John Paul Liang on Building Community, Empowering Healers, and Innovating Holistic Wellness

John Paul Liang (00:00.35)
Sounds good.

Zane Myers (00:01.602)
The big show.

Okay, so I've got John Paul Liang here and he runs the Cassandra Wellness Group and he has a real interesting background which we're going to jump into as we go through this. So tell me a little bit about how you ended up where you are to actually how you ended up getting interested in acupuncture.

John Paul Liang (00:35.518)
So my father was an acupuncturist. so I grew up with it. I was born in Brazil. that's what he was practicing at the time. And actually, when I graduated with an engineering degree, I wanted nothing to do with medicine at the time. And when it was around the Y2K time,

And when I went into Anderson Consulting at the time, and I was doing a lot of computing and preparation for year 2000, I started realizing that something was missing. I didn't enjoy computer science. And so my father at the time told me, don't you come back, take some classes.

If it fits you, then great. If it doesn't, then go and look for something else. And I took some classes and it worked out really well. It fit really well for me. I enjoyed it. then 25 years later, here I am.

Zane Myers (01:49.038)
You're still at it.

John Paul Liang (01:51.696)
Stay with it.

Zane Myers (01:54.126)
So from Anderson Consulting to Acupuncture would be a huge jump, I guess since it was in your family. So tell me about your, so did you go into practicing with your dad? And he was practicing in Brazil at the time? I don't register any kind of accent. How is that?

John Paul Liang (02:18.398)
So we moved here when I was 10. So it was 1984. so I, yeah, so I started out, you I learned a little bit prior, but by the time I got here was elementary school. So probably, you know, there was enough time to adapt. And yeah, so when we,

Zane Myers (02:21.644)
Okay.

John Paul Liang (02:46.458)
started practicing initially for the first five years or so I did practice with him here in Houston and for a while and then I stopped so that I could manage the college for a while because it got a little too busy.

Zane Myers (03:03.768)
So let's not jump over that, because that seems like a big thing, because we talked about that just a little bit briefly. Managing the college, how did you get involved with the college? since our people who are watching, they don't know what college, talk a little bit about that.

John Paul Liang (03:26.814)
Sure, so my family actually founded the American College of Acupuncture and that's where I took some classes at the time. while I was studying, I actually started at the bottom. I did some coordinating work, some public relations, did some health fairs, and kind of worked myself up throughout the years.

And when, I guess it was around 2010, when the institution had a brief moment of financial difficulties. And the board actually asked me at the time to step in and see if I could fix it. You know, to this day, I actually think that I got the opportunity because

I was probably the cheapest option. I'm hoping that it was because of my skills, but I have a feeling that probably I was the cheapest option at the time and I was loyal to the institution because of who founded it. And so it worked out, you know, and it took about a year or two and I got it to balance the budget.

things to cut from there.

Zane Myers (04:53.654)
So I'm interested in that particular subject. Did you find that your experience at Anderson Consulting helped you to, I mean, what were the tough decisions you had to make?

John Paul Liang (05:06.5)
I would credit actually everything because my major at Cornell University was operations research. And so it was constantly optimizing, you know, all these projects that we've done, try to optimize, increase revenues, decrease costs. so at Anderson, we focused a lot on process, trying to improve the process continuously in order to make it optimized as well.

So when I got to the college, it was a different industry, but I think same process. And to do that, think one of the first things that we did is we actually stopped investing in things that required long-term benefits. So we invested in projects like marketing, enrollment, things like that.

required a nine month turnaround. And we redirected those funds into short term revenue generation, which meant more in the clinical side, because the clinic, you invest a little bit, patients come, you receive the revenue pretty much immediately. Whereas if we were to invest in tuition, there was a nine month turnaround.

Zane Myers (06:07.544)
Mm-hmm.

Zane Myers (06:30.452)
Right. So it was more in getting the clinic more that part of the school going as opposed to the you had to you really just had to make tough decisions. And did you have to let people go? And some of that when you.

John Paul Liang (06:32.904)
Thanks.

John Paul Liang (06:51.102)
No, but we had to let a lot of the we had to to stop a lot of the funding to their projects and and I I think I credit actually the personnel, you know at the time they were very supportive and trusted me and I let them know that personnel was the last thing that we were going to look at if we couldn't make it through but

Zane Myers (06:59.02)
Yeah.

John Paul Liang (07:16.904)
We didn't really need to. We were able to cut all the non-personnel things and ride it through.

Zane Myers (07:25.816)
So everybody must have thought, wow, he wears a cape. He's fantastic.

John Paul Liang (07:31.142)
You know, sometimes I even think it was a miracle and I'm sure luck was involved with some of it as well.

Zane Myers (07:41.39)
So then after that, so are you still involved with the college?

John Paul Liang (07:47.504)
I am, I'm the executive director of their board of governors. pretty much I look at the strategic aspects of the institution and also make sure that the institution doesn't go off rails.

Zane Myers (08:04.269)
So then after that, did you start Cassandra Group? Was it the next step in the process?

John Paul Liang (08:16.922)
Yeah, you know, when during the time that I was I was president of the college, I didn't notice that a pattern in which a lot of solo practitioners had a very difficult time. Not to say they were not successful. I think they had they all had the same challenges. They were worried about resources and they were worried about financials. They couldn't take a lot of time off because if they did, that would result in

know, patients disappearing and they couldn't get sick. They were chief officers of everything. So we developed this group primarily because we wanted to provide this support system for practitioners. And actually, I first found that Cassandra, it was not what it is today in that

Zane Myers (08:54.327)
Yes.

John Paul Liang (09:15.77)
We thought initially that practitioners wanted a centralized administration where practitioners can come in, see patients get out, and not have to deal with any administrative work. And as we started bringing more people in, we started getting their feedback and we started realizing that they actually love their independence and autonomy. And they wanted actually Cassandra to not be involved in their operating.

work and for Cassandra to just be a support service. So that kind of, you know, as the company started moving forward, the direction morphed a little bit as well.

Zane Myers (09:58.946)
So explain that to me because they sound like they're kind of related. they liked having their independence, which I really appreciate too, being a small business person. The whole reason why you're there is because you want to do your own thing, your own way. And so tell me about the support and how you do that without getting in their soup.

John Paul Liang (10:23.292)
A lot of times, you know, economy is a scale. the main thing that practitioners want is marketing services. They want to be able to reach to potential patients at a cost-effective rate because so many times for an individual, it is very costly to pay for marketing services with no guarantees that it's going to work.

Zane Myers (10:49.888)
Mm-hmm. Right.

John Paul Liang (10:51.966)
It might take six months, nine months, nobody knows. And if something doesn't work in six to nine months, solo practitioners, they start to get worried because you're spending 1,000, 1,500, 3,000 a month. And all of a sudden, if something is not immediate, you don't know how long you can hold on in hopes that the patients will start coming back.

Zane Myers (11:18.83)
Great.

John Paul Liang (11:18.928)
So one of the things that we've done is we've invested in marketing services to drive the cost down for solo practitioners. But the other main thing that has worked out really well is that we've developed a non-clinical revenue stream for practitioners who are looking to get a side income related to healthcare, related to healthcare education.

So it's within their skill set, but it's not seeing patients directly because primarily what we learned during COVID is that patients can disappear overnight. So when COVID hit, half of the patients disappeared in every single clinic. So their income streams just dried up really quick. And I think it's important to

have a diversified revenue stream. you have, you know, a lot of individuals now like to teach, they like to see patients, they like to do research, they like to do other things. And, but they don't have the resources. We have a relationship with the college, we have funding, and therefore we can provide research opportunities, we can provide teaching opportunities, or we can provide business development opportunities.

Zane Myers (12:29.87)
Mm-hmm.

John Paul Liang (12:44.56)
opportunities. So many times people have ideas but they can't implement it because of risk factors and we have the financial backing and therefore hopefully that will minimize the risk and the fear of moving forward.

Zane Myers (12:59.342)
Right. I do see that a lot of times with small businesses in every stripe when you're trying to grow your business and then you face all these people coming at you from all these marketing companies say, can go out, we're to run Facebook ads or we're going to run Google ads. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. And just give us a thousand, five thousand, $10,000 a month or just whatever package that they have. And this is going to work great. You're going to get

all these new customers are going to be so busy you can't see straight. Maybe it works out sometimes, but maybe it doesn't. I even see this with SEO, and I don't mean to throw all these people into the bus. It's just a fact that sometimes things that you think are going to work, don't.

John Paul Liang (13:50.686)
Yeah, it's a different industry for us, especially. And one of the main things that I think we've noticed is that it does take time because they're constantly tweaking the marketing strategy because it's such a unique niche. And so it does require, I fully believe that it does require the amount of time that they say it requires, you know, three to six months or so.

And, but the problem is that a lot of practitioners don't have that kind of financial stamina to hold on six, three to six months without anybody new coming in. So I think that's one of the things that Cassandra offers is that we, we, we, we can continuously do the marketing, fund the marketing research as it starts tweaking and people can come in and benefit from.

the legacy that's already been in place in that marketing knowledge and not have to reinvent the wheel. And hopefully that will cut down the cost for them quite a bit.

Zane Myers (14:58.852)
that's interesting concept. So tell me if I were a physician and I belong to Cassandra Group, and tell me before I go there, tell me what kinds of practitioners belong to your group.

John Paul Liang (15:17.694)
Any holistic functional medicine type of practitioners so it goes from Massage therapist nutritionist acupuncturist chiropractors are you Vedic practitioners homeopaths natural paths Energy healers Functional medicine physicians so it's a wide range anybody who is working towards preventative care

and things that will help the patient in the future or the individual to take preventative measures and then to be able to refer to the proper physician if something starts to get noticed. Because so many times patients don't really notice anything or they don't really realize that their health is not doing well until something really bad happens. And I think we're missing that.

Zane Myers (16:15.053)
Mm-hmm.

John Paul Liang (16:17.246)
front piece of healthcare where we need to detect some of these conditions a lot sooner so that the physicians can either take precautionary measures or they can intervene at an earlier rate so that the survival rate increases.

Zane Myers (16:36.334)
So tell me about, like if I'm a physician at Cassandra, or that, what does that mean to me as an individual and maybe I belong to it? Is everybody individually belong to it or are there maybe some small groups that also belong to Cassandra?

John Paul Liang (16:56.488)
So we have five different institutes within our organization and each one is targeting a different need because every single practitioner, they don't have the same needs. I would say some of the individuals are purely looking for research opportunities. They have all the patients that they need, they have the funding, they don't really need much.

There are other members who actually just want to belong. They don't need anything. They just like being part of a collaborative group. And so we have to determine what each individual's needs are and then provide almost like a consulting, a dedicated consulting service for that individual. There is one thing that we do look at though, because, you know, enrollment and membership is not automatic. It's actually by invitation.

And the reason why is that it was founded on the basis that the practitioner needs to have good bedside manner. The idea is that if a patient goes from one practitioner to another, we have to assume or we have to try our best to determine that they will have the same level of

bedside manner that they receive. Skill level, you we have individuals who are brand new graduates to all the way to 20, 30 years of experience. We can teach the skills. It's very difficult to teach personality. So it's important for us to make sure that everybody who comes in has a very collaborative mentality. They don't have a competitive attitude.

Zane Myers (18:41.132)
Mm-hmm.

John Paul Liang (18:51.452)
they are able to work together because so many of our projects are collaborative work. And so it's important for us to find the right personalities that can actually mesh.

Zane Myers (19:04.919)
So when you, within your group, so you've got, you'd said like 30 different people in your group or are there more or less, is that about how many?

John Paul Liang (19:15.55)
We have probably about 40 to 50 now. Yeah.

Zane Myers (19:17.888)
About 40. And so within your group, you guys will, when I say guys, that's a very West Coast phrase. On the East Coast, or in the South, they say, what do mean, you guys? We're not guys. We're y'all. So anyway, your group.

John Paul Liang (19:36.254)
Y'all right, yeah.

Zane Myers (19:44.878)
tends to refer people within their group because you feel like the protocol is similar, the personalities are similar, and you're going to deliver a similar level of care. that an accurate?

John Paul Liang (19:58.43)
I would say the protocol might be different because everyone has their own unique styles and we don't want to interfere with their autonomy. what we really look for is the personality. Is this individual nice to people? How is their communication style? Is it doom and gloom? do you have empathy?

and you're able to really listen to the patients. So, you know, I can't say that we guarantee that that will happen because sometimes it's very difficult to gauge someone's personalities based on several meetings, but I think so far we've come pretty close. Yeah, we have a great group of people.

Zane Myers (20:48.214)
Mm-hmm. So I just talked to, in the last couple days, I've talked to people, physicians, totally different types of practices. But it was interesting. The one thing that they were in agreement on was good communication and the idea of conveying to patients that

John Paul Liang (21:00.894)
Thank

Zane Myers (21:17.966)
positive mental energy that really will have a huge impact, only in how you're to to that as a physician, but to get your patients to kind of buy into that into that concept, kind of what you're looking for in in physicians.

John Paul Liang (21:39.39)
Yeah, I agree. And I think we go one step further in that I think the communication and the collaborative mentality goes with each other as well. Because we do have so many projects where we collaborate into, you know, we did a major conference at the end of March. Several members actually collaborate. I would say about 10 or so.

collaborated in making that conference happen. And that required a lot of communication, a lot of collaboration. And as you know, things can get stressful sometimes towards when the deadline approaches, they did it smoothly. It was one of the smoothest projects that I've ever been involved with. And yeah, so that's what we're looking for.

Zane Myers (22:33.688)
So tell me about the conference. What was the conference about? What were you guys accomplishing or looking to accomplish?

John Paul Liang (22:38.526)
It was actually, it has several aspects to it. know, the, do an annual continuing education for acupuncturists. And so that was one part of it. But then we also had a public track where we educated public members about lifestyle. So it could be whatever dietary, it could be,

sleep, the importance of other activities and things like that, mental health. And so we had several different tracks that were going on at the same time. And I think we got roughly almost close to 275 people. Yeah.

Zane Myers (23:21.324)
Wow. So these are potential patients or the population as a whole as opposed to other practitioners.

John Paul Liang (23:29.298)
They were both. So we had several tracks. So we had a track for practitioners, a track for public members.

Zane Myers (23:36.544)
Okay, and where'd you have it?

John Paul Liang (23:39.238)
we headed at the Norris Conference Center in Houston.

Zane Myers (23:44.11)
How big is it? It must be a smaller facility that's, there's a lot of local conferences and.

John Paul Liang (23:53.488)
It was actually, so the conference, it's not like George R. Brown, you know, where it's a huge place and they cut it up to whatever you need. I don't recall the actual size of the facility, but it's actually embedded inside a, they call town and country, which is a mall, outdoor mall type of environment. So it was actually a very nice area. Individuals could

walk through the little corridor to their hotel or they could go downstairs and there's a whole bunch of shops that they can visit. So it was very nice.

Zane Myers (24:34.264)
So on those kinds of conferences, because I've talked to other practitioners who use conferences and workshops and that to help grow their business and get the word out, what kind of marketing did you do to make sure that that was successful?

John Paul Liang (24:54.654)
So we actually relied on the American College of Acupuncture to reach out to a lot of the network because they've been doing this type of continuing education for decades. And so this was the first year that we co-hosted. And so we took up a lot of the work and they did the promotional aspects of it. But we did some in terms of

social media and things. I think for us, it was mainly the operations and making it, know, built everything up from ground.

Zane Myers (25:32.814)
So it was a good marriage where you split things up. So tell me about your own marketing within Cassandra since you have all these different practices. I mean they're not in one place right they're in separate everybody has their own office they belong to the just so I'm understanding everything correctly they belong to the group but they have their own things that they they run separately their own staff and and all the rest of that.

John Paul Liang (25:35.729)
It was.

Zane Myers (26:03.63)
Tell me about how you help the individual practices to because they I would think they have different needs to write some of them want to get more patients some of them want you know like you said just support some of them want to be able to talk to you must have some administrative support things going on too so how do you address all those different needs but let's start to start with the marketing part of it first how do you help them do their marketing

John Paul Liang (26:32.446)
marketing part, it has to be the R &D. We have to start basically running that. kind of like I said before, I think the practitioner's main issue is the fact that they might not have the ability to sustain a financial commitment for six months, nine months for the marketing agency to test things out and tweak it.

Zane Myers (27:01.88)
Mm-hmm.

John Paul Liang (27:01.918)
And a lot of us actually, once we pay for something, we tend to want something immediate. We want the patients to start walking in immediately. And I think for Cassandra, continuous running of that marketing is important because that will allow us to test things out and whether practitioners decide that they want this aspect of our services or not.

it's gonna keep running because I think we have to keep tweaking and we have to keep learning and hopefully by the time that various system practitioners are joining us, we've already been running for quite some time and hopefully they won't need to sustain six to nine months of testing anymore. We will know all the data already.

So that's, think that will be one of the main things that would be very helpful. And that's within one of the institutes that I talked about, which is the healthcare institute. We do have another one that is related to technology. And that one we are developing, doing some tests right now and developing an AI application for

detection of heart disease as our first disease based on analysis of the tongue. of the tongue. So the idea is people stick out their tongue and the algorithm hopefully will detect in a nice high accuracy that you have a risk factor for different heart diseases. And that will allow us to actually

Zane Myers (28:34.126)
of the tongue.

John Paul Liang (28:53.848)
warn these patients so that they can go and get checkups with their physicians a little bit more often if they have certain types of conditions. So far, we've got it to about 72 % accuracy. We are still trying to combine with other things and trying to see if we can get it to a little bit higher. I think we would consider it pretty successful if we can get it to about 85 % or higher. And then we developed this app for people hopefully

to be able to even do it at home by themselves. And so that's what we're hoping to achieve with that.

Zane Myers (29:30.575)
So I was just listening to a physician the other day who talked about nitric oxide and the importance of that and and one of the things he was talking about was the the tongue and

I'm gonna go way off in a separate direction, which I don't want to do, but I thought just since you brought up the tongue, he really indicated the mouth is a huge indicator of health overall and that he works a lot with cancer patients. And one of the first things he does with cancer patients, no matter what stage they're in, is send them to a dentist.

John Paul Liang (30:15.827)
Good idea.

Zane Myers (30:17.07)
just because there's so many underlying conditions around the mouth. And so when you brought up the tongue, it just brought that concept up into my mind. So tell me the science behind the tongue.

John Paul Liang (30:31.912)
Well, the tongue is just based on 5,000 years of acupuncture diagnostics. And so it's divided, it's basically geographical. So you have five major organ systems that actually would be located in different parts of the tongue. And therefore, when things happen, it tends to show up in those geographical areas of the tongue. The heart system just happens to be at the tip of the tongue.

And so a lot of times when you see people having very heavy anxiety, they have really difficult time sleeping, a lot of stress, and even, know, heart circulatory issues, you do see a darkness or redness on the tip of the tongue compared to the rest of the tongue. And so that's where we're basing a lot of things off from.

Zane Myers (31:21.646)
Interesting. So coloration. but since people have different, you know, everybody's anatomy is a little bit different as far as coloration. How do you judge that on the basis of tongue? I'm just super curious now.

John Paul Liang (31:36.408)
Yeah, it's because it's not based, we are not comparing one tongue to someone else's tongue. We're comparing the section of your tongue to the rest of your tongue. So it's a relative. So if the color of the tip of the tongue is darker or brighter red or pale compared to the back of the tongue or the side of the tongue, then we know that there's a problem. So...

Yeah, we never compare from one individual to another. We always compare with yourself.

Zane Myers (32:10.136)
Can you hang on for just like two minutes? There's something going on in the background that's creating a little bit of noise. I need to go take care of that. Just two minutes. I'll be right back. Thanks.

John Paul Liang (32:14.75)
Whoops.

Of course, of course. Sure.

Zane Myers (33:14.19)
Okay, sorry for the little interruption. That was less than two minutes. So tell me about the challenges between helping all these different diverse groups because some people need a lot of marketing probably and they want to grow their business. Some people don't need marketing. And some people, they all want to accomplish different things. How do you balance that out?

John Paul Liang (33:16.293)
no problem.

Yes.

John Paul Liang (33:39.006)
I think that's one of the benefits of having a lot of different institutes. And so we have officers that are dedicated to each institute. So we have one that is mainly in charge of the healthcare services, which includes marketing. We have one that, like I mentioned, is technology. We have one that is more the non-clinical revenues. And then one that is focusing more on research and publication.

And then the last one is the main one, which is the funding section. each institute will have individuals who are responsible for that area. And so when things need to happen for different individuals, it's a group actually trying to resolve issues rather than one individual. And that's one reason why it was important for us to select these members who are very collaborative because

and also who don't really have a competitive nature. Because I think even individuals who are in the same field, who are probably location-wise right next door to them, they're more than happy to help them out as well.

Zane Myers (34:45.613)
Mm-hmm.

Zane Myers (34:56.558)
that's awesome. That's quite a... Because it's just human nature. You kind of feel like, you know, there's only so much to go around when really there's more than enough to go around.

John Paul Liang (35:07.678)
More than enough. And I think the other thing also that we've noticed is that most people, you know, they enter a company most of the time, not always, most of the time, because of title and money. But they leave a company not because of title and money. They leave a company because of the work environment. It gets too stressful or the lack of respect.

You know, that's what I think I could be incorrect, but that's what I've observed is that most people go in for financial reasons, but they come out not because of necessarily financial, but because of, you know, the emotional aspect of it. They got burned out, they got all these things. And so it was important for me to create it, to try and create these, an environment and a culture of that people will say, I love working here. Because I think that's the only way that you can

Zane Myers (35:53.25)
Mm-hmm.

John Paul Liang (36:07.24)
keep people around is that if they really enjoy being around others.

Zane Myers (36:12.75)
So you still practice though, in addition to wearing this hat running Cassandra Group. So tell me about your own practice, what challenges that you have in your practice.

John Paul Liang (36:13.47)
Ahem.

John Paul Liang (36:24.774)
Yeah, so I've always seen, you know, because of my other commitments, whether it was, you know, present in college or whether it's Cassandra or something else, I've always only seen patients about 15 hours a week since the beginning of time. And I enjoy it. And I think the challenge, you know, for me is it has always been time, time commitment.

Zane Myers (36:38.893)
Mm-hmm.

John Paul Liang (36:53.81)
But I think, I call seeing patients actually my fun time. I love treating patients. I love seeing them getting better if I can. so it's really enjoyable for me. I think I'll always have a clinic if I could.

Zane Myers (37:15.054)
So when you do treat patients, so your specialty is acupuncture. Obviously you came up through that way, your dad was that way, you were in the college of acupuncture. So tell me, when you first started out, you said you only worked like, you've always worked like 15 hours a week. So when you're first starting, how does that work? So a lot of people, say,

I gotta get more patients, gotta get more patients, more patients because my income is so tied up in this and delivering patient care. How did that all work so that you could start off that way? Because that's kind of unusual.

John Paul Liang (37:52.804)
Yeah, because I worked at the college before I graduated. I started out, so I have basically essentially two jobs. And that's where the model, the Cassandra model came from, because a lot of we did observe a lot of individuals who just graduated, set up their practice, and they only have one income. Money is very tight. And then we saw it again during covid when half of the population or the patients disappeared and money became tight for these practitioners again.

But the ones who didn't suffer or didn't have as much of an impact were the ones who actually had dual revenue streams. The faculty who were, they were teaching classes as well as they were seeing patients. It didn't impact us. So when, you know, for me, I was always working as an admin at the college. So I had that income revenue stream. And that's what we're trying to build also with the non-clinical revenue institutes.

within Cassandra is individuals who also choose to do non-clinical to try and add another revenue stream. They can because you never know when another COVID is gonna happen. And so it's always nice to have two, three revenue streams coming in.

Zane Myers (39:10.518)
Mm-hmm. So I didn't, I got pressed for time and I didn't have as much time to do as much research on you as I would have liked going into this. And so I'm thinking on my feet right now. What would be most interesting to our viewers about you, about Cassandra,

John Paul Liang (39:29.82)
No worries, no worries.

Zane Myers (39:37.526)
And about, so what's the, when you were, when you're doing, working within the group of Cassandra, I'll maybe I'll shift over to the more of the business side of it. and you're, you have, practitioners who are looking to grow their business. what do you do to help them to do that? What are the most effective that you found? So there's the long-term and then there's the short-term. What, what have you found works best from both perspectives or.

You know, one thing to do long-term growth, another thing to do, you know, immediate shots in the arm.

John Paul Liang (40:12.658)
The biggest thing actually, believe it or not, is we listen first. Because so many times, individual perspective practitioners will come to me and say, okay, I would like to join Cassandra. What can you do for me? And it's almost like, you know, we have these services that are standardized and we provide the

the prospective practitioner and then they decide is this worth it or not. And that's not what we do. We actually first inquire what they need and then we go back to our resources and say, do we have these types of things that this individual requires? And then if we do, and only if we do, then we extend an invitation to become a for membership because if

The whole company's purpose is to help people with their career development, to help them financially, emotionally, et cetera. And if we can't do that, if they feel like this is a money pit where it's basically just throwing money away, then we're not doing a good job. So I don't want to extend any invitation for individuals to become members unless we feel like there's a high chance that we can.

Zane Myers (41:39.278)
And so what would be the profile of somebody that you felt like you could help best?

John Paul Liang (41:46.214)
I think the ones that we can help best for now, right now, at this point in time, will be the ones, there's two. think the main one, I think, are the ones who want to engage in non-clinical revenues. Because those projects are coming and we put them in teams, we guide them, we provide the funding. They actually input as well and kind of...

I mean, some individuals might have their own ideas. They've been wanting to develop this business. They don't have the resources. They don't have the, they fear, they don't have the risk appetite and we can make it happen as well. So that I think is one of the major ones that we've been pretty successful in. And the other one, think that we, the second one that I think we're developing really quickly are the ones that want to conduct research because conduct research.

Zane Myers (42:39.202)
that want to what? Conduct research.

John Paul Liang (42:43.558)
Because aside from money, a lot of practitioners want the title. They want the credentials. They want their resumes to be built. They just don't have the opportunity to do anything. They don't have any opportunity to write publications, to kind of enhance their knowledge, or to kind of tell the public what they've learned, or to teach, to conduct research.

We provide all those things where people can actually conduct research, gain something from it, publish it, and then hopefully earn their stripes from it. So that's the second thing that we're really building on.

Zane Myers (43:27.79)
So tell me about a individual practitioner who joined your group and saw something happen within your group that made a big change for them.

John Paul Liang (43:42.696)
Well, think there's a lot of different reasons why people join. But I think the main one, I would say the biggest one is this conference where an individual came in. They probably did not have the opportunities to get together with people. they were probably prior to Cassandra, they were by themselves seeing patients kind of isolated and.

Zane Myers (43:47.214)
you

John Paul Liang (44:09.86)
This conference, think, was an eye opener for a lot of members, including myself as well, because you saw over 10 individuals who started working so well together and you build this camaraderie. It's not only just the financial piece that they all receive, but I think the biggest impact is the trust and the camaraderie that's formed, that community where you can say,

If I run into any type of trouble, I can rely on these individuals to at least ask and now I'll feel supported. So I think for a lot, not just one individual, but for a lot of individuals, that's what I feel like has made the biggest impact. Even though many of them have worked, they have received financial benefits out of it.

But you can see that that closeness and camaraderie is probably something that is intangible.

Zane Myers (45:14.806)
So, if I'm getting this right, you're kind of talking about the isolation of being a solopreneur or someone who's running a practice, even if you have a few employees, just the isolation of being, of not having people to bounce ideas off of and even to share stories and you're just all alone.

Is that accurate?

John Paul Liang (45:43.922)
Right. Yeah. That's one of the biggest complaints of solo practitioners is that they feel like they're on their own. And when COVID hit, they were really on their own and they were trying to figure things out by themselves. had no one to rely on. And now, you know, just having that support, having a group. And the idea of Cassandra is that we don't let the group fall.

or any members of the group fall. We support each other and we bring it up. And so if Cassandra as a group cannot survive, then certainly an individual cannot survive.

Zane Myers (46:26.126)
Mm-hmm. So I think we've about, I want to move on to a private conversation with you. I'm going to turn off the recording because this is not an ad. I don't want to do, the podcast is in and of itself an educational opportunity and an opportunity for practitioners to.

John Paul Liang (46:41.374)
Okay, of course, of course.

Zane Myers (46:53.432)
to find out what's going on out there in the marketplace with the rest of their brethren and to figure out is this something that fits me or can I pick up something here that will really help me grow? And then the other part of this is I kind of like to think that this podcast, if patients are watching it, because sometimes it's really patient oriented, that they can also kind of come to realize that the

Practitioners are not just practitioners who are there helping them, but they're also small business people. And I think there's a certain empathy that can go along with that to understand, we have to charge a certain amount of money. We have to have these certain protocols in place because, hey, we're running a business. We're delivering care, and we really do care about you. But we have to take care of business, too. So I think that that's kind of a different perspective.

I really appreciate you coming on. I don't know when this is going to be published sometime in the next couple of weeks because I've got about seven or eight in the can waiting to go out. And then I look forward to getting this up. And then we're going to make some shorts out of this. So I'm going to go ahead and hit this stop on this.

John Paul Liang (48:03.294)
first.