Happy New Year!
As we move into 2023, I am excited about everything people in our community have accomplished this past year, including me and my team. While I was exhibiting at conferences in California, I got to meet several students and alumni in person. What a treat! Mark Styles, our passionate and brilliant Collaborations Director and I got to meet for the very first time in-person at our exhibit at an addiction conference in London in June! He first joined our community about 4 years ago, but it’s all been virtual, until now. I spoke at several virtual and in-person conferences in WV and CA on the value of feeding the recovering brain. This message was universally received with delight and interest. Jeff Hays Film Company flew me to Salt Lake City to film a long interview which will be in their newest docuseries on addiction to be released early 2023. We held our first 2-day online intensive training in July, which will be repeated mid-January if we have enough interest.
The free Practice Growth Group, led by Mark Styles, has been exploring a number of marketing concepts, new to group members, such as clearly defining their ideal client, how to engage a potential client around the problem we are helping them to solve, rather than the skills we are offering them, and clearly defining the steps of a healing or transformational journey over time. Many of our trained coaches have gone onto significantly increase their income, while launching wonderful new programs into the world.
Here we want to give a shout out to Chris Engen who launched a new DIY amino acid therapy course for clients, Jeff Jones who has transformed his practice and is about to launch a new online support program for parents of people with addiction issues, Jayne Reynolds who is expanding the reach, effectiveness and profitability of her functional nutrition practice, Lindsey Meindl who brought to fruition a long-term dream of using targeted nutrition to enhance the lives and mental health of mothers, Valsa Madhava, the new Benzo Taper Doc, and Carla Bate who within 2 months of starting the Level 1 training successfully detoxed her brother off opioids and benzodiazepine medications, to which he had been addicted for 15 years. He has now been clean for 7 months, for the first time ever!
Please do let us know about your new accomplishments and events. We want to publicize them in our newsletters and weekly event calendar.
Finally, our non-profit, Eating Protein Saves Lives has brought in $2662.25 in donations- used to fund free community education efforts; launched the 7- Day Eat Protein challenge, which has now had over 3000 views and launched Feeding Recovery Network, a new type of self-help recovery group focusing on developing a healthy lifestyle to support the “3rd leg of the stool”. Pati Reiss, who ran the 7-Day challenge along with Amy McDonnell, is facilitating one online meeting and Kathy Rose, a current student is facilitating another. Shellvia Cearnal from Johnstown, TN, who has been following our work for a while, invited me to speak to her sober living house for women. The women were thrilled to have this information and asked to have their own live Feeding Recovery meeting in-house. They shared with me during my talk that they had eaten almost NO protein at all that day (this was now 5 pm in the evening), nor any fruits and veggies. And just as exciting, I just met with a research team at Marshall University to partner with them in directly measuring the impact of improved nutrition and nutrition education in a rural community of people in recovery from opioid use disorder.
Please consider partnering with our life-saving educational efforts by becoming a monthly donor, a Feeding Recovery Network meeting host or becoming part of our Advisory Board.
Please stay tuned for more opportunities to expand your power and reach, both by entering our community of changemakers for the first time as new students and by taking advantage of new focused growth journey support designed to take you and your practice to the next level, thus fulfilling your wildest dreams!
Wishing you all a dream-coming-true New Year!