Today we’d like to introduce you to James Johnston.
Hi James, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
The Entrepreneurial Journey of a Physician Who Wouldn’t Stay in One Lane
Dr. James Johnston
If you look at my résumé, it doesn’t make sense on paper.
Physician. Novelist. Filmmaker. Weight-loss clinic owner. Stem-cell practitioner. Public speaker. Cash-only concierge doctor. Ghostwriter. Health entrepreneur. Inventor. Gas & oil technician…
I sometimes joke that I’ve lived the Forrest Gump version of entrepreneurship. Not because I wandered—but because every chapter of my life kept colliding with opportunity, crisis, conviction, and reinvention.
I practiced traditional family medicine for 15 years in Dresden, Ohio. During that time, I raised ten children with my wife, homeschooled them, and traveled the country speaking in churches and homeschool conventions. By day I was a small-town family doctor, pushing the boundaries of what family doctors traditionally did, by doing my own patients scopes, stress tests, dermatology, orthopedics, psychiatry… I even provided a free home visit to patients who birthed their child at home. By night and lunch hour, I unleashed my creative streak and wrote books and articles.
Over the years, I authored twelve books—family-friendly adventures, romances, thrillers, and a World War II biography that became my best-selling work.
In 2017, my wife’s online platform grew rapidly, and we relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina. I worked locum tenens jobs across North Carolina for about a year and a half to cover the bills while I launched a cash-only concierge family practice from scratch.
I didn’t build a traditional clinic. I built a relationship-based practice—long visits, home calls, lifestyle medicine, and freedom of medical choice. I openly welcomed homeschool families, alternative-health patients, and people who wanted a physician who wouldn’t dismiss them if they didn’t get all the vaccines. All the major medical conglomerates had publicly announced they would not accept pediatric patients unless they received all the CDC-mandated vaccines, and Charlotte, being one of the largest home-schooling communities in the world, did not take the news easily. I exploited this niche to grow my concierge practice very quickly. Without the office mortgage and the large staff, the overhead was very low. At the beginning, I would make home visits after my locum tenems job hours concluded.
In the first month of the pandemic shutdown, I took a job as nightshift supervisor of a 200-bed, FEMA-constructed field camp in the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia. It was the first month of my separation from my wife, and the hard work and long hours kept me sane. I saw patients for my concierge practice in Charlotte on the weekends only during that time. The experience I gained during that time in Atlanta provoked me to personal study of repurposed drugs like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, and I was impressed with the worldwide data that was coming out. I was also confused by the government’s severe, premature opposition to these remedies and the censorship of alternative health remedies on social media, and the strong vaccine push. From the very beginning, it was clear to me that the vaccine was dangerous and unlikely to be effective.
The concierge practice grew steadily, but when the pandemic hit, it exploded! People didn’t want to wait in a waiting room, where there were more germs per square inch than any other place in town. My home-visit model flourished.
At the same time, telemedicine rules relaxed. During the height of COVID, I began prescribing ivermectin and evidence-based supplement protocols recommended by the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. At one point, I was treating over a hundred patients a day—dawn till dusk.
That year, my practice grossed roughly $750,000. I brought on a Nurse Practitioner to help me carry the increasing load.
It was very fulfilling to see the remarkable turnarounds in patients with acute COVID. I watched patients leave ICUs after starting my protocols, when the hospitalist had predicted 99% chance of death. I saw people who had been disabled for ten months with multi-system failure—after countless specialist visits and procedures and medications—recover enough to return to work within weeks. It profoundly reshaped how I viewed chronic illness, inflammation, metabolic disease, and the limits of conventional care.
At the same time, my creative life was accelerating. A pastor had read all of my books challenged me to write a screenplay based upon a book he shipped to me. That first script eventually led me into film festivals and industry pitching. After a conversation with faith-based filmmaker Stephen Kendrick, I abandoned a massive historical epic “When Swords Heal” and instead wrote a much more producible, less expensive story called “The Reliant.”
The script won awards. Then funding came. Then national endorsements. We raised $1.2 million, brought on Kevin Sorbo, and released to 1,200 theaters nationwide. Artistically, it won 26 first-place film festival awards.
After that, I wrote a far more ambitious screenplay, “Oberlin,” about the 1858 rescue of John Price, when the first black man admitted to college in the U.S., Charles Langston, rallies the town of Oberlin to arms to save his friend, a runaway slave from Kentucky, that had been kidnapped by two U.S. Marshals who were transporting him back to his slavemaster. The trial of Langston earned Oberlin the press nickname “the town that started the Civil War.” That script has now won over 30 screenplay awards, including wins at Academy Award-qualifying festivals. I wrote and produced a five-minute concept trailer to send to investors to solicit funding.
In 2020, my life hit a crossroads. I was simultaneously facing increasing conflict with the medical board over COVID treatment, navigating a devastating divorce and custody battle, and being courted by a $20 million investor who wanted to fund my next film.
Believing my future had shifted, I chose to retire from family medicine and sell my concierge practice.
Then everything unraveled.
My first nurse practitioner had never signed a non-compete and left with a large portion of the patient base. In 2024, an unfortunate DUI intensified board pressure. And then the film investor pulled out.
I decided to voluntarily inactivate my North Carolina license to get out from underneath the Board’s tyrannical thumb, and I worked in Ohio where my license was active. I directed several nursing homes all over the state, and worked from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.. I went home on the weekends to see my children. But North Carolina went further and actually suspended my medical license, then Ohio followed suit.
Almost overnight, the medical chapter ended—and “Oberlin” lost its funding. A brief second marriage ended in catastrophe. I found myself rebuilding from scratch again. My personal life improved with counseling, but my loneliness during that time was exquisitely painful.
I took a sales job to help pay the bills while continuing to search for a film investor. Then I took a job with a friend who worked in oil and gas. Then I became a ghostwriter. for Peaceful Profits, and wrote four books and did Author Coaching. In December 2025, the ghostwriting company terminated many of its newest contractors, and once again I was struggling.
That moment forced the next evolution. Instead of rebuilding inside someone else’s system, I began building my own. Today, I am constructing a digital health and education infrastructure—webinars, coaching, evidence-based supplement protocols—designed to help people prevent or reverse chronic disease, achieve sustainable weight loss, and optimize longevity.
Through OptimizeYourHealth.online, I run free weekly webinars including:
• How to Lose Weight Fast & Keep It Off: The 10 Pillars of Metabolic Mastery
• Which Vaccine Should I Give My Kids?
• Can You Reverse Long-Haul COVID Syndrome and COVID Vaccine Injuries?
Two more webinars are in the works:
• Ten Pitfalls Divorced Dads Should Avoid to Thrive–Not Just Survive
• Homebirthing–Is It Right for You?
These programs synthesize everything I’ve lived: frontline medicine, telemedicine scale, chronic disease reversal, and meaningful patient education.
I am also continuing my creative work through OberlinTheMovie.com, developing films, writing novels, and ghostwriting through my production company, Insurreal Pictures. I am very enthusiastic about a screenplay I’m presently writing “Five Naked Ladies” about the five women who molded and broke me, and how I finally transcended women’s opinions to discovered my identity and value.
And in a completely different lane, I am currently patenting an invention designed to reduce fuel expenditure in automobiles.
If there’s a theme to my career, it isn’t medicine or novel-writing or filmmaking.
It’s building.
Building practices.
Building platforms.
Building stories.
Building systems.
Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they collapse spectacularly. But each chapter carries forward the same instinct: identify an unmet need, step creatively and bravely into uncertainty, and construct something that didn’t exist before. And hopefully, not get evicted in the transitions.
I didn’t stay in one lane. Because the road kept changing. And so did I.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Yes. Find an unmet need. The greater the need, the greater the value of your remedy. Creatively and bravely try to meet that unmet need. If you fail, adjust, and begin again. And never, ever give up.
Trump filed bankruptcy four times.
Pricing:
- Health & Wellness Coaching at OptimizeYourHealth.online: $399/month for individuals, $599/month for couples
- Novels: $15 to $20 on website: OberlinTheMovie.net
- Ghost-writing. From idea to book on Amazon-print-on-demand: $10,000. Marketing the book is additional.
- Oberlin investment: various
Contact Info:
- Website: https://OptimizeYourHealth.online
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/14UtKaMdqJm/?mibextid=wwXIfr
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/drjamesjohnston
- Other: https://OberlinTheMovie.com
