“I Don’t Believe in PhDs” and Other Fantastical Tales with Dr. Kathy Gruver
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:20:09] So absolutely, that’s key. I mean, you have to know what you want and then you can go about getting there.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:20:15] Now, one of the nice things about a doctoral degree, though, is even if she didn’t really like psychology, people will believe you about anything you say. What you have a doctoral degree so you can kind of choose your field at that point. I mean, obviously, make sure that, you know what you’re talking about and what you’re doing is respectful of that power that you have. But you can get a Ph.D. in psychology, not enjoy psychology and go and do high level work somewhere else, you know, business or social work or, you know, any number of other things.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:20:43] Absolutely. Absolutely. But in the moment she found it miserable until she realized she didn’t want to be a baker. And that was just the fact that I had suggested to her she do that, that she’s always one of the highlights of my my interaction with some of my clients. I look back at that and go, wow, you like you helped.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:20:57] Good. I mean, whenever you you hear back from someone that, hey, you help me, that’s always awesome, right? Because that’s what I found that so many of the doctoral students that that I work with and the folks who earn their doctoral degrees I talk with on the podcast, that’s really their why. And I tell folks all the time, you got to find out why. Why are you doing this? What is it that you want to accomplish? And most people want to help people. Somehow they might have a very specific person in mind, a very specific way of helping them in mind, or they might just generally want to contribute, want to make the world a better place. And I find that just. Consistent across so many of the people I talk to, and that’s that’s awesome. Yeah. What was your why behind this? I know you mentioned you were already kind of geeking out on material anyway. But beyond that, you know, in terms of actually getting an education and getting into this field, what do you want to accomplish in the field?
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:21:48] Well, it was exactly what you just said. It really was to help more people. One, the more knowledge I have, the more I can help the people that are in front of me, whether it’s in an audience or one on one. And if I’m taken more seriously, then I will be able to book more speaking gigs, to sell more books to get in front of more people. So it was that dual purpose of getting taken more seriously and gaining the knowledge. I picked up a book. I haven’t read a book in a while. I picked up a book last night that’s just reading. The first two chapters already gave me some ideas of how to help two of my clients. So that’s just I just wholly nerd out on that stuff. I have a whole medical library of stuff and so many people call me and go, do you know what do you think about this? Do you know anything about that? I want to be a resource. And if I don’t know it, I have a book that tells me or I can at least refer them to the right source of where they can get good knowledge on that. So that’s just that’s what I’m here for, is to help people, no matter all the professions I’ve had, I think, except maybe working at Domino’s Pizza has been helping people.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:22:48] So that’s that’s really cool. I really appreciate that. When you tell us a little bit about the work that you’re doing right now, how is it that you are you’re helping people and what is it about that work that you really enjoy so much? You have your doctoral degree.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:23:06] Yeah. So I continued on after the PhD and I got my certification as a hypnotherapist. That’s something that I’ve always loved to do. My, my my doctorate. It’s a Ph.D. in natural health with an emphasis in mind, body medicine. So my dissertation was all about stress, the mind body connection. I did a bunch of studying at Harvard with the Benson Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, just with the Masters of Stress and mind body medicine and mindfulness. And I just I love that aspect of it. And that goes hand in hand with the hypnosis, which I’ve actually been playing with since I was a kid, and finally thought like doing this thing. I should probably know what I’m doing in this thing. So I started seeing clients with that. And then now I’m doing a lot of coaching. So the majority of my one on one practices mostly coaching with a little bit of hypnosis. I tend to do pain management pre and post op, anxiety, smoking, which is not my favorite thing, but I do because that’s what everybody comes to us for. And I still have a little bit of smattering of massage clients. Actually, one of the great things that came out of twenty twenty for me with covid was my practice which shut down, which I had a couple of panics about, and then I realized, you know, I wanted to cut back on the massage anyway. So it was self selected by I have clients that went I’m not leaving the house, I’m not coming in, I’m not. And so what I’ve been left with are these phenomenal handful of clients that I would love to keep seeing anyway. It allowed me to build my coaching practice and my hypnosis practice and and now the speaking is coming back. So the writing is, you know, sort of a side thing. But the speaking and traveling around doing talks and then the one on one practice in my office or the assignments, that’s what I’m doing now.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:24:44] Having your doctoral degree or having gone through this dissertation process, is learning how to to be resourceful and flexible when things change is I don’t know about your experience, but for so many people, you know, you start off moving in one direction on your your doctoral journey, your dissertation, and somewhat at some point decides that you should be going on a slightly different direction. And and when the world makes that decision for you, like like happened last year, a lot of people had a lot of trouble and they went under. And that’s when we decided to start working with with folks on writing their books, because you can either, like, veg out to Netflix all day or I became an author.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:25:25] Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a really great point, Neal. For the first couple of weeks, it was the first time I had had time off in years. So I was playing Pokemon with my boyfriend and I was laying in the hammock and I was bingeing on Netflix. So we go for day trips and then part of me in my Capricorn part went, why don’t you do something? And I said, Oh, jeez, OK, I’ll write my next book. But it took me a while. I did a lot of laying around and sitting in that stillness and reevaluating before I sat down and worked on book number eight. But it was about that pivot and that, you know, looking at the situation as it is now and what can I do with this information kind of thing?
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:25:59] Well, the laying around seem to be the default for so many people. And those who weren’t shoot into the mindfulness like you are thought this is just great, right? Yeah. Yeah. My my kids. One of the things that they I think don’t like about the pandemic is I’m here in North Carolina. We had I want to call it a snowstorm, but it was an ice storm recently. And traditionally we the kids would have been out of school for that period of time. Well, now they’re doing so know asynchronous de. Which is the teachers aren’t going to be in school, but you are, man.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:26:36] Yeah, Snowdon’s I grew up in Pittsburgh. Snow days were the best day ever.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:26:40] Yeah, we had. And the thing is, in North Carolina, snow day means like, you know, the weatherman has heard of a snow of snow. That’s that’s that’s what it’s snow day is. And basically he says there’s weather coming our way and it might be snow. All the schools like, oh, my God, we better now. It’s gotten better lately. But it used to be you could not find bread or milk anywhere on the shelves if if anybody on the in the news said the word snow. So we’ve gotten better about that lately.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:27:11] Yeah, yeah. It wasn’t quite that loosened up in Pittsburgh.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:27:14] We were used to our snow lights, but some time in graduate schools in Chicago. And so, so yeah, they shut down for snow, you know, but so the books how how does how does that helped your your practice. Why did you decide to to to write books. You obviously you’re working with clients and doing fun and interesting things. What made you decide to write and how does that change things for you?
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:27:45] I always knew I was going to write a book. I thought I was going to be some funky fiction. It’s like all the things I thought I was a girl too,.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:27:53] Though everybody knows they’re going to write a book. But there’s this big gap between all the people who know they’re going to write a book and the few that actually do.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:28:01] Right. Well, my it’s interesting. Everything that I dreamt of doing as a child, I have done it slightly different. Yeah. So I knew I’d be on stage forever. I thought it would be as an actor. Now, as a speaker, I thought I’d be on a billboard in New York that actually happened. I thought I’d be on a magazine cover for the movie I am doing. It happened because of the trapeze stuff that I do. So it’s like everything that I’ve wanted has happened, but it looks slightly different. So I knew I was going to write a book. I thought it would be fiction because, you know, I’m so creative and fabulous. And instead it ended up being the alternative medicine cabinet, which was based on actually a lot of the school work I did for my PhD because I had to do all these projects. I had to write all these client stories. I had to do all the stuff in the in the aspect of learning these different techniques and modalities. So I put everything together that I learned and I put it in this book. And so each chapter is sort of a standalone thing about a different health modality, which I was learning about. So that kicked off into me getting to host my own TV series and what the guy said when we started filming the show, he said, you know, the reason I said yes to your show? Because I pitched him. He said, because you do a PhD, you have doctor before your name, but you’re not the stodgy doctor. You’re funny, you’re dynamic. You’re, you know, well-spoken, you have an acting background. He said, where do you find PhDs who know stuff with an acting background who can talk on camera? And I went, Oh, well, thank you, I’m cool. So I got to do that for a while. The main reason I started writing is I knew I wanted to do more speaking. And I had so many other speakers say, oh, no, if you need to speak, if you want to speak, you have to have a book and a crap. Guess I’m writing a book now too. So and now it’s like tatoos. It’s it’s an addiction. It’s like you can’t just stop with one.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:29:44] Well, and and I find that that seems to be true. That’s one of the reasons why we’re doing that with the with our clients is the book is kind of the gateway drug to credibility.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:29:55] Yeah, it really is.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:29:56] You know, you write a book, one of the authors, when I first was starting a business that I read everything that he wrote, he said that it it almost stopped surprising him. How many people would pay him ten dollars for one of his books and then turn around and pay him ten thousand dollars to read it to you, because that was how he characterized consulting work. He would tell them. Exactly. Here’s what you do. And they would they would say, OK, so now here’s what our situation is. He’s like, Yeah, that’s exactly what I wrote about in the book. I no, no, no, no, no. This is our situation is like, OK, you’re right, it’s completely different. And so they said, how do we fix it? And he’s like, well, let me see, pick up the book and you OK, why don’t you try this? But that that happens and it’s not the bad thing is not that those people are silly or stupid or anything because people also value different levels of interaction differently. So there’s there’s that as well. So if you want to coach, if you want to speak, if you want to do some of these other things, having a book out there is a way to get noticed. And then, like you said, they’ll they’ll just ask you to come in and do whatever you told them about in the book.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:31:06] And what’s so interesting to me is when I did the first book, I hired a publicist. This guy was amazing, so affordable, so effective. And we did this great press release. He sent it out to, I don’t know, the magic that he does. And I had about fifty people that wanted to review the book, had me on their TV show, had me on a radio show. And he goes, OK, so when you send them the book, you know, send the press release along with it, send this cover letter. And I went, I’m sorry, what now? And he said, well, when you send them the book and I said, no, no, I have to give books away. And he goes, Well, yeah, that’s how they’re going to review the book. And I said, No, no, no, I can’t give you I just put all this time and money into doing this book. And he goes, let me guess, this is your first book. And I said, Yeah. And he goes, Kathy. He goes, by the time you get to your third book, you’re going to realize this is the best business card ever and you’re going to hand them out to people. And sure enough, by the time I got to my third or fourth book, I’m like, oh, here, take this one, take this one, take this. It became a calling card now. And that’s that’s sort of what and it was a smaller book and it was more affordable. And but it’s either that they were back in the room sales. I have literally sold out every book I brought after talks because people want to take a piece of you home. So having the book for the back of the room stuff is is a huge part of the speaking, a huge part of the speaking business.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:32:26] And then the next thing is, well, it depends on how you set things up. But within the book, you you tell them how to get in touch with you. Here’s how I can do this, not just speaking, but coaching and other things with you. That’s what that’s what we drive them with, with our authors is that, listen, if you make absolutely zero dollars on your book, don’t worry about it. Don’t cry about it. It’s perfectly fine. You know, if you lose money on giving away your book, it’s OK because that’s how you get people to to want to work with you in a more intimate, more beneficial, more lucrative way.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:33:03] Absolutely. Yeah. If you think you’re going to be a multimillionaire with your book. That’s not a good. It’s just it’s just not I mean, it’s just it’s just not, you know, so few people are able to make a living with a book. And if it’s a self published book, I think to the average self published book sells less than three hundred copies or something like that. But it’s not about that. It’s about the credibility. It’s about passing on information. This is why when I’m coaching people who are writing books, I say, what do you what why are you writing this book? If it’s a vanity project, if you think you’re going to do one as a back of the room thing, don’t try to find some big high end publisher. They don’t want to talk to you or get it out there. Put it what you want to put in there to help people, to reach people. You know, that’s what that’s what the that’s what the gift of that is.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:33:49] And yeah, going back to that, why is it so important again, but for for folks to think about, well, I’m only going to sell three hundred copies of the book, if you got 300 copies of your book into the hands of the right people. How much of that how much could that do for a coaching business? Yeah, that sort of thing. So, yeah, it can be very, very worthwhile. Just don’t think of it in terms of, you know, some of the vanity metrics that people talk about, know we can figure out how to make your book a best seller if you want to, but that’s really a vanity thing, getting it into the right hands, getting the right people, looking at it, thinking about it. That’s the that’s the key.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:34:30] Yeah, it really is. Yeah. I agree with you.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:34:36] So what’s what’s the one thing that you would say has happened to you since you graduated that you would have never predicted before you before you earned your doctoral degree? Is there something that’s that’s been just a complete and total surprise or shock to you where you’re doing this now? And this was not on the radar at all as you were planning on getting your degree? Oh.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:35:02] You know, I I honestly don’t think so. I mean, who knows, who knows if something happened because of that and I don’t know that’s why it happened. I do remember standing at a. At a conference in Sacramento and I had my booth and I had a couple of books and I had my little banner that said Dr. Kathy Griffin, Ph.D. and my niece was there helping me. I was there to do a big talk. And I had they gave me a booth to set up with my books. And this guy walks up to the booth, looks at it, reads the sign and goes, I don’t believe in Ph.D.s and walks away. I went. What’s he like, I’m not a ghost, I’m state what do you not believe in? So occasionally I would get stuff like that. Like I don’t even know what you mean by that, sir. But, yeah, for some reason, that was that was weird.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:35:47] That needs to be peeled back quite a lot.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:35:50] Yeah. And I didn’t want to get that wasn’t on my list of things to do that day.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:35:54] No, I think it’s just you know, you’re not long ago that said, what did it say, something like science. Does it require you to believe in something, something along those lines? Like how do I have the world if you don’t have to believe in it, it’s just.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:36:08] How can you not believe in that? That was just the weirdest thing to me. So, no, I just think the seriousness, you know, I because I’ve been on radio shows where they say, you know, here we have to ask your doctor, Dr. Kathy Gruver. It’s like, it’s OK. You don’t need you know, I don’t find it to be that serious. I know people that have their that you need to call them doctor. I mean, it’s like that’s what they want. And after seeing how hard it was to do that, about how much work you put in, I kind of get it. I don’t require that, though.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:36:35] But yeah, it’s when you’re being addressed professionally, I think it’s a good thing to do. I don’t think you should be so demanding. But, um, but I think with the show that you’re talking about, there’s also this halo effect. They want to make sure that they’re getting the glory of we we’re good enough to have a doctor to make sure that they’re publicizing that as well.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:36:57] Yeah, that’s a really good point. I hadn’t really thought about it that way. But they you know, I’ve had people apologize for not addressing me that way. It’s like I’m just I’m not that strict, not that strict about it, but, yeah, it’s it’s, um.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:37:09] What do you think of the whole you know, it’s been a while now, but a few weeks ago, Dr. Jill Biden, there was a guy who I don’t remember his name and I don’t want to off hand. I did a little research on I know kind of what his back story was, but he kind of upbraided her about, you know, why would you use that title? And the fact matter is, she’s an instructor at the college level. It’s appropriate in most circles to use that title. What do you what’s your take on on that from a standpoint of just the the degree itself and then what that has to say about, you know, women in their place in society with that degree? I mean, how do you react to that? Because I know I have my thoughts on it.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:37:53] Yeah. You know, there’s that just opens up a whole can of worms. I don’t I remember when that happened. I did not read about it. I did not want to just infuriates me, stuff like that, you know. I think there’s still a huge part of society that looks at the traditional roles of women can’t be doctors there, the nurses, women are the teachers and the assistants, the secretaries, they’re not the CEOs. I think that’s a fading perspective. I think that evolution happens because a new generation comes up and just knows things differently. So I think as I see other generations coming forward, that’s not the case anymore. You know, we’re going to have to wait for sort of that top in older people to maybe go away and die out. But as I see the younger generations coming up, I see completely a complete shift in perspective on that sort of thing. So I always say temporary, but it is I mean, eventually we will age ourselves out of that.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:38:48] A lot of big societal shifts happen is, is the people who believe certain things, they don’t change their beliefs. They just die. Yeah. And new beliefs are born in the next generation. Yeah. I tried to give this the benefit of the doubt because I don’t go around insisting that my kids, school teachers call me doctor or their friend’s parents or any that kind of stuff. And so is that you will OK, I get it. But then when I read a little bit about, you know, kind of what he was saying, it just seemed like a kind of like the I don’t believe in the PhDs guy. Yeah. This is like would you not believe she did the work? Do not believe this is a title that she earned and that she. Yeah. So it was just I felt it was was one of those things, as you mentioned, it was it was an attitude that needs to go away and. Yeah, hopefully it will.
Dr. Kathy Gruver [00:39:44] Well and it’s yeah. It’s funny that just because I don’t ever tell people like I don’t introduce myself as Dr. Gruver, I don’t like I never even mentioned it to people. So it’ll typically be they’ll they’ll see my business card or they’ll say, oh here I’ll get in touch with you, but drop his class and they’ll go, oh my God, you know, they don’t because I tell people I’m the people of dance class don’t know my bad. They don’t know what I do until they see the Facebook post. It says, hey, I’m on Dr. Phil. And they’re like, wait, what you’re doing, what you know? So it’s like, I don’t really talk about that kind of stuff. Just doesn’t I know. I don’t think about it.
