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50 | No one knows what they’re doing
It's episode 50! Thanks so much for your support 💓
Today, we're talking about how there is no playbook for you to follow when creating your own practice. You build your own path, which is terrifying and also freeing. Please don't wait to get started until you know what you're doing. No one knows what they're doing. Start by taking steps forward, even if they might be wrong. Get an accountability group. Find a mentor. (Monday Mentoring is opening soon!). Join the Grow course.
You won't know what to do until you try some things. You'll find out what works for you, and what doesn't work for you. Do more of what works. Keep moving forward, and the next step will become clear.
Oh, and if you need help with the basics of getting your practice ready to open (website, insurance, forms, etc), check out the Roots course.
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Thanks for listening.
I'd love to hear from you. Leave me a voicemail with feedback or submit a question (click the pink "Send Camille a Message" button on the side of the page) 💚
Camille's Helpful Links for Practitioners
Transcript
Camille (00:00)
Well, hi there. Welcome to in the clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I am a licensed nutritionist and registered herbalist, and in this podcast, I share little tips and tidbits that might be interesting or helpful for other practitioners.
Camille (00:19)
Welcome to episode 50 of in the Clinic. I just wanted to take a quick second to celebrate this mini milestone and thank you for listening. Also to thank people who have shared the podcast, people who have sent me nice messages about how helpful some of the episodes have been and so forth, I really am very grateful for the opportunity to be here sharing some of what I'm learning along the way with you. So the topic of today's episode is both encouraging and discouraging at the same time. It is the idea that most clinicians do not know what they're doing as they start to build and grow their practices.
Camille (00:57)
Most people don't know where they're going. The reason that this is encouraging, I think, is because in the beginning, a lot of times we are sitting around waiting until we know what we're doing to get started. We think, oh, if I just knew the steps, if there was the playbook or the recipe book or the course or whatever that gave me instructions for what to do, then I would do it and I wouldn't mess up and I could be guaranteed that it was going to work. A lot of times we'll sit around and wait until we find out whatever that is before we do anything. So you think like, okay, I just need to take another class, or I need to read this book or whatever else, and then once I understand what to do, I'll start doing it.
Camille (01:41)
But until then, people kind of sit around, and maybe you work on your website. You sort of start telling people what you're doing, but not really, and just wait and see what happens. When you realize that there isn't a playbook, there's not a right way, then it frees you up to start moving forward. That's the encouraging part. That's the good part.
Camille (02:04)
It's really scary because we're used to doing things where there's a specific sequence, and if you do those things, you will pass the course. You will get whatever it is you're trying to get. A lot of times, if we want to get a job where there's a salary, there are credentials. Like, if you have this degree, this number of years of experience you interview, well, then it's likely that you'll get the job. And then once you get the job, there will be a description.
Camille (02:31)
It will tell you what to do. And if you do those things, ideally you will get paid and you will advance in the job and so forth. When it comes to creating your practice or any kind of business that you're doing yourself, there isn't a path. There is not a playbook, there isn't a road for you to follow. So you're not just looking for the road.
Camille (02:52)
You have to create the road. You have to create the path yourself. And your path is going to be different from anybody else's path. That's why you can't just look for somebody to tell you what to do, because you are responsible for figuring out what to do. There are lots of people out there who can guide you along the way who can say, oh, here's what I tried, here's what worked for me.
Camille (03:14)
Here's generally, what tends to work for a lot of people. Here's some basic steps that you should consider, but that's going to vary a lot depending on your skill set, the community that you want to work for, or within the circumstances of the world. Are we in a pandemic? What is happening? Is there a famine?
Camille (03:34)
Is there a drought? Is there a heat wave? Whatever is going on at that moment and that season and your resources, your abilities, all these kinds of things are going to come into play. Your circumstance is different from anyone else's. Even with the exact same training, you are going to have a different path.
Camille (03:52)
And it's a path that you are going to create yourself. So you cannot look at somebody else's path and try to do exactly what they're doing, because you will have rivers going through your path that weren't on that person's path. The hill will be a different size on your path than it was on the other person's path. There are going to be different circumstances. So it doesn't matter how many recipe books or playbooks you try to follow.
Camille (04:14)
Yours will be a little bit different. And once you understand that and once you take ownership, that you're going to have to create your own path. And also once you understand that you can't create the path in advance, you have to create the path as you go. So you can't clear out the next section of path until you're standing on the current section. So it's not the kind of thing where you're going to stand in one place and be like, okay, here's where I'm trying to go.
Camille (04:42)
I'm going to lay down all the bricks in advance and then I'm just going to walk along the path. That is not how it works. You have to lay the path down one brick at a time as you're standing on the previous brick. Are there cases where maybe people have done it in advance? Probably, but I don't know of them.
Camille (05:00)
Most of the time, what people are doing is just taking the next one step forward and then going from there. Now sometimes you're going to mess up your path, is going to go in the wrong direction, or is going to lead you right into a dead end and challenge that you cannot overcome. You have to go backwards and create a different section of the path or you've realized you've taken the long route and it would have been a lot faster if you did something else, but you're just going to keep going. So one of the hard things about this is that we don't always know our end distension. That's the other thing.
Camille (05:34)
Sometimes people feel pressured to know where they're going in order to create a path. And most of the time we don't know. We sort of have a vague understanding that, oh, I'd like to have a thriving one on one practice, or I would like to teach in an urban school, or I'd like to open up a retail cafe. Whatever it is. You have maybe a general sense of where your interests and your skills and so forth lie, but you don't know exactly what you're aiming for.
Camille (06:01)
You just want to show up and serve and be doing what you love doing in a way that's helping the world and your community and whatever else. And you're not totally sure how that's going to manifest. So again, you have to take steps before you know where you're going to just orient yourself in a general direction and start working towards that. Okay, so what does this look like in reality? I've been using some probably mixed metaphors to this point.
Camille (06:29)
But what I'm saying is that you have to just start even though you don't actually know what's going to work, you don't actually know what to do, and you don't entirely know where you're going. You're going to have to point yourself in the direction that seems like you want to go right now and take some steps. And by take some steps, I mean make an offer to some people. Throw out a class, put up a section, a little thing in the library about your one on one offerings. Show up at the massage therapist office and ask if you can hang up some flyers or ask if they know anybody in their practice who might be interested in your service.
Camille (07:10)
Take those kinds of steps, think about what you might want and start putting yourself out there. A lot of times your steps are not going to work. You're going to hang up a flyer and nobody is going to respond. And that's okay. Sometimes that happens.
Camille (07:25)
But you still took the step. You didn't just sit there at the beginning and do nothing, waiting for the client to come to you. You tried something and now you have valuable information that didn't work. Maybe it's because you didn't do a good job explaining what you're doing. Maybe it's because people didn't want they understood what you're doing.
Camille (07:42)
They didn't really need or want that. Maybe it's because the price was off. Maybe it's because that's actually not really where your skills lie and there's other people doing that better in your town or your community or whatever. And so then you have to regroup, figure out, okay, well, what's the next step? If you don't know what the issue is, then ask yourself, how could I know?
Camille (08:02)
How could I figure it out? Can I make an adjustment on that? Try again. And if that didn't work, then I try something else. You keep making those steps forward.
Camille (08:11)
You think to yourself, oh, okay, well, I guess maybe I could talk to some other practitioners and ask if they have any feedback for me about what I did. I could talk to a mentor. I could join Monday mentoring. I could do a class, I could read a book. Keep trying, keep doing those steps forward, because otherwise you are not going to get anywhere.
Camille (08:30)
Okay, so back to the theme of the episode, which is that no one knows what they're doing. It's not just you who's sort of fumbling around in the dark. If you look around at almost anybody who has a successful practice, a successful business, a school, whatever it is, most of those people did not start out from the very beginning and think to themselves, one day, I would like to be running a successful community nutrition business. They said, oh, I have skills as a nutritionist. I really want to help people.
Camille (09:03)
Why don't I try offering this cooking class at the community center? And then they tried that, and maybe three people came and the people said to them, oh, this was fun, but I'd really love to have one about spices, or I'd really love to know more about mindful eating or whatever. And then they were like, oh, seems to be interest there, why don't I do that? And then they realized, wow, there's a lot of interest here. I could teach a whole class on this for the community at the library.
Camille (09:27)
And then they started to teach one at the gym. So you see, like, people just did the next obvious thing, the next easy thing, the next thing that made sense based on their skills and their opportunities and what have you. And they kept moving forward until they are where they are. And so they can give you some advice. But if you try to do exactly what that person did, it won't work because it's not your path, it's their path.
Camille (09:52)
Great. So I hope that helps. I hope that makes sense. If you need help along the way, I encourage you to get it. There's lots of places where you can get help.
Camille (10:02)
You can form an accountability group, which is great, just group with other people. I have a whole different podcast episode on that, which I'll link to in the notes. You can get a mentor, you can join a mentoring group. We would love to have you on Monday mentoring. It's opening up again in September.
Camille (10:16)
You can again read books, seek out the business center in your area, look for the support that is there, but understand that the ownership of the path is yours. You are responsible for taking in the information and then taking steps. It does not matter if you take the wrong step, as long as you take steps and adjust accordingly. You learn whether you do something that works or whether you do something that didn't work. You keep moving forward.
Camille (10:45)
You adjust and correct and keep going, and you will wind up somewhere, ideally, somewhere where you feel like you're thriving and you found your spot, even if you don't know what your spot is right this very second. The one caveat when I was thinking about this episode, I was like, I should make it clear that before you start taking these steps, have the basics in place. Okay? So have an LLC if you want one. Have a bank account.
Camille (11:12)
Have your insurance, all those bits and pieces. Don't just take steps blindly on those things. But once you have the basics of your practice or your business set up, then you start taking these steps kind of into the unknown. If you need help with all the basic stuff, I have the roots course. Love to have you there.
Camille (11:27)
www.CamilleFreeman.Com/roots That will get you through the basics. Then once you get into the next phase, that's where it really is entirely customized to you. You've got to figure out what's going to work for you.
Camille (11:40)
I do offer a grow the grow course, which is for people in that phase where you're just trying to take those steps. If you need the support of a course for that, the grow course is for you. And that one is also opening up in September. So check that one out, too. Camillefreeman.com/grow.
Camille (11:55)
All right. I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you have any questions, and I will talk to you very soon.
Well, hi there. Welcome to in the clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I am a licensed nutritionist and registered herbalist, and in this podcast, I share little tips and tidbits that might be interesting or helpful for other practitioners.
Camille (00:19)
Welcome to episode 50 of in the Clinic. I just wanted to take a quick second to celebrate this mini milestone and thank you for listening. Also to thank people who have shared the podcast, people who have sent me nice messages about how helpful some of the episodes have been and so forth, I really am very grateful for the opportunity to be here sharing some of what I'm learning along the way with you. So the topic of today's episode is both encouraging and discouraging at the same time. It is the idea that most clinicians do not know what they're doing as they start to build and grow their practices.
Camille (00:57)
Most people don't know where they're going. The reason that this is encouraging, I think, is because in the beginning, a lot of times we are sitting around waiting until we know what we're doing to get started. We think, oh, if I just knew the steps, if there was the playbook or the recipe book or the course or whatever that gave me instructions for what to do, then I would do it and I wouldn't mess up and I could be guaranteed that it was going to work. A lot of times we'll sit around and wait until we find out whatever that is before we do anything. So you think like, okay, I just need to take another class, or I need to read this book or whatever else, and then once I understand what to do, I'll start doing it.
Camille (01:41)
But until then, people kind of sit around, and maybe you work on your website. You sort of start telling people what you're doing, but not really, and just wait and see what happens. When you realize that there isn't a playbook, there's not a right way, then it frees you up to start moving forward. That's the encouraging part. That's the good part.
Camille (02:04)
It's really scary because we're used to doing things where there's a specific sequence, and if you do those things, you will pass the course. You will get whatever it is you're trying to get. A lot of times, if we want to get a job where there's a salary, there are credentials. Like, if you have this degree, this number of years of experience you interview, well, then it's likely that you'll get the job. And then once you get the job, there will be a description.
Camille (02:31)
It will tell you what to do. And if you do those things, ideally you will get paid and you will advance in the job and so forth. When it comes to creating your practice or any kind of business that you're doing yourself, there isn't a path. There is not a playbook, there isn't a road for you to follow. So you're not just looking for the road.
Camille (02:52)
You have to create the road. You have to create the path yourself. And your path is going to be different from anybody else's path. That's why you can't just look for somebody to tell you what to do, because you are responsible for figuring out what to do. There are lots of people out there who can guide you along the way who can say, oh, here's what I tried, here's what worked for me.
Camille (03:14)
Here's generally, what tends to work for a lot of people. Here's some basic steps that you should consider, but that's going to vary a lot depending on your skill set, the community that you want to work for, or within the circumstances of the world. Are we in a pandemic? What is happening? Is there a famine?
Camille (03:34)
Is there a drought? Is there a heat wave? Whatever is going on at that moment and that season and your resources, your abilities, all these kinds of things are going to come into play. Your circumstance is different from anyone else's. Even with the exact same training, you are going to have a different path.
Camille (03:52)
And it's a path that you are going to create yourself. So you cannot look at somebody else's path and try to do exactly what they're doing, because you will have rivers going through your path that weren't on that person's path. The hill will be a different size on your path than it was on the other person's path. There are going to be different circumstances. So it doesn't matter how many recipe books or playbooks you try to follow.
Camille (04:14)
Yours will be a little bit different. And once you understand that and once you take ownership, that you're going to have to create your own path. And also once you understand that you can't create the path in advance, you have to create the path as you go. So you can't clear out the next section of path until you're standing on the current section. So it's not the kind of thing where you're going to stand in one place and be like, okay, here's where I'm trying to go.
Camille (04:42)
I'm going to lay down all the bricks in advance and then I'm just going to walk along the path. That is not how it works. You have to lay the path down one brick at a time as you're standing on the previous brick. Are there cases where maybe people have done it in advance? Probably, but I don't know of them.
Camille (05:00)
Most of the time, what people are doing is just taking the next one step forward and then going from there. Now sometimes you're going to mess up your path, is going to go in the wrong direction, or is going to lead you right into a dead end and challenge that you cannot overcome. You have to go backwards and create a different section of the path or you've realized you've taken the long route and it would have been a lot faster if you did something else, but you're just going to keep going. So one of the hard things about this is that we don't always know our end distension. That's the other thing.
Camille (05:34)
Sometimes people feel pressured to know where they're going in order to create a path. And most of the time we don't know. We sort of have a vague understanding that, oh, I'd like to have a thriving one on one practice, or I would like to teach in an urban school, or I'd like to open up a retail cafe. Whatever it is. You have maybe a general sense of where your interests and your skills and so forth lie, but you don't know exactly what you're aiming for.
Camille (06:01)
You just want to show up and serve and be doing what you love doing in a way that's helping the world and your community and whatever else. And you're not totally sure how that's going to manifest. So again, you have to take steps before you know where you're going to just orient yourself in a general direction and start working towards that. Okay, so what does this look like in reality? I've been using some probably mixed metaphors to this point.
Camille (06:29)
But what I'm saying is that you have to just start even though you don't actually know what's going to work, you don't actually know what to do, and you don't entirely know where you're going. You're going to have to point yourself in the direction that seems like you want to go right now and take some steps. And by take some steps, I mean make an offer to some people. Throw out a class, put up a section, a little thing in the library about your one on one offerings. Show up at the massage therapist office and ask if you can hang up some flyers or ask if they know anybody in their practice who might be interested in your service.
Camille (07:10)
Take those kinds of steps, think about what you might want and start putting yourself out there. A lot of times your steps are not going to work. You're going to hang up a flyer and nobody is going to respond. And that's okay. Sometimes that happens.
Camille (07:25)
But you still took the step. You didn't just sit there at the beginning and do nothing, waiting for the client to come to you. You tried something and now you have valuable information that didn't work. Maybe it's because you didn't do a good job explaining what you're doing. Maybe it's because people didn't want they understood what you're doing.
Camille (07:42)
They didn't really need or want that. Maybe it's because the price was off. Maybe it's because that's actually not really where your skills lie and there's other people doing that better in your town or your community or whatever. And so then you have to regroup, figure out, okay, well, what's the next step? If you don't know what the issue is, then ask yourself, how could I know?
Camille (08:02)
How could I figure it out? Can I make an adjustment on that? Try again. And if that didn't work, then I try something else. You keep making those steps forward.
Camille (08:11)
You think to yourself, oh, okay, well, I guess maybe I could talk to some other practitioners and ask if they have any feedback for me about what I did. I could talk to a mentor. I could join Monday mentoring. I could do a class, I could read a book. Keep trying, keep doing those steps forward, because otherwise you are not going to get anywhere.
Camille (08:30)
Okay, so back to the theme of the episode, which is that no one knows what they're doing. It's not just you who's sort of fumbling around in the dark. If you look around at almost anybody who has a successful practice, a successful business, a school, whatever it is, most of those people did not start out from the very beginning and think to themselves, one day, I would like to be running a successful community nutrition business. They said, oh, I have skills as a nutritionist. I really want to help people.
Camille (09:03)
Why don't I try offering this cooking class at the community center? And then they tried that, and maybe three people came and the people said to them, oh, this was fun, but I'd really love to have one about spices, or I'd really love to know more about mindful eating or whatever. And then they were like, oh, seems to be interest there, why don't I do that? And then they realized, wow, there's a lot of interest here. I could teach a whole class on this for the community at the library.
Camille (09:27)
And then they started to teach one at the gym. So you see, like, people just did the next obvious thing, the next easy thing, the next thing that made sense based on their skills and their opportunities and what have you. And they kept moving forward until they are where they are. And so they can give you some advice. But if you try to do exactly what that person did, it won't work because it's not your path, it's their path.
Camille (09:52)
Great. So I hope that helps. I hope that makes sense. If you need help along the way, I encourage you to get it. There's lots of places where you can get help.
Camille (10:02)
You can form an accountability group, which is great, just group with other people. I have a whole different podcast episode on that, which I'll link to in the notes. You can get a mentor, you can join a mentoring group. We would love to have you on Monday mentoring. It's opening up again in September.
Camille (10:16)
You can again read books, seek out the business center in your area, look for the support that is there, but understand that the ownership of the path is yours. You are responsible for taking in the information and then taking steps. It does not matter if you take the wrong step, as long as you take steps and adjust accordingly. You learn whether you do something that works or whether you do something that didn't work. You keep moving forward.
Camille (10:45)
You adjust and correct and keep going, and you will wind up somewhere, ideally, somewhere where you feel like you're thriving and you found your spot, even if you don't know what your spot is right this very second. The one caveat when I was thinking about this episode, I was like, I should make it clear that before you start taking these steps, have the basics in place. Okay? So have an LLC if you want one. Have a bank account.
Camille (11:12)
Have your insurance, all those bits and pieces. Don't just take steps blindly on those things. But once you have the basics of your practice or your business set up, then you start taking these steps kind of into the unknown. If you need help with all the basic stuff, I have the roots course. Love to have you there.
Camille (11:27)
www.CamilleFreeman.Com/roots That will get you through the basics. Then once you get into the next phase, that's where it really is entirely customized to you. You've got to figure out what's going to work for you.
Camille (11:40)
I do offer a grow the grow course, which is for people in that phase where you're just trying to take those steps. If you need the support of a course for that, the grow course is for you. And that one is also opening up in September. So check that one out, too. Camillefreeman.com/grow.
Camille (11:55)
All right. I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you have any questions, and I will talk to you very soon.
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