Introduction
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, AKA Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show where I want to discuss five, out of the many, ways you can use your FDN Certification.
I must apologize in advance. I am a little under the weather, so I’m slightly nasally today. I got to say this because it’s so darn funny to me. You might relate to this. If you’re in the natural or functional space already, have you ever been doing this stuff for a while and then you catch a cold or a stomach bug or whatever? And you have a friend or family member that does nothing for their health, they say to you, how did you get sick? Don’t you do all that natural stuff?
I look at them like, are you out of your mind? Like, what do you think this is? You think automatically you never get a cold again? You never get a fever? You never get a little stomach virus? Yeah, I don’t die either. I’m actually going to live here forever because I eat well and go to bed on time. We gotta be clear about the expectations of this. Can you most likely shut down or even reverse sometimes, because I’ve seen this on this podcast, the effects of chronic disease? Probably.
I do genuinely believe that in most cases, if the people have the right tools, which is what we strive to teach at Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, the body should never be in a completely deceased state to the point where the person’s sick or relying on medication all the time.
People Wanting Info on the FDN Certification
But to say that we’re never going to get a cold or a sinus thing or a stomach bug, or that we are going to live forever, all of these things are a bit ridiculous. We need to make sure that we have the right expectations, not only for ourselves, but especially for our friends and family members.
I always think that’s a funny thing. I digress. I want to get back to the main point here.
Now, we’ve been doing this quite a few weeks, but we did switch over to what is now called the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. It’s still the Health Detective Podcast, but by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition instead of the original name, which was by FDNthrive.
FDNthrive is a part of that to a degree. We take on clients from the public there, and you can actually work with an FDN practitioner. But what we found, even with those stories and with talking about FDNthrive is more people were still interested in the course. We have people go to FDNthrive all the time, but they still more often wanted to know about the course.
They wanted to know how can I do that? What will this certification allow me to do? Because of that, now we have extra episodes where we actually are able to talk about these things. Today I wanted to talk about a question that we get all the time and that’s, what can I do with my FDN certification?
Number One: Get a Job with Your FDN Certification
What does it mean to be an FDN practitioner? The cool thing is we give you a system so that you can go do a couple specific things, but we also don’t box you in. You’re not limited to one or two things. You can go do a variety of different things. I’m going to list off today, the top five things that people do typically with their FDN certifications in no particular order. Then you can decide which one resonates with you the most. Maybe it’s a few different things.
So, number one is that you can get a job lined up. That’s number one. Now I don’t think this is the most common route for most FDNs. I don’t even think this is the most common aspiration of most FDNs. I don’t think they want to go work for someone else necessarily.
But what’s really cool is if you’re someone considering the FDN certification program and you don’t really like the idea of being in business for yourself or working for yourself (I know to some that’s like a laughable comment, you’re like, why would I not want to work for myself?), there’s pros and cons.
I’ve done that for myself for quite a few years, there are benefits and there’s also some downsides to it. I totally understand someone that wants to go work for someone else. I mean, heck even with this podcast, I work for FDN. I know that the podcast world by myself is just not as much fun.
Using Your FDN Certification to Work for Someone Else
I will always host something, but it’s quite a lot of work. You need marketing tools; you need a bunch of different things. It takes a lot for one person to do that on their own. I’d rather come here and supply the things that I’m good at, and then let other people do the things that they’re good at to create one fully supported podcast.
Some people want a job lined up and that’s totally cool. We have people now in our professionals’ network, AFDNP, which is the Association of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioners. That’s where many of our graduates choose to hang out on Facebook. And we’re actually doing a whole separate platform in the future where people can actually just go on and talk freely. If that’s something that you want to do, know those opportunities are out there.
We see things all the time where doctors are coming into FDN and wanting to hire someone virtually for their practice. Occasionally, we get someone that is looking in a major city to hire someone in person. Most frequently, and I think this is such a testament to what we’re doing, we have other FDNs who have such successful practices that they’re hiring FDNs to come work for them. You can learn a ton from these people.
You can get more creative. Go to your local chiropractor, your local acupuncturist, more often than not, they’re not trained in the functional lab analysis. You might be able to create a great relationship with that person or people running that practice and be able to help them out.
Number Two: Use Your FDN Certification to Write a Book
Get creative and don’t be afraid to talk about what you do. Once you graduate the FDN course, most people (and you should feel this way), feel really confident in what they know. They feel able to go out there and talk about what they do.
Number two, this is definitely not the most common one, I just wanted to throw it out there. You could write a book on your healing story. I think FDN, the certification alone, absolutely gives people the ability to write a book. Even outside of the health space, we all kind of have that in the back of our heads. It’s like one of those human projects that we all wish we had a book or memoirs or something.
I know for me, it was FDN that actually allowed me to be able to do that. Now, my book, what’s funny about it, is most of it’s not even necessarily about functional healing modalities, although certainly that’s in there towards the end. But the thing is this, the story I share, I wouldn’t have ever felt confident enough to share it had I not gotten healthy.
And how did I get healthy? By using FDN. That’s kind of how that works and maybe that’s something you’ve always wanted to do. Well, I think it’s a wonderful thing to choose to do. It might take a while. It is a really large project to write, edit, publish a book, even if you’re self-publishing. It’s a lot easier than it used to be, don’t get me wrong. But you’re going to spend months and months doing that at least. You need to reread it. It’s just very repetitive.
Number Three: Use Your FDN Certification to Start Your Own Practice
There’s a lot to it. But if this is something that you wanted to do before, I think it’s really worth doing once you get your health under control. You could inspire so many people who are out there dealing with a similar condition to what you’re dealing with. So that’s number two. Number one is get a job lined up. Number two is write a book.
Number three, and this is probably the most common one, is starting your own practice. Many people, I would say 90% plus, choose to do this virtually in the world of FDN. It might even be more like 98% plus.
What’s interesting about FDN is we were teaching people how to do this before the pandemic hit. Why that’s important is because of course, after the pandemic started, everyone wanted to work online or felt the need to work online. We were actually already figuring this out long before that ever happened.
I think this is one of many reasons FDN saw so much growth during the pandemic. Because people needed to go to a place that already had some systems in place to actually help them do what it is they wanted to do. So, if you’re looking to work online, I truly can confidently say, this is one of the best places to learn how to do that because we had people doing it and teaching it before it was cool.
Use Your FDN Certification to Do What You’re Passionate About
This can be intimidating for people. Starting your own business is kind of scary. And one of the things I think that happens in this industry (and I’ve said this on other podcasts before, if you’ve listened regularly), we have this thing where people don’t necessarily choose this work, this work chooses them.
What that means is they might have a completely different job. They might not even really think about their career much. Maybe work, for them, is something they have to go do for 40, 50 hours a week and then they try to escape that as much as possible. That’s an unfortunate reality for a lot of people.
Then they deal with these health issues, or they see a family member or someone close to them deal with it and it changes everything. They start getting involved in this. They started trying to heal themselves and when they get the results or even get a full resolution to their health issues, then that really inspires them a lot of the time to say, hey, I think I want to go do that.
I don’t think I want to go do just 40, 50 hours a week anymore at something that I hate, at something that I can’t wait to get away from. I want to go engage with something that I’m actually inspired to do, something that excites me every single day to do as my work. So many people will choose to start their own practice because of this.
Business School – Adding to Your FDN Certification
Now this is a really good time to be at FDN. I think it’s always a good time, but since FDN continuously evolves, it’s always increasingly better. Not only were we teaching the business stuff before, just to be clear, this is after the course. You join the professionals’ network. It’s a whopping 30 something dollars a month at the time of recording this, it’s not much.
And this is something that is going to give you extensive business training as well. This is not necessarily taught in the main course. We do teach the system. We’re not teaching you taxes or all those things. You will be supplied with all the forms you could ever need. The legal forms, intake forms, that’s all included in the main course.
I just want to be clear about what I’m saying though. Strictly business content. How do I file the taxes at the end of the year? How do I sell stuff? How do I market? That’s going to be in the professional side. So, it’s all there, but it’s not in the main course.
Business School Program – Provides the “How To’s”
What we’re doing is taking all that stuff, which is already great and, in my opinion, more than enough for someone who is self-motivated, which you probably have to be to go through the FDN course anyway, and then also has a bit of time. But if you are one of many people who maybe lost their career, and this is still happening because of the pandemic, unfortunately. Maybe you lost your career or maybe things changed really quick, and you need to get into something new, that’s why we came up with FDN Business School.
This is something that is very soon going to be available to our graduates of the FDN Certification Program. It is a zero-to-90-day program showing you how to do everything. You come in, you’re like, hey, I’ve been working a job for 40 years. I’m 60 years old. I’ve never even thought about starting my own darn business. But I want to go do it this way so I can travel and live wherever I want while still helping people.
We can show you how to do that with the FDN Business School by the time it’s out. The good news is, if you haven’t pulled the trigger on the course yet – you haven’t even started, if you started today, as soon as you listen to this podcast, the good news is FDN business school will be out long before you ever even graduate. Nothing to worry about there.
Number Four: Use Your FDN Certification to Start a Podcast
So, number one is to get a job lined up. We could do that. Number two is we could write a book, something that many people think about their entire life. Number three is that we could start our own practice. Number four, you might like this one, it’s start your own podcast.
You totally could do this with FDN. And so many people that have graduated have done this. They take their particular condition that really affected them, or find a niche that they’re very passionate about, and then they go out and start a podcast on this. It’s basically focused in on that niche while still covering the same functional foundations that we talk about in the FDN course. They’ll bring on people who interview others or they interview other FDNs. Maybe it’s just solo episodes where they’re educating people.
We have tons of FDNs out there doing this work. I think one of the biggest ones, he has almost 2 million downloads on his podcast now. He’s out there really doing great work. His name’s Ben Azadi. He’s been on this podcast. I believe he was episode 16, I think that’s correct. It’s very close to there.
Just look for Ben Azadi of Keto Camp. His podcast again has almost 2 million downloads and he’s out there doing this thing, man. This is really cool to know that people can go do that if they want to do it. You’ll have the knowledge to start a podcast, I promise you that.
Number Five: Use Your FDN Certification to Start Speaking
Number one, we can get a job lined up. Number two, we could write a book. Number three, we could start our own practice. Four – we could start a podcast. Number five – I left this for the last one because I think this is one that a lot of people like the idea of, but it does scare people. You could even start speaking. Yes, you could absolutely go start speaking.
Still to this day this is one of the best and quickest ways to grow your FDN practice. Social media is great. If you got a hundred thousand followers, maybe that’s even quicker. But if you’re someone starting from scratch, it is undeniable that the people that are in the front of the room at a conference or at a coffee shop or at a small meetup, those are the people who are going to be able to positively influence others.
And I say “positively influence” because that’s what we’re doing. You’re not giving them BS. You’re giving them information that could save or change their life. I say those things not dramatically or cliche, that’s what we do here. How many episodes do you need to hear to know that this does change and save lives? It absolutely does. We’ve seen crazy stories come on here.
It’s your obligation to go out and share this with as many people as possible. And one of the ways that we can do that is by speaking. Now, you don’t need to be a professional speaker or really good at this stuff or join Toastmasters or do anything like that (although all those are wonderful things), to go out and start speaking.
Reed’s Lecture Packages
As a graduate, Reed Davis literally gives you, well, you could buy them technically (I think it’s about a hundred dollars for each of them and they include a call with Reed themselves, which is the founder of FDN. So, kind of nice.), they’re called Reed’s Lecture Packages. And he has the slides already done for you.
You get to know exactly what to say. You can go out and give these presentations to people and educate them, but also invite them to work with you. Maybe you don’t want to do that at all. Maybe you just want to become a very expert person on a specific niche. And that’s also fine too.
Then you can just go lecture on these things. We do have people in the space doing that. I’m doing that myself. Plenty of other FDNs are doing that as well. Now there’s other skills that you need to get involved. If you want to go do it like that, you’re going to probably have to learn how to speak as well.
Maybe some of those things I mentioned in the beginning of this part would be relevant like joining Toastmasters or something along those lines. But you can go do this. People will pay for this information. We have really good info. When you can get people results with their health, they will pay for that. It’s a wonderful way to make money and make a living.
Use Your FDN Certification to Make Money Ethically While Assisting Others
I am all for making money. I have no problem with it, but I hate doing it in unethical ways. I did sales a lot when I was younger, like 18, 19 years old (and everything sales to a degree). But this is what I’m saying. I did like car sales stuff, and I did this actually to improve my speaking skills.
I knew I wanted to speak. So, I put myself in situations that made me uncomfortable because I was very nervous to speak. But I found that sometimes we were supposed to kind of, you know, fib to the customer a little bit. It wasn’t that often, but it did happen. I don’t think those places are as bad as people think, but it does happen.
So, I didn’t want to do that anymore. I had to switch that up. And I love being able to share information with people that encourages them to buy from me when I know I’m doing something good for them. There’s nothing wrong with that. Speaking can be many different things. It could be educational. It can be to produce a sale. It could be to just generate a lead. Many things can be done with speaking.
So those are the top five ways that people use the FDN certification in no particular order. They could get a job lined up. They could write a book. They could start their own practice. Now that one is the most popular, just to be clear. And we help a lot with that. You could start a podcast, or you can even start speaking.
Conclusion
So, remember since this is now the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, any time that you guys have a question for me or us about the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Certification Program, all you got to do is reach out.
The best way to get in contact with us is by going to the Health Detective Podcast on Podbean. Podbean is a podcast platform. You just sign in there. You can sign in with Google. Then you can leave a comment there and ask a question. Anyone that’s left a comment there will tell you no matter how long it takes, and it’s usually never more than a few weeks, I will always make sure that those questions are publicly answered so that you can figure out what you need to figure out.
Now with that said, our next episode, we will be back to the interviews. I’m looking forward to bringing you guys yet another amazing guest.
Thanks again for listening. I’m looking forward to talking to you guys again soon.
