Why Don’t Buyers Trust Your Innovative HealthTech Startup?

Introduction to The Provider's Edge 0:00

Most founders think a better product will automatically build trust. It won't. In this episode, we sat down with Katrina Freil, a business mentor, the TEDx presenter, and an award-winning author to unpack why expert-led startups struggle with visibility, messaging, credibility, even when the innovation is strong. You'll learn how founders can turn expertise into authority, simplify complex ideas and build trust before asking buyers or investors to say yes. Healthcare entrepreneurs, are you ready to rewrite the rules for your business so you can have more time off, a great team, and more income while creating a positive social impact?

Then you are in the right place. Welcome to The Provider's Edge. I'm your host, Sabrina Rambach. I'm a provider and international peak performance keynote speaker and a best-selling author. Let's open the gateway to profitability for you today. My guests and I help healthcare entrepreneurs and startup founders like you break through barriers so you can control your business, control you life, and control the future. This is your defining moment to be a disruptor in healthcare. Today, our speaker is Katrina Frill.

She is an internationally recognized business mentor who has been celebrated for her expertise in guiding entrepreneurs and leaders toward true mastery in their field of excellence. Katrina has empowered clients for over 25 years, drawing from her expertize in an award-winning author, sell-after speaker,

Why Founders Need a Philosophy, Not Just a Product 1:56

and how TEDx presenter is going to help you to build your personal brand. Her unique down for you program transforms hidden dreams into reality in just 90 days, offering a clear path for success, through seven streams of income. For those ready to become experts in their field of excellence, Katrina is the how they have been waiting for, providing the clarity strategy and inspiration needed to thrive authentically in the new world, future-proofing your business and life. We are so fortunate to have Katrina here.

Welcome, welcome. Hello! Happy New Year! It is all full of excitement every time we go through a new phase, right? New quarter, new goal, and most of the time, self-branding, personal branding. How do you stand out? Because we talk about this in both corporate leader as well as individual leader, or innovators. You are your own individual. You're your identity. But you're also part of the identity of that innovation, that company that you are building. And sometimes they are not the same exactly, right?

Because we need to have a parallel identity and the challenge I find most startup is that they feel like their entire company need a speak act exactly like them. Instead of you need to speak, act exactly like the problem, the highest level of painful problem you to solve and how your offer is going to match the rest of the ideal client you needed to engage with, right? So I feel like sometimes people get a little bit of confused on who are they? How do they keep that authenticity? Well, your product services need to also communicate in a specific way to the public.

So you have been more than 25 years experiencing in building personal brand and creating these additional incomes. When you start advising people on building those different things, where is the first thing they need us to start asking or start thinking? Well, everyone's sitting on a goldmine, as far as I'm concerned, and they need to explore their philosophy. And so I suppose other people call it their story, their messaging, but I call your philosophy, so from that philosophy that you want to educate people about and make them care about.

Otherwise, if you're not really educating and you haven't really got any messaging behind it, you just sell in something. and no one really cares. Whereas if you're out there as a personal brand ambassador for your brand, you have a story, a philosophy, and a reason to educate your market so that they actually care. That's your job and that's where the seven streams of income come in. And it usually starts, I believe, with a book. And, you know, it doesn't have to be an actual paperback book, It can be a e-book that really, if you're going to do one, your mails will do both.

But this is where you stop and you start to think about who am I? What do I stand for? what's my messaging, what my story, What's My Philosophy? And we pull that out of you so that when they see you speak, which is the second part of it, When they see you speak, they now can buy a t-shirt from The Rock Concert, which is your book in our world. So they get to walk away with a piece of you. This is a very expensive business card, of course, but they got to work away your philosophy and they want a peace of view.

Books, Speaking, and Building Authority 5:38

and the book really says in a couple of hours exactly who you are and what you stand for. So the Book is where we start, not for your market, but for yourself, so that you've done the rigour of working that out of who are you and who stand you for, otherwise people just don't care. There's just so much out there, nobody cares. Right, so your philosophy is one piece of long content. And then for some people like us is a long interview, right? A speaking engagement, and they start there. But for a lot of people, that's audio.

You can really also translate something on paper so people can walk away, as you mentioned. How do you differentiate when people should be publishing a book as a collaborative book versus individually publishing under their own name. To me, publishing a book in a group is very distracting. I strongly recommend you do a Book yourself so that it's just one message, one focus, no other distractions with all these other people and their philosophies. It's like being on a panel when people are scared of do panels.

It's like well you get five minutes and you're hearing from all these other people and all those other opinions and other distractions. Again, you've got to be your own speaker. Stand up and be a keynote with your book and your speaking and together you have this one message, one focus rather than all of these others just because you are scared of writing a book yourself and scared to stand on stage on your You might start there, but I don't recommend it for my clients. My clients, I say to them, no to panels and no group books.

To me, you're much better off getting your philosophy book done first so that people, that you have that philosophy there that says who you are and what you stand for and you speak. You now can go out and apply to be a speaker at various events based on your philosophies. People that are on panels, it's usually just their first time getting on stage. I think there's a different takes on when people go into a collaborative book, it's because they will believe that it can be faster for them to chart the bestseller in those category, because now you have multiple author pushing and engaging doing multiple PR press about that book.

So that is true for you. If you, for what we see is if you just simply wanted to say that you're a bestselling author and especially international author. then collaborative booklets get you there versus if the purpose is really a self-demonstration of what Katrina you mentioned of philosophy, right? What do you truly believe in? How are you getting there? what's that story?What is the thing that you can create better than anybody else, that competitive edge? Not a single book seems to be a much better way of not being distracted.

by anybody else's voices, opinions, and the way that they're talking as you refer to on the panel. And I think it's also when you're going to speaking, there are going be conferences that are majority are panel for you to get to a keynote. You need to spend a lot more time to build that relationship with these event planner before you can even get chartered for the keynote versus majority of your speaking engagement are panelists. Also from where I stand for as an event planner, we wanted to have a lot of amazing people out there.

And how do you do that is a panel. So I think when people start getting engaged in these things, you have to ask yourself, what's worth it? Is the worst to be on that panel because you got to meet a lotta other people in that event, and it's still a good opportunity for you, where you're only looking for keynote. But if you to do have some keynote, film it, right? Do speaking reels repurpose that? So there's a lot more things that people can leverage. But I do understand what you're saying. You don't want to get drowned, you really want a spotlight.

So besides starting with the individual book, and then start picking up more speaking engagements, what else do you think people should start thinking next? So, the book is the first stream of income, The Speaking is a second stream income. The third stream is to then have a signature program. So a Signature Program is where the rubber hits the road. This is were the actual money is. There's no money in books and you'll do a lot of speaking for free until you reach a level where you're getting paid big dollars for speaking.

And that's a whole other business strategy. But the signature program is where you'll sell something for five thousand, ten thousand twenty thousand dollars where people can go deeper with your message, deeper, with the experience of being educated about this thing, whatever that is. And there's many, many ways you can deliver on this one signature programme that you've created. It could be a three day retreat, it could a two day workshop, What I like to do is build the signature program, the big Rolls Royce version.

Signature Programs and the Seven Streams of Income 10:51

And then what we do, is we apply the accordion method so that no matter what the time that you've given, you might be given a half day, a one day or two day a three day. Whatever is going to work for your particular industry and your particularly niche, can do the same program just done at different speeds. So the less time you have, the least interactive it becomes. Just like all the way down to a one-hour keynote, there's not a lot of interactivity with that. Whereas a three-day event, lots of interactive exercises, a lots discussions and a whole bunch of inter-activity.

So the signature program is the third stream of income. And then from there, you've got coaching one-on-one. So same program, same signature programme, just one on one. Then mentoring is next stream income, mentoring where they've done your basic one, which is coaching and training. But now they want to go to the next level. This is where you might do a second year of training with them. It might be your more advanced training, it might a train the trainer, It could be a whole bunch of things, but it's just more advance really.

And then facilitating is the same sort of thing. You've done the basic foundational training. facilitating is for those second year students, the ones that want to go deeper and become, you know, more expert in your particular field of excellence. And then the final one is consulting is where you're now teaching back to your industry and creating best practice and create. You know installing a policy or a procedure or whatever it is you want do to consult back, to you industry, and consult that to.

Organizations within your field and excellence So there are all the streams of income that you've got on hand and all of them are there at varying levels from the book to the keynote to signature program to advanced training. All of that is there so you can educate your market. Again, because if you don't educate the market about your thing and your innovation and you know your area that you think is so important, nobody cares. So it always comes back to educating your mark and new market needs different education at different levels.

And some just want to book for two hours and go, oh, yeah, that's really interesting. and others want a deep dive into it. And so you've got to be ready for all of that. And that's your personal brand. That's what walks in the room ahead of you is your Personal Brand. Even though you might have a tech product or something similar, You can't just be going around talking about your tech solution. You have to talk about the whole education piece around why it exists. What's the pain there? How did the paint get created?

how does your philosophy fix that? And so on. So you're able to do it with these seven streams of income, as opposed to just having the product itself, the tech itself. That's almost like an eighth stream of the income. Yeah, so we'll translate a little bit. So for subject matter experts, I think that's gonna be something relatable is that you are an expert of something you work in the industry for 1520 years. Let's say you Are a informatics expert. And from there, you have probably A lot of research, a lot a personal experience, building different organization.

And so for those are what come to your core book, your philosophy, you believe system that develop into a talk. Then we think about a signature talk and you really signature program. Now you have to even narrow down to who are the people who feel pain enough? Who has the urgency to buy this big ticket item? And when you are understanding their language, think back to all your past clients. How do they describe those problems? That's when, you start thinking about what is that big problem you're solving?

How are you solving it? and then with the how you developing that program. And that's what Trina is saying. Then it can be a few days, can't be few hours. However, it's in a format. It just, but once you have the core of what that big scope looks like, then you can expand or subtract the tuition based on how many activities you help with the people. And then is that for many of us, I think a subject matter expert, sometimes we kind of just skipped the signature talk. We go directly as a consultant because we worked, right?

You creating a complete new product and service and sell, that's a lot of work. So sometimes you can just go to directly to as consultant, because you have the expertise to teach, to show that, Right? To do a diagnostic on things they don't even know what they are looking for, right? Like the blind leading the line would not help, so you're going to become the eyes. And that's when we start thinking about, okay, where are you in what phase? It doesn't mean you have to do everything. It's more about what can you do to be the easiest to set up your authority and then rinse and repeat, and for tech founders.

That's where also, Trina, you also leading into is Even you have a product, if you're just talking about the hardcore product integrated systems, this drug can do this, This is preventative. That's all good. But as you build this story, you can have something, let's say creating a community and that community might be a new product. Right? Like in this community, how do you talk about, for example, one of our clients talk, about a pain free way to do a GYN exam. We all know those spatulas, all those devices are very uncomfortable for women.

And then women need to do this exam from teenager all the way to menopause, right? We needed to have those things. But so maybe what you're talking about is human shouldn't just suffer. Women shouldn' just use these old school devices, what can we do to make things easier? to adapt more to serve the underserved population, right?

Using Content, Confidence, and Simplicity to Build Trust 17:28

Creating community around those. And then when you have that group, those your champions, so those are your supporting system. Then when, you know them so well, then you can actually help to sell that product. So I think for a lot of tech founders out there, we needed to be more creative on creating these maybe not as high ticket of product as you going to sell the services and programs, but something else that still can help with your cash flow and also is your social support that will eventually your final big ticket product is going to sell to.

How else, Trina, do you believe that we can think about personal branding in building something that's a little bit of rigid, right, like hard to capture and using your own voice? Well, just the book itself, if we just focus there for a minute in doing the rigor of something like that, you can actually create a book with a whole bunch of chapters based on case studies so that people can read all the different case-studies. The other benefit of the Book when you do the rigour is that it's about a year's worth of social media content.

So you're not reinventing the wheel. This is what I call pre-approved content that's already been edited and checked and sits within your personal brand voice. And you can just really repurpose the whole thing from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, you can use it as scripts and talk to camera. You can add a voiceover and you know you could do so much with it, You could even turn it into an audio book if that's the vibe and that what's gonna get you to your market quicker. There's just so much within the book.

But the main thing about the Book is you've sat down and you worked it out and You've built confidence. It's a layer of confidence that you wouldn't have otherwise had. If you don't do that, you know, sit down And work out your story, your philosophy. You really haven't got that layer Of confidence, and so you'll always feel a little bit off kilter, a Little bit like an imposter. than the average person. This is a layer of confidence you need underpinning yourself as an expert in your field of excellence.

Such a great point. We have to do those self reflection of how do you get P from A to Z? And sometimes if we didn't do that deep dive, we think it will take a lot shorter amount of time than what it is or other people oversimplify. And therefore then you are not standing out as the true niche expert that you. So take that time. Some people might say, well, Sabrina, We're not good writers. But we all know writing doesn't always have to be just sit down and type. There's so many creative ways. Nowadays we have phones, a transcribe for you.

You can do a online screen recording. I'm showing, demonstrating. Some people are great at just having a whiteboard and then they are mapping out. portion of how do you do things? And then in between, then add your reason, add the stories, other case studies to make it more human, right? There are so many creative ways. And if you even want more of it, there's plenty of amazing ghost writers out there. Once you have the core, they will turn that into something amazing. and that also sound like you and doesn't sound Like someone else completely took over.

Absolutely. That's why I do what I, do is because it's a done for you model because no one's coming into this as an expert in being an author, being a speaker, designing programs, be a consultant. No one is coming in to it with that expertise. this done-for-you kind of model is where you don't have to worry about the back end. It's all done for you. And yes, we're not ghostwriting per se, but I've worked with people that are dyslexic and I'm actually editing, you know, putting 20 different edits into one sentence.

That's how much kerfuffle it can be to edit a book. But as long as I know what you're trying to say, we can then finesse that and make it sound good. No one is a great writer. Being a greater writer is something that you can pursue your entire life and still not arrive at perfection. There is no perfection, all we want with experts in their field of expertise is really something that's simple. That's what makes you the expert, is you can explain complex things in a very simple, direct way. And so the book is something, that should be very easy to read, very, simple and you get up there and the main objective with your book and your speaking is for people to go, oh, I never thought about it that way, That's the objective, is for people to go, oh, I never thought about it like that.

And that's because an expert is explaining something that has taken them 20 years to work out in a succinct 20-minute TED Talk or a two-hour book read. Do you know what I mean? It's just, that is what an Expert is. It makes the complex really simple. And now I'm interested. Now I know what I didn't know before. now you've explained it. It's like, wow, now, I want to learn more. I wanna apply it to my life. Whereas before I was oblivious. So that's what your book and your talk is there to do is to make people come into your field.

and learn something new that they didn't know or care about before. And until that happens, no one will care that you take either. Exactly. It's we said the trust need to be built with the person itself, how much they trust you, believe in you. And then they will actually trust and believe it in the product that you're trying to sell. Then ultimately is trust, and belief in a company that your running. So you have three really reputation to manage yourself, your product and your entire company, because the company is built on multiple people.

Where to Find Katrina and Closing Remarks 23:58

and the product delivery mostly is might not just be you right especially when we think about when you're scaling these companies it's not. Just your couple co-founder with you you wanted to become the hundred staff that on your team and eventually exit right and so make something starting from today to make people love you trust you From that perspective, and also the simplicity is also how we teach people on how do you pitch for that big contract that Big Check for founding is that it's not a 10 minute talk.

It's actually two minutes, something get to the point that people's like, I want to ask you more questions, get into the next phase. So we know there's could be a lot more to dive into. We're so excited for you guys to even just explore this little things about having a book, having your talk, have a signature program product, and then expand that into consultancy, expand into something hardcore that you're taking to multiple different places. And then you feel free to express yourself. And then we all start from somewhere.

We never grow into even for providers edge, we're top 100 in entrepreneurship on Apple podcast in US and UK and other countries. But we didn't get here overnight. we have published almost 300 episodes, right? It's the consistency is the grind is passion of continue to do more and to share to get the right people to speak to listen to give you the knowledge that you need and for you guys to start speaking back right tell us how well you are doing let us celebrate you let's hear your story and this is what this show is about so we're excited to be there for everybody else Go connect with Katrina and she has so much more things that she can do for you.

You don't have to do it all because she will do everything and plan that out with you and to make you shine the best. So how can they best find you on linking your website? Yeah I think going straight to the website because everything all the socials are there so if you go to becomingtheexpert.com.au you're able to book in for a free discovery session at becomingtheexpert .com .au. Book in a for free Discovery session and just allow me that time to really just unpack what it is that you're doing, how it all looks so that I can map it out for you.

And whether you work with me or not, you still have it mapped out. You'll have a lot of clarity about who you are as the expert in your field of excellence. So that is a free one hour with mean that's an hour of my life. I come get back and I'd love to sort of just deep dive with you a little bit more based on your specific tech and your specific area of expertise. So, yeah, I look forward to catching up with some of you guys and find me at the website and we can connect there. There's a free checklist you can download so that you see what the program itself contains.

And there's lot in it, a lot of value in. It's done for you kind of model. Yeah, in 90 days, you could have your whole personal brand ecosystem all sorted out. and ready to go for a great 2026. See you soon. Thank you for listening. Remember, the positive change we're seeking starts right here with me and you. If you're a fan of the show, or if you are just having struggles or success that you either experienced in the past or are experiencing now in healthcare industry, these matter to all of us.

I want to hear from you! Visit sabrinarumbag.com forward slash connect and send me a direct message. Talk soon!