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.
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.
The minimum viable product approach: how to put your idea out there with a plain document and a tentative price before investing time and money in creating something new.
Thoughts on co-creating programs rather than doing it independently.
What to do if nobody signs up (file it away), and what to do if five people do (build it as simply as possible, then refine later).
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.