It might help to think about this in terms of mindful eating. When you feel the urge to sign up for something, stop and ask: is my practice actually hungry for this?

• If you've decided newsletters are your main marketing focus and you're specifically hunting for newsletter training - amazing. Dive in.

• If you're just responding to a sale email, a fear of missing out, or a vague sense that you "should" know more? Take a step back. You might find the urge is actually about avoiding visibility work, not about needing to know this information right now.

When I'm tempted by a program but my business isn't actually hungry for it right now, I keep a running document with the link, price, and details. About 80% of the time, I realize that I don't need or want to do the program right now. It's a "nice to have eventually" versus a "I need to implement this right away and I think this course will help." Programs and classes are almost always offered again later.

Before you sign up for anything this fall, ask yourself:

• Is this a hunger in my business right now?

• Am I going to implement what I learn, or just collect more information?

• Am I using learning as a way to avoid the harder work of being seen?

We want synergy between what we're taking in and what we're putting out. Make sure there's a balance between the two.

• Submit a question for a future episode at intheclinic.com

• Sign up for my weekly Practitioner Notes newsletter at intheclinic.com or camillefreeman.com

• Find all episodes and show notes at intheclinic.com

I'm Camille Freeman, DCN, RH, and I host In the Clinic with Camille, a podcast for herbalists and nutritionists building and growing their private practices. I've been in clinical practice since 2003 with a focus on fertility, pregnancy, and menstrual health.

I've gotten several questions lately about whether or not I recommend Substack to clinicians who want to start a newsletter to help promote their clinical practices. TLDR: it's not the best tool for the job.

In this episode, I spell out why I don't think herbalists and nutritionists are well-served by using Substack as a way to promote a private practice.

Essentially, it all boils down to:

1. It's not designed for promoting services, classes, workshops, etc. and it shows.
2. It's free, which is great, but you do pay in other ways - for example, in control over you readers' experience.
3. Support is basically nonexistent.

I go into a few other reasons in the show, but these are the big ones.

Go ahead and use an email service provider that's designed for the type of promotion we do when we write a newsletter. I use MailerLite, but there are tons of great options with similar features.

For more on writing newsletters, check out my book: Write Better Newsletters: Grow your 1:1 practice with newsletters people actually want to read.

And/or join my newsletter for practitioners to get a new note from me every Thursday.

Thanks for being here!

- Camille

A behind-the-scenes update on a change I've been making at Bloom & Grow: after years of offering my freebies as open downloads, I'm now requiring an email address to access them. I wanted to share my full (evolving) thinking in case it gives you permission to change your mind on something in your own practice.

Key Points & Timestamps:

• 00:00 - Welcome and intro

• 00:18 - The backstory

• 01:10 - Why I've had a change of heart

• 01:35 - People don't click on web search results anymore, apparently

• 02:24 - Web traffic is down overall

• 02:53 - AI roadblocks

• 03:52 - Freebie set up

• 04:53 - Keeping an eye on results

• 05:13 - New website navigation

• 06:07 - It's okay to change your mind

Resources Mentioned:

• My freebies page: camillefreeman.com/freebies

• My book: Write Better Newsletters: Grow your 1:1 Practice with Emails People Actually Want to Read

• My weekly practitioner notes: sign up at camillefreeman.com (or grab a freebie and join the list at the same time)

If you want to check out the new setup, head to the freebies page; some are still in transition, so you might see a mix of old and new setups. If there's something in your own practice that doesn't feel in alignment anymore, I hope this gives you a little wiggle room to change it. You can always change it back 🖤