89 | How to Update your "About Me" Page as an Herbalist or Nutritionist

0:00 Hi there. Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I'm a clinical 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 the About page on your website. Hopefully, you have one of those. I'm leading a workshop later this week on how to update your About Me page, so I've been thinking a lot about them. And one of the things that I'm realizing—I think I probably knew this, but I'm coming to realize it in a different way, is that the About Me page is the way that you introduce yourself to your reader. It's that moment when you say, hey, this is me. Who are you? It's like a moment in a conversation, except, of course, it's asynchronous.

0:41 So there's a number of different functions that an About Me page can serve. But I really want to focus in right now for the purposes of this episode on the function of introducing yourself and how do you get to know each other. I think Most of us, when we go to write an about page, we think it's about the facts. You know, like, where did you go to school? How long have you been doing this? Do you know what you're doing? Where do you live? That sort of thing. Just the bits and pieces. And that is one way to introduce yourself. There's other ways to introduce yourself. And that's what I want to explore a little bit today. And I want to give you an example from something that happened in my life recently. I, over the summer, I decided for fun to sign up for a creative writing class through Firefly Creative Writing.

1:25 I've taken lots of classes with them in the past. Really great. Love them. Highly recommend. Not related to business at all, but I will put the link in the show notes in case anybody else is interested in this sort of thing. So anyway, I'm taking this creative writing class. I haven't done something like that quite some time. You know, you're a little nervous going into a new class. It's an online class via Zoom. And the first day was last week. And what we did, we, in order to get to know everybody, we went around and we did one little round of just your name, pronouns, and where you're from. That's it. Nothing else about why you signed up for this class, what you do, anything like that. Just, just essentially, where are you in time and space?

2:08 And what would you like to be called? That's it. And so that was the introduction. And then we went into our first activity, which was essentially, we did a little bit of a guided free write just for a few minutes, and then read it to each other, and people gave some specific types of feedback on the writing. And just the practice of hearing what somebody had written and also hearing the types of feedback and you know the things that they said about other people's writing provided so much information, it feels like you know somebody really well and at least in certain aspects just from doing that and if you were to ask me for many of these folks what is their last name what do they do for a living.

2:54 Are they married? Do they have children? Do they have a partner? What do they do for fun? I would not know any of that, really, for most of them, unless maybe it was alluded to in the writing. And still, I went away from that class feeling like I knew these folks pretty well. As. One-time meeting them. But it was a much deeper feeling of knowing than if we had started off with a five-minute list of, like, here's where I went to school, and here's my job, and here's my relationship situation, and that sort of thing. There's different ways of knowing people. And I think about this in relationship to our About Me page, especially for those of us who have a one-on-one practice, where our intention with our website is, how do we help people get to know us to the point where they might want to come and work with us.

3:46 Really, the intention of a website for most of us is not just to be out there sharing facts about ourselves. It is to create a presence and a place where people can connect and to draw people into our practice if they are a good fit. So when I'm thinking about an About Me page and what do we want to do there, we can absolutely take the approach of let me just list the relevant details about myself. And I'll tell you where I was born and where I lived and where I went to school and how long I've been doing this and that sort of thing. But is there a way to write an About Me page that still shares information about you, but that also conveys something more, something more about, the way you approach the world, the way you show up, the way you interact with people, the way you welcome people into your space?

4:32 I think that all of that can be in your About Me page if you want it to be. And I've been thinking a lot about how do we do that? How do we show rather than tell? How do we become our values on the page and create an introductory experience for people that really demonstrates what we care about and how we interact with the world? So one thing I invite you to do, whether you decide to come to this workshop or not, is really go to your About Me page with a fresh set of eyes and experience it as if you are somebody who maybe just met you or is just becoming familiar with your work.

5:14 What do you take away? Are you taking away facts? Are you like, okay, this person went to school here, or they have this degree, they have this credential, or what other information is in there as well? Is there any other information? Information conveyed about what you care about, the way you interact, the way you communicate, the feel and tone of your practice, the starting of a conversation. Again, not all of these have to be there, but are they there? I'm wondering, I think for a lot of us, myself included, there may be things there that I don't intend to be there. And there may be ways that I want to update my About Me page in order to make it more clear, to make my tone and my perspective more clear as people are starting to get to know me.

5:59 So anyway, have a look at your About Me page. See what you think. Maybe you want to make just a couple of small updates based on what we just talked about. So if you want to go through some of this together, this is not meant to be a definitive guide, but more of a reflection, thoughts, some examples, some ideas of what you might do with your About Me page, I would love to have you join us for this workshop. It is on Wednesday, which I think is the 23rd. Again, I should have checked this before we got on here. It is the 23rd. The 23rd. It's Wednesday the 23rd from 12 to 1 p.m. Eastern Time. If you would like to come to the workshop, you can go to my website.

6:41 I'll put a link in the show notes. It's $25, or if you will share it with your social media friends or invite somebody else, it's free. So please come on and join me for the workshop if you're around if not this is your friendly nudge to check out your about me page and update it if you like otherwise have a really great week if you want to stay in touch and we're not already connected you can sign up for my practitioner newsletter at camillefreeman.com and i'd love to love to stay in touch all right i'll talk to you soon bye.