The Influential Practitioner
Episode 4: Nobody Grows Alone
Transcript
Episode number four of The Influential Practitioner.
When I look back at every meaningful jump in my business, there's a person on the other side of it. The friend who suggested I try the student clinic at a Chinese medicine school, which is the day I found my calling. The networking group that filled my empty office, one referral at a time. The speaker in that group who mentioned her business coach, which led to the single question that made me commit to fertility. The podcast guests who became collaborators and shared my work with their audiences. The authors who put their names next to mine. Not one of them came from an ad. Not one of them came from an algorithm. Every one came from a relationship. If you take one thing from this show, I hope it's this: you don't grow alone. Nobody does.
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. Today I want to talk about the thing I think practitioners underestimate when it comes to growing their reach: relationships. I know how that word may land for some of you. It sounds like networking events and business cards and forced small talk. For a long time that was part of an ordeal for me too. But what I'm talking about is different, and I want to spend this episode showing you the difference, because it actually is the engine behind everything I've built. We'll talk about the networking group that rebuilt my practice, the question from a business coach that changed my direction completely, the podcast that put me in rooms I had no other way to get into, the asks that at first terrified me, and the shift from competing to collaborating that changed how growth felt. So let's get into it.
So I've told this story in pieces, but I want to tell it through the lens of relationships this time, because that's what it really was. When I walked into that new office with zero appointments, I didn't have a marketing plan. I had a rent bill and a fear of public speaking. And the first thing I did was join a networking group. Every week for about a year, I stood up in front of a room of business owners and talked about who I was and what I did. And every week I was terrified.
But something was happening in that room that I didn't fully understand at the time. I was building relationships with people who would send me patients. This was before I committed to specializing in fertility. Although people knew that I loved working with fertility, I was treating everything back then. Back pain, stress, whatever walked through the door. And the people in that room didn't necessarily need acupuncture themselves, but they had spouses, coworkers, friends. And once they'd seen me every week for months, they knew me and trusted me. I became the acupuncturist they thought of when someone in their life needed one.
That's what a relationship does. It turns one person into a doorway to everyone they know. I couldn't have bought that. There's no ad that makes a stranger vouch for you to their sister. Only a relationship does that. And it took showing up week after week, scared, until the room stopped being a room full of strangers and became a room full of people I knew, and who knew me.
But the most important thing that came out of that group wasn't a patient. It was a chain of people I never could have planned. There was a woman in the group who was a speaker, and I admired her, because I've always been afraid of speaking. One day she mentioned how much she'd learned from a business coach. I paid attention, and I ended up going to that business coach's retreat. And at that retreat, I mentioned to everybody in the group that I was really interested in working in fertility. So the coach looked at me and asked, “Why aren't you headlining fertility on your website? What are you waiting for?”
I didn't really have a good answer. The truth is, I was scared to commit. Because if I put fertility front and center, what about everybody else? What if the people who weren't trying to conceive stopped coming? But I did it. I committed. And that's when my business took off.
Think about that chain. A networking group I joined out of desperation. A speaker in that group I happened to admire. A coach she happened to mention. A retreat I happened to attend. And one question. I didn't plan any of it. I just kept showing up and staying open, and the right person asked the right thing at the right time.
So I want to go back further, because the most important relationship in my whole career happened before I even had a career. I was living in San Francisco, and a friend suggested I try acupuncture at a student clinic of a Chinese medicine school. That was the whole suggestion. A friend being practical, pointing me toward a cheap option for therapy. And I walked into that building, and my life changed. The smell of the herbs, the students in the hall, the practitioner I looked at and thought, I want to be her.
I think about that a lot. I didn't find my calling by searching for it. A friend handed it to me without knowing what she was handing me. And of course, at the time, I wasn't really thinking about it and deciding to go into acupuncture. It actually happened many years down the line. But that was the first awakening. I bring this up because I think we imagine the big moments in our lives come from big decisions we make alone. Mostly they don't. They come from people. From a suggestion, an introduction, a yes to something small. If I'd been too busy or too proud to take my friend's advice about a student clinic, perhaps I'd still be at a desk, working on the computer all day. It's important to stay open to the people around you, because they may be carrying doors you can't see yet.
Now let me talk to you about the podcast, because I've said it was the turning point, and I want to explain why in relationship terms. Most people think of a podcast as a content strategy. You make episodes, people listen, and you grow. And that's true, but that's not what made it powerful for me. A podcast is also a reason to reach out to people you'd never otherwise be able to talk to.
Think about it. If I'd emailed an author I admired and said, “Can I have an hour of your time to pick your brain?” the answer would have been no, or silence. That's asking a favor from a stranger. But when I emailed and said, “I host a podcast for women trying to conceive. Would you come on and share your work with my audience?” that's an offer. I'm giving them a platform, and it's a platform with purpose. That leads to a conversation. Suddenly I was sitting across from people whose books were on my shelf. Not reading them. Talking to them. And it's always been my dream to speak to people that really inspired me. I was such a huge self-help junkie that my dream really was to speak to those people one day, and I never really imagined that it would come true for me.
I've said this before and I'll keep saying it: being around greatness awakens your own greatness. When you only see someone on a stage or a book cover, they feel like a different kind of person. When you talk with them for an hour, you realize they're a person. They started somewhere, and they were once scared too. And that does something to your sense of what's possible for you.
Every one of those interviews was a relationship starting. Some of them stayed a single conversation, and many of them became so much more. Guests invited me to speak at their summits, and they said yes when I asked them to speak at mine. They had me on their podcasts. When my book came out, some of them went live with me to share it, and some helped me launch and promote it. None of that was on my radar when I hit record for the first time. I just wanted to have a good conversation with people I admired.
Let me talk about the asks, because this is where relationships either become something or stay polite. About a year or two into the podcast, I started asking guests for endorsements. People I looked up to. Dr. Christiane Northrup, who to me is the queen of women's health. Dr. Lisa Miller. Aimee Raupp. Jessica Ortner. I want to be honest about what that felt like, because I know some of you are avoiding an ask right now. My heart pounded. Every version of “who am I” was so loud. These were people with bestselling books, huge audiences, decades of work. I was an acupuncturist with a podcast. What right did I have to ask them to put their names next to mine?
And here's how it actually went. Most of the time, I asked at the end of the interview. We'd spent an hour together. The conversation had been real. And I'd say something like, “Would you be open to giving me an endorsement?” A few I emailed afterwards. And they said yes. Not because I was special, but because I'd built a relationship first. I'd given them a platform and had a real conversation with them. The ask came after I'd been generous, not before. And the order matters. An ask with no relationship behind it is a cold request. An ask that comes after you've shown up for someone is almost always welcome.
I should also tell you that not every email got a reply. Some of the ones I sent afterwards went nowhere. No response. And you know what happened? Nothing. I was in exactly the same place I'd been before I sent it. The ones who said yes changed my career. The ones who didn't answer cost me nothing. And that's the math, and I use it every single time. If you try, you always have a fifty percent chance, and if you don't, you have zero. Fifty or zero. When the “who am I” voice got loud, that's what got me to ask anyway. Not confidence. Arithmetic.
I also got to have Dr. Bruce Lipton on as a guest. Saying that out loud still doesn't feel real. And it happened the same exact way. A podcast, an invitation, and a yes. And as a matter of fact, I reached out multiple times until he finally said yes.
I've made a lot of asks since then, and there's one principle underneath all of them. Give first, and give with an open heart. No expectation. This is the part I want you to really hear, because the giving only works if it's real. I don't share someone's work so that they owe me something. I don't give an interview to someone as a setup for a favor. I give because I want to, because their work moved me in some way, and because I think my audience needs to hear their message. And then when the time comes, I'm no longer a stranger, and the ask doesn't feel as transactional. It feels like the natural next step in a relationship that already exists. If you give with a scorecard in your hand, people feel it. And if you give freely, they feel that too.
A few practical things that make an ask easier to say yes to. Be specific. “Would you be willing to collaborate sometime?” gets nothing. “Would you come on my podcast? Forty-five minutes, here are three dates, I'll send you the questions ahead of time” gets a real answer. Every bit of friction you remove is a reason to say yes. And let no be fine. Someone saying no, or not answering, is not a verdict on you. They're busy. It's bad timing. It's not a fit. It's usually never personal, and you'll be in the same place you were before you asked. Fifty or zero.
And you don't need to start with the biggest name you can think of. The practitioner who is a few steps ahead of you is more likely to say yes, and more useful to you right now, than the celebrity author who doesn't have time to read their emails. The bigger names do eventually come later, and they come through the relationships you build. Every one of my endorsements came from someone I'd already spent an hour with.
Getting a yes is the beginning, not the end. And this is where I see practitioners drop the ball, because they treat the yes like a finish line. Someone comes on your podcast. Someone agrees to speak at your summit. Someone sends you a patient. And then nothing. No follow-up, no thank you. The relationship goes cold, and six months later, when you'd love to talk with them again, you're starting over. Relationships are kept, not just made.
A few things I do. When an episode goes live, I share it widely. I tag the guest. I quote them. I make sure their audience sees that their time was treated with respect. That's not just promotion. It's how they know the conversation mattered to me. When someone sends me a patient, I close the loop. Not with clinical details, but with a simple thank you for trusting me with their friend. And I put effort into staying in touch without needing anything. A note when I see their new book or program. A share when they post something I love. A congratulations when something good happens to them.
This is the part that feels most natural to most people, because it's one-to-one and it's sincere. That's how a single interview turns into a summit invitation two years later, or a guest spot on their show, or someone going live with you to celebrate your own book. None of that is tactical. It's what you do with a friend. The only difference is that you do it on purpose, because these relationships are the infrastructure your business runs on. And infrastructure needs maintenance.
So I want to talk to you about something that keeps practitioners small, and it's mindset more than tactic: scarcity. The idea that there are only so many patients, and the practitioner down the street is taking yours. The idea that if you collaborate with someone in your field, you're helping the competition. I understand where it comes from. When your calendar's empty, everyone with a full calendar looks like they took something from you. But it isn't true, and it's actually expensive to believe. There are more women trying to conceive than there are practitioners who can truly help them. There are more people with chronic pain, with fatigue, with anxiety, with all of it, than any of us could ever see. The need is enormous. There is more than enough. Scarcity is a story. Collaboration is a strategy.
Let me give you a real example. I have relationships with other acupuncturists who practice north of me, who also do fertility work. Patients from up there who find me would have to drive a long way to see me, and patients near me would have to drive a long way to see them. So naturally, without even asking, we've been sending each other patients. It's better for the patients, and it's better for both of us. The practitioner I could have seen as my competition is someone I actually trust with the people I've been working with.
And it goes further than that. The practitioner who does what you do is a co-host for a workshop. She could be someone you run a summit with, or exchange notes with. She's the person who understands your work well enough to describe it accurately to her patients. I've built more from collaborating with people in my field than I ever could have by guarding my own territory. Every summit I've run was built on practitioners saying yes to each other, and every one of those brought new people into my world, and into theirs. When I stopped seeing other practitioners as competition, growth stopped feeling like a fight.
Before I move on, I want to spend a minute on the most practical relationships of all, because they're the ones any new practitioner can start building this month: referral partners. The professionals whose patients overlap with yours. For me, in fertility, that means reproductive endocrinologists and their IVF clinics, therapists, nutritionists, pelvic floor specialists. People who see the same women I see at different points in their journey. For you, it depends on your specialty, but the principle is the same. Who else is already helping the people you help? Two or three real relationships with the right partners can fill a practice. Two or three people who know your work, trust you, and think of you when the right patient walks in.
And it starts the same way every relationship in this episode starts. Give first. When a patient needs something I don't do, I send her to someone I trust, and I tell her why I trust them. That partner notices. Referrals flow toward the people who send them. And be easy to refer to. A partner needs a sentence to describe you. Having that authentic voice does the referring when you're not in the room. One more thing: when a referral partner sends you someone and that person reaches out, get back to them within a day. I follow up on every inquiry, definitely within twenty-four hours. Speed is a form of care, and a partner does hear about it. Nothing kills a referral relationship faster than “I sent her to you and she never heard back.”
I want to talk to you about virtual summits for a few minutes, because they're the clearest example I have of relationships turning directly into reach. I've run about six of them now. The first one was the Empower Your Fertility Summit, back in April of 2021. Almost fifteen hundred people registered. My most recent one, the Fertility Shift Summit, brought in over sixteen hundred registrations. And this is one of the smaller summits that I've done. Some of the bigger ones brought in a lot more. Those numbers didn't come from ads. They came from speakers.
Think about what a summit is. You invite ten, fifteen, twenty experts to each give a talk. Mine have ranged from ten to twenty, depending on the year. Each of them tells their audience about it. Every speaker is a relationship, and every relationship is a doorway to an audience you didn't have before. The summit is just the structure that lets all those doorways open at once. And where did those speakers come from? Mostly from my podcast. People I'd already interviewed and built something with. The relationship came first, and the summit was what it grew into. It works in both directions. The speakers get in front of a new audience too. Everyone wins.
And that's the thing about building from relationships instead of from force. It doesn't feel like taking. It feels like everyone showing up to the same room and all leaving with more than what they came with. I'm not saying everyone should run a summit. It is a real project. But I want you to see the principle underneath it. My biggest jumps in reach came from gathering people, not from shouting louder. Borrowed trust, offered generously, compounds.
I want to speak directly to the people who have been listening to this whole episode thinking, well, that's fine for you, but I hate this. I want you to know that I'm not a natural at this. I'm somewhere in the middle. Not the person who works a room, and not the person who hides from one either. I was afraid of public speaking, and I was afraid of being judged. The networking group was a weekly ordeal for a long time. None of this came easily.
So let me speak to the shy ones, the quiet ones, the ones who'd rather be in the treatment room with the door closed. You don't have to be good at rooms. You have to be good at people, one at a time. Most of the relationships that changed my business started as one conversation, one email, one interview, one question at a retreat. I didn't work a room. I built one connection, and then another.
Relationships in this field aren't transactional. You're not collecting contacts. You're finding your people. The practitioners who see the body the way you do. The experts whose work lights you up. The referral partners who trust you with the people they care about. When you build from that place, it doesn't feel like networking. It feels like finally meeting the people you were supposed to know. And if you're the kind of person who'd rather write than talk, then write. Send a thoughtful email. Comment meaningfully on someone's work. Quiet people are often better at this, because they listen, they follow up, and they mean it.
There's a bigger idea underneath everything I've said today, and I want to name it before we close. Force is trying to make growth happen by pushing harder. Posting more, chasing every tactic, constantly trying to keep up. And I know that feeling well, because for a long time marketing felt forced and exhausting. Every week there was a new thing I was supposed to be doing, and I was doing it, and it was draining me.
What changed wasn't that I found more energy. It was that I realized everything has a system. Once I saw the structure underneath it, the podcast, the summits, the relationships, the follow-up, it stopped being an endless list of tasks and started being something I could design. And then something shifted. I started treating it as a creative outlet. I'm an artist. I've painted my whole life. Once I looked at building my business the way I look at a canvas, it stopped feeling like keeping up and started feeling like making something. That felt more like alignment for me. Building from who you actually are and who you're actually connected to, and letting that carry you.
When I was forcing it, it drained me and gave back very little. When I aligned, when I built from real relationships and said what I actually believed, doors opened that I never could have pushed open myself. Growth stopped feeling like a fight and started feeling like flow. That's not a mystical idea. It's just what happens when the way you grow matches who you are. Relationships are the most aligned form of growth there is, because they're built on the thing you're already good at. Caring about people. Paying attention. Showing up. You already do this in the treatment room every day. But can you also do it outside of the room?
So here are three things you can do this week before I let you go. One: make a list of five people you'd like to know. Not celebrities. People a few steps ahead of you, or beside you. A practitioner whose work you respect. A referral partner you've never actually met. Someone whose podcast you've listened to. Five names.
Two: give something to one of them this week. Share their work on social media. Send a real note about something they said that helped you. Refer someone to them. No ask attached. Just give.
Three: make one ask you've been avoiding. Just one. An introduction, an interview, a conversation. Make it specific, make it easy to say yes to, and send it. Just remember: fifty or zero. Zero percent chance it's going to happen if you don't, and if you try, it's going to be fifty.
So if you only write down the five names of the people you'd like to get to know today, the rest gets easier. And if you want the bigger picture, the moves I made to rebuild from an empty office, including the networking group, the podcast, and the asks, it's all in a free guide called You Built It. They Didn't Come. And you can find it in the episode notes. Remember, the people who will change your business are already out there. Some of them are waiting for you to say hello. Thank you so much for being here, 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.
