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Reed Davis, Triple-Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner (HHP) and Certified Nutritional Therapist (CNT), is an expert in functional lab testing and holistic lifestyle medicine. He is the Founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® (FDN) and the FDN Certification Course with over 3000 graduates in 50 countries. Reed served as the Health... Read More
Anne Fischer Silva is a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and Restorative Wellness Specialist. She has been serving clients around the world for 21 years with an emphasis on root cause. Anne helped start Nutritional Therapy Association in 2000 before founding Restorative Wellness Solutions (www.restorativewellnesssolutions.com), where she currently teaches health professionals... Read More
Restorative Wellness Solutions is a highly sought-after comprehensive functional nutrition certification program for qualified health professionals. With four progressive levels of clinical curriculum, RWS helps practitioners achieve outstanding results with even their most complicated clients.
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Behavior Change, Client Compliance, Dietary Changes, Health Coaching, Movement, Pre-qualification, Sleep, Stress Management, SupplementsReed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Gosh, I’m so glad to be back folks. And you’re really gonna enjoy today’s speaker, Anne Fischer Silva. One more person I’ve known for a long time who I really think is providing tremendous leadership in the health coaching field. As independent health coaches, we want to go out there in the world and help people and make a good living and live the lifestyle that we deserve to live and set the example for our clients so they have something cool to follow. And I want to tell you, you couldn’t follow a more genuine person, a healthy person—thank goodness—than Anne Fischer Silva. She’s gonna talk to us today about her functional nutritional therapy program. She is a functional nutritional therapy practitioner and restorative wellness specialist. So she’s going to talk about her program.
She has been serving clients around the world for 21 years with an emphasis, of course, on root causes. Anne helped start the nutritional therapy association. If you’re not a member of that, you should join. I’m a member, my whole organization is a member actually. She helped start that in 2000, like a long time ago. I think some of you weren’t born yet, but before she found—just kidding!—but she founded the Restorative Wellness Solutions, which you can find at restorativewellnesssolutions.com. That’s where she currently teaches health professionals how to be successful, confident and skilled using lab interpretation, along with her own unique proven methods of healing. Again, I’ve known Anne for a long, long time, and I know she’s one of the most sincere people you’ll ever meet. She’s very passionate too about nutrient dense foods and also, of course, about her family—as we all are—and helping others live their best life in connection around the table. So, Anne it’s so great to have you here. Why did you start Restorative Wellness Solutions and tell us any more about your background that you’d like to mention.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Thank you, Reed. Thank you so much for having me. I started Restorative Wellness Solutions because I have the opportunity to work with some of the early nutrition pioneers, a lot of them aren’t even around anymore, and I was able to put together a lot of techniques that I learned from them. When I looked around at my colleagues, I really felt like they weren’t optimizing, they weren’t successful. They weren’t really able to get their practice off the ground. And so I realized that there was a huge need for advanced education beyond a nutrition certification. So I started Restorative Wellness Solutions in 2013.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
That’s beautiful. I remember when you started and we’ve had some conversations and I just commend you so much for planting your own flag in the space and for getting a lot of people to salute it. That’s a good thing and it proves that it can be done. Another purpose of our event, the summit, is to open people’s eyes up to possibilities. If you want to help others and you’re willing to walk the talk, you also want to be healthy and set an example and things like that, then you’re in the right place. We’ve just said so many good speakers and I couldn’t wait to get to you. So, I think you’ve got a little presentation for us here. I’d like you to just jump into it and if I could butt in here and there and make sure we get some other questions answered, that would be lovely.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Yeah, yeah. You just come in anytime. What I want to talk about today, I’m gonna share my screen.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
What I want to talk about today is—Oh, it’s not letting me share my screen, so if you could—
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Right, let me turn that on.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
So what I really want to talk about today is client compliance, because I see that as such a deal breaker for a lot of practitioners. We have all this knowledge, all this expertise, but if we can’t get our client to comply, then it’s all for not. So that’s why I think this is such a good topic for all of us to really talk about. Alright.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
It looks like you should be able to share now. Oh yeah, great, great.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
I think we’re good.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
And you’re absolutely. Yes, it looks beautiful. It’s taken up the whole screen. Client compliance. Now I just wanted to do my first butt in and say that you couldn’t be more on top of it. We’ve been doing this a long time together and you can run labs and you can figure out exactly what’s wrong with the person or real close to it. And then, you can have an effect upon whatever that is that you find with the correct program, which we have each developed some amazing, similar, but with a twist programs. So you investigate and you figure out what needs improvement and then you design a protocol for that unique individual. Guess what? Someone still has to run the program. I’m so glad you’re talking about this today and I think you’re the first one of our speakers who has, so good on you.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Awesome. Awesome. Well, I’m excited to share the things that I’ve discovered about it. So what we’re going to talk about today is why it’s a deal breaker. We’re going to talk about four strategies to help increase your client compliance. And then we’re going to talk a little bit about Restorative Wellness Solutions. So why is this such a deal breaker? When you think about it, we’ve all been there. You have that client that comes in and they’re so excited to work with you and maybe they’re not digesting well, or they’re not sleeping well, or they’ve got a laundry list of issues. And the symptom presentation can vary, but the results are… mostly they’re miserable.
You do your assessment, you come up with what feels like an amazing plan for them, you recommend some changes to their diet, but not so much that they’re gonna have a hard time with it. You recommend some supplements, just the key ones, cause you don’t want to overwhelm them. And you send them on their way. They get going, but maybe they hit an overwhelm and life happens. And then they’re quickly back to their same old habits. And then the next time they come to your office, they’re like, “You know what? This doesn’t work.” Or they write you off altogether. But when you really dig into that situation, you discover that they really didn’t do what you asked them to do, or the moment they ran into some big obstacle, they just threw in the towel and walked away. And if you’ve been practicing for any length of time, I bet you’ve discovered this in your practice as well. Reed, you know what I’m talking about, right?
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Oh yeah.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
So this challenge is actually really unique in the nutrition space. When you think about it, if you go to a massage therapist, whether you do anything else at all, you’re still gonna get the benefit of the massage. You could do a few things before or after the massage to enhance it, but just by showing up, you’re gonna benefit from it. And that’s true of chiropractors and acupuncturists and lots of hands touching therapies, but that’s not really the case for us in the nutrition space. Our clients come to us for advice and in order to get real results, they’ve got to take that advice. They’re the ones that have to really do the work and the kicker in the whole thing is that when they don’t follow our recommendations it actually reflects poorly on us as the practitioners. With very few exceptions, the clients aren’t out there taking responsibility for their own compliance. They’re rationalizing why it was too hard or why it didn’t work, and ultimately, that failure is a reflection on us.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
I’m so glad you’re making that point that our success depends on theirs and in a way, rightly so. I can’t wait to see the rest of this, but yeah, it’s frustrating if your clients aren’t doing it ’cause you know what they do? They go and they tell other people your program didn’t work.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
That’s it. So on our side, it’s real easy to blame the client, right? It didn’t work ’cause they didn’t do this or they didn’t do that. But the hard part to swallow is that we have to take responsibility for this. It’s really hard and I know that that’s a really hard thing to take in, but it’s taken me years to figure this out, that behavior change is the hardest thing. Yet our entire business relies on our ability to inspire and support behavior change and like it or not, our client’s success is on us. So here’s another really hard part, and this is sort of counterintuitive that when the client starts to feel better, that’s when we’re in the most trouble. When somebody isn’t feeling well, when they first come to you, they’re miserable.
Of course they will do anything to feel better, but when things start to work and they sort of get their groove back, that’s when we’re at the most risk of them bailing. There’s a school of thought that I have found very accurate in my practice, and that is that when their symptoms start to abate, you’re about halfway to healing. And this is when we’re at most risk for losing them. We acknowledged that there’s this problem of client compliance. And we realize that in order for our clients to be successful, we’ve got to set them up properly. We just can’t give them their marching orders and expect them to obey. That just never works. You could have the best plan in the world, but if they don’t follow it, it’s all for not. So let’s take a look at a couple of strategies. Number one is that real compliance really starts with that first time you talk to a client. We all want to have more clients, but if you don’t pre-qualify them properly, you can’t just take on anyone. You know what I’m talking about, right?
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yeah, absolutely. You have to screen them. You’ve got to screen them and take out people who you like and who you expect to be able to follow the protocols.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
We all enter this field ’cause we have these huge altruistic hearts. We want to help people. But if you don’t navigate this first piece right, you end up taking on clients that either aren’t ready or, the reality is that doing objective testing and supplements and our expertise present real costs, not everybody can afford to do this work. I have pro bono clients in my practice. I’m sure you do too, Reed, in the work that you do, but I can’t do that with everybody. So part of pre-qualifying is, “Are you ready?” and “Can you afford this work?”. In order to get real results, they have to be ready to do the work. Are they ready to make really hard dietary changes? Are they ready to take their favorite foods out of their diet? Are they ready to add more movement? Are they ready to take a handful of supplements a couple times a day? Are they ready to work on their sleep and their stress management? When you think about it, we ask a lot of our clients.
And of course I loved what you said Reed, that we have to be walking our own talk to be able to ask this of our clients as well. But part of really, really understanding whether they’re ready to do the work is presenting the entire package to them: “Here is what I’m going to ask you to do.” Honestly, it can almost feel like you’re talking them out of it as you’re saying, “Okay, here’s what it’s gonna look like. I’m gonna ask you to really make hard dietary changes. I’m gonna ask you to incorporate more movement. I’m gonna ask you to take supplements. I’m gonna ask you to work on some stress management and here’s what it’s gonna cost.” You know? And, if you don’t do that though, it’s sort of like going to a car lot.
You have this new car you want to buy and you’ve looked it up. You know what the price is, you get in there, you’ve negotiated for hours like it takes. And then you get to the finance guy and they tell you it’s gonna be several thousand dollars more. Nobody likes that experience. That’s not how we want to operate. Right? We want to be completely upfront. We want them to know everything about what’s involved because there is a real cost and there is a real expectation of what we’re gonna do. I’m telling you, when you do that, when you lay this out to a client, it’s almost like they are gonna beg you to take them on because you’ve been so honest and so transparent about all of it.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yep.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
We can’t sugar coat this process, it just doesn’t work. We can’t withhold anything. We can’t just wait for them to sign up and then start laying on all these hard things we’re going to ask them to do. It’s so much better to just be straight up with them upfront. Say, “Look, this is what it’s going to take. And I know I can help you, but honestly, the work’s going to be on you. I will be there with you a hundred percent all the way through, but you’re the one that’s gotta do the work.” So the second thing is that we have to structure our business so that it really compliments this particular process. There are two things that we know for sure, true healing happens over time. And at some point the work gets really hard.
One of the things that has occurred to me is that when people go to their doctor for health advice, they only do that when something’s wrong, they really only make an appointment to go to the doctor when they’re not feeling well. Then once they start to feel better, they’re like, “Okay, I’m done with you. I don’t need you anymore.” But for true healing to happen, it is a process. It’s not gonna happen overnight. To really accomplish the health goals that we set out for our clients. So we need them to make a commitment to us, over time. It just doesn’t—they can’t be done once they start to feel better because, again, they’re about halfway there. Then the work can get really hard.
We’re asking our clients to change behavior and that doesn’t happen overnight either. It can take several months for things to happen. There’s some research out there that says that our excitement for something new lasts about three weeks. So if that happens with our client three weeks in, they’re not going to be there. And if they don’t get the results, they’re not gonna refer their friends and families. That’s just the nature of this work. So there’s these two business models in our field. You can go session by session or you can set your clients up in a package. What do you recommend Reed? Do you do packages?
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yeah, packages, ’cause if they’re not committed for a certain length of time, then you’re probably not gonna get the results that they’re seeking, so we do a very similar thing. Session by session, I would say do that after an initial time period. Like you could see me session by session afterwards, but I imagine—
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Absolutely.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yeah, that’s kind of how I would do that.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
But when people in the nutrition space start out, they’re very timid to ask for that kind of package situation because you’re asking for a big outlay of money upfront, right? And that’s not easy.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
It’s challenging.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Session by session, like all you’re really asking the client to do is commit to the very next appointment and hopefully they come back and you can tweak their program a little bit and make another appointment, and hopefully they come back. But at any point in time, you’re at risk for them bailing on you. So setting up a package where you let them know, “Hey, this work is gonna take three months, four months”, however long your package is, sets them up for success in a big way. So we always wear these two hats, right? The clinician and the coach. We need both hats in order to be successful at various stages in the process. We wear the clinician hat when we are assessing, when we’re interpreting, when we’re making our recommendations. But then we use the coaching hat when we want our clients to lean in. When we want them to make those hard behavior changes, working around a restricted diet, working around handfuls of supplements. They’re looking for any excuse to bail on us and these two hats help keep them engaged with us.
So this is something that I’ve also discovered is a really big deal, and that is asking the client what their big why is. This question comes right up front in your initial consultation when you’re doing your intake, you’re taking your history. One of the things that you can ask people is, “Susan, if our work was completely successful, what would you be able to do that you’re not able to do right now?” It’s amazing, some of the responses you’ll get. Some people will say, “Wow”—when they really feel into it—”If we’re successful, I wouldn’t always have to worry about where the next bathroom is”, or, “Gosh, you can help me with my energy. I wouldn’t be so crabby with my kids all the time.” You hear some really profound things from people, but this is also something that you kind of keep in your back pocket because when they reach that inevitable speed bump in their program where they’re frustrated. They’re tired of eating a restricted diet and they can’t eat their favorite foods, and it’s just getting old for them. That usually happens about halfway, when they start to feel better. This is when you pull out their big why.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Absolutely.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
“Gosh Susan, do you remember what you told me? Yeah, you told me that if we were successful that you wouldn’t be so crabby with your kids. I so want that for you, and I know you still want that too. We’re almost there, Susan, we gotta keep going.” So this is a way to really keep them engaged when they start to feel like things aren’t quite as easy as they were initially, or they’re starting to feel better and they think they’re done.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yeah, this is huge.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
You also wanna support them—
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
I don’t mean to interrupt, but I just think that’s worth dwelling on for a minute, the why, ’cause it also helps you decide if you’re gonna work with that person. If you’re doing that during the initial interview, as we do, you decide, “Hey, they’ve got a good why”, so it means that you can commission with them on it. You feel even more like you really want to help this person because their why is really cool and you really get to know “Hey, I just want to spend more quality time with my spouse. We haven’t gone dancing in three years because of this XYZ”, whatever the problem. Or you find it really cool, you really get to know a person. So it’s a really good thing to do in the onboarding process, including being able to remind them about it later on. The other thing is that it helps them to make the commitment if they don’t visit the ‘why’ during your onboarding session, then they’re maybe not as likely to sign up with you. If they’ve connected to their why, and then when you tell them the price and the commitment that they’re gonna have to make, they need to have that why right up there in the front of their brain. Yeah.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Yeah. Just the other day I had a client who has been on an acid blocker for 20 years and he’d been poking around on the internet and realized that this medication wasn’t a hundred percent safe and he was concerned about the longterm repercussions of it. So he came to me for a strategy for getting off of omeprazole. When we were talking about it, I asked him what his big why was. And he said, “I am a marathoner and I want to be able to run marathons into my seventies without worrying about, am I getting osteoporosis? Are my bones getting brittle ’cause I’m not absorbing minerals.” And believe me, as we went through our process, I had to pull that out a couple times with him because there were speed bumps in the process as there inevitably are. And it really served both of us well.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Right, right. Another thing about why—Again, not to dwell too much, I want you to finish, but sometimes you need to get them to go a little deeper. Like “what will that do for you if you’re able to run marathons when you’re seventy? Is it just to prove your bones aren’t brittle or do you have some deeper reasons for that?” So exploring the why, it should not be overlooked ever. So good job.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Yeah. So the fourth strategy is we want to base our recommendations on real data from objective testing and working with nutritionists who don’t have the ability to use objective testing, it’s oftentimes a guessing game in both their dietary recommendations and their supplement recommendations. And when we use real data from objective lab testing, it’s so much more targeted as I know you know well Reed. So this is an important part of getting really, really good results and being real targeted in your recommendations.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Absolutely.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
This is a client that I want to use as an example. So this is an adrenal panel on her. I’d been seeing her for years and I always suspected that she had adrenal issues, and I kept telling her. She was a high-powered exec, worked 60 hours a week, constant stress, and she wasn’t really doing anything about it. Finally, I convinced her to run this adrenal panel. And you can see that she’s got some real cortisol rhythm issues here and it wasn’t until she saw it on paper that she finally said, “You’ve been telling me this for years. My chiropractor has been telling me I have adrenal issues and now I really see it and understand it.” And it was only based on this that she was willing to cut back, stop, do some meditation, really mitigate those stress.
So using objective data can really, really be helpful in this regard. And same with this, this is part of one of my clients’ GI panels. You can see that this anti-gliadin, which is the polypeptide of gluten antibody. I had asked her to go gluten free and she was hit and miss because she didn’t think it really bothered her, but it wasn’t until she saw this, that she was actually reactive to that gluten, that she was really able to remove it completely from her diet. So objective data is really powerful. It allows us to really get specific with our clients and they are more motivated and compliant as a result. When that happens, we all get better clinical outcomes. So I want to talk a little bit about Restorative Wellness Solutions.
This is our entry level programs. We have four levels. Level one is mastering the art and science of gastrointestinal healing. It’s a 12 week online certification program. This is what part of our curriculum is. You learn a lot about how to assess GI function through a number of different testing options. We talk about adverse food reactions. We have modules on how to really dig deep into the diet, supplements, lifestyle, emotions, and then putting it all together. We have ten coaching calls throughout the 12 weeks. We have an exclusive online membership board where our policy is that no question goes unanswered. We also give you this master list of healing solutions. We’re not tied to any one supplement line. We recommend what we have found successful in our practices for the last 20, 21 years. We have a big team of instructors that we allow every instructor to have a personal relationship with students.
We also have the ability for you to run your own labs, develop your own protocol, sort of like ‘healer, heal thyself first’ and have it reviewed by one of our instructors. This is just a few comments from some of our students. Jordan says, “Before taking your class, I thought I’d need to go to medical school to have the impact I want to make. Now I have everything I need.” Dr. Rachel Yan says, “Restorative Wellness Solutions transformed my practice and has given me the confidence to approach difficult cases.” And Mariette says that it’s brought it all together for her and increased her confidence. So, Mastering the Art and Science of Gastrointestinal Healing. We have a class starting in September, September 1st. We’re also adding, for summit members only, three bonuses, building your own personal brand, the ins and outs of supplementation, and then a webinar on ketogenic diets, intermittent fasting and weight loss, which are all the three techniques that we use a lot in our practices. So if you’re interested, you can go to masterguthealing.com.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Hey, that’s fantastic. Thank you for that presentation. I was missing seeing your face. We’ve been having some really great conversations, so let’s pick it up where you left off there. I started making some notes around the time that you mentioned the packages versus sessions ’cause the commitment is pretty big that they’re gonna make. You can get them to buy a package, you’re right. It takes a little bit of experience when you first come out of the training like yours or mine, I’m sure it’s the same. They’re like, “Well, I don’t know, some of these packages sounds expensive.” Whatever, but if you go sessions by sessions, I don’t see how you can actually make as much money either. Since this is a professional—this event, this summit is for people who are considering professions, that this is gonna be your career, or maybe it is your career and you just want to kick it up a notch. Most of my grads have had four or five different training programs. That’s another reason why I don’t mind sharing and just introducing everybody to everybody, ’cause you’re gonna pick what feels right and then you’re gonna find your niche and decide where you need other training and things and different courses offer different stuff. You should probably have a handful of certifications if you’re not a licensed practitioner.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
I couldn’t agree more. Education is a lifetime when it comes to nutrition, right? Like you’re never done.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yeah. There’s studies done that the typical professional health coach has a college degree of some sort, some work experience and two or three certifications or more. I think today, it’s probably gonna end up being they’ve all got a whole bunch. Personally, I think I have 15 and they’re from everything from nutrition to personal training to massage, to all these different things. So I don’t think you can ever stop learning. So with the packages, you’re gonna initially be able to make a good living, session by session. People might really not value whatever you’re—’cause if you’re not making 200 bucks an hour, I think you’re underpriced, doing what we do.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
I agree.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
One lawyer, he’s 1100 an hour. I don’t know any that aren’t 500 bucks an hour. They just have special knowledge in a special area and so do we, so we should be well paid. The reason you’re going to get well paid is so you can live the lifestyle that you’re trying to model for your clients. You can’t model the right lifestyle if you’re working out of the back of your car, and these kinds of things. You can start there, but don’t stay there very long! [Laughing] Another thing—
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
I was just gonna say, I find that the package commitment, so much of it has to do with the practitioner’s conviction, that “This is really what it’s gonna take for you to get where you want to go.” And so you have to have complete faith in yourself and the process.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
You totally do. And it should come quickly and try to learn from other people’s mistakes. When I first started running lab work when BioHealth opened in 1999, I would run one or two labs on my clients. I had lots of clients that were my—it was all for bones and hormones back then, that was what was really huge—
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
I remember
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Different studies. So bones and hormones. I’d run a saliva test and a urine test. Then I’d say, “Well, I want to look for pathogens.” Okay, and they’d do it. And I’d say, “Okay, now we need to look for food sensitivities.” And they go, “Okay, let’s do it.” You don’t know how many clients said to me, “Reed, why didn’t you just have me run all these labs in the beginning?” And I just said, “Well, I don’t know. I didn’t think you’d run them all ’cause you’ve invested a lot of money. And they said, “No, you should have just had me run them on the beginning”, ’cause they’re so into it, and they get it, and they like working with an objective and that’s when I just started selling packages.
That’s the deal. From then on, I never looked back, and this is what I’ve been teaching ever since. ‘Cause people, if you go through that onboarding process where you get their why and you get other things that we ask in that process, they’ll go, “Okay.” I mean, most of them have seen four, six or eight different practitioners already anyway. It hasn’t helped them. The reason is they haven’t collected enough of the data, identified enough of the healing opportunities and they don’t have a protocol that will address all of it at once, every cell tissue, organ, and system. So there really is a method to our madness, isn’t there Anne?
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Absolutely. Absolutely. And early in my career I was afraid to ask people for the major commitment of a package. So I did go session by session and people would hit that speed bump and then I would just never hear from them again. And I thought I failed. That was really what I thought, but then what I’ve discovered over the years is so many of them have come back and said, “You were the only one that really helped me”, even though I thought I’d lost them. It was on me that I didn’t make them make that commitment. That’s why I think it’s so important.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yeah. Yeah, totally. I’m so glad you brought up the idea of the two hats, the clinician and the coach. I’ll just give you an—I think I understand what you’re saying that, in the office, when I spent those 10 years at the wellness center, I was a clinician and pretty much we’d run the labs and we’d look at the results and we’d design a protocol and it was all highly customized things like that. But then it was like, “Okay, I’ll see you in two weeks.” That’s the clinical model where most physicians aren’t giving you much guidance on what to do between visits. At least we were given the instructions, the guidance, the recommendations and things, but still most physicians kind of sit back and wait for when the next appointment comes around. They get out the chart and go, “Okay, let’s see now.
Oh yeah, you’ve got this.” And then, “Well, we gave you this to take, have you been taking your medication? And how are you feeling? And what are your vital signs?” And things like, “Okay, keep going.” But what I learned was it’s what you do between the visits that really matters. That’s where the coaching hat has to come on and why we’re not clinicians really, we’re coaches. There’s two sides of it when you’re doing the lab work, but absolutely you can’t expect people to just go home and follow a complex set of instructions without some help, right?
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
It’s hard, you know? And so we’ve gotta be their cheerleader. We’ve gotta make sure that they’re successful. I think that the clinical hat comes in, in developing trust, that we really do know what we’re doing, that we have that deeper understanding of the human body. So you go back and forth between the two hats.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Absolutely. Yeah. That’s a really smart thing. And what else—let me see—do we want to talk about here as far as your… ‘Cause I think coaching is going to be the number one go to place for people who have a health condition, especially if they’re not getting results anywhere else. Professional health coaches, more or less your independent health coach who’s doing this as a profession, it means like you said, your livelihood depends on it. You better get people well so that you can get referrals and instead of having to market all the time.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Results refer, right? That’s it.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
There should be a referral. There’s a very special time in our program when we ask for the referral, almost insisting, “Well, you feel better, you just said so. I’m sure you want other people to feel better too. Who do you know that has a health problem that concerns them, that they actually want to do something about?” And all I want is an introduction. I can’t help people if I can’t talk to them and you go in and telling them isn’t going to work. It’s me. I’m the one that needs to talk to them and interview them, see if they’re ready and willing and able, and things like that.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
That’s right.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
So tell us any other obstacles you see practitioners having today besides not enough training?
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
If it’s in addition to that, for sure, and knowing how to handle client compliance, I would say the other part of it is just we enter this field because we have these big hearts and we want to help people. We need to also understand that we’re running a business and know how to make that part of the practice successful. And, like you said, have our clients referring people to us. I’ve never marketed my practice a day in my life. I’ve had a waitlist practice for many, many years. It really comes back to your own success and your ability to get your clients to become client compliant. That just is a circular thing that will just keep coming back to you. For sure.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
It’s so funny you said that, Anne. I just had a conversation this morning about what it takes and if you’re out there giving, you’re going to be successful. So there’s this idea—I grew up in an era of “go getter, go getter, go getter”. I was a real go getter. And no matter what job I did, I tried to be the best that ever did
- And kind of, not show off, but just show what I could do. This is absolutely true. Just this morning I was telling my staff, in high school, one of my jobs that I had was working in a dog kennel and I was not at the top of the totem pole. I was at the bottom and you know what that means in a dog kennel, you’re picking up poop. I just decided that, no matter what the job I did, I would do it the very best. I was a great poop picker upper! [Lauging] But I took pride—it’s ’cause I took pride in doing it. I tried to be a professional, be a go getter. Now that took me a long way.
But now that we’re in the industry in a big, it’s more about being a go giver. What I realized looking back, the way I built my business was to go out and give lectures, to go out and give these screenings to go out and give workshops and things like that. When you think of it as a go giver, you go out there and just deliver, deliver, deliver like information, helpful stuff, get in front of as many people as you can, and just show them that you love what you’re doing and be walking that talk, trying to set an example. When you’re out there giving, it’s gonna come back to you, people are gonna sign up. Like you just said, you’ve never marketed. I didn’t consider all that really marketing. I just—it was something I loved to do and I knew I’d get clients, but you love going out there and giving those lectures, or workshops, or talks, or webinars, or things like that. If you’re into writing blogs, give them, go give and you will receive. Absolutely.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
It’s so important Reed. You and I come from the same cut of cloth I think. I have never marketed, but I put myself out there over and over and over again, in community talks, in chiropractor offices, you have to get people to know that you’re out there. It takes a little bit of courage and a lot of self confidence to do that. I think that that’s part of developing that trust in yourself and in your own process. You know the gift that you have that you can give people and you’re so confident in that you want everybody to know it.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yes, ma’am. Absolutely there. So now, some more stuff about your program. Tell me what some of your most successful students are doing.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Well, we have such a wide variety of people come through our course. We have a lot of nutrition people, health coaches, but we also have chiropractors and MDs who are really wanting to understand functional nutrition. We have—the level one is Mastering the Art and Science of Gastrointestinal Healing because we believe that the gut is the highest healing priority of the body. Then level two is Mastering the Art and Science of Hormone Regulation, where we really dive into adrenal, male, cycling female, and post-menopause and bone health. Then level three is Functional Blood Chemistry from a Nutritional Perspective. And we’re currently in the process of writing level four, which is going to be the coup de gras culmination of everything else we haven’t covered. It will include the brain auto-immunity, genetics, and deep detoxification things, like mold and that kind of thing. That will be available in April of 2021. So we’re busy over here!
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
I know. I thought I would, maybe after 20 years, not work so hard but it’s actually the opposite. It’s just ’cause it’s getting bigger and bigger and there’s just so much to do.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
I know.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Well, I hope you’re getting some time off and you’ll be down here in Southern California at some point.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Well, I’m looking forward to that. I think the last time we saw each other was in Maui—
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
It was Hawaii
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Looking forward to seeing you again!
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yeah, we’ll do that. We have our conference coming up in October. We’ll talk about that afterwards. So, one more thing on my notes here that I want to talk about… We talked about packages and sessions, but why do so many practitioners undercharge? Is it just an experience or is there something else to it?
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Well, we have a way of helping a practitioner really determine how to price themselves that I think works really well. And that is, you first have to consider everything that you’ve invested in your education, how long you’ve been doing it, your ability to truly help people, the kind of success that you’ve had. When you consider all of that, then sit down and start playing with numbers and come up with—even though you’re working in packages—you want to think about it in terms of an hourly rate and then how many hours you’re gonna put into that package. But when you’re considering your hourly rate, think about a number. Let’s just say you come up with a figure you want to sit with that and go, “How does that feel? Do I feel like that feels good? Or is it not enough?” Or am I like, “Oh God, I could never ask for that amount of money.” And then just start moving up and down the scale until you come to a point where it feels just right for where you are right now. That that feels like a really fair and adequate amount to charge. I don’t think it’s of great value to ask other people what they’re charging, like it’s up to you to determine your own value. Most people undervalue themselves tremendously. So, I think—right?
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yeah.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
For what people invested in their education. You need to be charging for it.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, no one can tell you what you should charge. No man can put a price on my service, and likewise, I’m very respectful. I can’t put a price on another person’s service. If someone comes to me to fix my pool or do some plumbing or build a brick wall in the backyard and they tell me, “Well, here’s what I—I have a laborer, he charges this, I charge this for supervision. I have another guy who’s a skilled worker. That’s the rate.” What am I gonna do? Beat the guy down? I don’t do that.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
If that’s what you charge, that’s what I’ll pay, right?
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yeah. I was like, “Okay, if I want you, this is what I’m gonna have to pay.” And you either have the money or you don’t or you go get it. A funny thing is, one of my biggest promoters, Sean Croxton, tells this story. When he first wanted to take my course, he had just bought a TV, and he ended up taking it back to Lowe’s or wherever, getting his money back so he could pay for the course. So don’t let people tell you they don’t have the money!
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
I love that story. That is so good. People will get it if it’s really important to them, for sure.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Another thing I bring up sometimes, Anne, is—and sometimes I just do it automatically—when I give the price, I’ll say, “Now that might sound like a lot of money to you, but if this was your dog that we were talking about, saving it’s life, you wouldn’t even think about it. You would write me the check right now, if it was your dog.” And people do. I mean, I’ve had pets, and if the doctor says, “Oh, he needs a new something” or “We’ve gotta repair this, repair that, and it’s five grand.” You just go, “Okay.” You don’t think about where the money’s coming from and “Oh, should I spend it?” You just go, “Okay.” If it was your kid, you’d pay three times that much, whatever it is. So why won’t people to spend that on themselves. It’s just so you can have that conversation with them. And I break the ice with that: if it was your dog, you’d spend it.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
I like that. I like that.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
And, of course, the other thing you could do is decide how much money you want to make in a year and how many clients you can handle and do the math. If you want to make a hundred thousand dollars, that should be easy money with an organized—if you’re a go giver in the health business, that should not be a stretch to anyone’s imagination, a hundred grand a year. But if you only charge a dollar per person, you’d have to see a hundred thousand people, and so you can start doing the math of, “Well, I can reasonably see this many a week. Therefore I have to, to stay in business and to meet my goals, I’m gonna have to charge at least this much”. And it’s more than you think. So if you’re not charging that much, you’re under priced. So that’s fantastic. Say again?
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
I also think that when somebody hears about you and how great you’ve done with them, that makes the price all the more palatable.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Like, “Who’d you hear about me from? Oh yeah. Good one.” So you know that they kind of have an idea what the ballpark might be. And look, you can do charity work if you want to, but that’s on the side. I’ve got my charities, a number of them, but it’s not my work, even though we do give scholarships and things like that, you can still do lots of charity work. You can be as altruistic as you like.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Yeah, you can’t choose everybody though.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yeah, but you just gotta find some customers and treat them like good customers: that means charging. So, let’s see. I have just maybe a couple more questions here. We alluded to this a little bit in our conversation here, before we started recording we were talking about it, the role of health coaching in today’s healthcare space or sphere. Let’s talk about that.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
I’d love to, yeah. I feel like we have so much to offer above the conventional medical system, partly because of what I talked about, their whole model is that you only go there when you’re sick. That’s not our model. You come to us to optimize wellness and that’s a completely different model. And one that I’m thrilled to be a part of.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yeah. Let’s say it another way: to help people be their best. Sometimes optimized wellness is a bit of a euphemism. What the hell does that mean? It’s like, be your best, have lots of energy, get up every day with your feet hitting the floor, feeling pretty good about yourself. Be it having a sense of wellbeing, having all your meals be very satiating and producing lots of energy and, again, that sense of wellbeing. So you know what to eat and you’re getting a good night’s sleep and all the energy, you got clear thinking. It’s not just a lack of symptoms, ’cause a lot of people, like you just said, if this was the wellness meter, and here’s no symptoms, people say, “Oh, I’m fine.” Why? “No symptoms.”
As soon as they have a symptom, headaches or just fatigue, they’ll take something to get back to no symptoms. Well, if this is fatigue, that’s a symptom. Well, here’s no symptoms, what’s this, an abundance of energy? Yeah, and if you’re sick all the time, or a lot, you’re catching every cold and sniffle, when your kids go, “What’s this?” This is a kick ass immune system that doesn’t get sick. It takes something really virulent. Even if you do get a bug or something, you usually can get over it really fast without a lot of symptoms. So there’s a lot more than just no symptoms or symptoms, no symptoms and symptoms. There’s all this immune system working great, and lots of energy, and clear thinking, and sense of wellbeing. Really that’s how you can work on joy and being happy in the world. You know, you can’t do it without health.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Without a doubt. I’m really proud to be part of changing that paradigm of, let’s not look for a medication. There is no magic bullet. We really have to take responsibility for our own sense of wellness, energy, joy, whatever we have. It’s really on us to optimize.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
To be your best. Absolutely. You know how many drugs are on the market today? I’ll just tell you, it’s almost 1500. It’s like over 1400 different drugs. You think there’s not enough drugs in the world? There’s a drug fricking for everything. I think personally that most of them are just made up. But they’re patented drugs, new molecular entities that exist, and it’s going on 1500 different drugs. How many conditions are there that you could think of? It’s just crazy to me, and to a lot of the people in our space. So, we don’t need more drugs. We don’t need medication. We need education. We say: we don’t medicate, we educate.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
The other thing I think about with medication is that there are no clinical studies of any kind of drug combination beyond two or three. Think about how many people are on four, five, six medications, and they’re taking drugs to treat the side effects of medications. We have to change that paradigm of “that works”, ’cause it doesn’t work. We have to make people realize, help them understand, educate them that there’s more to life and that eating well, moving, sleeping well is not that difficult, you know? And the results are amazing.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yeah. Just as we wind it down here, and we were talking about the role of the health coach today. The only study being done now, if you go to clinicalstudies.gov or something like that, the only study being done on health coaching is can they increase compliance with medication taking in cases of IBD (irritable bowel disease). The current only study on health coaching is can it help people stay on their medication? Now that’s the wrong system for us. That’s not what health coaches want to do for a living, is make sure you’re taking your medication on time. So, it tells me that in the future as health coaching becomes more prevalent that on the medical side, we’re gonna start calling it institutional health coaching. That that’s what their job is, basically just going to foster and continue to format the idea of disease management. It will help you, you need coaching to help manage that disease.
Doctors get that it’s what people do between visits that matters not what they do in the office, unless it’s surgery. They get that health coaches could be helpful, but they’re actually appropriating health coaching because health coaching was founded in helping people reach those optimum states of health, be your best. Not be compliant and manage your disease. That’s not what we started health coaching for all those years ago before we called it health coaching. I don’t like this appropriation by the American or Western medicine model, personally.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
That’s certainly not what you and I are about and we’re doing everything we can to turn that around.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Well, what else could we be doing here as we wind it down again? What else should we be doing as professionals to help the space?
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
I think there’s so much to be said for walking your talk, as you said. We can’t ask anybody anything that we’re not doing ourselves. One of the things that has become really apparent to me in this whole lockdown of the coronavirus is how important my own health is and the things that I need to do to be more proactive about that. Not that I wasn’t before, but I’m even more committed. I have a big birthday this year and I’m super proud of the health that I have and I wanna keep it going as long as I can.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
I’m not gonna ask which birthday, but I’m sure I saw it a long time ago, whatever it is.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Oh, I’m gonna tell you, I’m turning 65 this year.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Oh my God. Yeah. Well, you sure don’t look it!
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Thank you.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Yeah, I didn’t think that at all, but I still got you beat. So last thing here Anne, it’s been so much fun talking with you. What do you think really separates a pro from a hobbyist in the health coaching field?
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Commitment. Commitment to your purpose. Experimentation. I’m sure you could say the same thing that I’m about to say Reed, in your career. I practiced a million different ways of presenting things to people until I found what really works because I knew it worked. And just really being your most creative self, being a hundred percent committed, taking classes, getting more education, never quitting. One of the things I love about this field is we can’t ever know it all. It’s what’s kept me engaged for all these years. I can’t ever know it all because it just is ever-evolving, and then you’re dealing with biochemical individuality, every person is different. And so, just keep going, keep growing.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
Keep going, keep growing. Let’s end it with that, it’s a very positive note. I thank you so much Anne for being here. I’m sure people are gonna really like you.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Thanks you Reed. Good to be with you.
Reed Davis, HHP, FDN-P, CMTA, CNT
We are gonna make sure your information goes in the show notes too and I’m gonna encourage people to go out there to those show notes right now and buy your VIP passes while they are still available, ’cause once this is off the air, then you won’t be able to buy them anymore. So there’s your word of advice from Anne and I, and thanks again Anne.
Anne Fischer Silva, NTP, RWS
Thanks Reed. Take care.
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