dignity. From the moment you walk into our facility, uh, people call us, they will tell because we have chandelier's. You know, it's beautifully decorated place.
We have excellent doctors in my goal was to duplicate what I did as Corazon medical, which was where I spent 26 years of my life to be able to duplicate it and bring it to the underserved community. And we have. In urgent care. So we are put before COVID we were open every single day, 365 days a year. Uh, and we're culturally sensitive and that's the reason we decided that we were going to open up every day because our community works.
A few jobs. Um, they are, you know, this is the hard working community and they need to be able to have access to healthcare and we needed to be flexible with it schedule. So we have urgent care. We have primary care gynecology, podiatry cardiology, and, uh, and now we have a COVID. A testing center that we've created since the beginning of April.
So we've been doing COVID testing, uh, and this is something because this is the community that we serve to not have access to the COVID testing. In our, at least in, in Westchester county, you needed it to drive to the facility to get your tests. You needed an ID. So, you know, a lot of my patients don't have ID.
A lot of my patients don't drive. So we were one of the first centers to open up where patients can actually walk. We had a tent outside. Of the building, where our patients will come in and get tested on basically on the sidewalk. And we started doing so many tests and now we actually have a center with 10 rooms.
We have about, we're doing close to 500 COVID tests per day. Uh, for me, uh, we're growing, uh, we are bringing in another internist. So the idea is to really grow this business, which gyro Dr. B, this has not been easy. It is by far the hardest thing I've done in my life, uh, to really build a business from nothing.
And that's what we did. So our format, that's what we do. We have something very special, which is a medical membership that is focused on the uninsured community. So basically it's having a membership to format. You pay a dollar a day, $365 a year. You get access unlimited to urgent care, and then you have major discounts throughout Westchester with a specialist, with imaging centers, with quest, with it pharmacy, uh, we have built a really comprehensive program for the uninsured community that I'm extremely proud of.
How did you come up with that with the home medical membership and that concept of maybe being able to help the underserved, the uninsured? Um, how'd you come up with that concept? And I guess I just want to know a little bit about the historic backstory behind that. Yeah. So we, I sit, this was the mission and, you know, to help the uninsured community.
So my business partner and I were looking at different ways that we can help them in the beginning. I remember saying, well, you know, we can, we can give maybe a point system where we give them a card. And every time they come, they get a discount and we were just getting very creative. And my, uh, Gina Capelli my, my business partner one day, she goes, how about if we do like a membership program where they can pay a certain fee and then they can just get access to the urgent care.
And we started working the numbers the out and, uh, and then we're like, okay. I said, well, If they pay this fee and we come up with a dollar a day because it made it easier to talk about, right, a dollar a day, 365 days, $365 a year, you are able to get, so it was easier to market that way. But at the same time we analyze the numbers and people were saying to us, well, You know, they're going to take advantage of this, but what people don't understand is that the uninsured community and a lot of the people that are on are undocumented, they have two to three jobs.
They're not people that are going to abuse the system. As a matter of fact, The idea is to really bring them on so that they can have their physicals, which it's part of, it was part of the membership then, and it is now, um, we wanted them to have the physical so that they can, uh, preventive care. This is something that we want to encourage in the community.
So when you have a mission and your mission is clear, You get creative. So we got very creative on how to bring access to healthcare. So there's community, right. That's amazing. Amazing story. What has your experience, as you said, you moved up the ranks and your last role prior to taking on the role at, for me was executive director of a medical Scarsdale medical group.
What being a business consultant, what has all that. How has, how has all that experience helped you in running? Uh, for me today? Well, I obtained tremendous experience there, you know, or I got this mentality that everything is my job. You know how some peoples say that's not my job. Uh, and I always tell people, if you want to be having average life, then say that's not my job, because if you're going to be stuck, And you got to, you have to be hungry.
So I was extremely hungry for knowledge. I was extremely hungry to succeed because I was the sole provider. I was a single mom for 17 years. So for me, Uh, whatever they asked me to do, I would do so I ended up learning all the different aspects of the healthcare field, uh, everything from the business and being a medical assistant, working in the lab, working as a receptionist.
I didn't care if I have to clean, I would clean. It didn't matter. I was hungry for knowledge and I was hungry for a sick, I needed to succeed B you know, to, to, to be successful. So I ended up learning every aspect of the business in, in the, what. I have transferred to four main medical center. It's all this knowledge that I obtained and I, you know, to, to really grow for me.
The thing that I had, the biggest challenge was it wasn't when it came to the structure, because I knew how to build it was more, how do I mark it? Something that. Is number one is, you know, for the underserved community, which they were as different needs to be able to market you. I had to understand how I was going to be able to get the word out that we have this mission.
So I ended up getting into social media, which I never, I never have Facebook, Instagram, nothing before. So I ended up realizing and reading books from grant Cardone, sell OB soul. It's a good book listening to it now. It's great. It's great. Listen so far. So I'm like halfway through it. That's great. I love, I, I actually, I think I, I listened to it because I do audibles too.
I listened to most of his books and, um, and became, you know, someone that just figure out how to market. And I started building relationships, very strong relationships within a community services that service the community that I wanted to serve. So. I would love it. Um, I look at, look at where we are now, like 30,000.
Amazing. Amazing. What advice would you give to, uh, aspiring women who want to get into entrepreneurship? Either all in or whether it's on the side? What do you, what advice would you give to aspiring women? Do your homework. Um, really understand, uh, what your trying to do and more than anything, no matter what it is that you're going to do, you have to be connected as to mission.
What is your purpose? And that purpose can not just be money because if the purpose is money, It it's, it doesn't work. You need to, I, I read the book. I listened to the book. It's true dog. This is the guy from Nike. And I remember, um, that even him that is, he was making shoes. He had a mission. His mission was to build the best shoes for runners.
He was a runner and he wanted to make sure that his, his should was comfortable. That every one that was going to use it was that they would run and they would be inspired by his shoes. So it doesn't matter what the product is. There has to be a mission attached to that product. And then you start doing your homework.
It's very important that you prepare yourself, that you create a business plan that you learn, just go out of the blue and say, I'm going to leave my job. And I am going to, I can tell you my ex husband did that. Uh, my first ex-husband and I remember I was like, you quit your job. And you're going to do a business and you have $20,000.
And I talk about it in the book $20,000 that we have saved, and you don't even know what you want to do, and you don't even have a business plan. You got to have a business plan. And there are so many organizations out there that actually, wherever you live, there's many organizations that are non-profit that could help you build a business plan, help you understand part of it has to be passion and mission, but part of it has to be planning.
I agree a hundred percent. Yeah. It's all about, yeah. Most businesses fail because of lack of planning. So I agree with you a hundred percent just to wrap things up. Great conversation. Where can people find more information about you or about the book and your resiliency, and you was able to bounce back throughout that trauma and look at you today.
Amazing story. Amazing, inspiring story. Thank you. Um, so I have a website is Maria to set that or in, in this website, I actually share, I do a podcast that I do every day, Monday through Friday, and there is a respect. I do it in Spanish and English that flicks reflecting with Maria in, in the pat class. I actually just share my emotions.
What am I feeling today? Um, how am I connecting to something that happened to me and how do I use, um, I'm sort of giving people how I use my tools to be able to continue because life is a journey. We never stopped working. So I work out my life every day, but I don't make it where, you know, I have to work on my life.
It's more. I want to reflect and I reflect two minutes and they actually can access the, um, the podcast there. And I have Encore and Spotify there. They are out there. In addition to that, my social media, I do a lot of posting as you know, LinkedIn. Uh, I have, uh, I have a lot of followers on LinkedIn that are very loyal.
So I want to thank them of, uh, take this opportunity to thank them. And also Facebook, uh, Maria Trusa, Instagram, Maria Trusa in the book I say no more. It's an Amazon. You can get it in my website website and also my Facebook. Thank you. Thank you, Maria is a pleasure having you on my podcast. I know our listeners are going to learn a great deal about your story and he was able, and your resiliency and able to bounce back from such a traumatic experience.
And I'm so proud of you. I'm so happy that we've met that work ironically a few years ago, and I'm happy to. Honored to be a, you know, to be a friend. So thank you so much. Thank you for being on my show. Thank you so much. Uh, it's always, I always say that it is an honor for me to be able to, um, be able to attend, you know, interviews like this, because it just helps me continue spreading the word in my mission.
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