The Influential Practitioner
Episode 2: Marketing Is How Healing Finds People
Transcript
Episode number two of The Influential Practitioner. A few years ago in my practice, a patient of mine got pregnant after two years of trying. And on her way out, she said something I've never forgotten. She said, “I wish I had found you sooner.” I went home that night and thought about it. She lived fifteen minutes away from my clinic. The whole time she'd been searching for help, the whole time, and for two years she couldn't find me, because I wasn't anywhere she was looking. That's what this episode is about. Not marketing as a chore. Marketing as the thing that would have gotten her to my door two years earlier.
INTRO
Welcome to The Influential Practitioner. I'm Michelle Oravitz, fertility acupuncturist, podcaster, and founder of The Wholesome Lotus. I built this show around one truth I had to learn the hard way: if you want to heal more people, you have to reach more people. This is where practitioners learn to market from alignment, move through doubt, and become more influential in their communities. If this is you, you're in the right place. So let's get started.
EPISODE
Welcome back to The Influential Practitioner. I'm Michelle Oravitz. If you listened to Episode 1, you heard my whole story, from the empty office to the podcast to the endorsements. And if you didn't, you don't need it for today. All you need to know is I'm a fertility acupuncturist, and I built a practice and a platform that reached a lot of people, and I did it while being very uncomfortable most of the time.
Last week I mentioned that the show is built on one belief: if you want to heal more people, you have to reach more people. Today I want to take that belief apart and look at the piece that trips most of us up. The reaching part. The marketing part. The part that makes practitioners wince.
Because I've talked to a lot of you over the years, acupuncturists, naturopaths, coaches, bodyworkers, nutritionists, and there's a pattern. You spent years training. You're amazing at what you do. Your patients love you. And you would rather do almost anything than promote yourself. Selling feels wrong. Talking about your work feels like bragging. So you do a little, half-heartedly, and then you stop, and then you feel guilty about stopping, and then you tell yourself word of mouth will handle it.
I've lived every bit of that. So this episode is my attempt to change what marketing might mean to you. Not by giving you a strategy, but by giving you a different way to see it, because once it looks different, the doing gets a lot easier. So grab your tea, and let's go.
So I want to start by being fair to the resistance. It's not laziness, and it's not fear of technology. It comes from something good in you. You went into this work because you care about people. You've seen what happens when health gets turned into a product: the supplements sold with fear, the programs that promise a fix in thirty days, the wellness influencer with perfect lighting and no credentials. You looked at all of that and thought, I am not that, and I never want to be. So when someone says “market yourself,” your brain might pull up those images, and your body might say no.
I remember the first time someone told me I needed a newsletter. This was early, maybe a year into my office. A colleague said, “You should be emailing your patients every month.” And I felt this wave of, I don't know, embarrassment. Who wants to hear from their acupuncturist every month? Isn't that annoying? Isn't that what spam is? I didn't send a newsletter for another two years. Two years of patients who came in for a few sessions, felt better, drifted away, and forgot I existed. Not because I'd done anything wrong. Because I'd gone silent. And silence, it turns out, is not the same as respect.
That's the mistake underneath the resistance. We think staying quiet is humble. We think not promoting is a form of integrity. And there's a version of that which is true. Nobody wants to be shouted at. But there's another version, where staying quiet is just a way of protecting yourself from being seen and possibly judged, and we dress it up as humility so we don't have to look at it. I know that because it was me. My “I don't want to be pushy” was mostly “I don't want to be rejected.” Once I could admit that, I could actually deal with it.
So let me offer the shift that changed it for me. It's simple, and I want you to sit with it instead of nodding past it. Every time you think about marketing, you're thinking about yourself. How you'll look. Whether it's tacky. Whether people will roll their eyes. Whether you'll get it wrong. Now flip it. Think about her. The woman who's been trying for two years. Or the patient who has been dealing with back pain. The mom who's been told her fatigue is just stress by four different doctors. Whoever your person is, they're right there, right now, tonight, typing things into a search bar at 11pm, scrolling for someone who sounds like they understand, asking a friend if they know anyone.
That person doesn't experience your post as self-promotion. They might even experience it as relief. Finally, someone who gets it. Finally, someone who explains what's happening in my body in a way that makes sense. When you don't post, she doesn't think, how humble. She doesn't think anything, because she's never seen you. She scrolls past the empty space where you would have been and finds someone else. Maybe someone good. Maybe someone who will sell her a cleanse.
So the question isn't, is it okay for me to promote myself? The question is, who's not getting help because you're hiding? That reframe took marketing out of the category of things I do for me and put it in the category of things I do for them. And once it lived there, next to treating patients and studying and showing up prepared, I stopped being able to justify skipping it. Marketing is not the opposite of healing. It's how healing finds the people who need it.
So, marketing is service. What does that look like in practice? Because “marketing as service” can become a nice phrase that changes nothing. Let me get specific.
Service means you teach. The best marketing I've ever done wasn't clever. It was me explaining something I explain in the treatment room every single day. Why your period tells you so much about your fertility. Why your body won't prioritize making a baby if it doesn't believe you're safe. What acupuncture actually does for blood flow to the uterus. Things I say to patients over and over, said once into a camera, written once in a post, so that thousands of people could hear it instead of just one. If you've been in practice for more than a year, you've answered the same twenty questions a hundred times. Those answers are your content. You don't need to invent anything. You just need to say what you already say, so people can find it.
Service means you're clear about who you help. This one's hard for practitioners, because we can help so many people. Acupuncture treats almost everything, so we say, “I treat everything.” To the person searching, that sounds like, I specialize in nothing. I talked about this last week. When I said fertility, I became findable. The woman searching for fertility help didn't have to wonder if I was the right fit for her. It was in my name, my bio, and my first sentence. You can be broad in your practice and still be clear in your message. Lead with one thing. Let people discover the rest once they're in the door.
Service means you show up consistently. Not constantly. Consistently. There's a difference. Constant is exhausting and not genuine. Consistent is a rhythm people can rely on. A weekly episode, a newsletter every other week, a post a few times a week, whatever rhythm you can actually hold through busy season, because the rhythm you hold in your worst month is the one that counts. When I started my podcast, I committed to weekly. Not because weekly is magic, but because I knew if I let myself skip, I'd skip forever. Four hundred episodes later, that one decision is most of the reason I'm here. And keep in mind, I scheduled these episodes. I didn't have to do it every single week. So you can always come up with a really good system.
And service means you talk like a person. Not like a brochure, not like a textbook. The way you talk to a patient you've known for a year: warm, direct, a little unpolished. I promise you, the posts and episodes where I sounded most like myself did far better than the ones where I tried to sound like an expert. People can feel the difference, and they come to you for you.
Let me tell you a story I didn't get to in the last episode, because I think it puts all of this together. About a year into that new office, a woman in my networking group ran a yoga studio. She asked if I'd come do a short talk for her students on fertility and stress. Forty-five minutes, maybe fifteen people. I said yes immediately, and then regretted it for three weeks. I over-prepared. I made slides nobody needed. I practiced in my car. The night before, I couldn't sleep, and I remember lying there thinking, they're going to ask me something I don't know, and I'm going to be exposed. Everyone will realize I'm just a person who went to school for this and doesn't have all the answers. The morning of, I almost canceled. I had a text drafted, something about a scheduling conflict. I didn't send it, mostly because I couldn't stand the idea of lying to someone who'd been kind to me.
So I showed up, and about ten minutes in, I realized they didn't need a lecture. They needed somebody to tell them their bodies were not broken. So that's what I did. I talked to them about their nervous system. I talked to them about why the body pulls resources away from reproduction when it's under stress. I talked about what I had seen in my practice when women start to feel safe in their bodies. And I answered questions. A couple I did not know the answer to, and I said so. And nobody gasped. Nobody left. One woman asked if she could get my card, and then three more did. Two of those women became my patients over the next year. I can trace at least a dozen patients back to that one room of fifteen people.
I want you to notice what happened. That was marketing, textbook, by any definition. I stood in front of strangers and talked about my work so that they would hire me. And it didn't feel like marketing at all. It felt like the best hour of clinical teaching I'd done that month, because nothing that was talked about was slick. It was service. I gave fifteen people something real, and some of them wanted more. That's the whole model. That's what I've been doing ever since, just with a bigger room.
Before I go further, I want to deal with the objection I hear most, because it's the one that stopped me for two years. Won't people get sick of hearing from me? Let me tell you what actually happened when I finally sent that first newsletter. It was short, a little about why I chose fertility and one thing people can try at home. I was sure I'd get a lot of unsubscribes. And then I got four replies. One woman said she'd been meaning to come back for a while, and my email was the reminder she needed. Nobody unsubscribed.
However, over the years, many people unsubscribed, of course. And this is the part I want you to hear, because it's okay. Someone leaving your list is not a judgment on you. It's a person signaling this isn't for them right now, which is exactly what you want them to do. It makes room for the people it is for. We overestimate how much attention people are paying to us. Your patients are not sitting there tallying your posts. They're living their lives. And when they see you, it's a small moment of, right, her, I like her. And when they need you, or their sister does, that small moment is what makes them remember your name. The people who get annoyed by a practitioner sharing useful things once a week are not your people. Let them go. Go talk to the ones who lean in.
And here's a way to check yourself if you're worried about your tone. Read what you wrote and ask, would I be embarrassed if a patient I respect saw this? If the answer is no, send it. If the answer is yes, it's usually because you're trying to sound like someone else. Fix that, but not the frequency.
So I want to go through three things I used to believe that kept me small. I call them lies, but they're more like stories we tell ourselves that feel true and are not.
The first one: if I'm good enough, people will find me. I believed this completely. I thought the really good ones just got busy from word of mouth. It isn't true, and I wish someone had told me this earlier. I know extraordinary practitioners with half-empty schedules. I know average ones who are booked out six weeks. The difference is never skill alone. It's whether people know they exist. Being good is the price of entry. It's not the strategy. Word of mouth is real, and it's wonderful, but it's also slow. It also depends on you being memorable and referable, which means people need a clear way to describe what it is that you do. That clarity is marketing. So even word of mouth runs on it.
The second lie: marketing means pretending. This one comes from watching the wrong people. Yes, some marketing is fake. Manufactured urgency, hype, before-and-after photos that lie. But that's just bad marketing. It's not what marketing really is. The marketing that's worked for me has been the most honest thing in my business. Sharing what I believe about the body, explaining what it is that I do and why, and telling the truth about what I've seen work and what I've seen not work. It's a longer version of the conversation I'd have with you if you sat down in my office. If you feel like you're pretending, then you're doing it wrong, or you're copying somebody else's voice. So if that's the case, stop copying and say your thing.
The third lie: I'll do it when I have time. I said this for years. Once the practice gets busier. Once the kids are older. Once I figure out how to do video. And time never showed up, because time doesn't show up. You make it or you don't. What I finally understood is that marketing isn't the thing you do after the practice is built. It's part of building the practice, and it belongs on the schedule like patient hours. Not as something extra, but as the work. When I started treating one morning a week as content time, protected like an appointment, my whole business changed. Not because I had more hours, but because I finally stopped waiting for the hours to appear.
So I want to spend a minute on the cost side, because we always weigh the cost of putting ourselves out there, and we almost never weigh the cost of not doing it. Every month you don't share your work, some number of people who needed you found someone else instead, and you'll never know how many. That's what makes it easy to ignore. The empty appointment slot doesn't have a name on it. But sometimes it does. Like my patient who wished she had found me sooner. Two years of trying, fifteen minutes away. That was the cost of my silence, and I got to see it in someone's face in real time.
There's also a cost to you. When you have something to offer and you keep it hidden, it wears on you. You start to feel a little resentful, a little unseen, or maybe just not expressing your own potential. And then you watch other practitioners grow and wonder what they have that you don't. And usually the answer is nothing, except that they let people see them.
And I'll say this gently, because I know how it lands. Staying hidden can become a way of never being tested. If nobody sees your work, nobody can judge it. That feels safe, but it's the same safety as an empty office. Nobody's rejecting you, and nobody's coming either. I would rather be seen and occasionally criticized than invisible and safe. It took me years to be able to say that and mean it, but now I mean it.
So let me get practical. I don't want to give you a huge system. I want to give you something you can start with this week, without buying anything or learning a new platform.
Step one: write down the ten questions you answer most in your practice. The most frequently asked questions. So for example, for an acupuncturist: Does acupuncture hurt? How long until I see results? What should I eat during my luteal phase? Why am I so tired all the time? Whatever they are for you, ten of them. This takes twenty minutes, and it's your content for the next two months.
Step two: answer one of them somewhere in public. This could be a post, a short video, an email to your list if you have one, a talk at a local studio if you're brave. And answer it the way you would answer it in the treatment room. Two hundred words, ninety seconds, done. Don't polish it to death. Just make it simple.
Step three: pick a rhythm you can keep. If once a week feels impossible, do every other week. The rhythm matters more than the frequency. Put it on your calendar like you would a patient, and protect it the same way.
Step four: tell one person, one referral partner, one colleague, what you're doing. Say, “I'm going to be sharing more about X, Y, and Z that I've learned throughout my experience in the clinic, and if you know anyone who'd find that helpful, send them my way.” That sentence alone has brought me more patients than any ad.
That's it. Four steps. Ten questions, one answer, a rhythm, one conversation. If you do that for three months, you will not be the same practitioner. Not because the tactics are special, but because you have practiced being seen, and it'll stop feeling like a threat.
So I want to name something that a lot of practitioners skip, even the ones who've made peace with sharing. You share, you teach, you post, and then you never actually ask anyone to work with you. I did this for a long time. I'd give a talk and never mention that I took new patients. I'd write a whole newsletter about the luteal phase and never say, if this is you, I'd love to help, or here's my free guide. I thought the invitation would take care of itself. If they wanted it, they'd figure out how to find the booking page. Some did. Most didn't. Not because they didn't want to, but because I'd made them do the work of figuring out the next step. And people don't want to do that work. They mean to. They get distracted. They forget.
So inviting someone to work with you is not the same as pressuring them. It's finishing the thought. You've just spent five minutes explaining why their cycle is telling them something. The kind thing to do is to say, and if you want help reading it, that's what I do, here's where to start. Then let them decide. It's simple. Teach something, say who it's for, and say what the next step is. Say something like, “If you've been told your labs are normal but you still don't feel right, that's exactly the kind of case I see most. I have a few new patient spots open this month.” I know this sounds simple, but it's really, really powerful.
So I've been thinking about what I'd say if I could walk back into that office with zero appointments and talk to the version of me sitting there. I wouldn't hand her a marketing plan. She'd have panicked. I'd tell her that every patient she's going to help over the next fifteen years is already out there, living their lives, dealing with their symptoms, hoping someone can help. They're waiting, and the only thing between her and them is that they don't know she exists yet. I'd tell her that talking about her work isn't bragging. It's directions. It's telling people where to find the help they're already looking for. I'd tell her the fear of being judged never fully goes away, and it doesn't need to. It just needs to stop being in charge. And I'd tell her that the woman who says “I wish I'd found you sooner” is coming, and that the whole point of everything that follows, the networking group, the talks, the podcast, is so that the next woman finds her sooner. That's the job. Be excellent in the room, and then make sure people can find that room.
Before I let you go, remember what I mentioned. Write down ten questions. That's all. Don't answer them yet. Don't post anything. Just open a note on your phone and write down the ten things patients ask you most. If you do that today, the rest of this month gets a lot easier. And if you want the bigger picture, step by step, of how I rebuilt from that empty office, I put it in a free guide called You Built It. They Didn't Come. It's got the eight moves I made, in order, and a thirty-day checklist. You can grab it in the episode notes.
The people you're meant to help are looking for you right now. Give them a way to find you. Thank you for spending this time with me on this episode, and if it helped you in any way, please make sure to subscribe, and I would love a review. So thank you so much for tuning in, and I will see you next time.
OUTRO
Thank you so much for spending this time with me on The Influential Practitioner. You've built something meaningful. Now it's time to let the right people find it, because when you reach more people, you get to help more people. For free resources and courses to grow your visibility, visit theinfluentialpractitioner.com. And if this episode helped you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a practitioner friend. Until next time, keep showing up and sharing your gift.
