If I had to start all over again! | A Functional Medicine Practitioner's Journey

Hello, my friend, and welcome to today's masterclass called if I Had to Start All Over Again in this training, what I'm going to share with you is the things that I wish I had known starting out, and also what I think and feel truly, that you need to know right now. Things have changed significantly since I started my practice, and so I'm always revisiting what the startup process looks like with the clients that I work with, keeping my sword sharp and continuously reinventing myself and my practice. Kind of like we should be, right? Just like the trees reinvent themselves every year, shed their leaves and start from scratch, sometimes that's important for us to do as well. So no matter how seasoned you are as a practitioner, I feel like you're going to get a lot of value out of this presentation because it's going to help you revisit the way you're doing things. And many times you might be able to just check off what you're doing and saying, all right, great, I got this. However, sometimes you might go back to the basics and recognize some of the steps that you may have missed along the way. So once again, I congratulate you and I, I'm so proud of you for being here because it demonstrates to me that you are on a continuous journey of growth and learning and recognizing that there's always opportunity to expand your knowledge. So once again, I am super proud of you. So who's this training for? Just in case you're wondering, it's for functional medicine trained chiropractors, medical doctors, naturopaths, nurses, nurse practitioners, health coaches, ayurvedic practitioners, acupuncturists, and really, the list goes on. The principles that I'm going to share with you apply across the board because they are so foundational. And what I'm going to suggest is that if you're in the holistic health space, that this presentation is for you, and it's particularly for you if you have no idea where to start. You're just feeling stuck. Maybe you've never been an entrepreneur before. You know, my first entrepreneurship journey was being a barber as a teenager. So that's, you know, my first enterprise was something that I really love doing that helped people feel good. And I've learned a lot of lessons along the way. In fact, I was charging packages for haircuts from the age of 20. So I've been doing this for a long time, learned from some amazing people, and I've started several businesses. And, you know, the lessons that I've learned are gonna be packed into today's masterclass. So if you have no idea where to start, or you're just feeling like a little bit stuck, or you want some validation and confirmation that you're on the right track, then you're in the right place now. Because you're in the right place, the invitation is always to be here now, be fully present and enjoy what I'm gonna share with you. You might even listen to this while you're going for a walk. You might listen to this doing the dishes or working out, wherever you are. You don't have to sit here and watch every single slide that I'm going to share with you. The invitation is to listen to the concepts that I'm going to share because you'll be able to soak them up. However, be here now. So it's always going to be helpful. If you have a notepad handy, there might be some aha moments and some nuggets that I may encourage you to write down. So be fully present. That's my invitation. So what I want you to know is that you're going to learn some key concepts and if you stay till the very end, you're going to learn some of the key concepts that Heather used to have 25k months, you know, after, you know, kind of plugging along in her practice, really not knowing what her mission was, what her message was, what her, you know, purpose was and how to get her business started. We were able to help her have record breaking months in a short period of time by giving her a process and a way of thinking, which you're going to learn today. You'll also see how clients are are going from zero and launching group programs using some of these concepts to making $42,000 in four months, like this client did. You'll also see how people are generating more revenue, but more importantly, making a bigger impact, just like this client is as well. And clients are having more freedom. So practitioners just like you and David Bennett here, who's taking the picture, which is what's called cool about this picture, is that he's the one taking it on vacation, right? So he's running his business while he's traveling with his family and they're enjoying themselves, he's putting in a few hours each day, not decreasing in any way the impact that he's having. In fact, he's becoming more impactful because each day is an opportunity for him to become a better version of himself. So you stick around to the end. You're going to learn how some of these Practitioners are doing this with some of the key concepts that I'm going to share with you. If you're unfamiliar with me, that's me on the left, that's my beautiful son Devin, who's soon to be a teenager in the middle. And then my beautiful wife, Deepa. We are all in. Deepa works with me. She's a functional medicine trained pharmacist. I'm a functional medicine trained chiropractor, breath coach. I've picked up so many trainings along the way, don't even know what to call myself anymore. But I am a student for life. I think that's the best way to describe me now. One thing I want to share with you is that I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had to work for everything that I have. And I am so proud to say that I've learned so many things along the way, positive, negative, what to do, what not to do, from some of the influences in my life. And I'm grateful for all the experiences I've had to bring me here to be here to share with you what I'm going to share with you today. Now, one thing you may not know about me is many years ago, just about over a decade ago, I was dead broke. But fortunately for me and my family, and hopefully for you, I wasn't broken. So this is a Notice of Insufficient Funds document that I got from Huntington bank many years ago. And this is where I was in the startup phase of my business, still taking nutrition seminars, which I was paying overage fees for. However, to me, it was really important that I trained myself, I educated myself and did whatever I could to get the message out there. So I've been hungry from the very beginning to not only make an impact, but also, of course, to feed my family. So I understand that feeling. I understand the emotion, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about that. But I do want you to know I can empathize and understand where you're coming from. I know that you are passionate. I know that you are fully invested in getting your message out to the world. You just may not know where to start. You might be wondering, why is it so hard to help people? Why is it difficult or challenging for me to impact people the way I want to? And you're going to learn some ways to be more impactful as we get through today's masterclass. So I want to get across to you that I truly understand where you're coming from. I understand the internal limiting Beliefs that you have. You don't know enough, you're not enough. Who am I? I understand the outside factors that are playing a role. You know, people only work with practitioners that take insurance, right? You might have heard that there's a recession coming, right? And you may have bought into that. However, what I realize is the best place for people to invest their money when there is a recession, let's assume that there is one is in themselves and in their own businesses. So again, you're in the right place, you're in the right business. Because guess what? Health is the, the most important tool that we have. No matter what condition the economy is in, good health pays dividends. And it's the wealth we take with us every single place that we go. Now, many lessons I've picked up along the way, and one of them is that for us to transform, rebuild and really reinvent ourselves, we often need to be broken emotionally, financially and spiritually to truly discover who we are. So sometimes we have to be kind of cracked open, which doesn't always feel good, but is an absolutely necessary process I've learned for us to really meet ourselves as who we fully are. And that's what business allows us to do. It allows us to go on this spiritual journey of building our dharma and our purpose around a movement and a mission and generating not only income, but making an impact as a result of that in a positive way to society. So just like many of you, I started with no following. Not sure where to start, you know, really no money. I was 60 grand owed from another company I was working with. I had, you know, no time. I had a one year old child when I started. Living proof. I had no tech skills. I love tech, but I didn't, I wasn't born with the knowledge of how to use the software. I had to learn and pick up skills along the way. I didn't know who I was going to help. I was going to help them because as practitioners, we can help everybody. I had no testimonials, I wasn't sure where to invest my time and money. I had no branding, I had no traffic, I had no email list, I had no copy skills, I had no signature, product or service. I, I didn't really like getting on camera. Was very, very self conscious. And even getting on camera now, although it's become easier, there's still this mental game that I have to play with myself. So if that's you, you're not the only one. I had no webinar or masterclass and I had no offer so if you're checking off some of these things on your mental list that you're keeping right now, again, we all started somewhere, right? And the key is we just have to get started now. Along the way, I met many amazing mentors like Joe Polish, Bob Rakowski, Majid Magarban, JJ Virgin, Carl Krumenakar, Peter Osborne, Matthew Loop and Reed Davis. And I could keep listing many, many people that have positively impacted me in my life. And I want to share this with you because I stand on the shoulder of giants and the invitation to you is to stand on the shoulder of giants and use other people's time and dime instead of learning things the hard way. So one lesson I can offer you is to surround yourself with the right people. The conversations are different when you surround yourself with people who are abundant minded. They're collaborating, they're not competing with you and they want to see you win, they want to see you grow because you're collectively on a similar mission and as one another. I've had the opportunity to speak on several stages, including here at the Consumer Health Summit. I've won several awards including Doctor of the Year. I reinvented myself and became a functional diagnostic, nutrition health coach and also a breathwork facilitator. We have a multiple award winning business that we run and I like to think that this is my most important accomplishment, which I'm proud of and that is being the best dad ever. So it's really about finding balance and in your life and truly you can have it all, including paying it forward. So for years now, we've been contributing to a community in Bhutba, Uganda, where we've built them a hospital, orphanages, homes for those who are in a position that they can't afford homes. We've built a school there, we've built a cafe and a food bank there. So through abundance we've been able to pay it forward. And thanks to the generosity of our community, I've also written a book and I have a podcast by the same name called Perfect Practice. So I'm constantly trying to put this information out there and paying it forward to you. And I want to remind you, although I've accomplished all these things and I'm very proud of them, we all start somewhere, right? And we just have to start. So this is the key. Get out of that analysis, paralysis and just get started. The worst thing we can do is be in a standstill position because unfortunately people are dying on our watch. And if what you do saves people's lives right now, you have an obligation to take it to a whole new level so that you could be of service to even more people. Now, before we get too into this, I want you to also understand my value system. This is absolutely crucial because I believe that you can only, you know, add value to the lives of the people whose. Whose values align with yours. Right. So if I value family and you don't, then I could spend all this time talking about how important family is to me and you may not resonate with that. Right. If I value nature and you don't. Right. Then of course I'm going to use nature metaphors and analogies and encourage you to spend time in nature, which you will value if you value nature. So all of these values here that are listed, I hope are in alignment with you. Love, family, honesty, transparency, integrity, excellence, growth, empathy, nature, simplicity, consistency, community, freedom, timeless wisdom, and paying it forward. If these values are in alignment with you, then you're definitely in the right place. And I call this the values filter. So when I'm putting a project together, when I'm putting a presentation together, I want these values to shine through and I want to implicitly share these with you because I want to value your time. And if there's alignment here, then I want you to lean in a little bit more. However, if there is an alignment here, then the invitation is to go about your day. Right. And there's nothing absolutely wrong with that. Now, common patterns that I see when people are just starting out is overthinking. Overthinking leads to underdoing. They may have a lack of focused audience. Right. This is a challenge that we all face. We don't know where to start. We may have a position in our minds where we undervalue our knowledge. Right. So for me to put this presentation together, however it ends up being, let's say it's an hour long. It took me 13 years of being a functional medicine practitioner at a minimum, and of owning my own functional medicine business to be able to share these values with you. So I understand the value of what I'm sharing. Okay, Now I want you to understand the value of what you're sharing. A simple thing that you offer people may have required years and years of training for you to be able to be able to share it and make it simple for individuals. So never undervalue what you're doing. And if you help people get healthy, you can never overcharge them for that, because health is truly priceless. Many of us may have a broken money mindset, including myself. I have Tons of stories that I could share from my upbringing about scarcity and a lack of abundance and how to overcome some of those challenges. Some of us might describe ourselves as sucking at tech, which is not a word that I would recommend that you use. You're learning, you're growing, you're getting better at it is a better way to frame it. Maybe you don't know what software to use, right? There's thousands of different softwares out there. Which one do you use to get your business off the ground that's going to check off all the boxes? We've gone through a ton of software in our time and I can tell you we've made a lot of mistakes as well. Some of you might have the pattern in your head where you're going to figure this out yourself. And while I commend you for having that attitude, that go getter attitude, nobody successful will ever tell you that they figured it out on their own. You'll eventually need help to go to that next level. And the hardest level for us to, you know, to across, right, and accomplish is getting started. So when you're getting started, you know, whether you hire a mentor or a coach, that's okay. And that's, that's the, the highest level of what you can do. But find some accountability partners, connect with your peers, right? Build a community of people that can support you so that you don't feel like you're doing this all on your own. We can feel like we're on an island as holistic practitioners because while there is a growing number of us, there certainly aren't enough of us and we're scattered all over the world. Next is inconsistent action. So, you know, you have to be consistent. Consistency carves canyons. Another thing that we might run into is comparing ourselves, right? We compare ourselves to other people and don't realize that the only person we should be really comparing ourselves to is who we were yesterday. Are you a better version of yourself? Dan Sullivan calls us the gap in the gain. The gap is, you know, how far you've come and, or I'm sorry, the gap. The gap is the gap between where you want to go and where you are now. And that gap just keeps remaining constant because once you accomplish any goal, the goals change, right? We just keep kicking that can forward, so to speak. The gain is looking back and reflecting on what have you done lately, what have you done this past week, what have you done this past month that you're proud of? Because the work never ends. You have to celebrate and consistently look back and acknowledge yourself. Compare yourself to no one, because comparison kills joy. Don't compare your chapter 20 to, or your chapter one to somebody else's chapter 20 and even your chapter 20 to somebody else's chapter 50. You know, be. Instead of being comparative, be curious. What you'll find is that people who are on chapter 50 are happy to help you write chapter one all the way up to chapter 49 and even chapter 50, because by the time you get to chapter 50, they're going to be at chapter 100. So never, never be afraid to ask for help. Next is do not be afraid of other people's opinions. Now, if you are going to be afraid of what people think, be more afraid of what they're going to think when they found out that you could have been helping them or their loved ones all along, but you didn't have the courage to share it. That's what goes through my head. Not what will people say when I tell them, but what will people say when they find out I didn't tell them. That's the mantra I have in my head. And maybe you can adopt that as well. Another one is imposter syndrome. What I've learned from one of my friends, Giovanni Marcico, is that imposters don't have imposter syndrome, right? So just unpack that a little bit and think about that. That if you were an imposter, you wouldn't think that way. If you were an imposter, you would think you know it all. So I invite you to replace imposter syndrome with humility. It's not your job to know it all. Mark Hyman doesn't know it all. Jeffrey Bland doesn't know it all. They're students for life, just like I'm a student for life. And just like you'll be a student for life. So be resourceful. If you're resourceful, then the world is at your fingertips. But if you think you have to know it all, you're always going to feel like you never know enough. And if I felt that way, then you know, it would stop me and paralyze me. However, I know that I can get answers. I have a community. I have resources that I could reach out to. And if I don't know, it's okay too. You don't have to know everything. The exercise that I invite you to do is practice humility and practice resourcefulness. Next is you want to have a realistic set of expectations. However, you also want your timeline to be realistic. So many people have very realistic goals. However, Their timelines are unrealistic. Sometimes the timelines are too long, right? They say, I'm going to quit my job and go full time into this in the next three years. And I'm like, why three years? Why not six months? Because their timelines and their mindset are priority, probably not fully aligned, right? They hate their job, they want to transition, but they're giving themselves three years. There's something called Parkinson's law. The amount of time we allot to something is the amount of time that it takes. So if you say I want to be at this number in six months, guess what? You're going to do whatever it takes to be at that number and be at that position in six months. Because your brain is a reality generator. And your brain is also responsible for creating and identifying the circumstances that are going to move you towards a clearly determined, defined goal. Have a realistic timeline, have some realistic expectations, dream big, but make sure that your timeline is, is realistic and it's not discouraging, right? So sometimes we set unrealistic goals within a certain timeline and that can feel discouraging. And you know, I promise you that the people that you see who quote, unquote, have success online perhaps, or success in their business, they were not an overnight success and they would tell you the exact same thing. So we believe that there are three key practice objectives that you want to have. And it took me a while to whittle down to what these are, but they seem so obvious. The first practice objective is you want to have superior clinical outcomes for your clients. I mean, that's of course the reason you do, why you do you want to help people feel amazing. I find that simplicity is the best way to create superior results and maintain long term engagement from your client. The next thing you want to have is you want to positive financial outcomes for your practice because that's what's going to fuel your growth, that's what's going to fuel you, that's what's going to validate you and recognize that income and impact are directly proportional. So if you want to make more money, nothing wrong with that, you have to anticipate that if you're making a bigger impact. So focus on impact and the finances kind of take care of themselves. The next is personal health and happiness for you. You never want to create a business that compromises your physical and emotional wellness. You want to be happy, you want to be healthy, you want to be vital so that you can be a living embodiment of what you encourage people to do. It's hard to help people on the path of health if we're not on that path ourselves or we're depressed or we're anxious or we're not living our message. You don't have to have perfect health, but you have to be living the message that's very crucial. So let me share with you as we go through this. I'm going to share with you 21 key principles that will really give you a broad sense of what it takes to get started. And then what I'd also love to do is to unpack these a little bit and then I'm going to invite you to something really special that we're doing, which I'll share with you in a moment. So, 21 essential tools to launch your practice. Now these are going to be tools, they're going to be tactics, they're going to be ways of looking at life frameworks to help you get launched. So the first thing you want to do is design your dream day. Designing your dream day is getting a clear understanding of how you want to live each day and then building a business around that. Okay. I encourage you to visit this mantra which is build a business around your life, not a life around your business. If you can adopt that, it starts by creating your dream day. What time do you wake up? What do you do? What are the action steps that you take throughout the day? What time do you go to bed? What do you eat? Asking yourself these questions is a great place to get started because then you can figure out where does my business fit into this? What type of business do I want to design that fits into my dream lifestyle that I want to create? And your business should enable you to do that. Especially if you're practicing holistic and functional medicine. As a practitioner and a coach, there's no better business to be in. The next thing we need to do is master our mindset. I've actually created a whole 42 minute training on how to master your mindset. The exact tools to master this beautiful brain that we have. And it's my most listened to training. It's the most powerful training that we offer that we get the most positive feedback on. So I won't be able to unpack all of that today. But, but know that your mindset is everything. Your brain is a five dimensional printer. It's not just printing the world around you, it's also printing your future. It's co creating a beautiful future with you and the universe. So what we focus on matters our language, the, the, the words that we use internally with ourselves, that chatter that we have is very important, okay? And there's ways to rewrite that chatter so that it's working in your favor. Another thing that you need to do, especially when you're starting out, is you want to become a product of your product. You want to be a walking billboard so that people are asking you, man, what do you do? Or you know, hey, what do you do? Right? You want to create curiosity, right? Why do you have so much energy? Why are you so happy? Why do you have such a big smile on your face? What are you so enlightened about? Right? Tell me about your meal plans, tell me about your diet, right? Tell me, what exercise program are you on? What? Wow, you look great. Like, you want to be getting these type of compliments as much as you can everywhere you go. Because when you pique people's curiosity, you draw them in, but you also exude more confidence and certainty. Again, it's not about your health being perfect, but are you walking the path? Because it's only when you're walking the path can you show people the path that you've traveled. Next is you want to get to know your customer. So once we really know who we are and become the best version of ourselves, the next thing we want to know is our customer. We have to clearly define our avatar. Who is our ideal customer? You know, what is their challenge? What keeps them up at night? What's the last thought they have at the end of the day? What's the first thought they have in the morning in relationship to the problem that you help them solve? What are the things that this problem is holding them back from? Where else do they shop? Are they an iPhone user? Are they an Android user? What's their income level? What's their education level? How many other practitioners have they seen? Do they understand the paradigm that you're operating out of? Or are you trying to create an educational platform which transforms people's paradigm? I suggest doing both. So knowing your customer and who you serve helps you understand the language to use. It helps you understand what problems to agitate and what solutions to offer. So we actually have a multi page document that we have our clients fill out that you'll be able to have access to in our membership portal that allows you to be able to go through this worksheet and start getting super clear on who you serve. And this evolves over time. So it's not about getting it perfect, but it's about getting started with knowing who you want to help. Now, one of the things that I encourage you to do is consider yourself. Consider somebody just like you who's maybe had or has rather similar challenges that you've had. Maybe they're just like you in their interest, they're just like you in their health challenges. They're just like you in their worldview and in their paradigm, they read the same books as you. Right? Imagine working with someone just like you. You understand that person and their circumstances better than anyone else. As their guide, there's two attributes that you want to have. You want to have empathy, which means you can relate to what they're going through, and you want to have authority, which means you've overcome what they're going through and you have a plan to show them how to overcome exactly that. Another thing is to know yourself. And when you know yourself, you get to know others. So in particular, we want to encourage you to know yourself in terms of your communication and behavior style. This is a form formula that we use called the DISC method, and there's a whole training in our membership portal about this. However, this, this is a great tool for you to have to become more effective at communicating with others and understanding how you are inspired and motivated to take action. So there's four key different personality and communication styles. There's the dominant one, there's the influent one, influent one. There's a conscientious one, and the steady person. So D, I, S and C are great. This is a great framework to be able to use in order for you to be able to understand yourself, your team, your spouse, your children, but most importantly, your clients as well. We actually use this framework when we're communicating to our clients so that we can motivate them and inspire them correctly. I wish I had known this from the very beginning because communication and the complexity of communication is what separates us from all the other animals. We can, because we can communicate, we can actually convey much more information than any other animal can on this planet. So this is one of our gifts as human beings. We want to master this skill of communication. Now, another thing that may not necessarily come up right away, however, is crucially important is feng shui. So we encourage you to feng shui your space, which means that it's decluttered, it is clean, it is. There's nothing extra that doesn't need to be there. There's, you know, there's good energy in the space. The furniture is arranged correctly, the positioning of your chair and the room is arranged correctly. We want to tap into the subtle energies of our Environment in order for the environment to support our growth as well. So feng shui is a powerful principle upon which I arrange every single room and every place I work out of in my life. Feng shui determines where I sit in the restaurant. Feng shui determines where I sit in my home when I'm doing work. It determines how I landscape my property. I mean, so we use this in so many other areas of our lives. And I invite you to learn these key concepts so that you can practice it in your life. Simple things that you can do to feng shui, your space is decluttering. Another simple thing is never have your back towards the door, okay? So you want to have your face towards the door or the door off to the side, ideally, you know, but we never want to have a door behind us, right? That just kind of keeps our nervous system a little bit agitated. So it's hard to relax when you can't see the mouth of Chi, which is the entrance of the room. So that's a really simple concept for you. Another thing that you can do to get more energy flowing is don't butt things up right against the wall. Keep everything about three inches away from the wall to allow the energy to flow. Again, simple stuff that I think is important for us to go back to the basics. Next is to have fun. What can you do to incorporate and have more fun and enjoy building your business? Right? Building your business and practice should be fun. So I'll give you an example. What can be fun about building your business? Doing fun things that your ideal client does, right? So if your ideal client goes to yoga, how about you go to yoga? If your ideal client goes to the gym, you go to the gym. If your ideal client is going to health fairs, you go to health fairs. If your ideal client is going to an outdoor, you know, park or venue, you go there, right? Have fun. Do the things that they enjoy doing as well so that you can understand them. You can understand their challenges, but you can also understand what lights them up and what brings them joy. All right? Another thing, this is crucial, I feel, and this is to use technology to be more productive. So here's the thing, and this is like a big mind shift for people. However, we want to use technology to solve a problem, not create a problem. Let me give you an example. So, you know, we do encourage you to have some sort of automatic scheduling link, right, where people can schedule an appointment with you. However, in the very beginning, if you don't have a lot of appointments, then you can manually schedule people right? There doesn't have to be a fancy link. You could just do it manually. And then you get to a point where, hey, I can't do this anymore. I'm getting a little bit disorganized. Let me, you know, use some sort of scheduling software so that I could schedule people and I could really easily share a link. It eliminates the back and forth. You see, now technology is solving a problem for you. But if you try to go through the learning curve of learning how to set something like this up, which is typically pretty easy, you've created a problem for yourself. You haven't solved a problem. Okay? Now this is crucial because a lot of times people get stuck in the tech and it's not actually solving an issue that they have. It's creating an issue of having to go through this growth curve. So be mindful of how you use technology. Be mindful of the tools that you use. There's so many different tools out there. With AI now being readily available to us, we can use that responsibly. Email. You definitely want to have an email account. You definitely want to have some sort of CRM. CRM is a customer relationship management software. This is how your emails and things like that are distributed. This is how you collect emails, distribute emails, how you build sales pages, landing pages, squeeze pages. That happens in a CRM software. Another thing that you want is an ehr. So the EHR that we recommend is called Practice Better, and the CRM that we recommend is called Kartra. And there's many other tools out there. So I'm not, you know, I'm tool agnostic. Do whatever works for you. However, there are some that we really like because they're easy to use and, and very affordable as well. So technology can be your best friend. And, you know, I could, I do have a whole training on my favorite tech tools, which is in our membership portal that unpacks all of this for you. Okay. You can also use technology like recording devices, certain cameras, microphones to help you be more productive and sound more professional as well. Now next is social media mastery. If you are using social media, there's a formula to get the most out of social media. There are certain rules that you want to oblige by and certain ways to, you know, get the algorithm working in your favor and certain ways to sabotage the algorithm from working in your favor. So social media, if you are going to use it as a tool, is very important to learn to use correctly. It's very important to be consistent. It's important to have Fun and find your flow. Some of you might like written, you know, content. Some of you might like with images. Some of you might like, you know, reels. Some of you might like selfie videos. Some of you might like selfie images. I mean, you can decide how much you want to be in the images. It's really not about you, it's about your clients. It's about what they want to know, not necessarily about what you. Or it's not necessarily about you, it's really about them. That's an important framework. A lot of times we get stuck in thinking, what are people going to think? And the challenge with that is that it's because we're making it about us instead of about them. If you're adding value, they want to see your content. If you're not adding value, then they don't. Okay, so ask yourself, is this valuable what I'm sharing? Valuable and important and going to create a shift in the way somebody thinks or acts. And if it is, then share more of that. Okay. Be a positive force for good on social media. I love social media. It. It's probably how many of you found me. It's a great way for me to express myself. It doesn't cost anything, which is great. Cost me time, of course, and it can be a time suck. I'm not immune to that necessarily. However, I try to be as productive as I can. I try to make people think differently. I like, I try to get them to act a little bit differently, to show up as the better and highest version of themselves. And I try to be a force for good, which you can be as well. Now, another thing to do when you're starting out is determining fair pricing. So fair pricing means that the pricing is fair to your client, it's fair to your business, and it's fair to you that your skills, your knowledge, your wisdom are being acknowledged. There's a fair energy exchange, and there's enough leftover for your business to grow. And also the client is, you know, feeling like they're getting tremendous value as well. Now, value isn't about lowering your prices. Value is about really helping people understand what they're getting when they work with you. Right. So when I work with clients, they're not just getting their time with me. Right, Because. And they're not just the program that they work with me. Let's say they work with me for six months. We're going to teach them timeless tools, and we're going to teach them skills that they're going to have for the rest of their life. So we're focusing on the lifetime value of what we have to offer people and not just how much time we're going to spend working together. Right? You're not a mechanic, you're not a, you know, you're not a massage therapist, let's say. I mean, we need those people and it's great to have them. However, they charge hourly, right? So once they provide the service, then their time is not necessarily involved anymore. For us, once we apply the service because we're teaching somebody a skill, they're going to keep using that knowledge over and over and over again, and you should be compensated for. It's almost like you get a royalty every time they do something positive. So determine fair pricing. The best way I found to determine pricing is using HeartMath. And there's a training that I do on exactly how to do that. But of course, that goes beyond the scope of our training today. Next is build relationship capital. How can you be supportive of other people, other businesses, other institutions that can also reciprocate that support for you? Important lesson here is to build relationships. It's the most valuable capital that you have next to your own personal health and wellness and happiness. So get out there, you know, connect with local health food stores, go to the farmers markets in your town, connect with the local farmers, go to the yoga studios, get a gym membership, right? Connect with your. Your existing friends, reconnect with some old friends. What can you do to build up relationships and help people understand through those relationships a little bit more about what you do? Because let's face it, everyone has a health challenge and, and, or everyone knows somebody with a health challenge for which you could add tremendous value. So keep that in mind as well. Next is how to hire a vendor. So I wish I had known how to hire vendors, because a lot of times we get shiny object syndrome and we're presented with this amazing offer and we jump right in only to realize that it's a lot more work than we thought and it's going to take a little bit more or a lot more effort to get the outcome that we were hoping for. And a project that you thought would have been just a few weeks ends up being a few months. And sometimes these projects never even get done. So really simple tip on how to hire a vendor is you want to hire someone who's worked in your industry. So if you're going to hire someone to build a website for you, write some copy for you, or build a sales page or help you with a webinar, you know, ideally you want to hire someone who has done this for themselves and or other people, okay. In your industry. So you never want to hire someone who's never worked in your industry because they may not understand your audience, they may not understand the nuances, they may not understand the intricacies of selling and offering services in the healthcare space. So that's one thing. The next thing you want to do when you hire a vendor, really simple tip for you is ask them what's required of you. Which means that if they give you a list, hey, we need a headshot, we need three testimonials, we need your color palette, we need blah blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, get those things ready first. Okay? Maybe you need a bio from you. Whatever those things are, get those assets together first and then hire the vendor because now things are going to move so much faster. What I find happens a lot of times is you hire someone and then they give you a whole list of things that you now need to compile and put together and then you're stuck in overwhelm and it can take you weeks or months or sometimes, you know, forever to get that back to them. And then that money's tied up, the vendor is tied up and they can't really help you. So by simply asking, what do I need to get this project done? They're going to tell you and then you're going to compile that and then I would suggest that you hire them. Okay, Next is pre qualify your time. So we want to make sure that your time is not being wasted. And there is no waste of time when you're talking to people and connecting with them. However, if somebody's going to get on a one on one call with you, then we want to make sure that you're pre qualifying that time. There's a few ways to do that. One is to have people fill out a survey to really get a sense of why it's important for them to solve this problem now, what that problem is, why they want to solve it now, and what are the things that are going to potentially stop them. And do they have a budget? Right. Knowing that somebody has a budget is important because the most common objection you're going to get is that I can't afford it. And really what people are telling you is they're not worth it. Okay? And let's get, let's get clear, right? I mean most people, they have a rainy day fund, right? They're not getting on a call with you unless they're willing to spend money, right? They know that there's going to be a cost and an investment. And let's face it, if somebody can't afford to spend, you know, 1500-2000 to $5000, then it may not be the money. I mean, sometimes it is going to be. However, it may be a self worth issue. So we got to unpack that a little bit. So pre qualify your time, make sure you're as transparent as you'd like to be. I don't like bait and switches. I like to be fully transparent. And again, there's a whole training that we do on this next is five freedoms. You want to build your practice and your life around these five freedoms as best as you can. I wish I had known this starting out, but these five freedoms I've developed over time. The first one is health, right? We want to be optimally healthy and well. And the next one is emotional wellness, right? So there's our physical wellness and our emotional wellness, which are, you know, kind of two different things, right? One's easier to measure than the other. The next thing was we want time freedom and geographic freedom and then financial freedom. So those are the five freedoms that I'm always asking myself. Is this business, this project, this task moving me in the direction of creating more of that, of those freedoms, or is it robbing me of those freedoms? Because if it's robbing me of those freedoms, I want to definitely reconsider. All right, now let's talk about essential tools to run your practice. One of the things that, you know, if you're a virtual practitioner or working with people remotely is you want to have a nice setup, right? You want to have a nice microphone so you sound nice and clear. You want to have a nice monitor so that you can do work, right? Expansive work. Instead of, you know, working on this tiny little laptop that you see here, you probably want to get a nice webcam, perhaps set up a nice space for you to work out of. These are essential tools to being successful, right? Is feeling successful and setting up your space for success. Of course, feng shui ing it, getting the right equipment, you know, not over investing, but, you know, what are the bare minimums that you can get to sound good, to look good and come through nice and clear so that when you do get on a call with somebody, you're projecting professionalism, you're projecting intrigue, right? And you've got a nice space set up so that it's not distracting, it's calm, it's relaxing, which I hope you're finding. MySpace right now. If you're watching the video, it's simple, it's clean, it's elegant, and it's, it's calming. Right? That's what we want to create, is tools to calm our nervous system and a way to calm other people's nervous systems as well. Next is learning how to do discovery calls. So this has taken me hundreds of discovery calls, if not thousands of discovery calls, to get clear on how to communicate and articulate with people, how to learn their body language, their love language, their disc score. By asking us a few simple questions, we can really discover how to best communicate with that person. We can understand why this is important to them. We can make them feel healthy, happy and whole just by a meaningful conversation. And there's subtle things that you can do in order to have a dynamic and reassuring discovery call. We always want to leave people better than we found them. A discovery call, if you've never heard that term, is kind of like a free consultation. It's a way, it's a, could be a health strategy call. You could call it a variety of different things, but it's the first initial consultation that you have with somebody. Now here's what happens before that consultation when somebody schedules. You want to have a confirmation email and then you want to perhaps send a series of emails leading up to that consultation that maybe share testimonials or case studies, perhaps takes them to a link on your website or perhaps is a written testimonial from somebody. Maybe it's also an email in there. There's an email in there that tells them what to expect on the discovery call. So it calms their nerves. Are you going to call them? Are they calling you? Where's the Zoom link? You know, what can they anticipate so that there's little to no nerves involved in the process? Most people know how to use Zoom these days, but depending on your audience, that might be a new concept to them. So make sure that you're creating familiarity before you get on that call. And people know what to expect. Show up on time, have a nice smile, really get to know that person. Help them understand the empathy that you have towards what they're dealing with. I mean, there's so much we can unpack here, but this is something I wish I had more training on, especially in the very beginning because I'm so passionate as you are just to get people started. And you just. If you don't know how to handle these calls, then it could be very frustrating. Okay, next is learn how to repurpose your content. Learn how to be leveraged in what you do. Now, this is a bit more advanced. As you start creating content, you want to start asking yourself, how can I, how can I use this content to my, you know, advantage? Right? So, for example, if I'm recording this presentation as I am now, I can take snippets out of this presentation and I can repurpose it as three to five minute videos if I wanted to for each slide. That's one way to repurpose. Okay, you could create a webinar and then repurpose some of that content. You could write a Facebook post and repurpose it on Instagram. You could write a Facebook post and repurpose it as a blog. You can do a video on YouTube and embed that in your blog on your website. I mean, there's so many ways that you can create content once and use it over and over and over again across many different platforms and. All right, the other thing I wish I had learned early on is how to run a successful workshop. And that could be a webinar, a masterclass. It could be in person or online. This is absolutely crucial. And it took us a few years to really figure this out, but we had a lot of success doing consistent webinars and presentations for people who were interested in improving and optimizing their health. We did that in a local community center every week for several years. And it was amazing. The growth that we experienced, the, the capabilities that we acquired by becoming better public speakers, and also the value that we provided for our community. We were featured in a local newspaper. I mean, we did some cool things as a result of getting our message out there in the world. Using workshops nowadays you can do webinars and you can still continue to do in person workshops by booking out a local community center and driving local traffic to it. This is probably the fastest path towards building a six and seven figure practice is to create your own stage, right? Don't wait for stages to be built for you. Build your own stage. It's not as expensive as you might think. Next is to create your stage. Right? Just that, like, what is the platform that you want to be on, right? So if you decide that you're going to use Zoom as your platform, go deep with that platform. Understand the intricacies. Zoom has so many different tools that it can offer you. And by spending just an hour or two learning them, you can master this software and create unique experiences for people that differentiate you. And also the other thing about having your own stage is becoming a better facilitator so I've taken facilitator training. So when I'm managing a group of 300 people on a zoom call, I know exactly how to do that. I know how to get engagement, I know how to ask questions, I know how to poll people. I know how to use breakout rooms. I know how to share music and share my screen and all of those things. So once we create the stage, then we want to master being on that stage. And one of the last things I want to offer you is ask. Ask for help. No successful person, including myself. The first set of people I shared with you were my mentors that helped me along the way. So I owe them a ton of gratitude. I owe my parents a ton of gratitude, my wife a ton of gratitude, my son, and all the members and peers that I've worked with in my community because I've learned so much from them. And so ask other people for help. It's so important. It's the humble thing to do. It's going to move you faster in the right direction, and it's going to help you have a much bigger impact, which is what I ultimately know you want. So there's 21 rules of success that I wish I had known that I've shared with you. And of course, there's so many more. I mean, you know, I've been training practitioners for years, but these are the fundamental things where you want to get started. One of the things that I've learned through my clients is that systems equal freedom. This is Dr. Kim Carpenter, who's a very successful chiropractor, but wanted to implement more systems into her business, and she did. So she's now better time leveraged than she ever was before. And I adopted what she said and said, systems store energy. Where can we store your energy? How can we make you so leveraged that you have fun building your practice? How can we create systems and processes and frameworks? If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to myself or my team. And I want to take a moment to tell you how proud I am of you for learning this information, for believing in your mission and in your message, and believing and trusting us. Thank you. I appreciate you. And here's to your continued growth, success and happiness. Bye for now.