Introduction
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Hello, and welcome to 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 on why FDN is tough but worth it.
I am here solo, bringing you an FDN PSA (an FDN public service announcement.) It’s to address some concerns that I’m seeing with both people that are considering the course itself, but mostly, actually, people who are trainees.
Now I want to be clear. This is not an abundance of people that have these worries or concerns, but I think they’re justified enough. I really have some practical things to share with you about why they’re not a big deal. They’re nothing to worry about, it’s not something to be concerned with.
If you’re not involved with FDN in the way that I am, or you haven’t already gone through the course and graduated, you wouldn’t get this, so I totally understand where the concerns come from. I say, why don’t we just address them in a short podcast, ease people’s minds, and help them flip the perspective on certain things.
Because I’m someone who, I like motivation. I listen to motivational speakers. I technically am a motivational speaker for mental health stuff. I don’t like to label myself necessarily as a motivational speaker, but that is, by definition, I guess, what I’m doing. I like something that I refer to as practical motivation.
I don’t like just, hey, you’re being lazy, so you need to go do this. That’s fine and all, and maybe there’s sometimes that you’ve actually been lazy and that’s justified. But I’d much rather get something real because I do think there’s a way to motivate us as humans that comes from something authentic.
Some Real Motivation
I hope this doesn’t come across as dark for people, what I’m about to say. I don’t mean it that way at all. I actually look at it as a very inspiring thing. When people sometimes ask me, why are you so energized all the time, or why do you push through things, or what’s the point, that type of stuff, I say to them, I don’t know about you, but I am painfully aware of the idea that I am not going to be on this earth one day. I’m going to pass away. In fact, I’m not moving farther away from that day, I’m moving closer to that day.
Worse yet, when you get to a certain age, not that I’m particularly old. I’m in my oh, geez, about to be late twenties. This is getting scary. Then for some of you listening, you’re like, dude, I’m like 50, 60 years old, like shut up. All right, forgive me with that one. But you know what I mean?
You get older and you lose people. I’ve lost some friends in accidents. I lost one of my best childhood friends in a drug overdose. You start to really understand when that happens close to you, and I’m sure it’s happened to all of you guys in one way or another at this point in your lives, it hits you differently. It makes you start understanding, oh, whoa, this isn’t guaranteed. Maybe I’ll live to the life expectancy if I’m lucky. And we’re FDNs so hopefully we’re going to live a lot longer than that, but that’s not guaranteed.
Practical Reasons FDN is Worth It
A car accident can happen. Any type of accident can happen. We don’t have control over that, not complete control, at least. I mean, I guess you could never drive again, but that doesn’t sound like a practical way to live for most of us. So, my point is, the last thing I’m trying to do is say something dark or make you think negatively.
I don’t use that as a way to think negatively, I use it for the exact opposite. When I’m tired or when I’m feeling lazy or when I’m feeling uninspired or when I’m feeling hateful or just excessively angry towards another person, I remind myself, dude, I’m going to die one day. Is this how I want to be spending my time here?
What if, God forbid, knock on something. What if it was tomorrow? This is how I want it to end? By being pissed off at everyone and saying bad things and stupid crap like that. Instantly, it shuts that off for me. So, this is not about that today, per se. What I’m saying is I like practical motivation.
So, I’m going to bring you guys some things today that might not be as powerful as what I just said, but it’s useful. It’s practical. It’s not just saying, do FDN for the sake of doing FDN and just finish up. You started so finish what you start. There’s actual practical reasons that should motivate you and we’re going to share those today.
Concerns From the Trainee Group
Now, the first things I want to address are some concerns, then we’re going to get into five tips that make FDN worth it. Maybe not five tips, but five things that make FDN worth it in my opinion, despite it being a very tough course. The first things I’m going to address are stuff that I see in the trainee group.
I said I would explain what the trainee group is. If you do not know, you’re not a part of FDN yet. If you join FDN, you will get access to an exclusive trainee-only group. This is only available to people who have not graduated the course yet but have officially started the course. It’s not just a bunch of trainees running around, causing trouble with each other.
We have our FDN mentors in there. The founder of the FDN is in there, Reed Davis. Myself, I’m in there, other various staff members for a variety of reasons. I mean, Reed actually goes live in there, and then another mentor, her name’s Elizabeth, she goes live in there. They answer your questions. These are weekly things; they both happen weekly.
It’s a very active group, very fun group, but, of course, a trainee can just post for the sake of posting. Sometimes I’ll see these people, and I totally understand this by the way. I would hope this is obvious, this is not a condemnation of these comments. I actually very much understand their concerns so I’m trying to help out by sharing this.
Worried About a Timely Finish
Some of the things that I will see revolve around this stuff. They’re worried about finishing the course in time. They know that they have a year to finish the course, that’s what we say. So, they’re worried that they won’t finish in time.
Maybe something came up, maybe they got pregnant. Maybe they started a new job. Maybe they are in a wonderful new relationship and that’s taking up some time now. Could be a variety of things. So that’s one thing.
They also maybe have limiting beliefs that the content is too hard, or they can’t do this. Wow. I thought, it’s an online course, I thought it was going to be easier. This is really tough. It’s one of the toughest things I’ve studied. Maybe I can’t do this. So that’s another thing. I want to address both of those.
One, there’s time extensions, guys. That does not mean that you want to keep pushing off FDN. It’s not even something that we really promote because we don’t want it in people’s heads that you should take more than a year. You really shouldn’t. Not being mean, but there’s really only so many reasons that the FDN course should take more than a year. There’s not really many good excuses for that, but there are things that come up.
Life happens and, quite frankly, let’s call it what it is, this might not be your top priority. Maybe your kids are first and your husband’s second or your wife’s second. Then the job’s third that you currently have, and you are doing a side hustle business and that’s four. This is just something that you have at number five.
Optimize Time and Balance Priorities
I get that, I’m realistic. But we don’t want to make it take longer than a year cause someone could literally be doing an hour a day and figure this out in less than a year. We gotta prioritize our time for sure. But gosh forbid, one of those legitimate excuses comes up, or I don’t want to call that an excuse, I’ll call it a legitimate reason, I apologize.
You’re good, you can pay a very small fee. It’s not even the cost of a monthly payment if you’re on the longest payment plan and they’ll extend the course view for a little bit. Then you can do that if need be. Don’t keep pushing this, don’t keep abusing it. There’s problems that can occur for you if you keep doing that because we update the course constantly. But there are time extensions so do not worry about the timeframe. Do what you can.
You should be more worried about this, looking yourself in the mirror and saying, did I do everything that I actually could do today for the priorities in my life while not burning myself out? That’s the only question you should be asking. Because that’s a huge difference between doing, oh, did I do everything I possibly could do? I don’t like that mindset because, to me, that forces people to work 20 hours a day. I could go work 20 hours. I could live off four hours of sleep for probably some time, but that’s not sustainable. So that’s not literally doing my best, in my opinion.
Be Honest About Work-Load Ability
My best as a human being is doing everything that I can, given certain contexts like my health status, other things in my life. What is the best that I can do without killing myself? Maybe for you that’s a 10-hour day. Maybe for you that’s a five-hour day. As long as you’re being honest with yourself about what you are capable of without worsening your health or shortening your time here, that’s good with me. So that’s the question you should be asking.
If we’re honest with ourselves, what we will probably find is that you could do a little more than you think you could, without burning yourself out. You could get more efficient; you could be more effective.
There is an FDN practitioner out there, brilliant woman. She’s been on twice, her name’s Jenn Malecha. She refuses to work more than 40 hours a week. It’s something that she does for her health. Yet Jenn is one of the best paid FDNs out there. How is that possible? How does she have such a successful business? She’s not killing herself.
How’s that work? It’s because she learned to be more efficient with her time. She took personal responsibility and said, you know what? There’s probably no way I’m doing the best I could in these 40 hours a week right now. So instead of just adding hours on, why don’t I learn to make these more useful? I can outsource, optimize, become smarter, whatever it might be. She’s kicking butt because of that mindset.
Retesting is Possible if Needed
I challenge you to do that, especially even with going through the FDN course, but also in life. Don’t ask, oh, I need more time. How can we be more efficient with the time? Because all of us, myself wildly included in this, can be more efficient with our time. So don’t worry about that.
The second thing here was there are abilities to retake tests, and I think this directly relates to the concern people have about the content being too hard. Take your time. There are very few things that someone who is going through FDN cannot learn.
I am not ignorant to the idea that there are different IQ levels, and that could, I guess in theory, prevent someone from learning certain topics. Like let’s go to something really complicated, like quantum physics. Yes, maybe at some end of the IQ scale, it is simply just not realistic or possible for someone to grasp even basic or fundamental concepts in something like quantum physics. I don’t know. I’m not a psychologist, but maybe that’s true.
FDN is tough. It is challenging. If you have the capacity to listen to me right now and understand what I’ve said so far, I promise you, you are not low enough on the IQ scale to not be able to get through FDN. It just might take you longer than other people.
And maybe you’re sick. Maybe that’s a reason that you’re having trouble with the content. That’s okay. Take your time, do what you gotta do. Remember, the only thing that’s really a problem if you can’t quote/unquote, “understand the content” or you think it’s too hard, is the test.
Study Hard & Give Yourself Grace
No one else is rushing you. There’s not really any huge push, so you can take your time with this. But you know, oh, wow, I’m going to take those tests. Here’s the thing, we allow you to retake them. There is a small, small fee for it. It’s similar to, I forget what the exact number is, but it’s, what am I looking for? The Proctor tests, you know what I mean?
Like, if you went to college and you’re going into a room and then you, maybe fail that one, you could like pay for it. Or if it’s a certification, like a personal training, one, you have a window that you can’t retake it for, I think ours is like two weeks or a month. Don’t quote me on this, this isn’t my part of the business, so I apologize. But it’s like two weeks to a month, something like that. Then you can retake it for a fee. So, there’s nothing to worry about here.
Our mentors aren’t mean people that are trying to fail you, but they want to make sure you know the information. So, if you fail it, they will tell you what you did wrong. They’ll tell you where you need to work on. You wait that time, you study hard, and you do a little better next time, just like any other type of testing in life.
So, do not tell me that the content is too hard. You might just have to study a little harder. You might have to give it more time or give yourself some grace. It’s supposed to be complicated.
FDN is Not Grading Oratory Skills
I was always someone who was pretty good at school. I feel like I did really well in school and kind of flew through it easily. FDN was one of the first things that I had to rewatch things on, or I really had to take good notes. I remember, I did the verbal final and that was the only thing in my life, up to that point, that I had gotten not an A on, that I actually tried for. I think I got like a B minus or a B plus, I forget what it was, but I tried.
I loved FDN, I was excited about it, more excited than any other topic I’ve ever studied up until that point. And I didn’t get the A, so it’s okay. You could still pass without getting the A. It’s supposed to be hard. Again, we’re going to talk about why that’s actually a really good thing in my five things that I have for you. My first part was addressing the trainees’ concerns.
And I kind of already segued into this, but the last concern I wanted to address is that FDN, on these tests, is not grading you. I hear this all the time too. It’s not grading you on your ability to speak fluently. You do not have to be a professional podcaster, it’s nothing like that. The FDN mentors are concerned with your ability to understand the information we provided you within the course, as well as making sure you are practicing FDN in an ethical manner.
#1 FDN is Worth It – It’s Supposed to Be Hard
You could stutter, you could say “uh,” “like,” “so,” all the time, it doesn’t matter. They want to know that you know the information that we were teaching. That’s all there is to it, okay?
So, content tough, not too hard. You’re going to be fine. In terms of time restraints and commitments, finishing the course, do not worry about that at all.
Now we’re going to move into the five things I wanted to list off, which are why FDN is worth it despite it being very tough. Number one is this, FDN is an online certification. It is an online certification without any formal prerequisites. Do you want it to be easy? That’s my question to you.
If it is an online certification without any prerequisites, do you want it to be easy? And here’s what I mean by that. There are certain certifications out there, there’s plenty of them. No one takes them that seriously. That doesn’t mean they’re bad. There’s great information in them and you can learn a thing or two. But there wasn’t any tough aspect to it. There wasn’t anything that separated the person going through that from the average Joe, really, in terms of helping another person. So, this certification is not respected.
You’ll notice something when you go online and search for FDN reviews. It’s near impossible to find a bad review. It’s not like we’re a small company, there’s 4,000 graduates. We’re a big enough company to have 4,000 graduates, but it’s not big enough to be buying Google reviews. Right? So, we can’t do that either. There’s no negative reviews because the people that are going through this are actually training themselves to become credible individuals.
#2a FDN is Worth It – Seriously Great Job Opportunities
The first practical thing is, is that it’s an online certification. Do you want it to be easy? Is anyone going to take you seriously if you don’t actually learn something? No, of course not. We take people with master’s degrees seriously, bachelor’s degrees, generally. I mean, I guess that’s becoming worth less and less, but depending on the bachelor’s degree, could be very useful. Doctorates, certainly.
All right. Number one is that. Number two is, because of how in depth the course is, and these will all tie in with each other to some degree, I guess. There are certain doctors who only hire FDNs because of how in depth this course is.
You might have heard her before. Episode 143 was Dr. Kyrin Dunston. She is an OB-GYN. She’s not an ND, she’s not a chiropractor. And by the way, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with those doctors, but I know some people will say, well, that’s not as hard as an MD. I don’t know. I haven’t been to those schools, but maybe that’s what you’re thinking.
Dr. Kirin Dunston is a normal doctor in every sense. In fact, probably studied way more than the average MD. She will only hire FDNs. There is a reason for that. It is because of what we learn in the course. In addition, this is kind of the same part here, so I will consider this part of the second reason. Because of how in depth the course is, not only do certain people only hire FDNs, but FDNs hire other FDNs, and they pay them pretty well.
#2b FDN is Worth It – FDNs Get Paid Well
I was just in the AFDNP group the other day, and that episode, Episode 173, came out recently if you haven’t seen it. It’s when we’re talking about business school, AFDNP, which is our professionals’ group. I’m not going to talk about that at all right now, but basically, I was in that. I saw someone hiring an FDN. This was literally maybe a week or two ago.
They’re hiring an FDN for $50 to $75 an hour based on experience, completely remote work, starting at 10 hours a week and you can move up from there, opportunities for advancement. Where are you getting that? This whole certification only takes people eight months on average, and you can come out of this, and you could’ve started, because you would’ve had no experience, on the lower end, $50 an hour. Guys, $50 an hour times a 40-hour work week is a six-figure job, completely remote, online, doing work that you actually love. That’s pretty good.
That’s another reason we want the course to be tough because it’s actually worth something to people. And when something is worth something to people, they pay you well for it.
#3 FDN is Worth It – Access to Labs
Number three is, you get access to labs. How are you going to be doing that without some advanced degree? I mean, it’s one thing to even get access to the labs, maybe you could swing that. But you’re also going to know how to interpret the labs. We have access to over 60 labs and counting as FDNs. We teach about five or six in the main course.
We have additional training that’s available to us exclusively, sometimes, by these lab providers for FDNs. You can go on their website and watch trainings that they have for us right there and learn how to do these other labs too, in due time. That’s pretty amazing.
We also have advanced courses where you can learn about different labs, like functional blood chemistry, for example. We’ll teach you how to take Western medicine’s blood chem results, like they could go to their doctor and get a normal standard routine blood work, and you could get taught how to interpret that from a functional perspective. That is pretty cool that we do that. That would be another reason that it’s tough.
If people have to get advanced degrees or even go to medical school sometimes to get access to labs, yes, you’re going to have to study a little bit during eight months for a fraction of the price if you want that same privilege as those people who spent maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars and went to school for 12 plus years. I think that’s a fair trade off.
#4a FDN is Worth It – Ability to Help Others
Number four, you will never, ever not be able to help your client in some way, even with the trickiest of people due to our history and community. Again, if you didn’t listen to the episode that we just released regarding AFDNP and stuff, go check that out. AFDNP is basically our trainee group on steroids. It is for people who have graduated, it’s a paid group that you can choose to join. You don’t have to join it by any means. You can still be an FDN and not be in it.
We have mentors in there. We have advanced business training. We have advanced health trainings. My executive director over there, she said that you could listen to one webinar every single day and it would probably take you two years to get through the content that’s currently there. That’s not including all the stuff that we’re releasing on a weekly basis. There’s a ton of amazing things over there.
One of the perks of it is, not only can you go through the archives and figure out stuff or search for questions that might have been asked in the past, you could ask mentors right there, Monday through Friday, and people still answer Saturday and Sunday, just to be clear. But staffed mentors are waiting for your questions in there.
#4b FDN is Worth It – Availability to Tons of Knowledge
It could be the weirdest health issue, you never even heard of the diagnosis and yet, somehow, some way, there is an FDN who knows about it and has dealt with that condition before and might be able to offer some unique tricks. Now, obviously we do not deal in the world of diagnoses and treating things specifically. That’s not what we are trained to do.
However, it is useful to know the implications of someone’s specific disease. If you haven’t heard of it, there might be a tip or trick that you might not even ever thought of that might be relevant to that person. That’s good to know. You will never not be able to help someone when you have access to the FDN group.
#5a FDN is Worth It – No Shortage of Clients
Number five, the last thing I want to share today, is the work we do is so powerful that once you get yourself out there, you will literally have no shortage of clients. I do not say that as some cute statement that sounds good. This is actually, again, like I promised in the beginning, very practical.
I have an example for my life right now that just occurred. I have said on here before I typically don’t take clients, it’s not really my main thing. I do a lot of stuff outside of this. Obviously, I do the podcast, that’s a job in and of itself. I do some traveling for FDN, so that adds up. I speak in schools during the school year. My girlfriend, my business partner, and I have a functional medicine/light therapy studio, local to me. So that all gets pretty tricky.
However, there are some people that for various reasons, just because of something I posted, ended up reaching out about client stuff. I was not even searching for clients. Within the last, I’ll overestimate here, within the last four weeks, I was able to take payment from four different people as someone who does not do this full time, does not advertise, does not even have at the moment of recording this, any website that talks about the coaching directly. It’s not like I have evantransue.com dedicated to that. I don’t do that. Yet four clients that all were willing to pay a good amount, a healthy amount, a month’s worth of income, that is for sure, to be able to do this work.
#5b FDN is Worth It – FDN Works
That’s not because I’m special. I’m not some crazy FDN that knows more than everyone else. I’m probably actually one of the more basic FDNs in a sense. I like other topics and I get complicated with that; I can contribute a lot there. But in terms of FDN and the advanced courses we have, I’m not the most advanced FDN by any means. Yet people are still seeking this out and asking me to do that, even when I don’t advertise. That’s pretty cool.
Imagine what would be happening if, for the last five years, I was constantly advertising, getting myself out there, and doing talks. Pretty sure, it’s fair to say, if I can get four clients randomly right now after posting something that wasn’t directly related to that, like it wasn’t supposed to be trying to attract clients that, yes, there is probably a good chance I would be at a full-time practice for a long time by now and maybe even on a wait list practice. I would assume that’s fair to say.
This is what’s cool about FDN, it works. You’re going to go through a tough course. You’re going to study hard. It’s going to take the 8, 9, 10, maybe even more months, depending on how much time you can commit to it. But when you are done, you have something that accelerated your career, accelerated your income, and most importantly, accelerated your ability to help very sick people feel a lot better in their bodies, maybe even have some more time on this earth, depending on where they’re at in their journey. That’s pretty cool. That’s a wonderful thing to be able to give people.
Summary – 5 Things that Tell You FDN is Worth It
In summary, those five things that I believe make FDN totally worth it despite being tough, are one, it’s an online certification, use common sense. Do you want it to be easy? If it has no prereqs, do you really want this to be something that’s easy? Or do you want it to be something that’s respectable?
Number two, because of how tough this course is, there are certain doctors who only hire FDNs, and they have said that publicly on our podcast. That’s pretty cool as well. Then there’s the job aspect that also goes into that hiring thing if you will, where people are paying a starting price of $50 to $75 an hour for remote work, with opportunities to advance. Also, pretty darn nice.
Number three, you get access to labs. Please look up how hard that is with any other route. We have a lot of things that we had to work out to make that possible for people without degrees and do it ethically and correctly. We did it.
Number four, you will never, ever not be able to help someone in some way, even when it is the trickiest client ever, due to our history, the stuff we have archived, and our community. Maybe this wasn’t always true, but at this point in joining FDN, there is no way you do not have someone that can’t help you with something. In most cases, it’s going to be many people that can help you with whatever you’re dealing with in terms of a client or maybe yourself.
And five, the work that we do is so powerful that once you get yourself out there, you will literally have no shortage of clients.
Conclusion
It’s a guy like me, five and a half years later, that posts one thing about health and four people not only asked, but signed up in the last month, even though I don’t do that as a full-time thing anymore. That’s the power of FDN.
So, I hope that this episode acts as what I intended it to be acting as in the beginning, practical motivation, right? Not just rah, not just hype, but wow, these points actually make sense. I am motivated because it makes sense. That is what my goal was today. And I hope that you guys got that.
If you have any other questions, you can always reach out to me somewhat directly by going to our Podbean. Podbean is a podcast platform. Maybe you use it, maybe you don’t. But that’s the way that you can comment to us directly. You can ask questions. I will answer them live on the podcast and I will answer you there as well.
But I’m looking forward to talking to you guys again soon. I will likely be back next time with another episode, but I’m feeling some solo episodes. So, who knows if we’re going to buff one of those out first. You guys take care until then and have a great week.
You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.
To hire a coach, go to fdnthrive.com.
For a free Health Review, go to fdnthrive.com/match/.
