Acupuncture Marketing School episode #54 with Clara Cohen, founder of AcuPro Academy, successful acupuncture practice owner, and author of three TCM books.

Welcome! Today I’m talking with Clara Cohen, the founder of AcuPro Academy.

You may be familiar with Clara already. With a combined 300 thousand social media followers across multiple platforms, Clara is a proliferative and very dedicated content creator.

But more than that, she’s both effervescent and inspiring.

In her early 20s, Clara moved from France to Western Canada on her own, speaking little English. She learned English and was in the fitness industry for over a decade before her career change to Chinese medicine, and she’s never looked back.

Since then, Clara’s been a licensed acupuncturist for 20 years in Canada, has been teaching acupuncture students in person for 14 years, and is the sole creator of everything you see at AcuPro Academy for the past 7 years.

She’s also the author of 3 TCM books.

She brings so much energy and enthusiasm to everything she does. Talking with her is always a delight.

Her mission is to support acupuncture students and practitioners all over the world, with easy to grasp and fun to learn Chinese medicine content!

In this episode, we talk about:

  • How Clara moved from France to Western Canada and learned English by herself
  • Her transition from the fitness industry to acupuncture school in her late 30s (and how all her family and friends thought it was a BAD idea!)
  • Clara’s experience with Marie Forleo’s B-School
  • What one thing transformed her business and increased her patients from 20 to 55 in six months
  • How your unique strengths are the key to growing your acupuncture practice
  • The fact that despite being prolific and very visible on social media, Clara is an introvert and what this means for the rest of us introverts (good news)
  • Why no one cares what you look like on video 
  • And much more

I hope you really enjoy this conversation with Clara. Let’s dive in!

🎙️ Episode #54: Use Your Unique Strengths to Grow Your Acupuncture Practice with Clara Cohen

Show Notes:

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Transcript:

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (00:04)

Welcome to the Acupuncture Marketing School Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Grasek, and I’m here to help you get visible in your community, take marketing action with confidence and get more patients in your practice and more money in your pocket every week. We both know you’re a talented, passionate acupuncturist and that acupuncture has the power to change lives. So let’s dive right into this episode and talk about how you can reach more patients.

(00:34)

Welcome. Today I’m thrilled to be talking with Clara Cohen, the founder of AcuPro Academy. You may be familiar with her. With a combined 300,000 social media followers across multiple platforms, Clara is a proliferative and very dedicated content creator, but more than that, she’s effervescent and totally inspiring. Today we talk about her journey to Canada, where she lives and practices now, her career change to Chinese medicine and how she got into creating online courses and content for fellow acupuncturists. She brings so much energy and enthusiasm to everything she does. Talking with Clara is always a delight. She’s been a licensed acupuncturist for 20 years in Canada, has been teaching future practitioners for 14 years, and is, as I mentioned, the sole creator of everything you see at AcuPro Academy for the past seven years. She’s also the author of three TCM books. Her mission is to support acupuncture students and practitioners all over the world with easy to grasp and fun to learn Chinese medicine content. I hope you really enjoy this conversation with Clara. Let’s dive in.

[MICHELLE] (01:43)

Hello Clara, welcome

[CLARA COHEN] (01:45)

Hi, Michelle, Michelle who I have never met in real life, but I feel like I know you because we’ve been conversing on the internet on Zoom, on social media for a long time. I love that you’re doing a podcast because I listen to podcasts all the time. This is something that is fantastic when you are walking the dog or going for workout or anything. So I love that you’re doing this because I think podcasts are awesome and then I love that you’re helping people, so impacting people, having fun, meeting new people, and doing interviews like this, this is fun. So thank you for having me.

[MICHELLE] (02:23)

Thank you so much for taking the time to be here. I know you are super, super busy. One of the things that I admire the most about you is how prolific you are with your content creation, with everything from Instagram reels to YouTube videos and writing books. You finished writing your third book late last year, which is so exciting.

[CLARA] (02:47)

Yeah, that’s crazy. I never thought I would write one book, two or even three books just because, as you can hear from my accent, English is not my language and writing a book in English felt like, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to write a book. I don’t know how you even create a book. But people kept asking for it just because I love to create, I love creation, so I was creating a lot of, like you said graphics and different fun, easy way to understand acupuncture for my community on social media and everybody kept asking, why don’t you make a book? Why don’t you make a book? And I kept thinking, I don’t know how to do this. But then when so many people ask, you’re thinking, well, maybe they need it. So if I can make an impact of a book, and the feedback had been so amazing that I ended up doing a second one and like you said, last year released a third one. So it’s been a great journey and very rewarding.

[MICHELLE] (03:45)

What’s the name of your third book, just so people can look for it if they’d like? And we’ll include a link in the show notes as well. Oh,

[CLARA] (03:51)

You’re so sweet. It’s Chinese medicine Treatments Made Easy, because I’m all about making it easy, simple. Then if you want to go in-depth after, then you can. And my whole goal in life is to start at the foundation at the basics and give you all the basics you need to be able to have a guide in your practice to treat patients and then after that you can add your own knowledge to it. That’s why I created that because people would ask me all the time, I have someone that has diabetes type two, what points would you do, and I would always answer, it depends, it depends on your diagnosis as you know. So I decided to give the most common patterns with the symptoms and how we treat those patterns. So it gives you a guide. So that’s why I wrote this one. And I had a lot of fun with it because I think that to me is something really useful to have. And I actually refer to it in practice sometimes, which is funny —

[MICHELLE] (04:51)

That’s amazing.

[CLARA] (04:53)

I know, because sometimes I’m like, ooh, I haven’t treated this in a long time, so let me see, because I had so many notes from school. I have written so many things over time for my students because I, teaching in a college, so I had all my class notes, everything. I just had to really make it pretty and fun and easy for people to grasp in that format, so that’s literally, the whole knowledge was already there I just had to format it really. So that was great.

[MICHELLE] (05:21)

I always appreciate anything that ends with the words made easy. You mentioned that English is not your first language, so I was wondering if you would mind sharing with us how you came to be in Canada. You’re on the western side of Canada, right? How you learned English, how you got into acupuncture, that whole amazing story.

[CLARA] (05:42)

How much time do you guys have?

[MICHELLE] (05:44)

Plenty.

[CLARA] (05:46)

Plenty? Here we go. This is an interesting story for me, but I hope it is interested for, interesting, sorry for everybody else, my mom, my dad died when I was five. I’m sharing this because my mom was a single mother of three working full-time, minimum wage, 12 hours a day to put food on the table and pay rent, basically minimum things we needed to grow up. I was born 10 weeks premature. I told my mom it’s because she was smoking two packs a day, like a French woman that she was and she said it has nothing to do with it and I was like, oh, I think I need to get out of there to get fresh air, but okay. So I was quite premature, which in Chinese medicine, my husband always says you weren’t finished. I have essence gene deficiency, I was not finished, fair enough.

(06:38)

I grew up with, in a TCM perspective, it was so, when I learned TCM I was like wow, it makes so much sense because first of all I had asthma as a kid because, of course, I was in my mom’s belly smoking it up, so I had asthma as a kid. I was born with scoliosis so my spine wasn’t straight, which is again a kidney essence deficiency. My teeth didn’t go straight at all. I had so many issues, my teeth growing up, and I was sick all the time as a child. So the thing that my mom did when I grew up in France, it’s a little bit different than North America. We have a lot of people that are very well used or utilized, which is acupuncturist, host, osteopath, I can never say that in English, osteopathy, osteopathy, osteopathy?

[MICHELLE] (07:19)

Osteopathy, yeah.

[CLARA] (07:24)

Thank you, baby. Chiropractic, kinesiology, all those modalities are used a lot. Homeopathy is huge in Europe, so in France it’s huge as well. So my doctor when I was younger said, okay, well we’re going to put a brace, like a corse. It was a brace when I was seven and a half and for 18 months, I had this brace that I had to wear every day during the day and not at night. Then they put a plywood on my bed and I had to sleep on this plywood board on my back, which was so hard because I used to sleep on my stomach and I used to cry, I can’t fall asleep. And now I can, you put me on a flat surface, I can just drop, fall asleep right away, But when you’re a kid it’s really hard.

(08:03)

And then every week I had two or three chiropractic session. I had tology, I had exercise, physio and then I had acupuncture twice a week as well. In 18 months of them doing this, because I was growing, obviously I was young so I was growing, they completely rectified my spine and I have no scoliosis today. So I am so thankful for those. That’s the beginning of the journey into discovering acupuncture. I had it again when I had dysmenorrhea as a teenager, lots of girls as a teenager you get your period and it’s so painful and so I had that and I had acupuncture for that and it really helped as well, so that was the two parts. Then I moved to Canada to learn English, so I moved to Vancouver, to the west coast because it’s not the French side of Canada, it’s the English side.

(08:51)

I moved here. I didn’t know English, I didn’t know a person, I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have a place to stay and I had $490 in my pocket with no credit card and with a single mother on minimum wage she wasn’t going to send me money if I needed it. So it was an interesting journey when I first arrived and it was really hard and there was, the first month I literally cried a lot to sleep and thinking I just want to go home to my mom. I just, I can’t do this. It’s so hard. Because when you don’t speak a language in an area where you want to learn obviously, but you can’t make friends. How do you make friends when you can’t have conversations? So you feel really lonely. I felt really lonely and isolated, but eventually I pushed through. I watched Sesame Streets and

[MICHELLE] (09:35)

I love it.

[CLARA] (09:36)

That’s how you learn all the colors and the fire trucks and the dump trucks and all those ridiculous things. Then I graduated from Sesame Streets to soap opera because soap opera, fantastic. It’s like, I love you, I hate you, I’m going to kill you and everything is fine, all the drama. But it’s slow. They speak slow, it’s not complicated. So it really teaches you the basics. So it was, my goal was to be able to read the newspaper and understand it, so that’s what I did. Then I ended up having someone that was fantastic. I went to, I signed up to a fitness club and, because in France we don’t have aerobics and those things so I thought it’d be fun to try this and I loved it and within three months of being in that fitness club, the owner came to me and she said, “Clara, I love your energy. I want to train you to become an instructor and I want you to work for me.”

(10:29)

I was like, oh, well I wasn’t looking for that. It started a journey of me working in the fitness industry for 15 years and I really, really enjoyed it and I made friends and I just had such a great lifestyle around this. But then one Friday night I was sitting, I was managing two fitness clubs at the time and I was sitting on a Friday night at one of the clubs because I gave everybody the night off because everybody likes to go out on Friday night and I’m not a party person, so I was sitting there and I had done all my work and there was just two people working out. It’s Friday night, so there’s nothing to do and I sat there and I thought, wow, I’m in my late 30s and this is fun, but I don’t think I want to do this till I’m 60 or 70 or whatever. I feel like I’m missing something. I love to help people, I love the fact that I can show them exercises, but eventually it’s always the same, women want to lose weight in their thighs and bellies and then men want to bulk up on the upper body.

(11:28)

And there’s so many exercises you can arrange and nutrition advice you can give, but people would come and say, I’m so sorry, I can’t work out today. I’ve had such a bad bout of insomnia. Or women would say, I’m in so much pain today. I’m cramping. I can’t work out. Or they would all have those things, I have a bad headache today, and I didn’t know how to help them. I was like, well, how can I help the headache or the insomnia or all those things? I thought, well this is very limiting. Even though I enjoy this lifestyle, it’s very limiting and I want to learn more about health and help people when they have those issues.

[CLARA] (12:01)

So I went to look for options and I looked at chiropractic medicine, RMT, massage therapist, naturopathic medicine, TCM, of course in acupuncture. I looked at all this and last two was naturopathic medicine, it was actually Bastier in Seattle that I really went to see. I love that school. And then TCM. And because I’ve had so many great experiences with acupuncture and because eastern medicine always fascinated me, Ayurvedic medicine is the same. I just was always fascinated. I decided I was going to do a doctorate in Chinese medicine and I told everybody about it and they all thought I was insane and I had lost my marbles. Oh my God. It was, and it was the best, except for marrying my husband, it was the best decision I’ve ever made in my life. So yeah, it’s just no turning back.

[MICHELLE] (12:55)

I didn’t realize that you were in the fitness industry for so long before you decided to transition to acupuncture. That is amazing.

[CLARA] (13:04)

Isn’t that crazy? I used to teach hip-hop to kids and then teenagers, so that’s what, aerobics came naturally to me because I used to teach hip-hop dance. So that was fun and I really truly enjoy it. So yeah, it was a different life. I always think it’s like a different past life of mine, but it led into what I did next. I’ve always been interested in health and because my mom, I think it’s my mom, since we talk about women, my mom is my hero, always will be. She passed away a few years ago, at 92 because she was a force to be reckoned, but she always used to say, because I used to complain when we had no money, all of us living in a one-bedroom apartment, I was, I used to say all the time, we can’t do this. We don’t go on holiday. I can’t buy a new pair of pants.

(13:51)

I complain all the time about having no money and my mom used to say all the time, as long as we have our health, nothing else mattered because we could have all the money of the kings and queens in the world, if you are sick, you’re not going to enjoy any of it. I remember as a kid you’re like, yeah, yeah, who cares? I want a new pair of pants. And now I’m like, as an adult since my 20s, I always thought she is so right. She was always so right. Without our help, we have nothing. Literally that’s all we need because then we can conquer the world.

[MICHELLE] (14:24)

So true. I agree with you, when you’re younger, you truly feel invincible. You feel like my health is always going to be fine. I just want a new pair of pants.

[CLARA] (14:33)

That’s true. Now I’m in my 50s and I’m like, yeah, not so much.

[MICHELLE] (14:38)

You remind me of Marie Forleo of B-School because she was in the fitness industry for like 12 years and she used to teach hip-hop. I remember watching some of her videos. My talent for any sort of choreographed dancing is very, very low so it was mostly me watching and trying really hard and not succeeding. But it was fun at the same time.

[CLARA] (15:02)

I love it, I love that. That is a great compliment because I love Mary Forleo very much. I did take B-school. Yeah, interesting. In 2014 I think, or 13, 14, I decided to take B-School and to learn because as acupuncturist or TCM, we learn all this TCM stuff, all the acupuncturist stuff, but in my school anyway, we had zero business class at all. Like zero, zero teaching on once you’re in the world, okay, so this is what I do for patients, but how do I get the patients? Nobody taught us any of this at all. So I took B-school and I absolutely loved it and it taught me so much.

[MICHELLE] (15:43)

I would love to talk about that because people ask me all the time if I have ever taken B-school and I have not. I love her, I follow her all the time, feel really inspired by her journey because she also, she reinvented herself several times, which I think we can all do. We just don’t realize it until we are like really pushed to this point of no return. But I think it’s helpful when people are open in talking about it and saying that they pivoted because they felt inspired and it worked out even when everyone said it wouldn’t. But I’d love to know, what do you feel like, I guess if you could sort of distill it, what was the big takeaway that you had from B-School? Like why would you recommend that someone listening to this dive in and pay for B-School?

[CLARA] (16:31)

Yeah, so at the time when it was seven, hold on, eight years ago I took it, so a long time ago. I want to say even nine years ago, it was, at the time it was $2,000. I remember thinking, this is insane. It’s way too much money. Like this is crazy. I talked to my husband about it and he is like, well, do you really want to do this? I said, yes, I really want to do this, but it’s just so much money. And he goes, well, remember when you went back to school? It was for five years and you had to come up with tuition and you had to pay your rent. I hadn’t met him at the time. I was by myself and I thought, how am I going to pay rent, food and my tuition and survive for five years? How am I going to do this? But if you really, truly believe this is what you want to do, then you make it work.

(17:16)

I made it work at the time, and like I said, it was the best decision. So when I did B-school, I thought if I’m spending that much money, I’m all in. I am going to do those eight weeks and I’m all in and I’m going to show up and I’m going to listen to everything she has to say and I’m going to do the homework. It’s like being in school again. So for the takeaway for me, there was a couple of things. The first thing which I had never thought of was to know who your, she calls it the customer avatar, the avatar, which is basically who is your patient? Who do you want to treat? As acupuncturist, we’re like, well, I want to help everybody. Of course, but that’s not the point. The point is you got to have someone in mind and one of the things that I learned really well is to try to really understand who my patient is, what is her struggle. I’ll say her because I had a woman in mind because I really wanted to do women’s health because it had helped me in the past. So I saw this woman that was struggling and I wrote a whole journal entry from this woman that was 33 years old. I really picture her in my mind.

(18:23)

One of the things that she had said is, when you make your website, most people make their website for themselves, but you want to make your website for your potential person that’s looking for you. I remember my first website, I had tons of acupuncture dolls and acupuncture pictures and things that I think really represent acupuncture. When I took this course, I completely changed my website with having a woman holding a baby and saying, do you struggle with fertility? Yeah, sorry. You are showing someone that relates, they don’t relate to acupuncture needles. Plus, it’s scary. So it was like, oh, okay, I get it. I got to relate to this person. So one of the big takeaway was knowing who you’re serving, who you’re trying to help, and really talk to her, talk to that person and think that that person is one person.

(19:17)

Like right now we’re doing a podcast and hundreds of thousands or how many people are going to listen. But at this time right now, the person that is listening is one person, so who that person is, we’re talking to her or to him. It’s the same on the website. That’s something I really learned from Marie Forleo, was just like, you’re talking to one person, not a potential 20 million people, but one person. That was the first thing that, the best takeaway. The second takeaway was to have a clear clarity. That was really good, clarity on what is it you want your practice to look like? How do you imagine what is it going to look like? Do you imagine yourself working four days a week, five days a week? What are your hours? How many patients are you seeing? What patients are you seeing, what all of this is, and I did the whole thing, I wrote down everything how this was going to happen. Within six months of doing this, I went from like, I don’t know, I think it was like maybe 20, 25 patients a week to 55. It was amazing. It was just such a change. You follow what she was saying and then it works and it’s, so those two takeaways, clarity on what is it you are looking for, what do you want, then who you’re serving, those two things are really important.

(20:41)

The third thing that I had to take away, which I love, is relationship. You and I are talking right now because we met somehow online, obviously not in person, but online and we connected. So relationships are so important. If I have an advice for anybody in business, relationships are the most important. Your relationship to the people that work with you. So if you are in a clinic with other people, all the people work with you from the assistant to other practitioners, to whomever is working with you. If you teach your students other educators around you, if you are in a small community, everybody that’s in your field, a chiropractor down the road, the physio next door, like all those people are your relationship you’re building. Then the most important is your patients. You’re building relationship with your patients, which they love you so much, they’re going to recommend you to everyone because if someone says, oh, I got to go see Michelle because my friend Susie said I had to, they don’t want to see anybody else. It’s like, I got to see Michelle. I don’t care if somebody is good. This is the one I have to see because my friend recommended her. So really the recommendation of a patient is gold so having a relationship with your patients is number one.

(21:57)

Those three things I learned from B-School, because really when I finished school I thought, oh, I’m so excited I’m going to help the world one patient at a time. This is going to be great. Then I put my signboard out, website started at the time to come up, so I made my cute little website with flowers and tea and acupuncture stuff and then first week, no patients second week, no patients, third week, no patients and I’m like what is happening? Oh my gosh, I’m paying rent in this and nothing is happening. The fourth week it was, I started October 1st and I remember the last week of October I had three patients and they were all friends of my husband’s because they felt so sorry and bad for me so they came. So I had someone to treat. So it wasn’t real patients, but it was some, someone that was really feeling bad for me.

(22:46)

And I remember the first call I got was the week after that. This lady called me and she goes, “Hi, I’d like to make an appointment.” I was so shocked, I said, really? You actually want to make an appointment with me? That’s what I felt in my head. She goes, yeah. I was like, oh, probably, looked all excited. But that’s the thing I realized, okay, so I know TCM or I think I have an understanding of TCM to help people, but how am I going to help people? Nobody’s coming. I didn’t know this. I didn’t know we needed to have some business understanding. That was a shock to me. I hope that what you do specifically is helping people so when they come out, they don’t feel that just shock of how am I going to help people if nobody comes in and knows I can help them?

[MICHELLE] (23:37)

I’m so glad that you phrased it like that because I spend a lot of time sort of convincing my students that yes, I understand all you really want to do is help people with acupuncture. I get it that I am unusual in our field in that I really enjoy marketing. I think it’s fascinating. I love a deep dive into marketing data and psychology, but most people just want to get their website out there and be done with it. The field of dreams approach, I call it like, if you build it, if you build your office and put your shingle out, they will come, but the whole point of marketing is that if people don’t know that you exist, you cannot help them. So we try to take the mindset or the angle that all we’re doing with marketing is letting people know, one, that acupuncture can help them, and two, that your clinic exists conveniently in their community.

(24:36)

Then they can do with that information, whatever they like, if they’re ready for it, they can become patients. If they’re not ready, they’re going to file it away, maybe share it with someone else who needs it. But I’m always trying to take the pressure of marketing off of people and help them think about it as just get a little bit visible. Because if you never get visible, then you can’t help people if they don’t know you’re there. It really is tough because I mean, I understand that, especially people who went to school maybe 10 years ago. So I graduated about, I think 13 years ago. We, at least me and my classmates did not understand when you graduate, you’re running a business and you start from zero. So if that was your mindset going into school, you had zero intention of being a “business owner” and all the marketing and visibility that comes with that. So I get it’s a hard transition.

(25:31)

And I’m so glad that you mentioned the ideal patient avatar too. I was explaining to someone recently the idea of target market and ideal patient avatar. So the avatar is just this very specific description of a single perfect patient that you would love to have like 40 of them a week in your practice. So it’s exactly what you were describing. You said you wrote a journal entry from her, and everyone is always asking me like, well, why do I want to spend time on this? It feels like a theoretical exercise and I don’t understand how to put it into practice in my marketing, which is fair. The whole purpose is that once you get to know that avatar really, really well, you can speak to them in all of your marketing.

(26:18)

It’s exactly like you were saying from Marie Forleo’s class, you are just talking to that one person in everything that you write on your website, in your brochures, on your social media, and then anyone who resonates with that message is going to sit up and take notice. So you’re writing your message with that one person in mind, but the ripple effect is much larger. You’re going to get all of the people who have those same struggles, concerns, their goals from treatment. Honestly, it makes such a big difference in people’s marketing. You said that you went from 20 patients to 55 patients within a span of like six months. Do you remember, you had 20 patients about how long had you been in practice before you went to B-School?

[CLARA] (27:05)

Yeah, I think it was, I think it had been less than a year because I it took me a while to get to 20 patient and, patients, sorry, and then I was like, well, obviously I need to learn how to do this. I need to learn to do this better. Because I knew someone in Vancouver who was seeing a lot of patients, had graduated maybe two years before me and seen a lot of patients. I was like, and I knew a lot of people that saw way less than me and people that had a second job as well. Like I knew both side, but I’m like, if this person is doing really well, what does he do? Because he’s learned the same thing I learned. We went to the same school, we learned the same stuff and I was very, I loved school, I loved to learn. I was a good student. I was really enjoying the whole process. So I’m like, how is this person more busy than me? How do I do that?

(28:05)

That’s when I stumbled about Marie Forleo and started taking different things. I took also a local business class here in Vancouver that was done by the local chamber that was free. I went there and they, it was an hour, but it taught me basic stuff that I had no clue. Like even tax, I knew nothing about things, and just like, it was really good basics. I’m like, okay, I need to learn more. So I went to buy How Do You Build a Business for Dummies, but it wasn’t enough for me to read that book. It was like, it was very theoretical. With Marie Forleo, what I like is like, you could put it in practice if you do the homework. When you talked about the avatar, like I remember thinking what are the things that some of my patients that come from fertility have said? They always say, I’m the only one in all my friends that is not getting pregnant. So when I wrote that entry, that journal entry, I remember writing down, I’m so tired of seeing everyone around me, all my friends getting pregnant and not me. Will it ever happen to me? I feel like it’ll never happen. Is it my fault? Have I done something wrong? All this stuff.

(29:19)

So when you do your marketing towards that person, the first thing you can say is, are you struggling with fertility? You are not alone. There is support. Because This person feels really like they’re the only one, which we know it’s not true, but that’s how they feel. So that’s what you utilize this entry in the journal to use for marketing. So yeah, it’s funny that people resist. I think you’re right, we all resist because we don’t want to be business people, we just want to love TCM and acupuncture and the beautiful, beautiful Chinese medicine. That’s why I’m so impressed that you are really continuing to help people because a lot of people in our industry resist this. But then they’re like, oh, I have a part-time job and I’m not seeing that many patients.

(30:08)

And you, I’m going to say something, when you listen to this, I’m going to say something you’re not going to like hearing. I know sometimes we don’t like to hear things, but if you are not busy in your practice, it is your fault. I’m so sorry but it is the truth. And the reason, it was my fault too, the reason is we don’t want to expand. We don’t want to learn. It’s like, well I’m in a clinic where nobody is helping me or there’s too much competition, there’s like six acupuncturists in the same town as me or, and I’m like you know what? I come from France, a small, small town, like a small village. There are seven bakeries, because baking is a big thing in France, there’s seven bakeries for 2000 people and all of them are busy all the time. Why? Because they all have a little bit of a difference. One makes better bread, the other one makes better chocolate. The other one makes better pastries. The other one makes better croissant. They all have the own little uniqueness.

(31:09)

And every one of us, all acupuncturists out there are unique. What makes you unique? What’s your strength? What makes you different that all your friends are telling you that is about you? Then utilize this to grow your practice because one of the things that Marie Forleo had asked us to do as a homework, which was so scary, is to go on your Facebook friends page where you have your real friends, people you know, not a, but your personal account and say, can you please with one word tell me what comes up to mind when you think about me? I was like, oh my God, that’s so narcissistic. Like, hey, what do you think about me? I was just like, oh my God and she’s like, just go there.

(31:55)

So I was so scared of being judged or whatnot, which we all are. Fear of judgment is for everybody. I looked at this and I thought, I’m just going to say I’m doing a course right now and I feel really vulnerable, but could you please put one word down there about what you think about me? It was such a revelation. I had no idea what friends and family thought when they thought of me. It was really cool to see because she was saying, take the three words that come up the most and this is your strength and utilize that in your business and in your marketing. I was like, ah, this is so cool. So I love that. That’s a great exercise. If you’re not sure what your strengths are, because we all have self-negative talk all the time for each other, we know what we don’t do well, but we don’t always complement each other or ourselves in our minds. So really find what your strengths are.

(32:53)

My strengths has really, has always been to be able to teach well and to be joyful and to really connect with people in an authentic way. So authenticity, fun, and great teacher was what came up with me, so I utilize that because I like authenticity very much. So when I meet patients, there’s no the other patients. I’m the practitioner, we sit together, we’re two people at the same space and I really want to connect with you in a way that is authentic. That’s really important with patients because they can see that you are listening, you are connecting and you’re not just pretending, oh, I’m the doctor, I know everything, just blah blah. It’s like when people ask question, why do you do this needle? I’ve known practitioners say, oh, this is good for you. It’s like, no, okay, well that point does this. This is why I’m utilizing it. You want to know, I love that you have questions, this is great. So that also is something that is important and I think that everyone needs to utilize because you are unique. Whoever you are, you are unique and you are here to make a difference so use that right as your gift to differentiate yourself from everybody else.

[MICHELLE] (34:16)

I also love that exercise because I think part of what makes marketing hard for a lot of acupuncturists and wellness people in general is this fear of visibility because of judgment or perceived judgment. But when you put yourself out there and you ask what’s the word that comes to mind and you get a flood of positive things like joyful, great teacher and authentic, I think it can help people break through and realize that it’s not that scary. In the beginning, a little scary, but it’s not that horrific to get visible for your marketing, especially when you are committed to being authentic and just showing up as a real person. I think that helps with your marketing so much because once you don’t have that compressed feeling about the idea of getting visible, you could just show up so much more often and you can be consistent with it because it doesn’t feel scary.

(35:19)

I think you mentioned the word expanding. Like once people get through that mental block of like, oh, visibility is scary because I’m going to be judged, especially in the digital world, then you have all of these opportunities for expansion when you’re not afraid to be seen. I’ll say that as an introvert, I know it is a process and I know there are lots of introverts out there who are like you have no idea how difficult it is. I totally, totally understand how difficult it is. I have been marketing online for nine years now so I feel like that’s really the only way that I am able to show up comfortably on my podcast and on Instagram was a lot of trial and error, a lot of uncomfortable moments. But having this core knowledge that what I really want to teach people matters and that the people who are right for me are going to gravitate towards me. That’s another useful thing with asking people that question, what do you think of when you hear my name? Because it’s really important to recognize that not everybody’s going to be a great fit for you, and that’s okay, but once you embrace who you are, the people who are your people, they are going to show up in force, like with bells on and it’s going to be wonderful. But it takes a little bit of getting uncomfortable in the process and then it gets so much better.

[CLARA] (36:46)

It’s so interesting that you said that because I’m on social media so much that people have no idea I’m an introvert completely 100%. They think, oh my God, she’s extroverted, on fire, blah, blah. I’m like, well, when I first started AcuPro Academy was to support students, especially my students. At first it was just for my students and then expand to other students around in the world. But what was interesting is I create a lot of graphics and posts and things about acupuncture and then one day I was like, I should do a video. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I look at a robot, it’s so awful, I look at it all the time because you’re absolutely right, people think, oh, I don’t want to be on camera. I don’t look good.

(37:29)

I was like, I’m standing there like a robot and I speak robotically and it’s just awful. But it was that first one and I put it out there and then I kept doing it, doing it, doing it like you did and then you get better. And my thought was, and I remember that because I remember thinking, oh my god now I’m putting my face out there and everybody, like in my industry, my peers are going to go, what does she think she is? Does she know more than me? I was like, yeah, I don’t know more than them. We all went to the same school. They’re all going to judge me and all this thing in my head. Then my husband, who’s been the yin to my young and my super good support all those years, he’s like, “Well, why are you online?” I’m like, “Well, because I want to help students.” And he’s like, “Who cares what people judge you? If you can help someone who cares if some people don’t like it? The people you help will be happy.” I was like, “Oh yeah, I’m here to help.”

(38:24)

That changed everything. I thought it doesn’t matter if it’s not great, as long as it’s helping or impacting someone and they learn something or they feel seen and they feel like they’re not alone and there’s some help out there and support. I was like, who cares what I look like? I don’t, like I said, I’m on video all the time. People are like, oh, I can’t be on video. I’m like, have you seen me? I’m in my late 50s. I have not straight teeth. I don’t speak English properly. I don’t care anymore because I’ve had those years of practice. It doesn’t matter because my job is to really make a difference and help people. So if I don’t look like a whatever, whoever we think we want to look like, it doesn’t matter anymore, but it took me just like you, years to get there, years of practice, years of doing things that look so bad.

(39:10)

But that’s the thing. I think everybody is scared of being on camera or whatnot because they’re like, oh, what are people going to think? But the thing is, so many people are not online. So if you are, you are the outlier, you are the one that people can connect to. Because people only connect to people nowadays. People don’t connect to business anymore. They don’t connect to Nike. Who’s that? The CEO of Nike? Who knows? We don’t know. I don’t care. Whatever. But I can connect to Mary Forleo because I see her, because she talks to me through YouTube like she knows me. That’s the difference. So we need to be, especially now, like you said on social media, we need to be out there to really connect with people because that’s how people are going to want to see you and come and say, okay, well, I really like the way she said this or he said this and what he showed was really cool. I want to go and talk to them.

[MICHELLE] (40:06)

I think it’s so important what you said, that it really doesn’t matter what you look like when you show up on video. It’s whether you connect with people. It’s a Maya Angelou quote about how you make people feel, like that’s what they remember. And I think we all have this image in our minds of, I don’t even know anymore of Barbie doll, something like weird fake perfection that we’ll never attain. We’re like, well, I can’t, I don’t want to be on video because I don’t like this and this about my appearance. We’re very self-critical. But when someone else is watching you on video, they do not see those things. They’re listening to your words and they’re really just paying attention to, do you come across with good shen? People don’t always know that’s what they’re looking for. But like, are you making eye contact? Do you have confidence? Are you speaking with enthusiasm? Like what is the energy that you are bringing to them?

(40:59)

I remember a long time ago, I used to work at my acupuncture alma mater, and we were recording some videos to teach people about the program. I volunteered to do the videos because I liked, more or less, I really liked the teleprompter, so basic, I would always ask at the end as they were reviewing it, I’m like, how’s my hair? Is my hair weird? Because I have this big curly hair and I don’t know how to control it. What do I do with it? And finally, after the third or fourth week of recording the AV guys were like, “Okay, we’re going to watch the video. You did a great job. The only thing we’re going to ask is when you give us feedback, don’t make any commentary about your appearance because it’s fine. We really just want to make sure that the content is good. So if you feel like you said something that was incorrect or you skipped a word, that’s what we’re looking for.” That was so helpful. I was like, oh my God, I feel like you’ve set me free.

[CLARA] (42:03)

It’s so true. It’s so true. Because it’s just us criticizing ourselves. People, you’re absolutely people, you’re absolutely right, people are just there to listen and to see if what you are saying is impacting them in a way, making them feel a certain way or giving them laughter, if it’s entertainment or inspiration or education. It’s not about what you look like because you see that all the time online. People are not that supermodel that we think we should be and we’re just listening to them. Like, I listen to Gary V all the time and this guy is like all about marketing and he’s very different the way he does things, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care what he looks like. He is in jeans and t-shirts and he is walking around and this guy’s a multimillionaire. He doesn’t care. So it’s just because he wants to make an impact and share his thoughts, I guess, so that it doesn’t matter. So for me it’s like, I’m still French, so when I do a video I’m like, well, I got to have at least a t-shirt. Like I can’t just be like holes in my t-shirt? I’m still frightened

[MICHELLE] (43:11)

Yes, good lighting is important. I will say that. It helps a lot to have good lighting.

[CLARA] (43:18)

But yeah, I think, I really truly hope that acupuncturists out there are going to learn more and more that it’s okay to market yourself because, one of the thing, like at first I had my clinic and then I ended up studied a multidisciplinary clinic, so I had a lot of other practitioners that came and worked in the clinic. I remember one of our acupuncturists was, I would send all new patients to her all the time. I’m like, I said to my assistant, “Send all the new patients unless they say they ask for Clara because I’m super busy and she’s starting.” Then I would ask my assistant, I’m like, “So how is she doing?” She’s like, “Oh, she’s doing great, but nobody re-books.” I’m like, “What do you mean nobody re-books?” She goes, “Well, no.” I’m like, “Well, can you ask the next person when they leave that you want to rebook and see what they say?”

(44:06)

So she asked and she said, “Would you like to rebook?” She goes, well, I don’t know because she didn’t tell me what to do.” I was like, ah. So then I got her sitting down and I said, “Are you telling your patients that they need to come in three days in a week and whenever the patient’s treatment plan is about?” She goes, “Well, no, because it feels really salesy, like yucky salesy, sticky, salesperson, blah, blah blah.” I was like, “Okay, basically when those people come and they’ve had whatever, insomnia for like 20 years and they come and see you one session and they don’t need to come back.” She’s like, “Well, yeah, of course they need to come back.” I’m like, “Well, but then that’s a sales thing. So do you want to help them?” Of course, I want to help them. Well, I’m like, if you want to help them, you give them the information.

(44:54)

They can rebook or not, that’s their choice. But they can’t rebook if they can’t rebook if they don’t know they should rebook and they have no idea because they’ve never had acupuncture.” So I’m like, “If your treatment plan is let’s try weekly for a couple of weeks or three weeks and see how it goes, and then readjust, then they know, but if you don’t give them information how they’re going to rebook?” So I’m like, “It’s just information. It’s educating the patient. It’s not selling.” She was like, “Oh.” Because I’m like, “Otherwise you’re not helping those poor people and they’re going to go out and say, I tried acupuncture once, it didn’t help. Well, yeah, because they did it once and they’ve had this issue for 20 years and that changed everything.” She totally turned it around and thought, okay, I just give them the education. Of course, people rebook because they love her, they like the treatment and now they have the information. So once you have the information, you can make the decision. It’s not selling, it’s telling people what they need to know. That’s it. Then they can just decide.

[MICHELLE] (45:51)

That is one of my favorite ways to think about marketing. It’s just sharing information. And I always encourage my students to sort of let go of the outcome. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want them to take a look at the data. Because I think it’s always important to decide what is the return on my investment for my different marketing avenues so that you can really lean into what works. But that’s not what I’m referring to. I mean, in your marketing you are sharing this information so that people can decide if they want to try acupuncture, if you feel like a good fit for them, but we have to let go of that uncomfortable feeling when we put marketing out there and it’s not like effective on 110% of people who witness it. That is never going to happen. There’s always going to be some people who hear your marketing pitch or your message, and it’s just going to feel like it falls on deaf ears.

(46:48)

It might not, they might not be your people. They’re not your ideal patient avatar or even in your target market. Or maybe they are, but they’re not in a mental place where they’re prepared to undertake a series of treatments or financially, whatever it is, but that has no bearing on you as a person. It doesn’t mean that you’re terrible at marketing. It doesn’t mean that you can’t learn marketing and continually improve. But we tend to take it so personally. We’re like, “Well, my marketing isn’t working all the time and so I just don’t want to do it anymore. Like, this doesn’t work.” That’s like if you go to an acupuncturist for one treatment and you’re like, yeah, it was okay, but it wasn’t great. Acupuncture doesn’t work. It’s like, oh no, you either need to pick a new acupuncturist or you need to keep trying. Pick a new marketing avenue or keep trying. But I don’t know why it’s so ingrained in us to feel like everything about marketing is gross and that means we are gross too if we do it. Nope, you’re just sharing information and knowledge. What they do with it is totally out of your hands and that’s okay. That’s totally fine.

[CLARA] (48:01)

Yeah, and that’s exactly it. I love that you talked about having to fail and giving up. Because I always think of sports, you look at any sports athlete or when you did sports or any sports, and if you don’t do sports, look at athletes that you think are great or just amazing. If Serena Williams was playing tennis and she lost a game at 14 and that’s it, she’s going home, she’s giving up, no, she’s like, okay, how can I do better next time so I can win the game? Then each time she’s improving and improving and figures out different ways of going about it until she becomes like really comfortable and confident. In sports people don’t give up. They, they have to train, change the way they look at things. They have to change the way they train, the way they do things, maybe it’s their diet, whatever. But you have to look at all those and then eventually you become better.

(48:57)

It’s the same with being online and doing videos. It’s practice. It’s the same in sports. And in marketing it’s practice. At first, it’s like, hi, I did this and three people responded. Great, okay, that’s great. Three people responded. That’s awesome. Now your job is to make sure those people are so happy and treated so well by you that they’re going to tell five more people and if each of those three people tell five people, now those three people are turning into like 15 people so you’re like, whoa, okay. It’s all about starting trying rowing and making sure that you know that the whole thing is going to expand as you go, but if you don’t do anything or if you give up because it’s too hard, the whole point is I love to learn. So I’m like you, I love to learn. Learning marketing was fascinating to me and I love to learn anything. So for me it’s like every time you learn, you grow. So it’s great. It’s great because It’s a win-win situation and failing gets you to try again and that’s how you learn. That’s how you grow.

(50:04)

I mean, when I went back to school for TCM, I hadn’t been in school in 16 years and I never been in school in English. I remember the first, I was so worried about this because I’m like, I don’t know how to write an essay in English. How is that going to go? But the good part is TCM is not about essays, which helped a lot. I was really worried about this, but then once you really excited about it, and at first, the first three weeks I was just really struggling. I was struggling by sitting down for eight hours a day because I had never done that for a long time, to focus for so long to do homework, to understand the material because It’s a lot that they throw at you at first. It’s TCM, it’s just this crazy new medicine that they’re throwing at you. So that was really hard, but I was ready to continue. I was dedicated. I signed up and I’m just going to continue and within a few months I was in love. I was just like, this is awesome. I love this.

[MICHELLE] (51:07)

I also try to recommend to my students that they think about marketing as an experiment, which I think is really what you’re referring to before, that you can try things and fail or fail forward. You get three patients, great, you have to work hard to take good care of them so you get referrals, but then you also want to think about, okay, what did I do well that brought in three patients and what did I do not so well that I could really hone now that I have a better understanding of this particular marketing avenue and a better understanding of my ideal patient avatar? But just remembering that it’s okay to do something and not have a good result because it is all about learning. Like, okay, now you know.

(51:52)

Plus, I think the experimentation angle is nice because not every marketing avenue is going to be a good fit for every person. Sometimes you try marketing and you’re like, this is not aligned with me. I know I cannot be consistent with it. And for some people that is just social media. It’s a blanket statement. They’re like, it really doesn’t feel good and I know I’m not going to continue. And I always say in that case, okay, experiment with some other things. If you feel like you are better you in person or if you are really good at writing, you could go to networking meetings or you could focus on your email newsletter. Just sort of feel it out and decide what is the intersection of marketing that seems to be effective for me and I enjoy it or don’t hate it enough that I will be consistent with it? That’s really the sweet spot that you’re looking for. But it takes some trial and error and you’re going to run into stuff that feels like, ugh, that was gross. I’m not doing that again. And that’s okay.

[CLARA] (52:53)

That’s exactly it. That’s how you learn, because you were just like, we talked about authenticity and I like to be authentic and there’s things that don’t feel authentic or your gut, you know that gut, that feeling, you’re doing it and then you’re like, yeah, I don’t feel right about this, I don’t feel right. Then your gut is telling you don’t feel right, but you don’t always listen to your gut. My whole life, anytime I listen to my gut, it served me. Every time I didn’t listen to it, it did not serve me.

[MICHELLE] (53:23)

It’s a tough lesson.

[CLARA] (53:26)

Oh man, and over and over you’re like, why don’t I always listen to it? Because your gut is your heart talking and your authentic self, while your brain is not, and the brain takes over and go, but what if this happened? The fear comes and all this stuff comes up that stops your gut feeling, which is funny that way.

[MICHELLE] (53:48)

Agreed. I feel like it took me an awfully long time to learn that not listening to my gut was going to be detrimental, man, at least 35 years.

[CLARA] (53:57)

Oh, it took me a long time too, absolutely. I always say that, I’m like, man, every time I didn’t listen, I look back and I was like, yep, I knew, I was like, nope, that’s not what I want to do, but I’m going to do it anyway because it seems like, when I went back to school, I was listening to my gut completely. I wanted to do this. I remember school was starting in September and I had signed up in May and I didn’t tell anybody until I signed up because I was like, and then I started telling all my friends, my mom, everybody, my family, my friends, and not one person said, oh, good for you. Why not? Everybody thought I had literally lost my mind., I had a great job, I was managing two fitness club, I had a great life. Why rock the boat? Why go?

(54:40)

Then people were like, acupuncture, really? And this was 20 plus years ago so I can understand, but still like, why, why, why? It was not one person. I remember going home and sitting on my couch and going, are they alright? Am I crazy? They must be right. Now., one person said, good for you. And I had great friends that supportive, but they were like, I don’t know, Clara, this is not a great move for you. I remember sitting there really thinking they’re right. Maybe I’m losing my head. What am I doing? What am I doing? They are right. And then I realized, I was like, no, because they obviously don’t want to go to acupuncture school so they can’t relate. But my heart tells me I have to do this. I really, in my head, I was like, well, if it doesn’t work, I guess I’ll have to work harder to pay my debt. That’s just life. But am I willing to risk this? Yes, because no matter what, nothing bad’s going to happen. I’m just going to owe money. Okay, well, I know how to work. I’ll just work and owe that money if it doesn’t work. But I was like, no, no, this is what I want to do and I had to follow my gut. And man, like I said, it always served me. And now people are like, wow, it was great you went back to school. I’m like, yeah, remember when you said it was crazy?

[MICHELLE] (55:57)

I think you made such a good point because they’re, I feel like the naysayers are really only thinking about if what you’re suggesting is something that they would want to do or that they feel they are capable of doing. So when someone says, that’s not a good idea, you can’t do that, it’s impractical, you can’t make it work, what they’re really saying is, I would not be able to make that work. And they don’t live your life. They don’t know the ideas that you have. They don’t know the passion and the drive that you are going to bring forth. It’s really tough to remember that in the moment as you are saying, you’re like sitting on your couch thinking, oh my God, if all of these people are saying the same thing, they must be. Well, I’m so glad that you followed your gut.

[CLARA] (56:40)

Me too.

[MICHELLE] (56:40)

I have one more question for you, and that is, what is your definition of success?

[CLARA] (56:50)

The definition of success is when you literally wake up in the morning and whatever you have planned for the day is feeling like it’s fun and it’s exciting. I know we’ve seen the quote, if you enjoy what you’re doing, you never worked a day in your life, et cetera, et cetera, but I absolutely, since I was younger, I always thought when people say, what do you want to do when you grow up, I used to always say, I want to be happy. And people are like, it’s not a job. What do you want to, and I’m like, I just want to do something that lights me up. So if I wake up in the morning and I’m excited because I’m going to treat patients and make a change in their life, or I’m excited because I’m going to make a video that’s going to support a student or I’m excited because I’m doing a podcast with Michelle and we’re going to talk and we’re going to make an impact together and have fun, if I’m light up and I’m excited about my day, then that’s successful. When my husband comes to the door and I’m excited to see him and tell him about my day and hear about his day and I have my dog and we’re going for a hike, all those things, of course, life doesn’t always flow, there’s things that happen, but in general, if you light up about your day, then you’re successful. That’s it.

[MICHELLE] (58:07)

Thank you. I really appreciate that. Well, thank you so much for being here today and sharing all of your wisdom. I just love learning about your background and everything that brought you to this incredible moment and all of the ways that you’re teaching and supporting other TCM practitioners around the world. Where can we find you online? Where can we follow you and buy your books and your classes?

[CLARA] (58:31)

You’re so sweet. Acuproacademy.com is my website and on every social media I’m under AcuPro Academy from Instagram to Facebook, to Twitter, to Pinterest, to YouTube, to whatever, everything out there. TikTok, I guess I had to join TikTok in my 50s and that was a whole new world for me, but it was quite fun and it’s still fun and I enjoy it. So it’s like, why not? It’s a challenge. But yeah, anywhere AcuPro Academy, you can find me. Definitely DM me or leave me comment or something. I’m really good at trying to answer everybody within a good timeline because people think there’s like 10 people, I get email all the time saying, hi, Acupro Academy team. I’m like, what team? It’s a me, myself, and I team

[MICHELLE] (59:18)

And your dog.

[CLARA] (59:19)

And the dog because he’s got to be part of the team, and my husband because sometimes he’ll look at things and he is like, yeah, sweetie, that’s not right English. You need to flip those words. I’m like, oh, okay. But yeah, it’s a lot of fun and I really try to answer people, so definitely shoot me an email or a DM and I’m always here to support people.

[MICHELLE] (59:40)

Wonderful. Well, thank you for all that you do and thank you so much for being here.

[CLARA] (59:44)

Thank you for having me, man. This was fun. I’m so excited you’re doing podcasts. Podcasts with Michelle.