87 | Reflections on the Take your Tonic program

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Hi there, welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman.

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I'm an herbalist and nutritionist.

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And in this podcast, I share little tips and tidbits that might be helpful for other practitioners.

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Today I wanted to share a little debrief of a program that just wrapped up last

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month called Take Your Tonic.

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I'll share more about the program in a second here. The reason I wanted to share

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a debrief with you all is because I think a lot of us as clinicians are thinking about,

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classes and courses and how to run programs or offerings in a one-to-many format

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in conjunction with the one-on-one work that we're doing with people.

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And sometimes it's just interesting to kind of get a peek behind the curtain at how these things go.

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So let me share about the program, then I'm going to share some insights or

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some lessons that I learned from running it for the first time.

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So this program, again, it was called Take Your Tonic, and I decided to offer

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the program. I've been wanting to do it for a while.

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I decided to do it, gosh, I don't remember when it started. It was six weeks

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and it just wrapped up last month.

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So anyway, whenever that was, I decided to offer it because I felt like things

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were really hard for a lot of people just with politics and everything going on in the world.

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It's pretty grim out there for many people, at least many people in my circles.

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And I felt like a tonic would be helpful for pretty much everyone, including myself.

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And so I just wanted to put it out there as kind of like an offering for whoever

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came across it, not necessarily as a money-making endeavor, but more as just a.

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What can I do to step up and help with the things that I know how to do.

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So my thinking with the Take Your Tonic program was that because I wanted to

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offer it in that spirit of,

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just helping as much as I could, I decided I was going to make it free.

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And that helped me to take the pressure off a little bit, not having to have it be perfect.

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Instead, I didn't make even a website for it. I just ran it through Practice Better.

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There was a little signup page that kind of talked through the basics of the program.

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And in there, I said, hey, this is a pilot program. I've never done it before.

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It's a little rough around the edges, but it's free. So if you want to take it, you can take it.

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I offered 50 spots in it.

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And the deal with the program was that we were going to meet once,

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talk a little bit about possible spring tonics and how you would choose one.

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We did a little bit of a kind of health constitutional assessment.

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There was no personal advice provided, but the idea was that people would choose

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their own tonic and then they would take it for six weeks as often as they could daily, ideally.

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And then at the end of the six weeks, we would just meet again and see how everybody did.

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So that was the deal. I sent out pre-scheduled emails every Monday just to remind

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people to do it and then a little nudge to check in either with a workbook that

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I provided people or there was a little forum that went with it on I think it

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was Fridays or Saturdays that that went out.

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So that was it. It was very kind of low-key on my end. I took of course took

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some work to set up the program.

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I created the workbook.

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I made the emails. You know I wrote the emails and facilitated in the forum

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but other than that it was really just two hours of live you know meeting via

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zoom and then I took my tonic as well,

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so that was the deal and I was curious to see how it was going to

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go so like I said I offered 50 spots I

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the only advertising I did for it was I just put it in my newsletter as under

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my recommended or upcoming section so I didn't do a full newsletter issue just

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for the tonic program I just put it in there once maybe twice and the whole

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thing filled up so we did get to 50 participants.

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The first live meeting via Zoom was on a Friday at noon, and I think 18 people

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came to that out of 50, not counting myself, and then it was available as a

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recording for folks who couldn't be there live.

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We had a forum, and I think maybe 10-ish, maybe 15 people posted in the forum

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what herb they had chosen, and fewer than that participated in the forum throughout.

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And then at the end, the wrap up, the very last day, we had,

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I think, maybe seven or eight people come to that live session.

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There was a feedback form where I asked people to do an anonymous Google,

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you know, Google form just to give me some feedback on the program.

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And I think 12 people out of 50 completed that.

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So that's those are the facts and now for

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the debrief part of it first of

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all I really enjoyed participating in the program I

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used I chose chamomile tea as my tonic and I did almost

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I missed one day out of the six weeks even though I traveled quite a bit during

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that time but I was pretty consistent the idea was that you're going to pick

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something that was a low barrier to entry something easy something you felt

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like you really could do and for me chamomile tea worked and it It felt really

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good, and I was super glad that I did it.

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The feedback that I got from a lot of people was that it was hard for people to do this.

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Now, I will say that most of the folks who signed up were practitioners.

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Those are the people on my mailing list right now.

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So generally speaking, these folks, most of the 50, at least the ones that I

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knew, were practitioners.

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I think a good number of them probably signed up because it was free and then

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didn't actually get around to doing it.

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Another segment of folks signed up probably

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started and then fell off the bandwagon and then

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a smaller percentage of people kept going

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at least in some form or fashion and got through

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to the end at least having taken their tonic some of

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the time so my thoughts on this how separate

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into two areas one of the areas is

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just from a sort of business component i

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felt like oh gosh maybe it was a little bit of a mistake to

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offer this for free because I think when

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something is free people just sign up for it just because even

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though they don't necessarily think they're going to do it right now

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it just sounds like a good idea so you're like oh it's free why it might as

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well it seems good in your head and then you know reality strikes and it's maybe

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not a good time or you don't you miss the first week and then you feel like

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oh I fell in too far behind or whatever it is so I think in the future even

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though this is not intended to be a big money-making situation In the future,

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what I'm probably going to do is charge a nominal fee, something like $50 or

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something for the six-week program, in the hopes that folks who sign up are

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actually interested in participating and kind of taking it through.

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So I think that's probably something that I took away from this is that even

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though I think of it as a gift and something that I'm hoping will really serve the community,

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that also there does sometimes need to be a little bit of a indication of commitment

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in order to get folks in the program who really do want to be there at this moment in time,

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rather than squirreling it away for the future, which I totally understand.

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And I have that instinct myself.

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So that was a learning for me about how to offer the program and structure it in the future.

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I found that I sent a weekly check-in form just asking people,

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you know, how often did you take your tonic and blah, blah, blah,

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blah, blah. How are you feeling? Anything like that.

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Hardly anybody filled that in. So I realized that that wasn't super helpful,

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although folks did report that they liked the email prompt reminders of just, oh, hey, it's Monday.

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Don't forget to take your tonic if you've fallen off track, etc.,

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etc. So anyway, I'll probably keep the emails and skip the form going forward.

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And then the workshop, the workbook will be an optional continuation.

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We'll probably do this again in the fall.

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And I probably, if I do charge for it, I will probably offer some sort of,

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you know, if this is truly unaffordable for you, there will be some sort of

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scholarship or something like that for folks.

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But I think I'm going to require some sort of payment in the future just to

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make sure that people are going to do it who really want to do it.

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The folks who did complete it, even partially, I think found it really helpful.

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And the other thing I wanted to share with you, which I think is relevant as

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a practitioner, is that it became really clear to me how hard it is to do something consistently.

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And, you know, this, again, it was designed to be something that was easy, fun.

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I encourage people to do something that tasted good or that was felt like a

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treat or something you really wanted to do, something very simple.

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So hopefully most people, when they decided on a tonic, chose something along those lines.

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And even then, this was, you know, I was like, no, we're not going to do any

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combo infusion decoction situations.

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You know, hopefully it's not going to be something that tastes terrible and

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you never want to do again.

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But really something that felt accessible and lovely.

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And even then, most people had trouble doing it.

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And again, these are practitioners. These are folks who believe in,

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you know, integrative and holistic medicine, who understand taking steps for

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self-care and that sort of thing. And it's still really, really hard.

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And so for me, a big takeaway here is, wow, I see this again and again in my clinic.

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When we give people four, five, ten things to do,

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each of which are a big reach, you know, we're like, okay, where you're going

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to take your infusion in the night and you're going to do your,

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you know, extract blend before each meal, and then you're going to take your

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zinc, and you're going to,

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you know, do your mindfulness practice, and you're going to change your phone

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settings, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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I mean, these are all folks who signed up for this program, and practitioners

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who have a background in this.

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It's, you know, infusions, tinctures, extracts. These are not new concepts to

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any of these folks, and still, it's really hard to do.

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So I think it was a great reminder for a lot of us in the program that we need

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to be really mindful of what is feasible for our clients to do and how quickly

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we're trying to make changes.

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Because it's one thing to do things for a few weeks. It's another thing to say,

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hey, I think you're going to feel best if you do this for six weeks,

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12 weeks, a year, and beyond.

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It's just a challenging, it's a challenging thing to undertake.

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So anyway, that was a valuable reminder for me as well, and hopefully some of

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the other folks who were in the tonic program.

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So there you go. A few takeaways from offering that program.

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If you'd like to check it out, I'll be running it again in the fall.

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We'll do kind of a fall tonic situation.

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So if you're into it and you feel like you actually want to try to take a tonic

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for six weeks, I hope you'll sign up.

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I don't have registration open yet, but I will let you know.

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Get on my mailing list at camillefreeman.com and I'll keep you posted when registration opens up again.

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All right. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you have an amazing day, and I'll be back soon.