72 | Is it possible to sustain yourself with a clinical practice?

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Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman.

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I am a clinical herbalist and licensed nutritionist. And in this podcast,

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I share little tips and tidbits that may be helpful for other practitioners.

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Well, hello. Welcome back. Thank you for being here today.

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I have a question that Katie sent me and I wanted to share it with everybody

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because I think other people might have the same question. then.

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So the question Katie sent in was, if it's possible to support yourself with

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a clinical practice or if you need to wear other hats.

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Let me share my perspective on this. It is possible to support yourself with

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a clinical practice and there are some really big caveats.

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The first thing that I want to tell you about this is that most people need

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at least two or three years in order to fully support themselves with their practice, if not more.

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Okay, so is it possible? Yes. Does it take a long time to get there? Also, yes.

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If you have a bunch of other things going on, and you only have a few hours

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a week to dedicate to your clinical practice, it's going to take longer to build

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it to where it is a sustainable and supportive part of your income. Okay.

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Mark Mark Silver, in his book, Heart-Centered Business, talks about your practice

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or your business as a child.

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In its first few years. And of course, it is not reasonable to expect a child

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to financially support the entire family.

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And when you are expecting a brand new business to financially support you right

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away, that's an unrealistic expectation as well. So I think that's a really helpful metaphor.

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Now, there are exceptions. I'm not saying that it's impossible for people to

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go right out of the gate out of a training program or a degree program or whatever

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it is, and start supporting themselves within a year. What I am saying is it's unlikely.

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If you have lots of time, very few caregiving responsibilities,

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if you have a spouse or a partner who supports you, you may have more time to

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devote to this, and that might speed up the process a little bit.

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If you are a naturally outgoing person, and or if you have a really large network,

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either online or large community where you live, work, etc.,

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then you may have a little bit of a jump start.

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If you're okay talking about what you do, if you do a really great job connecting

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with people, you can speed this whole thing up a little bit.

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However, most of us really have to learn the ins and outs of clinical practice,

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and we do it by trial and error, which means it takes a long time.

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And the harder it is for you to put yourself out there, the longer it takes

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to do the work of helping people see what you do, helping people know what you

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do, helping them feel comfortable with you, and being there when people are looking for you.

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That's just something that takes several years for many of us.

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So I don't, I'm not trying to discourage people by saying this,

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and I hope you're not hearing it that way.

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But when you understand, when you have a realistic understanding of the time

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that you can expect to gear up towards a clinical practice, then you can plan for it.

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You can say, okay, knowing this, what am I going to do to provide income and

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support in the meantime?

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And we all have different ways of piecing that together. other.

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So that's one caveat that I wanted to tell you.

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The other caveat is that a full-time clinical practice.

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Even if you have the marketing savvy and you learn how to do it and go out there

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and your community loves you and you're there and you're supporting people and

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you're seeing people, a full-time clinical practice is extremely hard for other reasons as well.

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It's not just the effort that it takes to bring in the client.

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It is also the energetic, mental, psychological effort that goes into seeing

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people that sometimes means a full-time clinical practice is not realistic.

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It depends on your capacity.

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It depends on, you know, what kind of supports you have in place.

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It depends on how much time you have, your restorative practices,

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all of these types of things come into play.

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But a lot of clinicians actually limit the number of clients they see,

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not because they can't see more, they can't find more clients to come and fill

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those spots, but because emotionally,

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physically, or for other reasons, they really just don't feel prepare to take

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on more clients than that.

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And so for that reason, many people like to supplement their clinical income

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with other activities, teaching, making herbal remedies, leading herb walks, the types of things.

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Okay. The other thing I will say is that if you are listening and you're an

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herbalist, there is an extra challenge, which is that people,

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many people in our communities don't have a pre-existing framework for what an herbalist is.

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So they don't know to look for you when you could be helpful.

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So if you're a nutritionist or

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a health coach or trainer or something like that, people have a concept.

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They know, oh, okay, I need a nutritionist because I think I'm having problems with dairy or whatever.

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I have a weird relationship with food. I think a nutritionist would be helpful.

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With an herbalist, they don't really know to Google herbalist.

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So there is that added benefit.

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That added work to do on your end, you not only have to help let people know,

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oh, here's what I personally do.

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And here's when you might want to work with me, you have to let people know

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what an herbalist is, in general.

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And so that is another thing that kind of extends the runway for people who

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are in the herbal field versus those of you listening who are nutritionists,

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or who have another modality that already exists in people's consciousness in some way.

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So some communities may have lots of herbalists and that it may be a more common thing.

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But for many places, there just isn't that concept.

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And so there is the underlying education that goes into things before people

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will even consider coming to work with you specifically.

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Okay. So I, again, my intention here is not to dissuade anybody from pursuing a clinical path.

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And I really, I really want you to go into it with your eyes open if you decide to do this work.

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If this is your calling and you feel like you have a lot to offer here,

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then think really carefully about how you can make this sustainable and supportive

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as you build up your practice to where it is sustaining and supporting you.

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The last thing I will say before I wrap up here is that I've already mentioned

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Mark Silver's book, Heart-Centered Business,

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which I highly recommend you read if you are in the process of thinking about

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this path or in the early stages of pursuing clinical practice and in a way

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that supports yourself.

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And the other book that I highly recommend you check out is called Radical Healership

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by Laura Mae Northrup, who also goes into some of the.

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Mental, emotional issues that come up when we start to do this visibility work

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and think about what it means to support ourselves, what it means to ask for

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support from our clients in a way that is reciprocal and sustainable for both people.

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So I highly recommend checking out those two books if you haven't already.

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And Katie, I hope this is helpful for everybody who's listening.

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I hope it was helpful for you as well.

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Best of luck as you do this work. If you need support along the way,

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that is very specifically why I created the Monday Mentoring Community of Practice

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because these things are hard.

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It's easy to get lost in the weeds when you're trying to do this work and it

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feels like nothing's working,

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be around other people who can give you the outside perspective that you need

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to get through those hard things so that you can grow as a practitioner and

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keep doing the work that you really want to do to support your community.

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Right. So you can find out more about Monday Mentoring at camillefreeman.com

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slash mondaymentoring.

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And the last thing I'll say is that I have a new podcast page,

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which is intheclinic.com. And

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if you go there, you can find all of the episodes. You can leave a review.

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I have never had before, but you can leave a review on the page and you can

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also leave me a voice message.

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So if you have a question you'd like for me to answer in another podcast episode, I would love to do that.

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Just go to intheclinic.com and there's a little pink button with a microphone on it.

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If you click that, it just lets you record a really fast voice message.

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I will get it and I'll answer your question. So I'm really looking forward to

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hearing from you in that way.

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If you're If you're not a voice message kind of person, you can also message

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me and that would be fine too.

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All right. Thank you so much for listening and I'll talk to you really soon.

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Hello. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I wanted to remind you that I send

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out a practitioner note via email every Thursday with tips and resources that

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help you build your practice and grow as an herbalist or a nutritionist.

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I love putting things in there, books that I've read recently,

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any useful websites that I've

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come across, recipes, little notes of encouragement, that type of thing.

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So if you'd like to get those, you can sign up at intheclinic.com or camillefreeman.com,

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and I would love to see you there.