Transcript
[INTERVIEW]
Ronda Nelson: Well, hello, my friend. Welcome back to The Clinical Entrepreneur podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Ronda Nelson. I’m so glad that you are hanging out with me today. I had a great conversation last week with my friend, Jamie Arnold. She talked about her wacky grandfather, who was so used to being called the Voodoo guy or kind of the wacky guy who did all kinds of crazy things. Which he didn’t like that name, but yet, he was like the old town doctor that just got everybody well. He used supplements we talked about the things he did and what Jamie learned from him in last week’s podcast. If you want to go check that out, you absolutely can, I’ll link it in the show notes, but it is episode number 34, RondaNelson.com/34.
After that interview, it got me thinking. Those of us that are in the wellness or alternative space, we sometimes don’t quite know how to describe what it is that we do. So, we could say things like, I help someone get better by using herbs and nutritional supplements. Okay, that’s a great thing to say, but really, it didn’t say anything. You didn’t provide any value to that person, you just said something that you do, but how do you think that other people are talking about you? What are people in your community saying about you? Last week Dr. Arnold said that she would be riding to school on the school bus and some of the kids on the school bus would say, your grandpa’s a quack. Is that what they say about you? Or have you commanded the narrative about what you do?
First, I want to ask you a few questions. If I were to walk around in your community and ask the people what you do, what would they say? Would they say, “Oh, I don’t know, he does this weird thing where you put your arm out, it’s like this muscle testing weird thing. And I don’t know what it is, but it just kind of works.” Would they say something like that? Or maybe they would say, “Oh, yeah, she helps me with my hormones.” Well, that doesn’t really say anything, either, because everybody’s got hormones.
If that was what your community said, they don’t have a clear definition or a clear understanding about what you do in the world of functional wellness or alternative or holistic medicine. Sometimes I’ve even heard people refer to practitioners as, “Oh, you do that homeopathy stuff, right? You’re a homeopathy guy, right?” And sometimes it’s just their perspective or perception of what we do, although not correct, necessarily, but sometimes there’s a limitation in the way that we communicate about what we do.
Now here’s my challenge to you, think about this, what if you were to ask every single one of your patients over the course of one day, you ask every single one of them, “hey, if you are going to describe what I do, how would you describe that?” Totally legitimate question, right? Fair question. 100% Legit. If someone was going to describe that, how would they say it? I think it’s a valid question to ask your patient. In fact, I would encourage you to do that, because I think the feedback is going to be very telling. Would they say you helped me with my digestion or you helped me feel better or you give me more energy or you give me these herbs that taste bad, but I like them? We’re trying to get to the bottom line of what it is that you do, and how you can communicate that out in the community.
Your patients are your best advertisement, easy to get them to talk about what you do when you make a transformation for them. They’re your best advertisement. If you want them advertising for you, then we better make sure they’re saying the right thing and respecting what you do and repeating what you do correctly. So, sometimes, it’s just because they don’t know how to articulate it. And the reason they don’t know how to articulate it is that we don’t know how to articulate it either.
Now, here’s the exercise I want you to do today. We’re going to get really clear about exactly what it is that you do. Think about it like an elevator pitch. And for those of you that have hung around me before, you’ve heard me say this, and this is going to be old news, but I want you to still keep reading and pay attention. What it is that you say about your practice should be able to fit into a short, concise sentence. It shouldn’t be too long. It doesn’t need to be all drawn out. “Oh, I help people do this, that, the other thing because they need to…” No, no, no, no, no, we don’t want that. We want it short, concise, and to the point. So, it’s like your elevator pitch.
If you were in an elevator with someone, you were going from the first floor to the fifth floor, could you tell them in one short sentence what it is that you do? Most of us would say no, but here’s my challenge for you today, what I want you to do is I want you to think about how you can create your “elevator pitch.” It goes something like this… “I help _________”. So, you would fill in the blank, I help ______, do _______. So, they can ________ and ________. It’s very simple. So, you might say I help mothers with digestive issues, so they can not worry about bloating, and they can always fit into their jeans. That’s a really bad example, but you get what I’m saying.
So what would it be? Who do you help? And you’ve heard me talk about this so many times about the importance of determining your niche. Who are the people that you absolutely love, love, love to serve? Like your hair lights on fire, woo-hoo. You love serving these people, who are they? Are they people that have a certain type of condition, like they are only Hashimoto’s patients or they’re only SIBO patients, or they’re only Lyme disease or GERD, whatever it is? Is it around a specific type of condition that you like to serve, those are the people that you want to help? Or it might be that you’re trying to help them achieve something.
Whatever the type of patient is that you love, love, love serving, that’s what goes in your sentence. Who are you serving? I help women with hormone problems, I help people who are constipated. Don’t say that on your website, you’ll get censored, but you get what I’m saying. I help ________, who is that person? What is that condition?
It’s kind of really a different way to talk about your niche or your specialty. Now, in that journey from the bottom floor to the fifth floor, you want to be able to rattle that off and pique someone’s curiosity enough that they might say, “really? I didn’t know that you could help GERD, I didn’t know that you could fix that thing.” Whatever that thing is you do. The point is you want to start having a conversation. Now, once you figure out your I help ________, do ________ sentence or some version of that, you can start repeating it. Now, you control the narrative about what people say about you.
You tell your staff, I help people with digestive issues, I help women with digestive issues, I help women with thyroid issues, I help men with ED issues, whatever your thing is, I help ________, do ________. Now, when you have that down and you know, in general, this isn’t super specific, but you have it down kind of in general, now you’re going to tell your staff that. Now, when someone calls your office, and they say, “Well, so what does Dr. So and so do?” Boom, your staff can say, “Dr. So and so helps ________, do ________.” Done. Easy-peasy. You got it nailed. Now all of a sudden, that becomes your little elevator pitch or your spiel or your tagline. Sometimes, we think about it like that because that is the way that you’re going to be able to represent yourself in your community and the way that your community will begin to talk about you. It’s kind of like the cliff notes version of your practice, except in a really short sentence.
Find out who it is you love to serve, and what you help them do, I help ________, do ________. You help women with thyroid issues, that then becomes the way that your patients and your community will talk about your practice, because without having that type of little tagline or little elevator pitch, people are going to go off and they’re going to start talking about all the weird, wacky stuff you do. It doesn’t matter if you are muscle testing, or you have an EAV, or a heart sound recorder, whatever your equipment is, it doesn’t matter, what matters is the result. I help ________, do ________, I help women feel better. Now all of a sudden, when you’re clear about it and you can articulate that to your patients, they get clear about it. And if your patients are your best advertisers, then by golly, that ought to be where you put your focus to make sure that they are representing you well in your community to their friends. Now everybody’s clear about what you do and sometimes, even more importantly, what you don’t do. We want to control the narrative, right? Basically, we want to control what people are saying in a way that allows them to represent you well, to their friends, their family, and in the community.
So, if you aren’t quite sure how to get started with that tagline or your elevator pitch, I want you to go back to episode number 4. I talk about this episode all the time, RondaNelson.com/4. And that’s where I talk about how to find your niche, because if you’re having trouble with your elevator pitch, being able to control that narrative in the community, what people are saying about you, might be because you’re not quite sure who it is that you really want to serve. I think that’s a very important aspect.
And remember, depending on where you live, if you’re in a metropolitan city or you’re in a little country town, there might be a practitioner on every corner, or you might be the only person in town. I guess it kind of depends on whether you want to be known as the wacky doctor or that alternative guy, or they just do weird stuff over there, but it works. If you are okay with that, I guess that’s great, but I think it would be good if you had a little bit more of a concise definition about what it is that you do. When we start doing making this up, we start saying I help ________, do ________, I can tell you the imposter syndrome is going to show up, it always does. And it’s that little voice that says, “well, what right do you have to say that, because there’s someone else down the street that does the same thing. They are better at it than I am, so I shouldn’t say that. I’m just going to step back, I’m going to kind of lean back, I’m not going to make too much of a splash in the puddle, I’m just going to do my thing.” No, my friend, it’s time for you to stand up, say what you do well, and be super proud of it.
And if you need help on the clinical side, if you’re supporting female hormones, or you are working with thyroid or Hashimoto’s, or whatever, if you need help on the clinical side, go to RondaNelson.com/ClinicalAcademy, and get on the waitlist for the Clinical Academy because that’s where you can learn all those clinical skills unedited, uncensored, real-time clinical information from yours truly. I just share with you what I’ve done over these 15, almost 20 years in clinical practice to help thousands and thousands of patients, and I just basically tell you how to do it.
So, Clinical Academy is where you want to be RondaNelson.com/ClinicalAcademy. It’s only open twice a year. It’s coming up very, very soon. So, if you’re needing a little bit of sharpening in the clinical area, this is going to be the place you’re definitely going to want to go. However, thank you so much for joining me. See you next week. Bye for now.
[END]
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