Fitness Professional Online Radio Show – FPO 004
Welcome to the Fitness Professional Online Radio Show where you get access to fitness industry news, tips, and insights from professionals around the world. Visit us at FitnessProfessionalOnline.com. And now your host, Doug Holt.
Doug Holt : Hello and welcome to fitness professional online radio. I am your host Doug Holt and we’ve got a great show for you today. It’s been a while since we’ve had a new show for you. We’ve got a lot going on the background at fitness professional online. We have phase two of our site releasing in mid-February. With that, we have the new newsletter coming out. Thank you for those of you who have already signed up for that, you will be getting a special treat in your inbox.
If you haven’t had a chance, go to FitnessProfessionalOnline.com there’s a newsletter sign-up form there for you. We never spam, there’s an optional opt-out button there for you to click on anytime if you decide you’re getting too many e-mails or you don’t’ want to get them from us if for any good reason. We also really appreciate your feedback. Again, a big thank you to those of you that took the time to go to iTunes and gave some honest feedback and ratings about the show. We’re always trying to improve and we greatly appreciate that. That does help our rankings and allows us to bring the show to you a little bit more regularly and to upgrade some of our editing devices here as we continue to do that.
We do have blogs releasing in mid-February of phase two as well. These are blogs from experts from around the world and that I’ll be sharing tips with you in a regular basis to help you with your business as well as helping you with your clients. We also have one of our Mastermind groups opening up in mid-February. We have several going right now and it’s been a great success for everybody, a lot of positive feedback. So much so that we’ve actually decide to open up another Mastermind group. So if you like information on that, you can go to the website or you can actually shoot us an e-mail here at info@fitnessprofessionalonline.com.
We’ll be releasing video and article product reviews. We’ve gone to a professional video studio with ASK Photography, has was actually been filming this for us. The only problem is I am actually the first one on the video that’s doing the reviews. So please bear with that a little bit. Hopefully, we’ll get some bits a little bit when more camera ready to get those out for you but they are honest reviews and we don’t get paid anything to do the reviews. So were just giving you honest feedback based on our experience with well, over a decade of experience in the industry.
We also have a job board coming up. This was something that several people send in, asking questions about where to get a job and during some of these tough economic times, how do you actually find a job? So, were actually going to put a job board on the forum. There are some other job boards out on the internet but we feel that we can put this in one place and help you guys get information link great fitness professionals with job owners. So hopefully, you’ll be seeing that in mid-February.
And while I’m recording this, I actually have sent my staff, I do own a personal training studio in Santa Barbara, California and I sent some of my staff members down to Perform Better for the weekend. So while I’m here with you and with Kathy Gruver who’s going to be our guest today on the phone, they’re out there actually getting the hands on experience as well as a practical experience and visiting with friends. It’s a great way to reconnect with friends in the industry and make some new ones. On Facebook already, as I’m looking at it right now, on my other computer I can see that several people and several you actually are at the same shell or commenting about it. So hope you’re having a great time there or had a great time by the time you hear this show.
Today, we got a great guest here, Kathy Gruver. I’ve known Kathy for several years now and she’s just absolutely amazing, a wealth of knowledge. So actually, Dr. Kathy Gruver, I should say. She is the author of the Alternative Medicine Cabinet and she earned her doctorate as a Traditional Natural Path and PhD in Natural Health. She has studied Mind Body Medicine at the famed Benson Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Harvard Medical School and pursued further education at the National Institutes of Health. Kathy is also been featured as an expert in countless publications and has written dozens of the health and wellness articles. She has appeared as a guest expert on over fifty radio shows including this one here today and has done over 40 educational lectures around the country.
In addition to maintaining a Natural Health in medical massage practice in Santa Barbara, California, Kathy offers phone and e-mail health consultations. She has also produced an instructional massage DVD therapeutic massage at home, “Learn to Rub People the Right Way” and as a practitioner with over 20 years of experience, she obviously knows what she is doing. Kathy was featured on Lifetime Televisions, The Bouncing Act in 2011 speaking about Natural Health and is in development with the network in Los Angeles for her own TV show. So you can find her bio and as well as her website on the show notes and on fitnessprofessionalonline.com. As you could tell Kathy, is very, very busy one of the busiest people I know. So without further adieu, this call is I’m sure is going to be a long one. So let’s get in to Kathy Gruver.
Doug Holt: All right, with Kathy Grover. Kathy, thank you so much forjoining us today. Really appreciate it.
Kathy Gruver: Also, thanks for having me, Doug, appreciate that.
Doug Holt : And I know you just finished a work out and got a lot in your place andsomething we always joke about is how busy the two of us are. Kathy and I met many years ago. I was running a magazine that you wrote for us and since then and even before then, you’re writing resume is enormous to say at least.
Kathy Gruver : You know, I work one-on-one with clients as so many of us do andit’s great to be able to put articles out there or do radio shows or book than working on or I have a book out to be able to reach a broader audience at one time. It maximizes that time and that energy and gets the word out of our health and that’s what my objective is.
Doug Holt : Speaking of your resume, when we’re looking over where you’ve comefrom, where you are now, and where you’re going, give us a little bit insight into you in kind of how you got started into this Health and Wellness field and, you know, kind of the progression you went through.
Kathy Gruver : Yes kind of bizarre. I have this real double life. I grew up in Pittsburgh, huge Steeler fan. Grew up with a dad who wanted a son and I was the only child daughter so I was out running around with the boys and playing football. So I was always athletic and into sports and fitness and that sort of thing but I was actually a theater major. I majored in theater in college back East and even though I started acting in 5th grade and I thought my life progression would be moving to L.A. which I did in pursuing the acting career which I did. I thought, I was going to be the next door neighbor [06:23] on Friends. Never quite got that to that point in my career — but what was interesting is while I was also acting, I also had this really huge interest in Natural Health and alternative medicine.
And even as a little kid, I was attracted to things like massage, and herbs, and crystals, and anything that I thought that would be not Western medicine. Of course, I didn’t have the words worth that I know now but I would sit behind my dad along car trips and rub his neck so he didn’t get headaches. And this was like 6 and 7 years old. I just gravitated towards that type of care. And my mom got sick when I was 13 and died when I was 18 of cancer and even at that age, I remember thinking wow, is there not something else other than chemo, and radiation, and surgery, and surgery, and surgery, and surgery, and surgery that could help her get better?
So even as a theater major, I was looking into alternative remedies and I was studying massage. I studied with a woman very accidentally during one of our children’s theaters and I ended up apprenticing with her for three summers before I moved to L.A. and she was a huge influence. She was the person that told me that I could do it and then I knew what I was doing and I instinctively have the gift to put my hands on people and help them. So I moved to Los Angeles to pursue the acting career and studied more massage and then load up to Santa Barbara and studied more massage and studied with the school out of Florida and realized that just wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to just do hand the muscle, elbow to muscle. I wanted to deal with people nutrition and the lifestyle and mind body medicine, and really looked into that triad of health which is body, mind, and spirit. We can’t separate them out and not include them all.
So I went back to school and got my Masters and my PhD. I’ve been to Harvard twice now for continuing education and I studied with National Institute of Health and I go to three or four conferences a year and I devour medical books like they’re going out of style. That’s why I read for fun people think I’m crazy but I’m a big medical nerd. I like the alternative medicine but I also like knowing about western medicine because I think we have to combine the two and make that a marriage for better health and take advantage of both aspects that we have an offer of in this country. So yeah, I’m continually studying. I don’t ever see it ending and I’m trying to find a more structured way to put that into my schedule and maybe take three hours a week to listen to podcasts or read a medical book or go study with someone. So it’s huge and I don’t feel like I’m done even though I got my PhD this year.
Doug Holt : And it was just excellent. Congratulations! Amazing!
Kathy Gruver : It was a journey.
Doug Holt : I think it’s so great. I mean, you know, you start off as an apprenticeship program which I think is so important, I think a lot of people miss those kind of things. I mean, maybe it’s not a formalized program but studying under some might kind of been there than that and learning what you like about what they do, what you don’t like you kind of find your way.
Kathy Gruver : I do, I love that. And it’s so frustrating because we’ve gotten into a societywhere it all matters, you know, how many hours do you have on paper? And which school did you go to? And what letters are after your name? Which I didn’t care that I had a PhD but it seemed that everybody else cared if I had a PhD. So — and I knew about a public speaking and you just take it more seriously if you can call yourself doctor. And on one hand, I think that’s really ridiculous because I probably would have gained the same knowledge without the formalized long term experience of program, you know, but those letters mean something.
And one of my frustrations especially with the massage business is “Oh, how many hours do you have?” You know, on paper because I started 22 years ago and I did a lot of apprenticing and things like that, on paper, I don’t have a lot hours because you didn’t need them back then, you know, but if I would go and I am a State licensed but they don’t count that I studied for three years with this woman. It doesn’t matter because you didn’t get a piece of paper and I’m a darn good massage therapist.
And I’ve met massage therapist who have never been trained the day in their life and they’re phenomenal and I’ve met some that have a thousand hours of training from the top school in the country and they are terrible. They could pass the multiple choice test but they don’t have the instinct of touch board. And I think, that’s so much of healing whether it’s personal training and at those things that you offer at your at your studio or in my office. So much of it is that it’s in born ability to touch people and help them heal and help them be more fit and healthier and I think the piece of paper only goes so far.
Doug Holt : Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more of. We had Sean Croxton on a couple ofweeks ago and he’s from Underground Wellness and he jokes around about getting — he got a college degree Kinesiology in Nutrition from San Diego but he got his Masters Degree from Amazon.com and I thought the point is, you know, that he found out what he was learning wasn’t working and just really went after it, you know, just like yourself and we’re all on a group that I classify fondly as exercised inner Science nerds basically, read everything we can. And I think it’s fantastic.
What I wanted to as you is, you know, so I was people telling people that I was having you on, it’s a lot of excitement. A lot of people know your background, how you got there. What surprised me a little bit is that a few people said, [11:24] well gee, what is Natural Health and why should I be concerned with it as a fitness professional? And that really kind of shocked me. So I want to throw that out to you and see kind of what your response to be.
Kathy Gruver : Yeah, absolutely. I think, that’s a very confusing term. Especially with anolder generation and when you turn to my father’s friend who say, “Oh yeah, I’m in Natural Health” and they look at you like, yeah, were you waiving like all the branches over my head and chanting with the funky rocks and with a turban and no. I mean those, there’s always miss — and that’s kind of how it’s portrayed in the media as well. You know, the sitcom where they go to the mysterious woman with the tea in the backroom and you know that’s still how it’s often been portrayed which is a little frustrating.
Natural Health is really mainstream. Frankly, what you guys kind of do is Natural Health. I mean, really helping people with their fitness, talking about nutrition, massage, acupuncture, chiropractic. All of those things, those non-allopathic things, the non-Western medicine things. If it’s drugs, if it’s surgery, it’s not Natural Health for the most part. You know, homeopathy, naturopathy, all of those things that your regular doctor’s not going to tell you to go do typically is what Natural Health is. Starting back to nature and getting our bodies to a point where they can kick in and heal themselves because I believe if we give, just like a plant if we give it what it needs, it’s going to do what’s supposed to. And I look at that from a three-fold perspective. I think we need to cut out things that we don’t need whether it’s soda or MSG or hyper dis-corn syrup, artificial sweetener and then I think we need to add back in the things that we need that we’re not getting. Maybe it’s vitamin, maybe it’s a mineral, maybe it’s a certain exercise.
And then the third one is — then let’s put things on top. Maybe it is a prescription, maybe it’s homeopathic, maybe it’s an herb but I think if we follow those three steps and the most important is to get rid of stuff first and I think that’s where Western medicine misses the mark is it just piled more prescriptions, and surgeries, and procedures on top of things that are already not working rather than let’s eliminate the things that aren’t helping the body. So I think if we follow that trail, then I think we can be healthier and incorporate that Natural Health into maybe whatever we have to do for the Western perspective.
Doug Holt : Absolutely. I think it’s so great. I know so many people that have gone theelimination method and found it that some of their ailments have gone away.What I mean, eliminating glutton, dairy alcohol the whole, the list can go on and on and slowly adding things back in and kind of discover what works for their personal body.
Kathy Gruver : Exactly. And what’s the –
Doug Holt : And that’s just the way it’s going to be going.
Kathy Gruver : It is — It will have to. It have to. And what so great about what you guysdo and the opportunities that the fitness professionals have is going to a personal trainer or going to a gym, that’s totally accepted in the society. Especially if you’re working one-on-one with someone, you basically have a captive audience in a safe place to share with them your knowledge and help them expand their health and other areas. And that’s a great advantage of having massage as a base for what I do.
People don’t walk in my office and say, “Hi, I’d like to hear about how my fats are affecting my body and making me sick.” Nobody knows that they want to hear that but when they get on on the massage table, it’s a safe place, they trust me, they know I’m knowledgeable about things. If it comes out of the time in the massage, then they’re going to be receptive to it, they’re going to hear it, and they’re going to go “Oh, I never thought about it from that perspective.” So that’s the advantage you have as a fitness professional, you got that person there for one hour during the training, that’s the time that they are probably sharing health issues with you and you can talk to them about other options whether it’s go get a massage or you know, “you might want to Reiki” or “Hey, how about a nutritional change” or maybe an acupunctures would help. We have a great advantage in that people are coming to us for something that’s now mainstream and we can introduce other things, huge advantage.
Doug Holt : And I think it’s great. I’m couldn’t agree with you more. Just based onthe feedback from the show, we have several doctors, chiropractors, allopathic medicine, acupuncturist but again I would say, based on the e-mails that we’ve gotten from our previous show, probably 80 – 85 percent are personal trainers that are listening in and I know that, you know, this for myself and the people that I know that I’ve worked with throughout the world, a lot of us were always constantly trying to learn new things. At what point Kathy, should a personal trainer or even somebody else utilize their knowledge if they’ve picked up on Natural Medicine and at one point they say, “Hey, wait. This is way beyond my scope of practice. I need to refer out to a Naturopathic doctor.”
Kathy Gruver : Right and that — and it’s a fine line and way before I started studying thisintensely and people understood that I had an understanding, and a grasp, and the knowledge and they trust you as a health professional. And so, they start to almost push you pass scope of practice. I mean, I remember having clients many, many years ago saying what should they do for their heart problems. And hey, they are diabetic. What do you recommend? Well, that was way at that point out of my scope of practice. I think you kind of know.
If you find yourself dredging, you know, dredging for answers and feeling like your making stuff up, as a massage therapist and the type of natural path that I am, I know a lot of prescribing diagnose. I can assess their situation, I can make recommendations just like a health food store would but I’m not aloud to say, “Oh you have diabetes, you should, blah, blah…” can’t do that. So I think a lot of it is phrasing and watching what we’re saying. I do a lot of radio interviews and I’ve had people say, “Oh, you know when you diagnose someone and I immediately stop and then say, no, no, no, no. I do not diagnose. That’s up to a medical doctor to diagnose.”
So you just have to kind of be careful with phrasing of things. And if you find yourself telling somebody what they should be doing, then you’re kind of skirting the line. And we also know, you know, we know if we’re a chiropractor or not, we know if we’re an acupunctures or not. So there are certain things that are slightly out of our scope of factor and I don’t know if in your business you get a lot of people sharing all their emotional stories with you where your borderline psychologist.
Doug Holt : Interesting.
Kathy Gruver : I have people, you know, like on my table and tell me everything and it’sso difficult to not move in to being a neuro psychotherapist and we’re going to have to be careful with that as well. I recommend a lot of books. I refer people to other psychologist or I’ll share a similar story that I went through. I’ll say, well, you know, I had a similar situation, here’s I how handled it. But I would never say. “Oh, well. You need to, you know ….” Because we’re not supposed to. We’re not allowed. We’ll not only get in trouble, but that can be harmful if people start relying on us for their psychotherapy.
Doug Holt : I couldn’t agree more. We have the same here when we do our apprenticeshipprogram. We have a 200 hour one, that we run at our studio and we have people coming from all over and we always just tell them, when in doubt, just refer out.
Kathy Gruver : Yes, of course.
Doug Holt : Stay. But a practical application, I know if you’re filled with honors, is you do get people telling you everything about themselves. I had actually a woman coming in who was training with another trainer who struck up a conversation on a studio with her and realized that they spent most of their sessions just chatting. Didn’t mention it to her and she looked at me and said, “You know what? This is cheaper and better than actually going to my therapist.”
Kathy Gruver : Yeah.
Doug Holt : I was just taken back by that. I couldn’t believe it and just being in a fieldthough, sometimes you don’t see the force of the trees.
Kathy Gruver : Right. But I also think I have massage therapist friend who, they don’twant to hear the personal story. They don’t want them crying about their dead cat, they don’t want to hear about the divorce. They want to rub them and send them on their way and I think that’s a huge disadvantage because to me, if the person on my table or in my office needs to have that emotional release and they need to talk about it and they need to cry, you know, and hug me afterwards because their husband left or their cat is dead or you know, whatever the situation is. Who am I to say “Oh, that’s not appropriate for this environment.” You know, they’re healing, they’re letting it out. Clearly it needs to happen.
If it didn’t happened with their friends, it didn’t happened with their therapist, if it didn’t, if it dumps on me, I take that, I process it, I try not to terrify them. Then, I send them on their way. But, I’ve had so many people crying in my office. Sometimes it is me. You know over whatever the issues, especially when I do Reiki Treatments. Reiki is a phenomenal emotional healing technique and I’ve had numerous people bursting to tears in the middle of the Reiki session. It just happens. You prepare for that.
We did my Reiki training, I had my Reiki master was telling me some of the experiences she had on her table with people just having this huge breakdown and just crying and sobbing and it terrified me. So, I think what do I do when someone looses it on my table and she said, “Kathy. You are never given more than you can handle.” And I thought about that. People who really, really just loose it on my table and I think I can handle this or if this would not be happening on me right now and I just hold the space with them and I hand them the Kleenex and I hold their hand and do whatever they needed that moment and it’s always worked out. There’s never been tragedy from it.
Doug Holt : No. There isn’t. You develop a bond with people and I think despite whatthe textbook say and I thought those textbooks were so long and I know you have, you know, people are people, we’re humans and we have emotions and those emotions are going to get displayed. You can’t just draw a line in the sand, it just does not work that way.
Kathy Gruver : Right.
Doug Holt : I mean sometimes you have to absorb it that you know, as you get moreexperience, it sounds like obviously you’re great at it. It’s just; you have to deflect some points too.
Kathy Gruver : And it gets really difficult. I work with cancer patients and I’ve gotpeople who are in severe amounts of pain and terminally ill and disabled and there are some days that’s really an emotional drain and I’m really lucky that I have a husband that I can come home and kind of dump it on him and he’s not affected by it the way I am. So there have been numerous dinners where I’ve sat down and cried because so and so is dying or so and so is in so much pain, they couldn’t roll over without help and it really tugs on you. I’m so raw emotionally and I cried everything but I don’t for my clients. You know, I can hold it together and I have to let it out later. So luckily I have a good man who I can cry over dinner with.
Doug Holt : And you got to have a team, right? You got to have a team.
Kathy Gruver : Totally.
Doug Holt : Obviously. You’re extremely knowledgeable. You study all the time andwhich impresses me, something that also as always impresses me and following you is you’re business savvy. I mean, you’re not just sitting there reading a book and then going into the clinic, practicing but you’re also getting yourself out there. Tell me a little bit about or tell us a little bit about kind of what you’re up to in your business life. How you’re kind of expanding? You have a couple of products out there, books, DVD; tell us a little bit about that.
Kathy Gruver : Well. My take on running any business, even if it’s just yourself and Ilearned this really quick when I landed in LA to be an actor. You could be the greatest actor in the world. You can have beautiful pictures but if you sit at home staring at your own photo, you’re never going to get a role. You really have to pound the pavement, you know and be your own promoter and I was a product in Los Angeles, you know and I was constantly going to places where I had to switch with agents or casting people. I was going to you know, anything I could to get my name out there and when I moved up here and I wasn’t acting anymore, I thought, well, it’s the exact same thing. All I have to promote me as the business and that’s what I did. So, I started out doing really fun ads and I think as the fitness which was your magazine was the first one I advertised.
Then I did some writing for you and you know, to me you need to keep your name out there. It’s not enough to hang a shingle and sit there and hope that people find you. I think it takes longer that way and I know some very successful massage therapist who said they’ve never advertised; it’s been all word of mouth. I’m sure that works but I didn’t trust that for me. I needed to be more proactive with that. I tend to be outcome based, very go-getter, move, move, and move. I know you’re the same way. So, I’ve advertised in pretty much every newspaper and magazine in town, some with great success, some with, my God why did I spend that money. I’m all over the internet. One of the first thing that I do is go to website and I was one of first massage therapist, you know, 11 years ago when I started this town to have a website.
I’m in all the phonebooks. I dropped that a little bit because they’re kind of becoming obsolete. But for the older clients it’s still easier to pick up a phonebook than it is to try to Google somebody. You get overloaded with that information and you know I gave a lot of stuff away when I started my business. I was in a lot of sporting events doing free chair massage. I would go into offices and do chair massage and meet people. I was giving away gift certificates to every charity that ever contacted me to give one and to me I felt like you needed to do that to get your name out there and now, I just had my tenth year anniversary being in practice. A whole decade of massaging people in Santa Barbara over 10,000 probably, well, over 10,000 people and you know, I get just as many compliments on my business practice like you were saying as I do my massage practice. I just have a good head for it. I grew up watching my dad run a small business and seeing his struggles and what he did to try to make it work and I’m definitely sure learned from that. I know I just had the head for it. That’s still in my brain, works. I’m very lucky that way.
Doug Holt : Well, ten years is actually a huge accomplishment. Especially coming outof a recession and economy that wasn’t so good the last two years, kept on doing great. I think a lot of people especially that gave into the health and wellness field would that be fitness, chiropractic or massage therapy. We get into it to help people, usually kinesthetic people. We want to be moving around and is suppose to be [24:19] and I think that most of it goes to the way side. There’s very few people … You realize that hey, this is a business. If I want to help somebody, I have to run it like a business so more people know about me.
Kathy Gruver : Right. I remember.
Doug Holt : You’ve always done a fantastic job with that.
Kathy Gruver : Thank you. And I remember you know, getting phone calls maybe randomly on a weekend to do a massage and I remember calling this one woman back and she goes, “Oh. Thank you for calling me back.” and I said, “Well, of course. Why wouldn’t I?” and she said, “I’ve called ten therapist, you’re the only one that’s called me back.”
Doug Holt : Wow.
Kathy Gruver : It’s kind of a business that way and you know, to me it’s like, well, that’skind of sad that I’m getting your business because I’m the only one that called you back but hell, I’ll take it.
Doug Holt : Absolutely.
Kathy Gruver : And even if I couldn’t see the people, I would call them back. Hey, youknow, that’s not going to work for me today. Maybe you offer them a different day and time but I remember people, you know we’re up for the weekend and I just didn’t have the time and I say, you know, I’m so sorry, I can’t see you this time. But you know, enjoy your stay in Santa Barbara, keep my number and the next time you’re coming up, give me a call and we’ll book that in advance for you and they went, okay. Six months later, I got a phone call. “Hey it’s us again, we’re coming up and we’d like to book you.”
Doug Holt : I think some people call that customer service and I think it’s just being agood person.
Kathy Gruver : I’ve heard of those few things and I think they’re starting to lack. Yeah. Iknow. But also and then, I mean like you mentioned. I moved on and I did a massage DVD to teach people to do massage at home and then I wrote my first book which came out last year and was just selected as a finalist for an indie excellence award which was very cool and I’m working on my second book and I’m looking for a literary agent and you know, you just can’t stop. I can’t stop moving into the next stage.
Doug Holt : I can relate. I think that’s great. We’ll put links in the show notes toKathy’s DVD, her book and her website and if you’re going to come out here in beautiful Santa Barbara then you definitely need to stop by and see her but if you can’t make it, those books and DVD’s, you can get them all online, correct Kathy?
Kathy Gruver : Yeah. They’re all on my website and then of course I’m sure everything is on Amazon as well.
Doug Holt : Perfect. I’ll put links on those for you for everybody else listening. I meanwe talked about social media. I would say, I mean, at least for our business. Social media is been one of the best things for us which I actually was like you. I was when the last people to join Facebook and you know, LinkedIn I’ve been on for a long time for business reasons. But, I was really apprehensive about it and based on traditional advertising for our fitness studio anyway, the fitness business, it’s been actually one of the best and the reason isn’t because we’re putting ads out there, I think the reason is people just constantly seeing our brand and our name. So, when it does come time at a cocktail party or a social event, they may think of our training studio or mention us. I’m not sure exactly what it’s been but it’s been excellent for us thus far. I know you’re all over it and I see you all the time.
Kathy Gruver : Yeah. That’s a really good point. It does refresh, it keeps you insomebody’s memory. Absolutely, that is definitely true.
Doug Holt : Yeah. I mean. From years of organizing magazine, we used to at least forsales. We tell people and this is supposed to be true in advertising as you look at Coca-cola, Budweiser, I mean the biggest companies, everybody knows who they are. But they also have the largest advertising budgets just because they want people constantly seeing their logo and their brand out there.
Kathy Gruver : Right.
Doug Holt : I think that’s evident. Well, you’ve done a great job at that and I see you allthe time on social media and you always have quality and I think, maybe that’s the difference. You always have quality things to post. That’s always interesting and then I think, gees, Kathy’s got a Ph.D. award winning book, a DVD and now writing a second book. I’m such a slacker.
Kathy Gruver : Oh yeah. Right. You’re such a slacker.
Doug Holt : I mean. A lot of people listening on this call have aspirations of doingtheir own DVD, their own book and I know this could be a whole 12 week episode but what are some nuggets you would say for somebody that’s interested and actually producing something. They have the knowledge and have these ideas of hey, look, I want a DVD, I want a book. Where some first steps people could take that actually to fulfill their dream in that, that regard.
Kathy Gruver : Well, the first thing I have to say is I was delusional when I started thisproject. I had this fabulous idea for this DVD. Everybody is like, “Oh, my God it’s going to be hugely successful … ” and I’ve got this great product and I got of them in the garage and what do I do with it?
Doug Holt : Yeah.
Kathy Gruver : Because the challenges and I ran into more walls. You know what I mean,I’ll just climb over and I’m going to bust through them. But these were thick walls and I thought, well, I’ll put them on Amazon. That’s perfect. That’s huge. That’s where everyone buys their stuff. Yeah. But who thinks to look for a home massage DVD. So, how do you find that it’s even on there and then I thought, well, get it into stores. I’ll be in K-Mart, I’ll be in Walmart and I’ll be at… Good luck with one product. It is extraordinarily difficult to get into any of the big stores. So, I’m in local stores. I’m in Paradise Town then I was at a whole foods and I was [29:18] for awhile but even the local stores because whole food is a chain, I had to go through mounds of paperwork as if I was selling them all of the groceries. Your words and terms, I had to fill out on these sheets because I’m like, I don’t even know what this word is. Thank God for Google because it helped me fill up these forms.
So, I’ve learned is it’s not so much having a phenomenal product. It’s how in the world you’d get that to market and it is so complicated now because anybody can have a product to take to market. Anybody can be a writer with print on demand. Anybody can be a filmmaker with Youtube and their cellphone. Anybody can, you know, I mean it’s gotten really difficult and not to discourage anybody from doing it but going with your eyes wide-open. I still have a lot of DVD’s in my basement. I’m proud of what I’ve sold. It’s done really well. I got national distribution which also had its challenges and I have not sold merely the amount I expected to. I don’t know that at this point I made my money back from producing it.
The book I wrote for the purpose of my speaking. Because speaker’s gurus won’t even talk to you unless you have a book and I said, but I have a DVD and they said I don’t care, where’s your book? So one of the main reasons I wrote the book was knowledge to share. Knowledge with people of course but also to have something to sell back of room and then of course, I put it on Amazon and I have it in a couple of stores and you know, it’s been reviewed all over the country and things like that. But again that’s the challenge because publishing is really difficult now.
I mean publishing is not, you can still publish ‘till you’re blue it on the face. But again, how do you find out on Amazon? How do you get that into bookstores? It’s really a challenge, it’s time consuming, and it’s expensive. Going to traditional publishing route is what I really want to do for my 2nd book and I have a friend who just got, she got an agent a year ago. She just found out books being published. She’s signing contracts right now. That’s so exciting. Doesn’t mean everyone is going to read it or that you’re going to be able to find it anywhere. It’s a challenge. It’s a challenge.
Doug Holt : Yeah.
Kathy Gruver : But my thing is if you want to write a book, write it. Self publish it, put iton Amazon, sell it out of your store, sell it out to your car, walk down the street and tell her when you have it. Don’t not to do it because it’s going to be challenging but understand it’s not going to be a cake walk. You know it’s a very long estimate.
Doug Holt : Absolutely. No, no, no. I’ve been very active the same. I thought the samefrom just what I mean, Robert Sharma who’s a famous writer.
Kathy Gruver : Oh Yeah.
Doug Holt : His story is that he and his dad went to swap meets and sold books andthey’re selling it back of the car and he did that for years, you know. There’s been articles about it, you know, him being an overnight success. But it’s a classic story of the overnight success and little is an overnight success.
Kathy Gruver : Right.
Doug Holt : And you’ve done it as well. I know you’ve done a lot of article writing alsoto both and your products, right?
Kathy Gruver : Right.
Doug Holt : You know, on the show. It shows like this one etcetera and somethingelse, people could try to do or strive for.
Kathy Gruver : Absolutely and that, you know, it’s using that medium to get your productsout there and even if you go the traditional route and you got an agent, you got a publisher, you still have to do so much of your own promotion and I’ve heard that from numerous people as well. They thought, yeah, I have a publisher now and they still don’t get, you know, they still don’t get the help that they need to advertise their own book. So they’re the ones trying to line up book signings. They are the one who’s trying to get radio shows.
I had a PR guy who sent out press releases to 12,000 media nationwide and I ended up on a bunch of radio shows. I got my book reviewed a bunch. I end up getting a given light on television out of it. You know, but you have to spend money. You have to spend money promoting your book and I hate to say this because it sounds horrible. But the more money you have, the more promotion you can do and the more success you’re going to find and you know, that depresses me but that’s the way it is but not that you can buy success but you can buy the promotion that will help you achieve things and that drives me crazy.
Doug Holt : Sounds like politics.
Kathy Gruver : Yeah. A little bit.
Doug Holt : Okay. You’ve done a tremendous job. But what’s next for you? I mean,you’ve done so much. I know you got a book coming out. Tell us a little bit about that and tell us what your next for Kathy Grover.
Kathy Gruver : Yeah. I am working on my second book on Mind Body Medicine. That isa huge interest for me and I’ve just done two classes of Harvard on Mind Body Medicine. So, I’m taking everything I learned through my 22 years of massage practice plus all that I’ve read, plus all that I’ve learned recently and I’m turning them into a book. Specifically for massage therapist and then also for the general public and fingers crossed, I am very, very close to having my own TV show.
I’ve been working with a network in LA and I thought it was completely off. I thought it was gone. I thought it was done. I packed up my things and went okay, I worked on my book and then I got a call three nights ago saying we’re back on and we want to start in January. We’ll see if it happens. I mean it could still completely fall apart. But it would be probably about 35 minute segments that would run on regular network as well as the internet that are a little quick like five-minute health tips and me doing very short interviews with experts of their field. So, I have my fingers crossed that that’s going to happen. So that’s hopefully what’s next for me.
Doug Holt : That’s fantastic.
Kathy Gruver : And then I want to be on dancing with the stars. That’s the ultimate goal
Doug Holt : Naturally. Naturally. Well. Kathy, I appreciate you taking the time to bewith us today. I’m going to put again for everybody listening. I’ll put links to Kathy’s website, her books and DVD’s on the show notes and on at FitnessProfessionalOnline.com. I got to end with one question for you. Ready?
Kathy Gruver : Yeah.
Doug Holt : What you miss about your childhood?
Kathy Gruver : I missed playing. Outside of that, yeah, I miss just running around outsidewith a football and playing with friends and I don’t play, I don’t think adults play enough. So, I think we need to play more.
Doug Holt : I agree. We’ll have to get a remote football game going.
Kathy Gruver : That would be great or like tag. Tag or duck duck goose. Why do we do that as adult? Because we can’t run as fast? Fall down and hurt ourselves. Yeah. We need to play more.
Doug Holt : I agree. That’s great. Well again, Kathy. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. I know you got a lot in your plate and a lot going on this weekend. So, thank you again for being here.
Kathy Gruver : Thanks, Doug. I appreciate it
Doug Holt : All right. That’s it for our show today. I want to thank Kathy Gruver and Iwant to thank you, the listener. Without you we wouldn’t actually have a show. So I really, really appreciate you guys being here. Thank you for all the feedback. For those of you that have submitted e-mails to us letting us know what we could do better and what you’d like to see on the show. There’s a lot that could be covered and there’s not a lot of coverage in our industry so we’d like to be that sounding board for you. So, let us know what we can do. We’d also appreciate it if you’d take a moment. If you feel like you like to show, do write us in iTunes. Your honest feedback is always appreciated and we’re trying to get better here and further ado, I wanted to say hey, have a great week and we’ll talk to you soon.
Thank you for listening to the Fitness Professional Online Radio Show. You can share your thoughts and join the discussion on this episode by going to our website or on Facebook.com/fitproonline. Let us know what you’d like to hear on future shows and please feel free to contact us via e-mail or give us a call at 805-500-6893. We look forward to hearing from you.
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