Aug
8
Getting started in the business of natural medicine : Our story, part 1
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Thanks for hanging in there while we get content production up and running on the blog. I wanted to start out by catching you all up to speed with how Amanda and myself got where we are today. First, it might be nice to know where we, in fact, are today. 
My name is Eric Grey and I’m a 4th (and last) year student of Classical Chinese Medicine (CCM) at National College of Natural Medicine (NCNM) in Portland, OR. I am a blogger at popular Chinese medicine site, Deepest Health and I also have a personal blog over at Ericgrey.com. My passion for natural medicine was probably partly given to me by my mother who was always trying little home cures when I would get sick. I also developed a very close relationship with plants at a young age, which made me interested in using plants for healing. It’s no surprise, then, that my one true love in Chinese medicine is the use of Chinese herbs. I started blogging about Chinese medicine because I saw that there wasn’t much good information out there about the medicine, yet there is an incredible amount of information that could be useful to people. This blog was born out of a similar realization. While there are many (some good) websites out there about business, there are relatively few about the business of natural medicine.
My partner, Amanda Barp, is a practicing massage therapist at Harmony Therapeutic Bodywork in the Kwan Yin Healing Arts Center in Portland, OR. She has been practicing in the Portland area for three years and has only recently combined forces with Harmony. She will be writing on the blog, though I am a more obsessive-compulsive writer than she has shown herself to be.
Amanda and I are planning to open a natural medicine clinic in the Sellwood area of Portland, OR in September 2009. We began planning our business about a year ago, and the process has been an interesting one. Because we are taking so long to work on our business plan, we have been able to go deeply into various elements as well as work out our relationship with regards to business. All of this information can be of use to other people, thus the creation of this blog. We hope that we can share our ups and downs, our research and our questions, our confusion and our a-ha moments with you and that in conversation with you, we can all come to understand how to be both integral healers AND savvy business people.
My first question - how did we ever start thinking that those two (healing and business) were polar opposites? What a self defeating idea!
It will take us a while to catch you up to speed with where we are and our process up until now. We will release a series of posts this upcoming week that will seek to do just that. We are also fortunate and excited to offer a series of posts from Bonnie Koenig of Quantum Lifestyles that will start us off on the right foot in talking about important concepts in natural medicine business.
Thanks for reading, we look forward to interacting with you for years to come.
Eric and Amanda
