The inspiration behind KidneyCoach.com came about due to my Nanna’s failing health. In 2008 my nanna, Isobel Park was 73 when she complained that she was feeling tired and in pain, I looked over her blood tests to see how I could support her. What I found was seriously concerning. Her kidney function was at rock-bottom, and yet nobody had flagged it up. I was surprised and sent her straight back to her GP to ask him why this wants being addressed.
His response?
“There’s nothing you can do, so I didn’t feel the need to mention it.”
Nothing at all?!
“It’s stage 4. Dialysis is your only option. It’s best to just accept it.”
Despite some health troubles, my Nanna had thought she had years and years ahead of her. Now she was looking at a future hooked up to machines, watching her quality-of-life decline before her eyes.
In the weeks that followed, Duncan and I researched natural treatments to boost Nanna’s kidney health. She swapped her black coffee for specially formulated herbal tea, took her supplements religiously, and adopted a nutrient-rich kidney health diet. And three months later, she went back and gave her doctor a piece of her mind!
What was fantastic was that her kidney function had shot through the roof. Creatinine down. GFR up. She’d gone from stage 4 – imminent dialysis – to stage 1 in just 12 weeks.
Thankfully, her GP was wrong, and Nanna went from strength to strength. We enjoyed ten more happy, laughter-filled years with this incredible lady, and her kidneys remained strong and healthy for the rest of her life.
From this major improvement we started to treat other people with kidney disease in our clinic. Then when Duncan was looking for a topic to write an eBook about, we realised that Kidney Disease was the obvious choice as there was no information out in the general public that wasn’t hard to find that educated people on the potential to support and improve kidney function. From here the Kidney Disease Solution was born.
It stated as an eBook that walked people step by step in what kidney disease was, how it is caused and how to treat it naturally by addressing the drivers and causes so the program could be individualised for each individual, we then hired naturopaths to support those using the program to answer emails and questions about medications and what supplements to use and how to interpret their blood tests. In 2016 we updated the eBook and relaunched it, then in 2020 Covid broke and we watched a lot of people in the Kidney Disease community become really ill, we were looking for ways to better support those in our community and one of the main pieces of feedback that we had got was that they were having trouble finding good quality herbs and supplements to match what we were recommending in the program, we realised we should make our own supplements of better quality and to help our community access supplements that not only worked but so they didn’t have to buy 10 – 15 different products to get what we were recommending and of course to save them time and money. From here Kygenesis, out supplement brand was born.
Challenges
Our biggest challenges have been with Google as marketing something natural for a disease that is deemed to be incurable goes against Googles marketing guidelines, even though we are having amazing results. This has been incredibly frustrating as we cannot promote our eBook via normal marketing channels relying on Facebook and other avenues. We have also had people copywrite our material that we have to keep getting removed from platforms like Amazon etc. We promote our eBook on Clickbank and we had some issues with some affiliates making very bold claims that goes against our affiliate guidelines so we hired an affiliate manager to keep an eye over that. Of course we also want to make sure that we are supporting our affiliates so this was a win win for both our affiliates and our company.
Opportunities
More and more people are open to seeking alternative advice when it comes to chronic diseases, especially since mainstream western medicine offers no good solutions for people diagnosed with kidney disease. If people are willing to take their health into their own hands and make good lifestyle changes and take some basic supplements and herbs, then there is a lot that people can do to improve their quality of life. We are blessed to be able to provide scientifically backed and proven support to those diagnosed with kidney disease. I believe that in economic downturns that I feel we are about to head into people really prioritise their health, which makes the market for health-related businesses more robust. Plus, at the end of the day I love being able to make people’s lives better and if we can keep just one person off dialysis then I have done my job! We are blessed to do what we do.
Advice to others
1. Add value! We provide a heap of free information to our customers. As soon as you are selling something that can improve people’s health some of the online community will ask why you are not giving the information away for free! We provide free information as well as paid, you cannot please everyone, but we try to strike a balance
2. Grow with your customers and the information – we have been at this for 15 years now, and we keep updating our information, staying up to date with the latest information and research studies and adapting. If you don’t adapt you will become irrelevant to someone else who is adapting
3. Communication. In this day and age many companies are near impossible to get in touch with. We provide naturopaths who answer emails, and we are very active on Facebook and YouTube answering questions. You cannot build a customer centric business by hiding behind bots and no contact for long unless you are Amazon.
4. Get a good team around you. We are blessed to have an amazing team of people who are all passionate about what we do, who are dependable and amazing to work with. We couldn’t do what we do without them, and we feel grateful for them every day.
5. Testimonials – One of the best things we have started doing in 2022 is collecting video testimonials, these are fantastic for marketing but also for consumer proof. Plus getting them made us realise how much of a huge difference we make through our company and products. This has been really rewarding and of course the proof is in the pudding as they say so having video testimonials that are real and unscripted (like a lot of things I see online) gives our consumer more confidence.
6. Finally do something that you love and something that you are proud of. It is much easier to keep going and building something that adds so much value to other people’s lives.
Sleep specialist
Using the acquired academic and professional experience, I advise patients with various complaints about mental health - depressed mood, nervousness, lack of energy and interest, sleep disorders, panic attacks, obsessive thoughts and anxieties, difficulty concentrating, and stress. In my free time, I love to paint and go on long walks on the beach. One of my latest obsessions is sudoku – a wonderful activity to calm an unease mind.
- Chickpeas vs. Garbanzo Beans: What’s the Difference? - April 19, 2024
- How to Manage or Improve Anxiety - September 21, 2023
- The birth of a company - July 29, 2023
