Lots of us get brilliant ideas for new courses and programs in the summer. Here, I share why I strongly recommend that you don't build the course or program before you know if people will sign up for it. Instead of spending dozens or even hundreds of hours creating a course, consider running a pilot version and making sure at least a few people are willing to pay for the program before you start creating it.
See also episode 39 from way back in 2022: Why You Shouldn't Create an Online Course
In this episode, we cover:
-
Why the surge of summer creative energy can lead to a very expensive mistake.
-
Why "that sounds interesting!" is not the same as confirmed interest.
-
How to put your idea out there before investing time and money in creating something new.
-
What to do if nobody signs up or if a handful of people do.
Timestamps:
-
0:00 - Introduction
-
0:11 - Summer and the creative energy surge
-
1:04 - Building something nobody buys
-
2:18 - What "interest" actually means (hint: $$)
-
2:59 - Co-creation vs. building in a silo
-
4:11 - Start with a Google doc and a price
-
5:32 - If nobody signs up, at least you know
-
6:31 - If five people sign up: build it simply, together
-
7:15 - Make it fancier in round two
Thanks for listening.
I'd love to hear from you. Leave me a voicemail with feedback or submit a question (click the pink "Send Camille a Message" button on the side of the page) 💚
Camille's Helpful Links for Practitioners
00:04 - Summer Ideas, Start Small
01:00 - Why Pause Before Building
02:10 - Testing Interest: Simple Outline & Tentative Price
03:40 - Easy Sign-up & Early Validation
05:00 - Co-creating the First Group
06:20 - Using Feedback to Shape the Offer
07:20 - If No One Signs Up: Save or Retry
07:50 - Next Steps: Build Simple, Then Expand
WEBVTT
00:00:00.835 --> 00:00:04.492
Hi there. Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman.
00:00:04.806 --> 00:00:07.997
I'm an herbalist and nutritionist, and in this podcast, I share tips,
00:00:07.997 --> 00:00:11.348
tidbits, and resources that might be helpful for other practitioners.
00:00:11.882 --> 00:00:16.700
Now, if you are listening to this around the time that it is released, it is summertime.
00:00:17.263 --> 00:00:22.697
And in summertime, I have noticed that a lot of practitioners have a surge of
00:00:22.697 --> 00:00:29.860
creative energy, and they get ideas to create new programs and courses and things like that.
00:00:30.612 --> 00:00:37.577
I have done a reasonable amount of writing and podcasting and sharing my thoughts
00:00:37.577 --> 00:00:41.315
about creating online courses and programs and things like that.
00:00:41.969 --> 00:00:46.665
And I'm not going to rehash all of that here right now, but what I do want to
00:00:47.037 --> 00:00:53.007
remind you is that if you have an idea for a brilliant program or a new way
00:00:53.007 --> 00:00:54.345
that you want to do things,
00:00:55.780 --> 00:01:02.930
I strongly encourage you not to create that whole thing before you have interest.
00:01:04.019 --> 00:01:06.739
And I don't mean interest as in, oh yeah, that sounds great,
00:01:06.739 --> 00:01:09.093
or that sounds really interesting, I'd love to know more.
00:01:09.354 --> 00:01:14.416
I mean somebody who has signed up to pay you money for this thing.
00:01:15.121 --> 00:01:20.856
I can't even keep track of the number of people I have met with over the years
00:01:21.175 --> 00:01:23.479
who have come to me and said, I had this great idea.
00:01:23.479 --> 00:01:32.569
I spent so much time and money and love and energy creating a course or a program of some sort.
00:01:32.569 --> 00:01:37.049
I put it all together. I recorded the videos. I signed up for audio editing
00:01:37.049 --> 00:01:41.179
tools, all these different things. I spent all this time making the website
00:01:41.179 --> 00:01:43.429
and connecting the buttons and
00:01:43.429 --> 00:01:47.013
thinking through the assignments and the homework, and nobody bought it.
00:01:47.506 --> 00:01:51.979
Or one person bought it. And it was dozens and dozens, if not hundreds,
00:01:51.979 --> 00:01:54.982
of hours that went into creating the thing.
00:01:55.821 --> 00:01:58.869
And I, first of all, if that has happened to you, I'm so sorry.
00:01:58.869 --> 00:02:04.899
I know it's really hard because it seems so powerful and it seems like,
00:02:04.899 --> 00:02:09.519
oh, this is really crafted with a lot of love and thought and care.
00:02:10.036 --> 00:02:12.137
And it just seems like people would sign up for it.
00:02:12.759 --> 00:02:18.679
And what I want to remind you in this episode is sometimes we have these ideas
00:02:18.679 --> 00:02:24.096
and what sounds amazing to us is just not what our people need or want right now.
00:02:24.977 --> 00:02:30.541
And it just doesn't make sense to spend so much time putting something together
00:02:30.541 --> 00:02:34.784
until you have a good sense that somebody is interested in it.
00:02:35.633 --> 00:02:40.691
Okay, so I like to think about the first round of anything like this as a process
00:02:40.691 --> 00:02:47.470
of co-creation versus you building on your own in a silo without any,
00:02:47.928 --> 00:02:53.111
input or that flow of energy back and forth between you and the people who are
00:02:53.111 --> 00:02:55.920
going to take the program or sign up for the course or whatever it is.
00:02:56.257 --> 00:02:59.351
We need that co-creative, generative,
00:02:59.868 --> 00:03:03.687
back and forth in order to make it something that's really good.
00:03:04.233 --> 00:03:08.591
Okay? So what we want to do instead is if you do have this idea and you're like,
00:03:08.591 --> 00:03:13.601
wow, I wonder what would happen if I did some sort of course thing and people
00:03:13.601 --> 00:03:16.371
could add on one-on-one visits or whatever.
00:03:16.371 --> 00:03:21.291
You know, I want to teach this course about how to meal prep for busy families.
00:03:21.291 --> 00:03:23.801
I don't know. Whatever the things are that are your ideas that you think,
00:03:23.801 --> 00:03:24.905
yes, this could be great.
00:03:25.803 --> 00:03:29.089
When you feel that surge of energy and you're like, oh, I'm going to start putting
00:03:29.089 --> 00:03:31.039
it together. I'm going to start fleshing it out. I'm going to start,
00:03:31.521 --> 00:03:35.179
you know, planning, planning my different modules and I'm going to look into
00:03:35.179 --> 00:03:37.458
course platforms and this, that and the other.
00:03:38.056 --> 00:03:43.832
That's a moment to pause to say, Oh, okay, I feel a lot of energy for this thing.
00:03:44.232 --> 00:03:48.809
Let me just make sure that I'm not alone. Because there's sometimes things where
00:03:48.809 --> 00:03:53.833
we get all excited about it. And again, not everybody, or maybe no other people,
00:03:54.499 --> 00:03:56.009
are on board with it right now.
00:03:56.630 --> 00:03:59.959
So instead of making the whole thing, and then putting it out there and hoping
00:03:59.959 --> 00:04:05.041
some people show up, the if you build it, they will come," philosophy, so to speak.
00:04:05.569 --> 00:04:11.699
What I want you to do is create a very, very basic overview of your idea,
00:04:11.699 --> 00:04:14.406
maybe on just a plain document.
00:04:15.039 --> 00:04:18.336
A Word doc, a Google doc, whatever, Notion, whatever you use.
00:04:18.772 --> 00:04:23.758
Just create an outline of what you're thinking and a tentative price,
00:04:24.402 --> 00:04:28.126
and put that out there and be like, Hey, I have this idea.
00:04:28.469 --> 00:04:31.261
I think it's going to work really well. It's still new.
00:04:32.066 --> 00:04:36.899
I want to know if anybody is on board. And if you would be interested in doing
00:04:36.899 --> 00:04:39.514
this starting next month, the price would be this.
00:04:39.810 --> 00:04:44.303
There would be a $50 deposit or something. I don't know. I'm just making this up price-wise.
00:04:44.890 --> 00:04:49.029
Let me know. Sign up here. Email me back. I want you to make this as easy as
00:04:49.029 --> 00:04:52.441
possible for you and for the people who might be interested.
00:04:52.766 --> 00:04:55.749
You don't need to create a sales page. You don't need to create the program
00:04:55.749 --> 00:04:59.592
out in Practice Better or Kajabi or whatever else you're thinking about using,
00:05:00.121 --> 00:05:01.845
just start as simple as possible.
00:05:02.309 --> 00:05:06.651
What is what they call in business terms the minimum viable product?
00:05:07.320 --> 00:05:11.685
That you could do, that you could deliver this and get feedback along the way,
00:05:11.685 --> 00:05:14.045
see what people are interested in, see what times work for them,
00:05:14.045 --> 00:05:18.645
see what dates work for them, help them, you know, have them help you determine
00:05:18.645 --> 00:05:20.615
which topics they really want to know more about.
00:05:20.615 --> 00:05:25.795
Let their questions from one week or one month guide you as you create the following
00:05:25.795 --> 00:05:29.365
month, right? So what we're looking at as something where we're essentially
00:05:29.365 --> 00:05:33.982
building the plane as we're flying it, so to speak, although not quite so dangerously.
00:05:34.665 --> 00:05:39.154
That's what we're going for. And I am a huge fan of those types of projects.
00:05:40.263 --> 00:05:44.295
You will find either you'll put your amazing idea out there and you'll be like,
00:05:44.295 --> 00:05:47.415
hey, here's what I'm thinking. This is a pilot price. It's, you know,
00:05:47.415 --> 00:05:50.055
it'll probably be more expensive the next time I run it, but because I've never
00:05:50.055 --> 00:05:53.312
done it before and because I'm going to be asking for feedback along the way,
00:05:54.185 --> 00:05:55.227
this is the price for now.
00:05:55.732 --> 00:06:00.265
If nobody signs up for it in that moment and you're doing the best job that
00:06:00.265 --> 00:06:05.160
you know how to do promoting it, that is a sign to you that people aren't ready for this right now.
00:06:05.799 --> 00:06:09.155
You want to put it in your back pocket, keep it in your practice notebook,
00:06:09.155 --> 00:06:12.631
file it away somewhere for a future time. But for right now,
00:06:13.142 --> 00:06:15.952
that is a sign that it's not going to be the best use of your time and money.
00:06:16.532 --> 00:06:21.919
If you need help marketing it and sharing more about it, that's a podcast for a different day.
00:06:22.925 --> 00:06:25.405
Definitely work with somebody on that. But realistically, if you use all the
00:06:25.405 --> 00:06:28.305
channels that you have available to you and people don't sign up for it,
00:06:28.957 --> 00:06:30.733
it's just not, it's not the time to do it.
00:06:31.128 --> 00:06:34.265
On the other hand, if you put it out there and people seem interested,
00:06:34.265 --> 00:06:38.845
you get a small handful of folks, maybe five, I would say, could be the minimum
00:06:38.845 --> 00:06:42.783
for something like this. Let's say you get five people and you're like, great, this seems good.
00:06:43.114 --> 00:06:47.115
Then I want you to build it again in the easiest possible way.
00:06:47.115 --> 00:06:51.275
So maybe that would look like I'm going to create unlisted YouTube videos and
00:06:51.275 --> 00:06:55.415
send them out via email every Monday or the first of every month or use whatever
00:06:55.415 --> 00:06:57.876
tools you already have. We're not buying new things.
00:06:58.195 --> 00:07:00.523
We're not making this harder or fancier than it needs to be.
00:07:00.842 --> 00:07:04.679
We're thinking, what is the easiest and quickest way I can help these people.
00:07:05.823 --> 00:07:09.843
Get to what I think they're here to do. That's what you're going to do.
00:07:09.843 --> 00:07:14.908
And then you can make it fancier and repeatable and all of that after the first round.
00:07:15.529 --> 00:07:19.963
Okay? So that's my friendly summertime advice for folks who have a surge of
00:07:19.963 --> 00:07:25.503
energy or an aha moment about creating a new program or offering of some sort,
00:07:25.503 --> 00:07:26.698
especially if it's a group thing.
00:07:27.296 --> 00:07:32.393
Please, please, please let people sign up for it and put a deposit down or pay
00:07:32.393 --> 00:07:37.803
for it first before you start creating it or before certainly before you get
00:07:37.803 --> 00:07:39.133
further than a week or two,
00:07:40.003 --> 00:07:45.553
of content created and then co-create the first round through and then after
00:07:45.553 --> 00:07:51.473
that you can make something fancier bigger better and spend more time finalizing it later on,
00:07:52.071 --> 00:07:55.763
okay i hope your summer is filled with creative ideas both for your practice
00:07:55.763 --> 00:07:57.613
and outside of your practice.
00:07:57.613 --> 00:08:02.558
Have an amazing time this summer doing fun things, being outside, and so forth.
00:08:03.017 --> 00:08:06.623
If you want to stay in touch, I would love to send you my Practitioner Notes
00:08:06.623 --> 00:08:08.392
newsletter that goes out every Thursday.
00:08:08.886 --> 00:08:12.909
You can sign up for it at camillefreeman.com or intheclinic.com,
00:08:13.507 --> 00:08:15.794
and hopefully I'll be able to send that to you on Thursday.
00:08:16.335 --> 00:08:20.161
All right, I'll be back soon. Have a lovely day, and thank you for the work that you do.
00:00:00.835 --> 00:00:04.492
Hi there. Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman.
00:00:04.806 --> 00:00:07.997
I'm an herbalist and nutritionist, and in this podcast, I share tips,
00:00:07.997 --> 00:00:11.348
tidbits, and resources that might be helpful for other practitioners.
00:00:11.882 --> 00:00:16.700
Now, if you are listening to this around the time that it is released, it is summertime.
00:00:17.263 --> 00:00:22.697
And in summertime, I have noticed that a lot of practitioners have a surge of
00:00:22.697 --> 00:00:29.860
creative energy, and they get ideas to create new programs and courses and things like that.
00:00:30.612 --> 00:00:37.577
I have done a reasonable amount of writing and podcasting and sharing my thoughts
00:00:37.577 --> 00:00:41.315
about creating online courses and programs and things like that.
00:00:41.969 --> 00:00:46.665
And I'm not going to rehash all of that here right now, but what I do want to
00:00:47.037 --> 00:00:53.007
remind you is that if you have an idea for a brilliant program or a new way
00:00:53.007 --> 00:00:54.345
that you want to do things,
00:00:55.780 --> 00:01:02.930
I strongly encourage you not to create that whole thing before you have interest.
00:01:04.019 --> 00:01:06.739
And I don't mean interest as in, oh yeah, that sounds great,
00:01:06.739 --> 00:01:09.093
or that sounds really interesting, I'd love to know more.
00:01:09.354 --> 00:01:14.416
I mean somebody who has signed up to pay you money for this thing.
00:01:15.121 --> 00:01:20.856
I can't even keep track of the number of people I have met with over the years
00:01:21.175 --> 00:01:23.479
who have come to me and said, I had this great idea.
00:01:23.479 --> 00:01:32.569
I spent so much time and money and love and energy creating a course or a program of some sort.
00:01:32.569 --> 00:01:37.049
I put it all together. I recorded the videos. I signed up for audio editing
00:01:37.049 --> 00:01:41.179
tools, all these different things. I spent all this time making the website
00:01:41.179 --> 00:01:43.429
and connecting the buttons and
00:01:43.429 --> 00:01:47.013
thinking through the assignments and the homework, and nobody bought it.
00:01:47.506 --> 00:01:51.979
Or one person bought it. And it was dozens and dozens, if not hundreds,
00:01:51.979 --> 00:01:54.982
of hours that went into creating the thing.
00:01:55.821 --> 00:01:58.869
And I, first of all, if that has happened to you, I'm so sorry.
00:01:58.869 --> 00:02:04.899
I know it's really hard because it seems so powerful and it seems like,
00:02:04.899 --> 00:02:09.519
oh, this is really crafted with a lot of love and thought and care.
00:02:10.036 --> 00:02:12.137
And it just seems like people would sign up for it.
00:02:12.759 --> 00:02:18.679
And what I want to remind you in this episode is sometimes we have these ideas
00:02:18.679 --> 00:02:24.096
and what sounds amazing to us is just not what our people need or want right now.
00:02:24.977 --> 00:02:30.541
And it just doesn't make sense to spend so much time putting something together
00:02:30.541 --> 00:02:34.784
until you have a good sense that somebody is interested in it.
00:02:35.633 --> 00:02:40.691
Okay, so I like to think about the first round of anything like this as a process
00:02:40.691 --> 00:02:47.470
of co-creation versus you building on your own in a silo without any,
00:02:47.928 --> 00:02:53.111
input or that flow of energy back and forth between you and the people who are
00:02:53.111 --> 00:02:55.920
going to take the program or sign up for the course or whatever it is.
00:02:56.257 --> 00:02:59.351
We need that co-creative, generative,
00:02:59.868 --> 00:03:03.687
back and forth in order to make it something that's really good.
00:03:04.233 --> 00:03:08.591
Okay? So what we want to do instead is if you do have this idea and you're like,
00:03:08.591 --> 00:03:13.601
wow, I wonder what would happen if I did some sort of course thing and people
00:03:13.601 --> 00:03:16.371
could add on one-on-one visits or whatever.
00:03:16.371 --> 00:03:21.291
You know, I want to teach this course about how to meal prep for busy families.
00:03:21.291 --> 00:03:23.801
I don't know. Whatever the things are that are your ideas that you think,
00:03:23.801 --> 00:03:24.905
yes, this could be great.
00:03:25.803 --> 00:03:29.089
When you feel that surge of energy and you're like, oh, I'm going to start putting
00:03:29.089 --> 00:03:31.039
it together. I'm going to start fleshing it out. I'm going to start,
00:03:31.521 --> 00:03:35.179
you know, planning, planning my different modules and I'm going to look into
00:03:35.179 --> 00:03:37.458
course platforms and this, that and the other.
00:03:38.056 --> 00:03:43.832
That's a moment to pause to say, Oh, okay, I feel a lot of energy for this thing.
00:03:44.232 --> 00:03:48.809
Let me just make sure that I'm not alone. Because there's sometimes things where
00:03:48.809 --> 00:03:53.833
we get all excited about it. And again, not everybody, or maybe no other people,
00:03:54.499 --> 00:03:56.009
are on board with it right now.
00:03:56.630 --> 00:03:59.959
So instead of making the whole thing, and then putting it out there and hoping
00:03:59.959 --> 00:04:05.041
some people show up, the if you build it, they will come," philosophy, so to speak.
00:04:05.569 --> 00:04:11.699
What I want you to do is create a very, very basic overview of your idea,
00:04:11.699 --> 00:04:14.406
maybe on just a plain document.
00:04:15.039 --> 00:04:18.336
A Word doc, a Google doc, whatever, Notion, whatever you use.
00:04:18.772 --> 00:04:23.758
Just create an outline of what you're thinking and a tentative price,
00:04:24.402 --> 00:04:28.126
and put that out there and be like, Hey, I have this idea.
00:04:28.469 --> 00:04:31.261
I think it's going to work really well. It's still new.
00:04:32.066 --> 00:04:36.899
I want to know if anybody is on board. And if you would be interested in doing
00:04:36.899 --> 00:04:39.514
this starting next month, the price would be this.
00:04:39.810 --> 00:04:44.303
There would be a $50 deposit or something. I don't know. I'm just making this up price-wise.
00:04:44.890 --> 00:04:49.029
Let me know. Sign up here. Email me back. I want you to make this as easy as
00:04:49.029 --> 00:04:52.441
possible for you and for the people who might be interested.
00:04:52.766 --> 00:04:55.749
You don't need to create a sales page. You don't need to create the program
00:04:55.749 --> 00:04:59.592
out in Practice Better or Kajabi or whatever else you're thinking about using,
00:05:00.121 --> 00:05:01.845
just start as simple as possible.
00:05:02.309 --> 00:05:06.651
What is what they call in business terms the minimum viable product?
00:05:07.320 --> 00:05:11.685
That you could do, that you could deliver this and get feedback along the way,
00:05:11.685 --> 00:05:14.045
see what people are interested in, see what times work for them,
00:05:14.045 --> 00:05:18.645
see what dates work for them, help them, you know, have them help you determine
00:05:18.645 --> 00:05:20.615
which topics they really want to know more about.
00:05:20.615 --> 00:05:25.795
Let their questions from one week or one month guide you as you create the following
00:05:25.795 --> 00:05:29.365
month, right? So what we're looking at as something where we're essentially
00:05:29.365 --> 00:05:33.982
building the plane as we're flying it, so to speak, although not quite so dangerously.
00:05:34.665 --> 00:05:39.154
That's what we're going for. And I am a huge fan of those types of projects.
00:05:40.263 --> 00:05:44.295
You will find either you'll put your amazing idea out there and you'll be like,
00:05:44.295 --> 00:05:47.415
hey, here's what I'm thinking. This is a pilot price. It's, you know,
00:05:47.415 --> 00:05:50.055
it'll probably be more expensive the next time I run it, but because I've never
00:05:50.055 --> 00:05:53.312
done it before and because I'm going to be asking for feedback along the way,
00:05:54.185 --> 00:05:55.227
this is the price for now.
00:05:55.732 --> 00:06:00.265
If nobody signs up for it in that moment and you're doing the best job that
00:06:00.265 --> 00:06:05.160
you know how to do promoting it, that is a sign to you that people aren't ready for this right now.
00:06:05.799 --> 00:06:09.155
You want to put it in your back pocket, keep it in your practice notebook,
00:06:09.155 --> 00:06:12.631
file it away somewhere for a future time. But for right now,
00:06:13.142 --> 00:06:15.952
that is a sign that it's not going to be the best use of your time and money.
00:06:16.532 --> 00:06:21.919
If you need help marketing it and sharing more about it, that's a podcast for a different day.
00:06:22.925 --> 00:06:25.405
Definitely work with somebody on that. But realistically, if you use all the
00:06:25.405 --> 00:06:28.305
channels that you have available to you and people don't sign up for it,
00:06:28.957 --> 00:06:30.733
it's just not, it's not the time to do it.
00:06:31.128 --> 00:06:34.265
On the other hand, if you put it out there and people seem interested,
00:06:34.265 --> 00:06:38.845
you get a small handful of folks, maybe five, I would say, could be the minimum
00:06:38.845 --> 00:06:42.783
for something like this. Let's say you get five people and you're like, great, this seems good.
00:06:43.114 --> 00:06:47.115
Then I want you to build it again in the easiest possible way.
00:06:47.115 --> 00:06:51.275
So maybe that would look like I'm going to create unlisted YouTube videos and
00:06:51.275 --> 00:06:55.415
send them out via email every Monday or the first of every month or use whatever
00:06:55.415 --> 00:06:57.876
tools you already have. We're not buying new things.
00:06:58.195 --> 00:07:00.523
We're not making this harder or fancier than it needs to be.
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We're thinking, what is the easiest and quickest way I can help these people.
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Get to what I think they're here to do. That's what you're going to do.
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And then you can make it fancier and repeatable and all of that after the first round.
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Okay? So that's my friendly summertime advice for folks who have a surge of
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energy or an aha moment about creating a new program or offering of some sort,
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especially if it's a group thing.
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Please, please, please let people sign up for it and put a deposit down or pay
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for it first before you start creating it or before certainly before you get
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further than a week or two,
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of content created and then co-create the first round through and then after
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that you can make something fancier bigger better and spend more time finalizing it later on,
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okay i hope your summer is filled with creative ideas both for your practice
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and outside of your practice.
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Have an amazing time this summer doing fun things, being outside, and so forth.
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If you want to stay in touch, I would love to send you my Practitioner Notes
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newsletter that goes out every Thursday.
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You can sign up for it at camillefreeman.com or intheclinic.com,
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and hopefully I'll be able to send that to you on Thursday.
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All right, I'll be back soon. Have a lovely day, and thank you for the work that you do.