By Freddie Ulan, DC, CCN
From the viewpoint of having a successful practice, it’s important to look at the subject of professionalism versus dilettantism. What does the word “dilettante” mean? A “dilettante” is one who is a “jack of all trades, master of none.” A “dilettante” is someone who never becomes professional at anything. He’s a dabbler.
I would say that the great majority of the people who come to my training workshops are not dabblers. They’re coming because they really want to be professional, effective healers and they know nutrition is an absolutely vital component of being able to achieve that today.
If you want to be a healer, you have to do what is necessary to be totally professional. That is the most important thing you have to do to be successful in this area. What does that mean? If you’re going to be dealing with nutrition, you’d better learn something about nutrition!
If you’ve already got a nutritional system that works for you that enables you to analyze the patient, know what they need and how to follow up with them, then that’s great. You’ve got what you need and you just need to be great at that. If you don’t, then I offer what I teach because it is a culmination of decades of work. My incoming mail is just full of the thanks I get from people who have learned the work that we do.
The bottom line is you need a system. You need to become professional at nutrition. If you’re using a particular line of products, you had better take steps to learn what those products are, how they work, when they’re indicated and when to use them.
For the guys that are doing my work I’ve provided a set of CDs (the Nutritional Pearls) and I’ve never had such great response from anything as from the doctors who listen to these CDs. Because basically, we give several decades of learning all condensed into a few hours so that you know the absolute, most important things. The point being that you need to learn your products and be very professional about them.
Next, you need to be a master of whatever you use for your analytical procedure. If you’re using as your total analytical procedure a symptom survey, you’d better become very good at interpreting that symptom survey. You’d better become good at knowing how to prioritize based on it. You’d better become very good at getting to know when it’s appropriate to give which of the products that are recommended on it. You need to be able to use those tools to monitor the patient’s progress. Because one of the things that you’ll find is most important in managing a nutritional patient is knowing how to communicate to them what their actual progress is, from visit to visit, to keep their interest and keep them coming to see you until they achieve optimum results.
The third thing is applying the management procedures. I have seen guys who are very dilettantish in their application of management procedures. I had a girl who came to one of our workshops a few years ago. I hadn’t seen her for two years when she called me and said, “I want to be a teacher for you, because I understand you’re looking for guys to train up to be teachers for Nutrition Response Testing. I know all the products that you use, I know them really well, I can really teach those products, I use your work, it really is great, I get miracles all the time.”
I said, “Good! So, are you an example of someone who you could be teaching?”
And she said, “Well, what do you mean? I’m smart, I know the work, I know all the stuff.”
I said, “Great. What are your practice numbers?”
She says, “Well, well, uh…I, I just went through a divorce, I, and well, you know, it’s hard times in this area and well, you know….”
I said, “Well, what are your practice numbers?” She finally told me. I said, “Did you ever take my patient management workshop?”
She says, “Yeah!”
I said, “Do you ever apply any of it?”
She said, “Yeah, I apply all of it!”
I said, “You apply all of it? And your practice numbers are that bad?”
She said, “I don’t understand it either.”
I said, “Okay, so what do you do in the first visit?” And it was nothing I taught her to do on the first visit. I said “Okay! So, that’s a flunk. So, what do you do on your second visit? Do you do the written report of findings?”
She said, “Oh no, I’ve never done the written report of findings.”
I said, “I thought you do exactly what I tell you to do.”
She said, “Well, yeah, but, you know, I had to adapt it to myself.”
I said, “Okay, so you’ve been unsuccessful in adapting my work to yourself, so if you continue trying to adapt it you will continue being unsuccessful with it.”
I finally got her attention. She said, “Okay, okay, what do I have to do?”
I said, “The first thing you’ve got to do is become successful in your practice so that you can actually represent me. I can’t have someone out there representing me who hasn’t been successful with it, you know.”
The point is, if you’re going to actually do this, become a part of this crusade, you really need to decide to become totally professional at these things. Because guess what? When they’re implemented, they actually work. And we’ve proved it, over, and over, and over again.
For more information on Nutrition Response Testing call 866-418-4801 or email us at [email protected]. You can also download our FREE Nutrition Response Testing E-Book here.
