Episode 399: How To Stand Out as a Functional Medicine Clinician in an “Oversaturated” Market
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Everyone says the functional medicine space is “oversaturated.” But what are we actually seeing? And what qualities make up a fantastic clinician?
Erin is offering a peek behind the curtain into her most rigorous practitioner hiring process yet, including what consistently showed up in applications, and all the sneaky clinical skill gaps she and Rachel Heintz, MS, RDN see that are holding practitioners back.
She shares why nutrition foundations matter (but aren’t enough on their own), what real lab discernment looks like in complex cases, and why immune dysregulation requires a full-bodied approach.
If you want to deliver care with more nuance, confidence, and a deeper systems biology lens, this is exactly why the Funk’tional Nutrition Academy (FNA) exists. Open enrollment starts March 1st!
In this episode:
The biggest clinical skill gaps Erin and Rachel consistently see in practitioner applications
What lab discernment really looks like and how to decide what you need before moving forward
The role mentorship plays in building confidence and shining a flashlight without punching above your clinical weight
What happens when you niche too early and grow inside a more unsustainable clinical silo
The clinical support you’ll get inside of FNA, and why you should apply for the spring cohort
Resources mentioned:
Are you a practitioner? Get your exclusive invitation to the FNA Open House.
Applications are now open for Funk’tional Nutrition Academy, our 14 month clinical mentorship + training program.
4-Day Autoimmune Practitioner Intensive Training
Apply to work with us 1:1 here!
Organifi supplement powder (save 20% on your order with code FUNK)
LMNT Electrolyte Replenishing powder (Use code FUNK and get a free sample pack with any purchase!)
OneSkin (Use code FUNK for 15% off your first purchase)
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But it's imperative that you understand how to take a systems biology approach. You understand how interconnected and interwoven every aspect of the body is, and you have a way to assess for that. It's not just the information, but can you apply that information to the person sitting directly in front of you? We have to address the body as a whole. And to be quite frank with you, I think this is one of the places where people can tend to feel failed. By conventional medicine because they expect this whole care or this whole system care, but they're still getting fragmented care.
Welcome to The Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast, spelled with a K. Because we do things a little differently around here. I'm your host, Erin Holt, and I've got 15 years of clinical experience as a functional nutritionist and mindset coach creating a new model that I call Intuitive Functional Medicine™, where we combine root cause medicine with the innate intelligence of your body. This is where science meets self trust. Your body already knows how to heal, and this show is going to show you how. If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health, be sure to follow and share with a friend, because you never know whose life you might change.
Hello, my friends. Today is definitely a different episode than one we've done before. This is going to be more on the practitioner side of things. We are in the process of adding a new practitioner, a new clinician to our team, which is very exciting, Rachel and I thought it would be really helpful to record this right now to talk about what we're looking for in a practitioner and what we're seeing with applicants coming in. We know that we have a lot of practitioners that listen to this show, and so our intention with this episode is to really support you guys and hopefully give you some insight that can help you in your career goals. Now, I will say at the time of recording this, we haven't hired anyone yet.
We haven't extended the offer yet, but by the time that this is published and aired, by the time you're hearing it, we will have. So most likely applications will no longer be open at the time of airing this. I just want to be really clear and upfront with that. I also want to be clear and upfront with the fact that Rachel and I originally recorded this episode together. Rachel is our lead practitioner here at The Funk’tional Nutritionist. She really oversees the clinical team. We're doing our process together. And so we wanted to record this together, and we did, but there were some weird tech audio issues, and so we can't publish the original recording.
So I'm re-recording it solo because that's really just what our schedules allow for. But just understand that Rachel and I really created this together, so it's both of our reflections, both of our insights. So we're in the process of adding someone really great to our team. Our one-to-one practice is growing. We served more clients in the past year than in any other year here at The Funk’tional Nutritionist. So that's really exciting. And with that growth, we're noticing some things. We're seeing a level of clients come to us that need a certain level of care.
And so I would say that we're being a little bit more intentional, a little bit more methodical with this interview process. There's more steps, there's more tests because it's so important to us that we find a candidate that really meets the needs of the organization and also our clientele. And we've done something different, something we've never done before, and that is for the first time ever, we opened our applications beyond FNA, beyond the Functional Nutrition Academy. We've only ever posted jobs within there and only ever hired from within our own graduates. But the reason we opened it up beyond this is because our FNA grads are thriving. They're like out there doing the damn thing, kicking ass and taking names, running their own practices. A lot of our grads are growing so much that they actually have expand their own teams and hire their own practitioners. So they're actually in a similar position to us, or they've landed gigs in other functional nutrition companies and they're super happy there.
A lot of folks who come to FNA really want to be entrepreneurs and really want to run their own show, but there is a percentage of them, I would say about 30% of our students and our grads, don't ever want to start their own business. They want to work within a team, within an organization, and so we see that as well. 'Cause the truth is this industry is growing, and so other practices and clinics are looking to hire good, well-trained, well-rounded clinicians. So because of that, our pool has gotten smaller, which is actually a really, really great sign and something we're just so proud of for our FNA grads and our students and those that we continue to mentor. It's actually really exciting for Rachel and myself and the rest of the team to see. But that's another reason why this interview process had to be a bit more rigorous than it has been in the past because we need to assure that your training, your experience is where we need it to be before we bring you into the team. So what we did is spend a lot of time getting super crystal clear on what qualities make up a fantastic clinician on this team. What qualities make up a fantastic employee, not just clinician, but team player employee as well.
Somebody that just really gels with the company culture and really aligns with what we're doing here. And if you are listening and you're a private practice owner who is looking to expand your own team, 'cause I know there's a lot of you guys listening, strong recommend on this. It might be like a, yeah, no duh, but truly we spent a lot more time, had more meetings, more dialogue, really unpacked what does a successful employee look like in this company and how do we create an interview process, an application process, an interview process that really, really, really assesses for that., and all of that time spent upfront has been so helpful, so supportive, and so impactful in this process. Obviously, as a CEO of an organization, I have to spend a lot of my time studying business and teams and systems. And what is true is that if an employee doesn't work out within an organization, it's usually because of one of three things or some combination of these three things. The first one is the interview process. It has to be really good. It has to be really thorough.
You have to screen for hard skills, for soft skills. Do they fit the company culture? Do they have the requisite skillset? And so that's really our job and our responsibility. Number 2 is the onboarding process. There needs to be enough support, enough effective training. Again, our responsibility. And then third, the person needs to have the skillset. So if, if after the appropriate interview, the appropriate training, somebody's not fitting because they don't have the skillsets, again, hard and soft skills, they're not able to meet the needs, the demands, the expectations of the organization, then obviously that's another reason that it wouldn't work out. But those first two are really on us.
So we wanna make sure that we're doing our part of the job as well as we can. And intentionality has really been my word lately. I just hear myself saying that more and more and more with my team. Like, we gotta be intentional. I want everything we do to feel intentional. And so this application and interview process is really no exception to that. And honestly, it has been going So great. So, so, so, so great.
So today's going to be a little bit of a peek behind the curtain into what we're looking for and what we're seeing as themes and as trends with applicants. I'm sharing this publicly here in hopes that it supports you in some way. I do think that we have a pretty interesting vantage point. One, because our team has expanded, we've gone through a lot of interview process. Processes, this one being the most rigorous. Two, we see and we talk to a lot of practitioners through our F&A cohorts. When we're in an open enrollment, we're talking with a lot of prospective students, so we get to see where they're struggling. We get to see what the gaps are in practitioners, and then of course, we can solve for those gaps for our students and our grads within F&A.
That's kind of why F&A exists. Now, we are about to be in an open enrollment starting March 1st. So there will be an invitation to join us at the end of this episode if this is something that you are interested in. If you know that you've got a good foundation, but you're really looking to fill in the gaps of your skillset so you can be the type of practitioner that clients are looking for, that is exactly what we help you do in FNA. And we're doing something different this time around, something cool, unique, and I'm really excited about it. We are hosting an open house, and that's going to be in a couple of weeks. It's going to start March 11th and go to March 24th. And the purpose of this is for you to come in and really catch a vibe of FNA to see what it's all about.
You've probably heard me talk about it. You might have heard other people talk about it, but now you actually get to come in and experience live classes. So there's going to be some live classes that are unique to this open house, and then we're also allowing you to come into live classes that are typically only reserved for FNA students. Opening them up to you guys. So if you want in, make sure you're on our practitioner list that will be linked up in the show notes. But that's really where all the invitations are going to go. So you got to get on our practitioner list if you want in. And it would be really cool to see some of you guys there live and to like see your faces and say hi.
Okay, so by this point in the episode, if you're still here with me, if you're still listening, you are— I'm going to guess you're a practitioner, or like adjacent, practitioner adjacent, or practitioner interested, practitioner curious. And what I really want you to know is this, this is a growing field. This is truly, truly, truly a growing industry. There's so much growth available. Now, a big thing that we hear is this feels like an oversaturated market. I feel like everybody that I know is doing something in the functional space. There's so many people. Is it oversaturated? Saturated.
And there's definitely a lot more people entering this field to do this work, that is true. But from our experience, this industry is not oversaturated with super highly skilled clinicians. And you guys, I am not saying this to be a shithead. I promise you that. I wouldn't be recording this episode if I just wanted to be a shithead. I am truly saying this to help you out, to shine light, to shine a flashlight on some things that you might not be aware of. Because how can you fix and change things that you're not aware of? At the end of the day, I'm a mentor. I've been mentoring clinicians for coming on 7 years now.
It's a long, long time. And I'm happy to share it here publicly into the mic. And I don't do it to be a DB, you know, a douchebag. I do it to like truly, truly help you out because I love this industry so much. And I'm sharing our experience, our vantage point, not just from what we're seeing but also from what our clientele is telling us. Our clients aren't having a good experience, you guys. That's why they're coming to us. I think that some of the experiences people are having with functional medicine are— they're just not cutting it.
I think people come to functional medicine, they expect a certain level of expertise, and I think that that's really fair and really valid because that's kind of how we're positioning ourselves as an industry. And so clients are coming to us expecting that and shouldn't we deliver? Shouldn't we be asking ourselves, how can I show up and deliver more of that? That's what we do here every single day at The Functional Nutritionist. That is what we do within FNA is help you guys actualize that. And so this episode is— I'm going to share some of the gaps that we're seeing. And if you can fill these gaps for yourself, if you can get training and experience around this stuff, it's going to put you in a position to set yourself apart. Again, this is just from my perspective. This is from our experience. But this is what we want to share with you guys.
And so is it an oversaturated market? Maybe. But if you can fill these gaps, you are going to set yourself apart from that oversaturation. So now let me share with you the different skill sets that we are looking for clinically speaking. So these are the skills that we think are very important for a top practitioner to have. And number one, I have to start with compassion. Compassionate care is numero uno in my book. Number 2, good coaching skills. You need to be able to coach behavior change.
A protocol is only as good as it can be coached. So we need to be able to help people see their own patterns, to transcend their own patterns as a way to get better. But in addition to that, we also do need you to be able to devise effective protocols. So it's not one or the other, it's an and both situation. These are two completely different skill sets and we require you to have both. So when I say effective protocols, we don't want something that's overly aggressive, like here's 15 different supplements that you have to take. But we also don't want you so conscientious of that, that you're kind of like creating a protocol that's too weak. We've seen that in the past too, so it's not as effective.
It's a little bit of a Goldilocks situation. We kind of like need you somewhere in the middle. We need you to be able to pattern assess. So seeing patterns in intake forms, in appointments, in labs— what are the patterns? Pattern Assessment is crucial. And then finally, for us, we do need high lab proficiency. Proficiency is really built through reps. And so if you are listening to this and you don't feel really confident like you have those reps right now, I'm going to teach you how to get them in a little bit. So do stay tuned.
Now, there's also qualities that we are looking for company-wide. So we need the clinical skill set, but these are traits that we value and that we find add a lot of value to the functional nutritionist. So the next 5 that I will list off are really more specific to me, to my organization, to our team here at TFN. But I will mention them since we are screening for them. The first one is a grounded presence. So can you maintain a calm, grounded presence? Do you have emotional regulation? This is so crucial for working within a team, but then of course also working with your clientele. The second one is efficient. You need strong time management skills.
You have to be able to follow processes, systems, SOPs without needing constant reminders, cuz that just kind of slows down the whole organization. Number 3 is adaptable. We refer to ourselves as kind of a startup. We have like a little bit of a startup culture, startup spirit here at TFN. So we need people that can pivot quickly. That also really helps you to be adaptable with clients as well. I really think it's important important to come to every client session with a plan. That's part of that groundedness, but you also have to have the ability to adapt quickly if the plan isn't planning.
I kind of think of it as like boxing. You have to be like kind of quick on your feet, uh, you have to roll with the punches a little bit. You also have to be able to read the room and assess what is appropriate. So your plan, your agenda shouldn't be the biggest priority. You should go in with a loose plan, but also be able to be adaptable and flexible enough to change it based on the needs of the clientele. Number 4 is team player. I think that's fairly obvious. And number 5 is autonomous.
This is crucial for us. We need people who are self-directed, who are self-motivated, who take the initiative. It is just how we all function and operate here. And so we really need everybody in the team to be able to do that. So basically we are screening for all of those things, the skills and the traits throughout the entire application process. Our process includes a written portion, it includes a video portion,. We wanna see how you communicate through the written word, but we also wanna see how you present yourself, how you show up, how you put your best foot forward. So if those go well and you seem like a good fit for our needs, then we will give you a test project, which is assessing for clinical skill sets.
So if those skill sets align with our needs, you will go onto the first round of interviews with our operations team. If that goes well, if everything feels like a good fit from there, then you will finally meet with Rachel and myself. I am the head of the company. Rachel is head of the clinical team and who you will be reporting to and working closely with. So that is the final stop in the interview process. And like I said, we are screening for your skills, your traits throughout the entire process. I'm of the mindset of how you do one thing is how you do all things. Patterns be patterning.
So when we're looking at your application, your writing submission, your video submission, we're assessing how you interact. Professionally? How will you interact with our clients? How will you interact and communicate with our team? Again, we're assuming that in your application and interview process, you are putting your best foot forward. So we're assuming that you're showing up as your best self, and when we're making the decisions about next steps, we're really making it off of that. So it is your skill sets, sure, but it's also your presentation of yourself because we are going to be presenting you to our clients clientele. And I'm going to be honest with you, our clientele have very high expectations of us, as they should, which means that we have pretty high expectations of our practitioners.
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So let's talk about some of the pros of what we're seeing.
Where were applicants and practitioners like really, really wowing us and knocking our socks off? There is a high proficiency in foundations. We saw this consistently time and time again. So really understanding, having deep knowledge of nutrition, blood sugar, understanding how to build a balanced plate, stress management, digestion, all of that, the foundations. And here's why I think that is a win for this industry. I was so pleased to see that because for a while there, especially in functional medicine, people were really leaning into labs and protocols, labs and protocols. I mean, that's still happening for sure. We just didn't not see that with any of our applications. And I was like, success, this is a win.
And I was so proud and so pumped to see it. There wasn't a lot of template medicine happening. It was really an emphasis and a focus on being able to clientele with the foundations first and foremost. So that was a big awesome thing that we saw. Another thing was compassion in care. I was really moved by this. Every single applicant that came to us very clearly had such a passion for doing this work. They all seemed so eager to learn.
You could tell that they were here because they wanted to be here. We saw quite a few applications coming in from somebody who had switched careers. They were doing this and it didn't feel aligned with who they wanted to be and what they wanted to do, so they switched careers, which is just like such a beautiful thing. So lots of compassionate clinicians out there, love to see it. And then third, intentionality. So I shared with you that that's a big focus of mine, but nothing that we saw felt like a copy and paste job. Job. We're also getting— outside of just hiring for this position, we're also receiving a lot of applications from prospective students to join F&A.
And that is the thing that we keep consistently seeing as a team, like very intentional applications. People are taking their time, they're slowing down, they're pausing, and they're being so intentional with this. So we're just seeing people really taking the time to think through what they wanna say. And that is so major to me as somebody who is working within a team, because I know that that really extends to and extrapolates to your client work. And so this intentionality was huge and I was happy to see it. And honestly, because of all this, it was so super hard for me to say no to anyone. I was like, oh, I don't wanna say no. So I gotta shout out Katharine.
I'm so proud of her. She's our head of ops and customer service. She was so kind and gracious and so thoughtful in her responses to people. And I really felt good about that because it's so vulnerable to put yourself out there for a position. And like, we weren't posting this out, you know, on Indeed or anything. We were posting this within our community. We sent this to our newsletter list. We sent this on Instagram.
So it wasn't randos that were coming to us. It's people who are familiar with me, who are familiar with our brand. And honestly, it's an honor to receive one applicant, never mind how many we got. So if you happen to be listening to this and you were an applicant, just know that I appreciate you so much. And every single application we received was a really good application. There was nobody that we looked at and we're like, oh no, nobody. So just know that. So those three things that I just outlined, I really want you guys to consider these must-haves for yourself as a practitioner.
Like, you really gotta be nailing those because your quote unquote competitors, your competition, are nailing those. But to really excel and to set yourself apart, you also wanna focus on filling in the gaps that I'm about to share with you because there were definitely some big gaps that we saw with applications, also with people that are coming to FNA. So I'm gonna list out the big 4 that we're seeing consistently over and over and over again. And number 1 is an overemphasis on the basics in foundations. So like I just shared with you, foundations are crucial. We need to have them. We cannot skip steps. You can't build a house on a shitty foundation, right? So we need the foundations, but in also for a certain population, for a certain clientele, we also need the ability to move beyond that.
And our clients here at The Funk’tional Nutritionist are highly educated. The majority of our clients are already doing the basics. If somebody's coming to us with an ongoing issue— chronic yeast, relapsing SIBO, being treated for H. pylori 7 times in a row— explaining to them like how to eat a whole foods diet it might not be a very effective strategy for where they are. So if somebody's nailing the basics and the foundations, but that's kind of where they net out, they're not going to be a great fit for our organization because our clients coming to us have a lot more complexities in their case presentations, and they really need somebody who can handle those complexities. So Rachel was sharing a story of one of her clients who had been working with another provider for a long time. And she had been treated for recurrent H. pylori for 4 years over and over with both herbs and with antibiotics.
She had symptoms going on for 6 years. She would get a little bit better with treatment, but then she would relapse within a month or 2 after she would stop the treatment, whether that was herbal antibiotics or prescription antibiotics. And so in a situation like this, we have to be able to really go deeper and think about the deeper whys. This is not a situation where we're going to tell somebody like, oh, just eat more broccoli, or just drink more green tea, or just like balance your blood sugar better, or like, that's like, that's just not going to be an effective strategy here. She was already doing those things. So we have to really be able to think of like, what is going on? What's driving the relapse? For her, in her situation, there was multiple things going on, one of which is that her partner had tested positive for H. pylori, with virulence factors.
So the provider that had been treating her for 4 years for H.pylori had never brought to her attention that she could be getting reinfected through somebody in her house, and that somebody was actually her partner. And so once we were able to address that, things got a little bit better for her. Now, of course, talking to our clients about nutrition and weaving nutrition strategies and recommendations into their care plans is work. Work that we're doing. But like I said, usually the clients we're seeing, they need more support than just changing up their diet and reducing their stress. There's usually other things going on, and it's kind of our job to figure out exactly what those things are. And so this is really the reason why FNA is a 14-month training program, and we spend less than a month going over the basics. The basics matter.
You need to have a good handle on them. You need to understand how to coach them effectively, But we need to be able to go beyond that for the type of clientele that we are seeing. So I guess that would be my biggest suggestion on how to fill this gap is more education. While I'm talking about this, what I'll mention here is that something that we see pretty commonly with FNA, the folks that are coming to FNA, the prospective students, the practitioners, the health coaches that are applying, is that they're concerned that since they've already done a functional nutrition program or a functional medicine training, thinking that F&A will be redundant for them. And pretty much like 9 times out of 10, 10 times out of 10, sometimes we tell them it absolutely won't be. We are familiar with the curriculum of different training programs. And what I can tell you is that a lot of folks are coming to us from foundational programs, and that's a great start. It's phenomenal.
It's excellent. It's necessary because we don't want to just jump right into the big leagues without really understanding the deep foundations. But if you want to practice at this level, you actually do need more in-depth education. And I, I feel like there's a little bit of a misunderstanding around this. You know, sometimes practitioners will even come to us with their master's in functional nutrition or functional medicine, and what we hear— there's this like idea that there's nothing that FNA could possibly teach me that I don't already know because I have my master's in functional nutrition or functional medicine. And honestly, in our experience, that Could not be further from the truth. So that's why a lot of RDs with their master's end up enrolling in FNA and still getting so much benefit. We're going way more in depth with clinical application in real-world experience, and honestly, you guys, that is what is required to be able to practice at this level.
I mean, if that is your goal. So number one, overemphasis on the foundation, and the way to solve for that is to just enrich your continuing education. Number 2 is what we're seeing is there's minimal experience or proficiency with functional medicine labs, where folks aren't able to piece together clues. Another example Rachel gave is from a client who had been dealing with yeast-related issues for years, and her provider had just kept her on a prescription antifungal without really doing other interventions or seeking to understand why does the yeast keep coming back, why can we not eradicate the yeast. And so she came to us, and had we kept her on that trajectory, probably not much would have changed. She wouldn't see the resolution she was hoping for. So we have to be able to look at all of the clues, look at the labs that she had. At that point, she had I think 4 to 5 GI maps done just over and over and over again.
And we need to really look at all of the data in front of us and try to discern like, okay, well, why is this happening in the first place? And do we need more data? Do we need to take a different approach? Do we have to move in a different direction? Obviously this direction isn't getting you where you wanna go, so we need to pivot and move in another direction. And so what Rachel started to ask herself is, hmm, what is putting so much demand on her body and her immune system that she needs to be on niacin? In to feel normal for this many years. And so in this particular case, it was mold. Rachel pulled an organic acids test and found more fungal markers and ended up having to address mold. And that's really why the fungus kept coming back. But you got to understand that people are coming to us with a lot of labs. Sometimes they're bringing their own labs, and this is probably going to be more commonplace because functional labs are just more easy easy to access. So people go to Function Health, they'll come from other functional practitioners, maybe they're looking for a second opinion.
And so you really have to be able to understand how all that data intersects, and that's what people are showing up expecting, at least our people are. And so we're a little bit beyond, hey, can you interpret a GI map, and we're more into the zone of, can you look at 4 to 5 different labs from someone and listen to their story and be able to understand what's going on and how to help them. Another thing that we're looking for with lab proficiency is discernment. So I mentioned that we did a test project, and we do that with pretty much every single role that we hire for within the organization. So if you are a team lead or you do run a private practice, this is another strong recommend. Whether it's a marketing position we're hiring for, social media, admin, customer service, or clinical position, we do a test project. The reason for it is because people can present and say a lot of really good stuff in an application or an interview, but we actually need to see their work. So with the test project, we can get a direct line of sight into what you can actually do, especially from a clinical perspective.
So for one part of the test project for this position, we had people look at someone's intake form, so a real-world client that really represented pretty much a typical client that we might see in our practice. And one of the questions that we asked is, after going through this intake form, what other information do you need? Is there any other data that you need? And for labs, we had them put them into one of two categories: need to have, like, these are labs, this is data that I need to have before I can take a step forward. And then nice to have, like, oh, you know, if money were no object, it would be really cool and interesting to see this, and this is what I would do with that data if I had it. So the reason that we asked this particular question is because we are assessing for discernment, your ability to understand what information do I absolutely need, like do not pass go, do not collect $200 without this. And then what would be like, eh, kind of nice to have. Because there's a pattern that we've seen with practitioners and you can go into one of two lanes. One is that we're super budget conscious, which is really, really great. We do not wanna spend people's money unnecessarily, but they can be so overly conscious or even nervous to recommend labs that they're actually not making the appropriate recommendations.
I'm always thinking about division of responsibility. Our clients, their responsibility is to tell us, this is what I can do, this is my budget, this is a yes, this is a no. Like, ultimately they can make the decision, but it's our responsibility to present the recommendations. They get to make a choice what they do with that recommendation. But at the end of the day, we cannot predict, we cannot mind read what they're willing and able to do. So we have We have to just make the recommendation and then dialogue with our clients about what is actually feasible. And so being able to put things in a position of like, hey, I really am strongly recommending this, and if money were no object, this is what I would do. And then being able to effectively communicate and present that to your client.
And then of course we see the flip side of that coin, which is people recommending too many labs all at once, not really being able to know and understand like what information is crucial for this particular case. And you guys probably know this by now, but we do not have like a standard lab that we run on everybody. It is very individual based on the person in front of us, what we're recommending in terms of lab testing. So in terms of how to solve for that gap, we'll talk about that in a minute. It is a game of reps. So I really wanna talk about how to get that clinical experience under your belt, but also in the meantime, really think through a good question to ask yourself when you are assessing somebody's intake form. Form is like, what do I need to know versus what would be like nice to have? Like, can you figure that out for yourself? And then what would you do with that information once you got it? How would it change the plan? How would it change the trajectory of the plan that you're putting together for your clientele?
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Okay, gap number 3 that we saw, that we have seen, that we continue to see is that there is a lot of gut or hormone experience and expertise. Which is not a problem. People want to work on gut health, people want to work on hormone health, so that's not necessarily a problem. But in our eyes, the issue that we see is that that approach is still segmenting the body. And what I can tell you after running a practice for a lot of years, people are not walking in with legs and a bowel, right? It's— people aren't just like, here I am, here's my my gut. It's just me and my gut here. People are not walking in with legs and a uterus, right? They're coming in with a whole ass body, an entire body that needs to be assessed. So it is imperative that you understand how to take a systems biology approach. You understand how interconnected and interwoven every aspect of the body is, and you have a way to assess for that.
It's not just the information, but can you apply that information to the person sitting directly in front of you? We have to, address the body as a whole. And to be quite frank with you, I think this is one of the places where people can tend to feel failed by conventional medicine because they expect this whole care or this whole system care, but they're still getting fragmented care. And I think this is a byproduct of a few different things. One is the way that people are doing functional training. What we've seen just throughout the years is that practitioners will do a course here for one thing, thing and a course over here for another thing. And so they're piecemealing their functional education together. And that approach can work for certain individuals, kind of like depends on how your brain works, how you think about things. That might be really effective for you.
But what we have found is that for most people that we see, they can get a little lost in the sauce with multiple trainings and they can lose the ability to effectively weave all that together. And so this is something that I've seen a lot. It's something I've thought a lot about. And my solve for this is really I created FNA. That's why FNA is a 14-month program. We're obviously teaching different topics. We talk about the gut, we talk about hormones, but we're also really emphasizing how they all weave together and how to use all this information in a focused way when a client is sitting in front of you rather than kind of like get trapped into a silo, which is definitely what clients are seeing in their functional medicine care right now, unfortunately, is that they feel like they have to go to a lot of different practitioners to get answers rather than feeling like somebody is a one-stop shop. That is a message that we're hearing pretty constantly from clients.
Now, number 4 really connects with and intersects with number 3, but we see a lot of immune cases in our— like immune dysregulation immunodysregulation cases in our practice. Autoimmunity, maybe MCAS, histamine issues, ongoing skin issues, just complex stuff, suspected autoimmunity. Even if there isn't a diagnosis, we see a lot of positive ANA markers. And we are also seeing with practitioners a real lack of experience and understanding with immune dysregulation. And I'm actually going to read this line that Rachel wrote in the notes that we are putting together for this episode. She wrote verbatim, this deep dive, comprehensive, full-bodied approach really felt like it was missing in the majority of the apps. I think at the end of the day, Rachel and I were really like Hawkeye laser focused on looking for this because this is what we require in our practice. Like this is the match that needs to be like bang on for somebody to come into the organization and not need need like 6 additional months of training just to be able to do the job effectively.
It is this. And even if you're not interested in a position at TFN specifically, I really want to make a case for why you gotta shore yourself up here. Immune issues are becoming more and more prevalent, and autoimmunity— or solving all autoimmunity, helping somebody with their autoimmunity— it's so much more than running a stool test and fixing someone's gut. Okay, that is not it. That's not going to cut it. Now, I do not do one-off clinical trainings. I just— I'm like, you can either hear me for free on the podcast, catch me when you can, or join FNA for 14 months. There's like no in-between.
And that is honestly for all of the reasons that I just talked about. Piecemeal education leads to piecemeal results. And I really want my mark in this industry to be mentoring and guiding and leading really well-rounded clinicians. And I just don't see that happening with like random one-off clinical trainings. I made one exception to this rule last year. That was the 4-day autoimmune training. And that, by the way, is still available for purchase. But the reason that I taught that is because it's a real area that clinicians are lacking nuance and understanding and skill in.
But we all need it. There is not like an autoimmune ologist that people can go to in conventional medicine. And so we all know this by now, right? It can take years and years to try to find and get a— collect a diagnosis. So that's why a lot of patients end up coming to functional medicine to try to figure out what's going on with them, with their mystery health syndromes. Okay, they are literally coming to us for this. And that is going to continue. Autoimmunity is reaching epidemic levels. There is anywhere between a 3 to 12% increase annually.
The prevalence of antinuclear antibodies is going up. That's with adults and adolescents. We're seeing rates of celiac disease go up, we're seeing rates of IBD go up. It's just all going up. So it's not so not so much if you will see it in your practice, but when you will see it, and will you be able to catch it when you do? So how do we fill this gap? I would just say learn as much as you can about the immune system, about autoimmunity, about immune dysregulation, and how to support that whole dynamic. Again, it's not just like fixing leaky gut. It's not. It isn't.
It's not just running a stool test and calling it a day. So my suggestion would be to join FNA. Sorry, that was a shameless plug. Get your education where you can, but get your autoimmune training for sure. Okay? But the real big overarching suggestion for how to plug up these holes, how to shore yourself up if you're lacking in any of these departments, is get experience. Clinical experience is truly a game of reps. The more you do, the better you get, especially if you go into it with a student consciousness of like, hey, I'm I'm here to learn. Everything I do different and new is an opportunity to learn.
So that's really our advice, is just get more reps. Rachel's specific advice was get experience in an entry-level position, especially if you want to just build those reps. She shared that she used to work in a clinic where she would see anywhere from 12 to 15 patients a day in 20 to 30 minute appointments. So they were short appointments, but they really crammed them in. And she said, I don't recommend that cadence, but she also saw a lot, and grew a ton and she grew pretty quickly. She learned what works, what doesn't work pretty fast. I will also share Nicole, who's also another full-time practitioner on our team. She came over from a clinic where she was seeing, I believe, 80 clients a month, maybe up to 120 clients a month if I remember correctly.
And so she's just was building reps, gaining experience like a ton, a ton of time, just having so much exposure to different people, different diagnoses, different situations, different personality types, different readiness levels. And, you know, my opinion, our opinion here at TFN, that volume of clientele isn't sustainable. I think that that can lead to a high level of burnout for clinicians. For reference, full-time for us here at The Funk’tional Nutritionist is 35 client sessions per month. That's kind of where we net out, maybe up to 40. But in the beginning, it really does help to build your skill the more reps you can get under your belt. So get that experience. Something else that we've done internally is run group programs.
And so that might be something if you do run your own practice, something you might think about is run group programs with labs. And you can even, it doesn't have to be like super, super expensive. You can set the barrier to entry pretty low. You of course don't wanna lose money on this because it's not a very sustainable business, model, but as a way to build your reps, to get your reps, to get people in the door. When we ran Your Hormone Revival, for example, when we ran that live, we would see anywhere between 30 to 50 Dutch tests per session. And so myself, Rachel, and then Nicole got very adept in analyzing Dutch tests because we just had such a large volume, and we were just like baked in the casserole of Dutch tests and just doing a lot of them. So those reps really do build build your confidence with understanding the labs. Something that I will hear that I want to speak into is practitioners will communicate with us that they can't get in the reps with labs at their current position or their current job, or even in their private practice, because they'll communicate that clients are quote-unquote not interested in functional labs.
And so they don't have as much opportunity to practice, which I totally I understand, but I also want to reflect this back to you. When I first started the podcast, when I first started talking about functional labs, when I first started introducing them into my practice way back in the day, nobody wanted them either. Nobody was interested in them because they didn't even know what they were back then. So I really had to talk about the value of these labs, what they offered, why I was running them, how important they were for the way that I was practicing, what they allowed me to do for my clients. I actually had to communicate the value to my clients, and that is such a huge important skill set as a practitioner. And again, another thing that we're actually screening for in interviews, and it's not because we need you to sell labs to our clients, we don't do that here. We don't upcharge labs, we don't make any money off of labs, it's not a revenue source for us. But in order for us to do our job, there is a certain amount of information that we might need.
And so our practitioners really have to feel confident and understand the nuance of different labs and what different labs offer and be able to explain the value to our client. That's really the clinician's responsibility, is to be able to effectively communicate that. So if you feel like you aren't able to build reps because you don't have the opportunity, what I would say to you is to try to build that opportunity, try to find that opportunity, try to create that opportunity, practice the communication skills required to be able to explain the value of like, this is the way that we're doing it right now. We could potentially do it a different way with this new tool, with this new resource. So anyway, reps and experience really matters. That's how you build confidence. That's how you build proficiency. That's how you build your skillset.
So when folks are in F&A, this is something that we're helping you get the whole time, more and more and more reps. Even if you're brand new, even if you're just starting out, we're encouraging folks to work with their friends, work with their family, do pro bono mono work, run labs on themselves just to begin to get the experience. So these are all things that I would recommend for you too. I always tell people in the beginning, do not worry about your niche. Just say yes to everything in the beginning. The goal is to build reps. So say yes to everything. That is my suggestion.
I recognize that this advice flies in the face of most, if not all, business advice that you're getting, which is like niche down, niche down, niche down. I do understand having a niche will increase your visibility, and so you might be able to grow faster with a niche, but you are also most likely growing in a silo when you do that. So you might get really strong in one lane, but then you might lack nuance in other areas. So my advice is say yes to everything long before you create a niche. Figure out what you like doing. Figure out what you're good at. Figure out your zone of genius. Figure out what comes naturally to you.
Figure out what fills your cup and lights you up. Do that first. Build the reps. Get comfortable working with lots of different things. If you want to be in functional medicine and you're immediately out of the jump putting yourself in a silo of this is my niche. I don't know if that's what's going to make you a really, really, really great, strong functional medicine clinician. This might not be popular advice, but it's advice that I'm giving to you based on what I've seen mentoring over 120 practitioners and hearing from hundreds of our clients about their experience with functional medicine and hearing from thousands of you guys through Instagram, through podcasts of how this industry, functional medicine, has failed you. So yes, part of FNA is business coaching.
I'm a businesswoman, I love business, and I love helping you with yours. And I'm coming to you from somebody who has built a successful business and practice and has sustained it for years, like a lot of years. So I'm more than happy to share and be super transparent about what's working, what's not, what used to work, what didn't work, the changes in the industry, the changes in the market, all of that. I'm talking about it very transparently, very openly within FNA. So business is a part of it, but also what I'm doing is advocating for this industry, and I'm advocating for good, competent, well-rounded client care within this industry, and I'm helping you do that. So that's where my advice comes from and why it might be different than a business coach who maybe hasn't done all of this stuff, you know, maybe doesn't really give a shit about the state of affairs of functional medicine. You know, just keep that in mind. Anyway, that's where mentorship comes in, and mentorship is a wonderful way to fill any gaps that you might have in your own skillset.
I always think about mentorship as like shining a flashlight into the areas that you might not be able to see for yourself. We do it in a gentle way, we do it in a kind way, but we are doing it nevertheless. Like, hey, this might be a weak spot of yours. Let's take a look at that because how can we grow in an area if we're not aware that that area area really needs growth. So that's why mentorship is crucial. You got a ton of that in FNA. We have monthly live Q&As. Rachel hosts one for more of a clinical perspective, so you can go over case studies.
I host one for more of a business and mindset where we're really talking through confidence as a clinician. But you can also bring any mindset issues that your clients are having to me, and we can kind of work through that as well. There's also one-to-one clinical mentorship support in office hours. These are 20-minute one-on-one sessions that you get as an FNA student. You can discuss treatment plans with Rachel. You can present different ways of thinking through things, or she can present different ways. You basically be like, okay, here's what's going on, here's the plan, what do you think? And Rachel can talk through a lot of different scenarios with you, bounce some different ideas around. If you ever get stuck with a really tricky case, you can talk through them.
It also builds in a security blanket because part of the reason people don't have proficiency in some of the more advanced lab testing is because they don't wanna punch above their weight. So they don't wanna introduce them to clients if they don't have any experience. And that, my friends, is called integrity. So if that's you, well done, bravo. And this is again where mentorship can come in cuz it builds in that security blanket. You can do things that you don't have a level of familiarity or comfort with, but you have the appropriate support so you're not doing anything borderline sketchy with your clients. Something that we've built into FNA that we're really proud of is we have taken these office hours and built out a library of them. So we have over 1,000 office hours recorded.
So it is a huge searchable library. So anytime you're working on a lab or you're trying to learn a new lab, you can punch that lab in. Or if it's like, like H. pylori, a condition, you can punch that in a huge searchable database where you can go back and watch these office hour sessions. And the more that you watch Rachel and other practitioners talk through the labs, the more familiar they become. You're also building reps that way too. It's a really good way to build up reps even if you're not getting the clinical hands-on experience yet. You can build so much familiarity, so much confidence.
You really start to what different presentations mean, what different markers mean, and what to do about it. So that is another resource that we have. So we're really thinking through this. We're paying attention all of the time. What are the gaps that practitioners consistently have with their skill sets? How can we fill those? How can we solve for that within FNA? The way that I look at it, essentially, there are 3 things that will really get you good as a clinician. The first is deep understanding of the body, of different systems, of different processes. You really have to understand that. The second is compassion and understanding the human psyche, so being able to like meet somebody human to human.
And then the third is experience in practice with both of these. It's building the reps with both of these. So all of this is baked into the Functional Nutrition Academy. We are about to be open for enrollment, so if you haven't gotten your application in, definitely get it in. And if you're on the fence, you're not quite sure you can for sure join us for the open house that starts on March 11th. They're gonna be open classes. Would love to see you. You guys, I really hope that this episode added value to you in some way.
If you've got clinician friends, practitioner friends, share it with them. This is not an episode that I recorded to make you feel like shit about the way that you practice. It's really to say like, hey, these are some gaps. No big deal. We all have them. This is why we all have mentors and guides, you know, and coaches and what have you. So if you feel like you're lacking in any of these departments, don't worry, there's things that you can do. Take some of the advice in this show.
If you are looking for a little bit more handholding, a little bit more support, we've got you in FNA, and you can join us for the spring cohort. All right, like I said, hope this was valuable to you. Love you guys, and I will check you next week. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Functional Nutrition Podcast. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. If you got something from today's show, don't forget, subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.