Tammy: Mm. Yeah. Well, before we begin, I did mention to my youngest today that I was going to come on the podcast, and they said, “Oh, so what are you gonna talk about?” I said, “Oh, diversifying your income as a practitioner.” And they said, “Oh, snooze-fest.” And to be honest, when I first started to consider, like, the terminology of diversifying, and the terminology of income, and all these business terms, many of us as practitioners have never actually, you know, had that conversation. We haven’t been in that conversation. We’ve been in biological conversations. We’ve been in physiological conversations. We’ve been in even, you know, spiritual conversations with our clients and things, but the business conversation can be a little bit, “Oh, I don’t know about all this.” So, I’m hoping we can, you know, start to unpack it a little bit, so that we can be a little bit more literate when it comes to our business, and set ourselves up for success, even when times get tough. And to your question about traditional practice, this is the thing. We usually sit in front of one other client in front of us, across a desk, or right next to us in our clinic room. We have a one-on-one consultation, an initial consult, maybe a follow-up. And very occasionally, we have a supplement or a herb or something else that’s really specific for them, and then they go on their way. And when it comes to the income side of things for that, it’s dependent on how many people come into your door, how many people you can fit in a day, and what particular access you have to beneficial medicines for the people that are in front of you. So, there’s a lot of caps on that type of way of doing business.

Andrew: So, first off, just with traditional business, the traditional business model, looking at some statistics on revisitation by initial clients and that sort of thing, and how to be successful, if you like, in the traditional business model, is part of the issue there that we don’t set concrete management goals, if you like, or request, if you like, from patients, to say, “I want to see you again in four weeks. This amount of herbs,” or whatever. “We’ll see you in four weeks. I want to see you in four weeks, at the outlier, if everything’s going well, and sooner if things aren’t going well, because I want to track you.” Is that part of this issue about, even the need to diversify?

Tammy: Yeah. So, that’s probably one of the first places that we look, in a way of ensuring that we’re looking after… There’s four Ps, really, that we need to look after. One is people. We need access to people. So, the amount of people that we see, and what that actually can look like, and how frequently we see those people. So, that’s what you’re touching on there. Number two is our profile. Ensuring that people know that we exist is really important. And if we’re hidden, and don’t have a website, we don’t have a shingle out the front of our building, those types of things, then we’re not going to be seen or heard, and people aren’t going to necessarily refer to us, because our profile isn’t available for people to access us. The third one is profit. And some people, especially in the business world, would put that first. But I know, being a practitioner myself, profit, yes, it keeps our business going. And in the long run, it’s the thing that actually enlivens our life, enriches the experiences that we can have as a person outside of being a practitioner. But profit is really important as well. And we’ll touch on that a little bit more later. And the profitability of each of the things that we’re doing is dependent on the people that we see, the profile that we have, and then the peace of mind that we have and they have. And so, peace of mind kind of encompasses duty of care and other things like that, which gives us a direction to go with clients who are with us, to ensure that we are giving them duty of care, that the herbs that we hand over are going to last three to four weeks. And technically, we should be doing our best to ensure that they have access to those medicines, and they’re properly cared for and maintained that level of connection and that level of contact, to ensure a duty of care and a continuity of care while we’re assessing their symptomology and their status, so that we can continue to care for them longer-term. Yeah.

Andrew: Sorry, fourth P?

Tammy: Oh, peace of mind. So we’ve got, in total, we’ve got people, we have profile, we have profit, and we have peace of mind. Yeah. So, anything that we do in business, we want to ensure that we’ve got at least one of those at the forefront, a primary reason for what we’re doing. And then the others tend to follow, and whether it is the amount of people that you want to impact, it is ensuring that your profile is high enough and you’re getting your message out to enough people that they wanna continue to hear from you or access you, is, one of our principles as naturopathic practitioners is a doctor as teacher, and profile is one of those ones. Then we’ve got profit, and ensuring that you’re not necessarily putting all your eggs in one basket, for instance. You’re not only just seeing one-on-one clients. You have another way of doing that, just in case we have another pandemic or something random comes up. We never really had that on the bingo card, but there it was. And having all those eggs in one basket kind of set back a few practitioners, because there wasn’t access to other things. And then that final one is peace of mind. And I really feel like peace of mind, like I mentioned, it can encompass your duty of care, but it can also encompass your values and why you’re picking particular products, your values and whether your business model actually aligns with the way you love to connect with people and do business. Hmm.

Andrew: Cool. So, diversifying. We could also say future-proofing, with respect to what happened with the pandemic, but with diversifying, that can be very fearful. Take us through how you teach people to, I mean, look, first overcome their fear, but then also get started. How do they find what even to diversify into?

Tammy: Mm. One of the things that I find, for the people that I help anyway, and I’ve mentored a couple of thousand practitioners at this stage, they actually have a tendency to overthink, actually have a lot of ideas about what to diversify into. And it’s actually the flip side of, it’s harder to actually pick the one thing to actually take a next step in diversification than it is to come up with any. And there is a fear that the unknown of diversifying, whether it is bringing on a new product line that you haven’t had access to before, whether it is getting into the online space, getting into the teaching space. Many practitioners who have been in practice for over a decade, it’s now they’re kind of mentoring time as well. And figuring out that there is a way of, again, reaching more people, making sure that your profile’s higher, getting that profit, and having peace of mind. All of those things are unknown because you haven’t had access to those before. And so it’s really easy to stick with the known. But generally, what we find is there’s a couple of symptoms that come up when you think, “Oh, I think maybe it’s time to diversify a little bit. Maybe I could make that e-course. Maybe I could do that speaking gig. Maybe there’s something else in there.”

That timing comes with a couple of symptoms. One of those symptoms is knowing it, like, starting to consider it, because it wouldn’t have come into your frame of reference had it have not been for you in the first place. The second one is getting purely burnt out. I see it time and time again, that practitioners have a tendency to get compassion fatigue, do the same thing over and over again. And the season for that particular way of doing business has come to its completion, and then we start to diversify. And the final one is starting to notice what other people are doing. There’s a comparisonitis. “Oh, they’re doing that. Hmm. I could do that,” or, “I could do that better. Oh, maybe I could hop up on a stage. Oh, maybe I could run a podcast. Oh, maybe I could teach my community about whatever, X, Y, or Z condition, but I could do it through videos or some other medium.” It’s a three-pronged kind of thing that these symptoms come up at a particular time. And then the fear becomes less because the curiosity becomes more.

Andrew: Ah, fear versus curiosity. So, okay. Fostering curiosity, to mitigate fear.

Tammy: Yeah, definitely.

Andrew: You know, when you’re in a fearful state, the curiosity seems rather small. How do you actually lessen the fear while increasing the curiosity? How do you get to that state?

Tammy: Turn the volume up on the curiosity. Just make it louder. The thing about fear is it’s always going to be there. And I remember having a conversation like this a few years back, at one of my conferences, that fear is always going to be there, but it’s whether you let it in the driver’s seat or you let it be the passenger with you, along for the ride. Fear is really great. It’s really important. It tries to keep you safe. It’s done a really good job of keeping you safe and keeping you in your comfort zone your entire life. But when we push up against our comfort zone, fear goes, “Ooh. Just a reminder, you’ve been doing it this way for a really long time. Don’t go thinking you’re gonna have to change anything, because that’ll step us outside our comfort zone.” And if we let that take the wheel, or in my case, the helicopter, the rudder of the helicopter, I also fly helicopters, so I know a lot about fear, and that fear can actually overcome when you’re only listening to it. But when you start to get curious about why that fear is there in the first place, then you start to give it a job, set it in the passenger seat, tell it it’s ready, it’s fine, we’re gonna try something different, and then get truly curious about who you’re serving, how you’re serving them better, how you’re taking care of yourself and your peace of mind better, and how you can actually make profit from that, then we change the entire dynamic, because you’re starting to get curious and finding open questions, and trying to find answers for those questions in your business.

Andrew: Let’s take your helicopter analogy. When you first, for instance, I don’t know if you’ve done this, but have you practiced a stall, mid-flight?

Tammy: Oh, yeah.

Andrew: Right. So, you had an instructor there.

Tammy: A stall. We’ve landed with no engine. Yep, yep.

Andrew: Yeah. So, you had an instructor there…

Tammy: Yeah.

Andrew: …to guide you, should everything go awry.

Tammy: Yeah.

Andrew: How important is it to have an instructor, a mentor for you, when you’re choosing to diversify?

Tammy: Absolutely. When you’re learning anything, not just a helicopter, but plenty of people have learned to drive cars. If you just chuck yourself in a car by yourself, how are you gonna know even what a pothole feels like? You know? Not any of the big, crash-a-car kind of scenarios, even a pothole. When you start to go, “Oh, what is that dark dip there? Oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh” You know. And when you’ve got a mentor, or a guide sitting with you, they can literally point out the potholes, and help you start to notice when patterns are occurring that you can avoid, or how to handle it when it comes up. And not doing it alone, especially in that first area, or when you’re trying to change up something… So, in the helicopter world, we get our initial private pilot’s license, but if we’re trying to change it up and go for the instrument rating on our helicopters, we then need an instructor again. So, yes, you can absolutely do it alone, but it is scary, and it is hard to do until you get those skills and get to understand what’s coming up, and then you’re able to move through it, and have a bit more experience at it. Hm.

Andrew: You were mentioning peace of mind earlier. What about looking after yourself when you are diversifying? Because it’s gonna be added stress. It’s gonna be extra time and learning new things, and that’s going to drain one’s energy. How do you look after looking after your energy, and that work-life balance, which is just so important?

Tammy: Yeah. So, we had a recent experience in our profession where many people are starting to diversify and change up their dispensaries, with practitioner-only products and things like that. And when, even considering bringing on board and doing the research for a new product to prescribe to your clients, that takes time. It takes energy. It takes effort. It takes research. We’re looking at excipients, and we’re looking at quantities, and we’re looking at combinations. And when we’re trying to even apply one brand against another, that time could be taken up seeing clients, which gets you money, right? And a similar kind of scenario, even if it’s not just changing your products over, it’s changing your income streams over from one-on-one, to then creating, say, an e-course or a program or a package, where you are providing videos or webinars, and teaching people about their health and their well-being. That is going to take time out of what you would usually, in your old kind of way of thinking, is actually seeing clients and helping them and being profitable.

The thing about all of those is you’re only doing that once. Once you’ve done the research to ensure that you have peace of mind about what you’re going to be prescribing your clients because you’ve done the research and you know that you’re confident in those products, or you have done the one webinar that’s been recorded, and then you can share it with multiple people, you’ve actually only had to go through that experience of fatigue and a little bit of worry and a little bit of not quite sure, and taking that time up once, because then you can replicate it time and time again, and you feel confident in what you’ve actually done. You also learn a lot, by either diversifying your product suite or diversifying your methodology to work with people, it changes the way that you have learnt you’re able to pivot. It changes the way you’ve learnt you’re able to teach people certain things. And moving forward, those things, it kind of is exponential, because you’re building and building and building on top of that change that you’ve created.

Andrew: I’m glad you mentioned e-courses, developing an e-course, developing a collateral, if you like, and investing that time into it. So, can I ask, through your many years now of being a mentor, and helping other people to be entrepreneurial, what do you think the investment in time in, let’s say an e-course, the investment in time developing an e-course, versus the return on investment, of developing that e-course, is? Do you have any stats? Have you ever looked at this, you know, really coldly, from a mathematical perspective, what that ROI is?

Tammy: So, it really depends on the person, and it depends on their situation. But, no, I would love to do the stats on that. That’s a really genius idea. I might write that down. Thanks. Great idea, Andrew. But, what we’ve seen is the people who are natural teachers, and this is the thing. If you’re a practitioner, we’re still all individuals, so we have a unique way of practicing, and we have unique strengths and gifts and talents in the way that we practice, and some of us are, you know, really empathic. We’ll hold people’s hands, we’ll be there in their darkest moments as they cry, as they pass on, things like that. Some of us are built to teach. And it is, again, part of our naturopathic principles, those six/seven principles that we all attribute to, and doctor as teacher, whether we do that one-on-one across the table, or we do that en masse, by continuing to even put out small social media posts and things like that, an e-course is a really great way of creating a container to hold all of that knowledge and share it, that wisdom, while you’re not there. And the thing about that is, if somebody has a tendency to have already taught, created a PowerPoint presentation, done any type of assignment in their qualification, it’s very likely that you have the opportunity to create an e-course that could be powerful for multiple people.

I have seen practitioners that have spent one weekend recording the entirety of their course, and then, the following month, launch it and sell it for, have enough people buy into that course for $68,000 worth of profit. And to do that, it takes a commitment to do that, but I don’t think we have enough conversations about that it is possible, that if you were just to commit to creating something that was of value, and you do that once, this course was made on one weekend, and then every time that person wants to share that wisdom with another group of people, it comes back up again, and he sells it again, and similar kind of scenario happens, because we’ve continually got people who are googling health symptoms anyway, but if you can become a trusted advisor, and create a course that is actually valuable and useful for people, you only have to do it once, and then it is available over and over again, which is very different to us teaching across the table to one person in front of us, and having to teach it again, and the amount of times I drew a picture of the gastrointestinal lining, and the gut wall, and how IgA works, and how probiotics work, and how, you know, we’re gonna… Zonulin, just sneaking on through there. The amount of times I drew that across the table, and it didn’t occur to me over those seven years to actually have recorded it until right at the end of my time running a full-time clinic. And once I did, it was then available to so many more people, and then packaging that up means that so many more people can have it in a course format that’s useful for them.

Andrew: Do you know, something from the patient perspective as well. How many times do patients, we teach patients, if you like, about, you know, leaky gut syndrome… Oh, I shouldn’t use that word. That’s wrong. Leaky gut. Not leaky gut syndrome. There’s no syndrome. Thank you, Brad Leech. So, having a leaky gut, having intestinal permeability, or hyper-permeability, I’m being correct. And then that’s just in one small snippet of information, even though you’ve explained it, their vernacular is that they go home, somebody, like their partner, says, “What’s wrong?” and they go, “The naturopath says I’ve got holes in my gut.”

Tammy: Yep.

Andrew: Can be a different… Japanese whispers, Chinese whispers. So, having a collateral, that one can revisit, i.e. purchasing an e-course provided by a naturopath, gives them a re-learning experience when they forget what was learnt in the initial space.

Tammy: Absolutely.

Andrew: So, it’s a win-win situation.

Tammy: Mm, mm. And there’s so many times that we have clients that come to us and go, “Why didn’t we get taught this at school?” I’ve heard it from so many practitioners, that their clients come in, and I definitely had it personally as well, “Why didn’t we get taught this at school? And I wanna teach my kids, and I wanna…” But they, like you said, don’t have the words for it, don’t have the terminology, don’t have the ease in which… We all have a way of explaining these things that resonates with our particular clients, and that’s why they come and see us, and finding that as a, you know, a container, whether it’s an e-course, or you sell it as a package, or you have a group that you take through an understanding of their journey, of their particular condition, we’re seeing a big rise in perimenopausal education at the moment, and some of the courses that I’ve seen on it are fantastic because they’re taking people from this unknown, “What am I gonna do? I don’t quite understand these symptoms. Are they symptoms of perimenopause? I can’t possibly be here yet. Is it? Isn’t it?” Da, da da, da day, to, “Ah. Maybe it is. Ah. There’s something I can do about it. Ah. There’s something I can do nutritionally. Ah. There’s something I can do hormonally. Ah. There’s something I can do from a stress and lifestyle perspective.”

And you’re taking people from that unknown, sorry, known, of what they’re doing, to, into that unknown area, and making it become known for them. And if you can take them as a group, especially this perimenopausal kind of crowd at the moment, they’re not feeling alone in it, and so that’s kind of the next stage after you’ve created a webinar or an e-course. You can actually create a hybrid-style package or program that you can collect a group of people, and take them on the journey of actually starting to understand, setting them little goals, setting them actionables, and getting them to start to collectively move through it, so that they don’t feel alone in this health journey that you’re taking them on.

Andrew: So, what other ways can we diversify, though? Look, we talk about e-courses here, but some naturopaths, for instance, they might diversify from the traditional, orally-ingested supplements to maybe using a piece of equipment, like pain management, for instance.

Tammy: Absolutely.

Andrew: What other ways, though, can we diversify? What have you seen?

Tammy: Mm. So, I could go on for days, whether it is product-based or service-based. So, that’s a good delineation to start off with. Product-based we generally see, traditionally, that people will have a herbal dispensary, dispense out. But we’re starting to see a lot more compounding of nutritional compounds, which is creating personalized medicine, instead of, or as an adjunct to, some of our already pre-made supplements from our practitioner-only brands. Then we have creating your own medicines. And so, we’re starting to see a little bit of a re-embracing of the more traditional balms and salves, and pessaries, and, you know, even sniffer boxes for people with colds and flus, and having different herbs and menthol and things like that in these. And so we’re seeing a bit of a resurgence of that homesteading type of remedies. Then, as you mentioned, pain devices, things like, you know, USB’ed heat packs, TENS machines. Other machines that are going to enable you to have immediate testing, onsite testing, is another way of connecting with people and diversifying what you’re doing from a product base.

Then, from a service base, we start to see a lot more in the one…instead of one-to-one, we see a lot of one-to-many type of services. So, we’re starting to see ebooks, downloadable PDFs. We’re starting to see webinars, one-off trainings. Then we’re going into the e-course space, programs, which are hybridized packages of seeing clients multiple times. We’re starting to see people writing books. It’s so much more accessible if you have a book hidden in there, if you’re a practitioner listening, you have a book hidden in there. The old publishing model is being broken up at the moment, and so there is hybridized models of writing books. We’re seeing speaking. We’re seeing appearing on podcasts. We’re seeing creating your own podcast that then have, you know, off the back end of that, selling e-courses and other things. And then, in the offline space, so, there’ll be people listening, going, “Oh, I don’t do any of that stuff on the internet.” And that’s totally cool because that’s all coming back around where we connect to our communities, which means, again, we’re creating groups and group programs out… And we’re speaking in, you know, we’re really wanting to connect when, in speaking at live events, and off the back of that, we’re creating smaller group programs or VIP experiences, like retreats, and conferences, and events, and we’re starting to see some really nuanced events, where a lot of natural health practitioners are connecting people in wonderful natural spaces, whether it’s going to hot springs and having a weekend away, or having a day retreat at their particular clinic, or having something out at a winery and other places. We’re starting to see some really interesting ways people are connecting and diversifying, to get the message out about health and well-being.

Andrew: That’s an interesting thing you say about the venues. You know, normally, we say, “I’m going to be holding a course, and it’s gonna be at my place,” and “here, you come to me.” Now, it’s the practitioners going to the people.

Tammy: Yes. Absolutely. And, you know, when you think about it from an adult learning perspective, being in a different environment really impacts the way that our neurology works, so, the way that we’re connecting synapses and new ideas, is a peaceful, more different space. It’s going to change the way that we’re thinking. And it’s a great thing to be able to be present to so many more practitioners hopping up on beautiful stages. I’ve literally been seeing people appearing at wineries, or stunning wedding venues that turn into, you know, these women’s events, and beautiful herbal flower arrangements and things like that, and it’s really becoming permeated in our culture that natural health, herbs, nutrition, can be a lifestyle choice. Yeah.

Andrew: So, I was going to ask about keeping pace with trend. You know, we’ve seen an online trend. But I totally get your point, that we’ve seen after COVID, is people want to reconnect personally. Interesting thing, so that, you know, for instance, years ago, when I used to work with a commercial entity, when webinars were just coming on, trying to get somebody to attend a webinar was like pulling hen’s teeth. Now, it’s gone…I won’t say it’s gone back to, but it’s much more accepted that webinars are going to be a part of it, but there are practitioners that really have a demand for that one-on-one or that personal contact, so companies, for instance, are providing hybridized events. And it just seems to be the new, the new black, do I say?

Tammy: Absolutely. And I think there’s something that’s shifted since the pandemic. Not only were we forced to go to telehealth, and forced to go to other options, like webinars teleseminars, etc. There is a level of inclusion and diversity awareness that means that we are making things accessible. By “we,” I mean, I run conferences as well, so, making things accessible to neurodivergent peeps, making it accessible to people in rural areas, who wouldn’t usually be able to access that level of connection through conferences. Making things accessible to people who don’t have the income to fly to a particular area. So, that hybridized version, where you still have people in person, who really wanna connect, and we have a very empathic, nurturing profession, so, we do wanna be around people. But also, we have a lot of learners, and people who do live remotely, who wanna be part of that as well. And so, we are in a really great space to be able to provide all of that now, because technology has kept up with that trend as well, so we’re able to kind of do that in a way that we haven’t been able to before. And I think practitioners who are considering running their own events need to kind of have an awareness that that is something that you can do too, and it becomes a much more inclusive experience, in a way that we haven’t seen before. Yeah.

Andrew: Can I ask about, what about when things don’t go right? When things really just are not right for you to go that way? There’s the old adage about “never give up. Keep going, whatever, come what may.” However, I’m reminded by a talk on, indeed, that topic, you know, keep going. But what I noticed of the speaker, and it was, he was, on a client, an ascent to Everest. And they had a landslide. Oh, sorry. A snow slide. But they had an avalanche. And what happened was, this guy was, kept on going, kept on wanting to turn back, but forcing himself forward. But there was a stage where he turned around, down, and when he turned back, his friends ahead of him were gone, in the avalanche. He lost his friends.

Tammy: Yeah.

Andrew: Right?

Tammy: Yeah.

Andrew: Horrific. But, what’s the point? Is the point to keep going? I don’t think so. I think the point of that is that every now and again, we need to reassess where we’re at. And it’s no, there’s no shame in going, “You know what? I really suck at that. I should not be doing that. I should be doing this.”

Tammy: Absolutely.

Andrew: And that reassessment is part of it. So, when is it the point to say, “Listen. This isn’t working. I need to do something else.” When do you teach people, or how do you teach people about stopping?

Tammy: Yeah. So, I love that you’ve brought this up. It’s something that many of us, because we want to excel, and we’ve been through qualifications where it is rewarded that we excel at the things that we’re learning and that we’re researching, that we’re trying to do, that we have a tendency in our profession to get burnout. And that burnout can come in the running of trying to chase after a dream that may not be the one that’s most in alignment for us. And in doing so, that changes everything because you aren’t there for the people, you don’t get the profit, you aren’t there for your peace of mind, and your profile, you know, you go into hiding. You turn into a little, you know, a little cave person. And the thing about that is, one, know that you’re not alone in doing it. Two, if you’re starting to diversify, and you don’t want all your eggs in one basket, but you don’t want one egg in each basket, to, enough that you’re holding all of these eggs, and all of these baskets, and it only takes one moment to drop one basket, and the egg, and then everything falls to poo.

So, there is somewhere in between, that will feel good for you, but if you do find yourself in that zone, like you said, that this climber found themselves in, that there is an intuition, a nudge, things aren’t working the way that they were working before, what I tend to talk to my mentees about is that that’s there for a reason or a season. And so, if you have been trying and trying and trying at a particular diversification, whether it is an e-course or whether you’ve been trying to relaunch something or push, and it’s not working the way it did before, and you’re feeling burnt out, and you can’t figure out why, and then all of the patients slow down and all of that kind of stuff, stop. And what I really love is a radical sabbatical. So, taking a whole weekend off. Not thinking about work, not Or, take a whole week. And if you’ve been in practice a long time, a radical sabbatical actually means taking a whole month off. Just block out your calendar, let it go, and then let go of each different part of what’s actually causing the tension in you. So, energetically, in your mind, let go of the e-course, let go of the launch, let go of the e…you know, let go of those treatment plans, let go of the…let go of all of them. Put them all on the ground, and unpack that backpack you’ve been carrying around with you, that luggage, that baggage, just drop it all down, take a breather, and then take each one up about, once at a time, and start to look at it for what it is. It giving me peace of mind? Is it giving me the profitability? Is it giving me the people connection that I’m looking for, or is it giving me the profile build that I need?

And if it’s not, just pop it down again, and pick up the next thing. Is this…? And going through the lens of that, in each different one, because it can be so overwhelming sometimes, with all of the different things that you could diversify in, and carrying all that around is actually going to cause you to stop anyway, and stand in your own way, so strangling it’s not gonna help. So, taking that breather, looking at each for the benefits that they have, as well as the challenges, and then it’s okay to lovingly let go one of the projects that isn’t working for you anymore. You have permission. Just let it go. And something else will come through for you, because you’ve made space for it. Yeah.

Andrew: I know there are people, because I know they’ve told me, that you’ve been screaming at them to write an e-course. I won’t say screaming. But you’ve been constantly at them. And these people have a particular expertise, in a particular condition, which really needs education, good education. I’m gonna be podcasting one of them today after you, indeed. So, how do you, in your courses, teach people, encourage people to say the time is right for you? And it’s not about, if I can change the focus, if you like, instead of saying, “This is gonna get me a return on investment later on. I have to do this for me,” and blah blah blah, rather than that, it’s actually to be of service.

Tammy: Absolutely.

Andrew: Because what they’re gonna be doing is teaching so many other people about their expertise. Is that part of what you teach?

Tammy: Yes. Absolutely. It’s basically the only reason we all got into the profession, was to help somebody. Not to help everybody. To help somebody. And if what you have to say, in the way you have to say it, because of your experiences, and your particular knowledge, and your way of describing things, helps one person, it was worth it. Like, the whole thing was worth it. Because that one person has the opportunity to change something, and by chance, tell somebody else, and they might have to change, have the opportunity to change as well. And that ripple effect is just by you showing up, sharing in your authentic way, in a way that’s helpful, and that ripple effect starts with you actually sharing it. Doesn’t start with your hidden PowerPoint presentation that you’re never gonna show anybody on your computer. It doesn’t start with the little idea that’s been spinning around in your head since the pandemic, that you wanted to start a podcast or a vlog, or that e-course. It doesn’t start with all those things hidden. It starts with you showing up, pretending that little person is in your camera or on your computer, or in your, listening to you in their ear, and you just speak to that one person. It’s bound to change something, and it just won’t change unless you show up for it.

Andrew: Yeah. It’s really interesting. You know, you talk about expertise from personal experience, and some practitioners, usually orthodox, might denigrate that, but it’s really interesting. Time and time again, I see in the orthodox literature how an experience of an orthodox practitioner has changed once they become a patient…

Tammy: Yes. Absolutely.

Andrew: …and have to receive the care. Really interesting. So, you know, for instance, if a female doctor developed polycystic ovarian syndrome, how their experience would change of their expertise, now that they’ve got both that medical training and the experience of a patient. I mean, it’s just mind-boggling how often I’m seeing it.

Tammy: And there’s something to be said about the head and the heart. We are head people, in that we are full of knowledge, and some of us are full of wisdom because of the experiences, but the heart piece comes with sharing your story, sharing it from real depths of… And I have that exact example in my own life, this past two years, Andrew, you know, my understanding of what it is to be a woman in perimenopause came through having to have a hysterectomy because some interesting things were found in my peritoneal cavity. So, it’s, and in doing so, I don’t want somebody else to suffer. And in doing so, it’s not just because I understand the anatomy of the uterus and the ovaries. It’s because I don’t want somebody to suffer the way that I did. I don’t…I want them to find out quicker, and easier, with less pain, and with more ease, and with more empathy and more compassion. And in sharing my story, it could change somebody else’s life, and I feel the same about people creating trainings that exist for that head and heart reason.

Andrew: Tammy, I love your head and your heart, and indeed, you show it every time we speak, and when I see you on stage teaching others and sharing your experiences, and sharing how they can better themselves, and therefore better the outcomes for patients. And I think that’s really what it’s all about. Tammy Guest, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re going to be putting up some interesting things. Can I ask a last question? Where can we learn more? Have you got courses that you teach people on this?

Tammy: I do. I have a library of courses.

Andrew: Yeah.

Tammy: So, if you go to tammyguest.com, there’s a lot of opportunities to interact, whether it’s free mini-courses that I have, especially for new practitioners, or those more seasoned practitioners coming and joining our membership, so that we can, don’t have to do it alone. Or, I do have a couple of conferences coming up. So, you can see it all on that website. Yeah.

Andrew: Beautiful. Tammy Guest, thank you so much for sharing…

Tammy: Thank you so much, Andrew.

Andrew: …not just your wealth of expertise, but your heart. Love it.

Tammy: Thank you so much.

Andrew: And thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Remember, you can get all the show notes to today’s podcast, and the other podcasts, on the Designs for Health website. I’m Andrew Whitfield-Cook. This is “Wellness by Designs.”