85 | How to Explain What you Do as an Herbalist or Nutritionist

0:00 Hi there. Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I'm an herbalist and nutritionist. And in this podcast, I share little tips and tidbits that might be helpful for other practitioners. Today, I want to talk to you about a revelation that came to me when I was teaching a workshop not too long ago. So, this workshop was about how to describe what you do. And if you've been in clinical or healing work for any period of time, you will know that the answer to the question, oh, what do you do, is absolutely challenging. It seems like such an easy thing. You know, it's one sentence, usually, maybe two, maybe three at the very most that you need to come up with to answer that question. And a lot of us tend to fumble it.

0:43 We don't always have a great answer. And sometimes we look back and we think, oh, that wasn't really the right thing to say. It didn't feel great coming. You know, it sounded too formal or it sounded a little weird or people looked at me and kind of backed away or whatever. So anyway, this is an ongoing issue that comes up. You know, I've been doing this work for 20 years. I've thought about it a lot, been mentoring other people for at least 10, maybe more years. And I've talked about this a lot. I have a lot of opinions. I have a lot of strategies and tips and things like that. So anyway, I was putting together this workshop, coming up with my slides, organizing my thoughts, etc., etc. And felt like, okay, I've got a lot of useful things to offer here.

1:24 However, when I did the presentation, I had people there live. I always love it when people come live because there's questions and comments and things like that in the chat, which I like to watch as I am teaching and respond to in real time. I feel like it's more of a conversation and I can modify the class based on what's there. And one of the things I think is really cool about teaching is that sometimes people. At least for me, the way my brain is working when I'm teaching, I can see things or put pieces together in a way that I can't when I'm just thinking about teaching or preparing a class. And that happened during this class. Okay, so I was teaching it, and I'm seeing these questions come in, and I'm seeing people putting examples in the chat for us to give feedback on about how they might describe what they do after hearing some of my thoughts.

2:14 And all of a sudden, I realized something that I hadn't realized before, which is that one of the reasons answering the question, what do you do, is so hard for people is because many of us do multiple things, right? Some of us are herbalists and we're nutritionists, or we are herbalists, but we do clinical herbalism and we run an apothecary and we do herb walks. Or maybe you are a nutritionist And you also have a job job that has nothing to do with nutrition because you are an analyst or you teach kindergarten or whatever else. So I was like, oh, I think one of the issues people are having, which was becoming clear to me by the chat questions in this Zoom presentation, is that people are trying to be really thorough in a way that if you were writing an about me page or a resume or something, you would absolutely want to include all the components of what you do.

3:11 Your various trainings and your, you know, background in different professions and that sort of thing. And I was like, oh, this is a real hang up for people. Because if you try to describe everything you do in this one sentence in a casual social situation, either you're going to hog all the space because it's going to take you five minutes to fully flesh out each of these things, or all you have time to do is just list off a bunch of credentials or words that don't really mean a lot to people. And so it came to me as I was teaching, I was like, oh, I see. And I think I've known this, but it hadn't come into words or clicked together for me exactly in this way.

3:52 Like, oh, I think a helpful and useful piece of advice would be don't try to describe everything you do in answer to this question in a conversation, on a website, in a written form. Amazing. Do what you want to do. But in a social setting, if somebody asks you what you do, my advice is to pick one piece of something that you do that is most relevant or potentially most interesting to the person you're talking to. So I'll give you an example. I'm actually a very good example of this because Bloom & Grow, right now, the main thing I do at Bloom & Grow is continuing education for herbalists and nutritionists. I have the Monday Mentoring Community of Practice, which I think of under the continuing education umbrella.

4:37 And that's a big part of what I do. However, I also have my own clinical practice, where I work with fertility and menstrual health. I also run the free clinic, where we see people with all kinds, you know, who knows, whatever people show up with. And I also, a very small part of what I do is giving classes and presentations for, you know, outside organizations. Like, you know, we just did one for a bunch of social workers, and I sometimes teach at other schools or universities or things like that. So I have all these components of what I do. And if I tried, if somebody asked me, oh, what do you do? And I was like, oh, well, I run a small business where we offer continuing education programs for nutritionists and herbalists. And I have a clinical practice where I do this.

5:17 And I sometimes I teach, like, I'm just going on and on and people are going to just drift away because I'm just sucking up too much. Too much energy, and it's hard for people to grasp onto any one thing enough to keep a conversation going. So what I do, and again, I hadn't really thought about consciously that I do this until I was teaching this presentation, but it is true that this is what I do, is that I will answer differently depending on who I'm talking to. So if it is just a sort of generic business setting, I will just say, I run a small business offering continuing education for herbalists and nutritionists. And if they want to ask more into it, amazing. And if not, you know, whatever. If I am in a clinical setting where people are, you know, most people are practitioners, where I'm around doctors or nurse practitioners or whatever else, I will say, you know, I'm a herbalist and nutritionist and I work with people who, you know, on fertility and menstrual health.

6:11 So both of those things are true. It's not a full and complete picture of everything I do, but it doesn't need to be. Because again, I can throw additional information into the conversation if we keep talking. You know, I could say, I'm an author and I just wrote a book. There's a hundred things that I could say in response to what I do. And all I'm doing is just picking one, picking one or maybe two things to put into the conversation based on what I think would be most interesting or useful to the person I'm talking to. So anyway, that's something that came to me. And I thought this was a really cool example of how teaching, I feel like your brain is working a little bit differently when you're teaching something.

6:52 And when you're in conversation, when you're in that energy of really being present with the people who are there and paying attention, sometimes when somebody asks you a question, it's been my experience that things will come out of my mouth that I'm like, oh, I know that to be true, but I've never said it before. I've never said it like that. before. And all of a sudden, again, it like clicks things into place. And that's one of the things I love so much about teaching is that it can bring out of us things that were there but buried. So anyway, I think the point of this podcast is number one, little tip for describing what you do, which is you don't have to say every single thing that you do in a conversational setting, just pick one.

7:33 And if the others come up later, great. If not, you haven't lied, and it's no problem. So that's one piece of it. And then the other piece of it is just a comment or a reflection on how teaching can be a way to. Clarify our own philosophy and to bring forth things that we hadn't seen before, especially when you are doing live teaching, where you have the absolute privilege of interacting with people who are listening and engaging in what you're saying. So anyway, big shout out to everybody who came live to the workshop. Thank you so much. And people who come live to any of my workshops, I'm always so grateful, even though I know it's not always possible. And I love that recordings are available.

8:15 But anyway, there's something really special about going live to things. And anyway, I hope that's helpful. Just wanted to share that with you today. If you have any questions, please reach out and let me know. I'd love to hear your feedback on the podcast. Or if there's anything you would like me to cover here, I would be more than happy to answer your question. You can go to intheclinic.com and leave a question. Or if you'd like to join my newsletter for practitioners, which goes out every Thursday, you can go to camillefreeman.com slash newsletter or just go to intheclinic.com and join the newsletter from there. All right, thank you for listening and I'll be back soon.