"My advice is always to trust your inner knowing and to just keep going. You've got this!"
With over 20 years’ experience in the healthcare industry, Claire Dunkley has seen the best and worse of it (she believes the healthcare system itself is sick). Healthcare today is focused on symptom management with a ‘cut and drug’ approach (ie – surgeons cut the pain out, BIG Pharma masks any pain that remains). Claire strongly believes this focus needs to shift to treating the true cause of the problem and empower people to do the best for their body and health.
Claire nursed both her parents through their battle with HIV / Aids in the late 1980’s and 90’s. Seeing first-hand the damage pharmaceuticals can have on the body when symptoms are treated over causes. She watched her parents endure years of side effects from the drugs that were supposed to be helping them, only to have them withdraw from ALL treatments to ensure her parents had some quality of life before their deaths.
Claire then went on to be a Clinical leader in the Victorian healthcare system and furthered her studies in radiology, gastroenterology, liver transplantation, orthopaedics, nurse and bed management with a strong focus on patient advocacy.
As the years went by, she witnessed more and more the adverse effects that a ‘cut and drug’ approach was having on the patients in her care. Her focus then became on finding a better solution.
In 2017, she found that solution – ANF (Amino Neuro Frequency) Therapy medical devices and dedicated the next two years to become Oceania’s first fully qualified ANF Practitioner. She established a holistic clinic to treat Clients with this specialty technology as well as an academy to train other healthcare Practitioners the advanced skills to apply ANF therapy to their patients.
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Table of Contents
Thank you for joining us, please introduce yourself to our readers.
Claire Dunkley: Hi, I’m Claire and I am passionate about revolutionising the healthcare industry starting with one patient at a time.
I have over 20 years’ experience in the healthcare industry, and have seen the best and worse of it (I believe the healthcare system itself is sick). Healthcare today is focused on symptom management with a ‘cut and drug’ approach (ie – surgeons cut the pain out, BIG Pharma masks any pain that remains). I strongly believes this focus needs to shift to treating the true cause of the problem and empower people to do the best for their body and health.
In 2017, I found a better health solution – Amino Neuro Frequency (ANF) Therapy technology to help heal patients at the cause of their issue and not just symptom management. Most of my clients experience a 50% reduction in pain within minutes of ANF disc application with no side effects. I am on a mission to educate as many healthcare professionals in ANF Therapy so that more people can become pain-free and live full and happy lives.
Can you tell our readers in what ways you are disrupting your industry?
Claire Dunkley: There are three key ways I am instrumental in disrupting the medical industry.
1) Heal Source
The industry currently works on treating symptoms. For example a person may have high blood pressure and a typical health solution is to take medication to reduce it. This basically ‘masks the symptom’ of high blood pressure. This pharmaceutical is a toxin to the body and blocks the human waste system – the lymphatic system causing more health issues.
How our medical solution is different is we find out WHY that particular person has high blood pressure and work on the root cause to have a long-term sustained result without putting more chemicals into the body.
One of our clients had 240/120 blood pressure (this is extremely high) as a QLD farmer, he was under constant stress from weather factors outside of his control. He had been to every Dr regarding it. Within 6 sessions at Cluzie Clinic, we got him down to 140/80 and it has remained at that level since.
2) Whole Person
In the medical world currently, we have a specialist for what seems like every part of the human body – cardiologist, dermatologist, immunologist. It is like the medical profession has dissected our bodies into tiny body parts and stopped looking at the body as a whole, and how its numerous individual parts and systems all interact and effect each other.
Imagine a person comes in with knee pain, key health solutions are masking the pain with steroid injection or pain-killers OR knee surgery. However the root cause may have nothing to do with it hurts (the knee) but potentially some other part of the body.
At Cluzie Clinic, we are different because we look at the person as a whole and investigate many body systems and not just where it hurts. As the person may have knee pain, but if there is an issue in the body’s waste system, nervous system or gut eg. these body systems would trump to be resolved before focusing on the knee as they are of higher priority.
We had one client who had knee pain and the issue upon assessment was actually with her ovaries. By working on the ovaries, the knee pain went away.
3) Individual Care
The current healthcare way is to have the same health solution for a particular issue irrespective of the individual… AKA a ‘Cookie Cutter Approach’.
At Cluzie Clinic, we have never met two individuals with exactly the same life experiences and genetic make up. Thus, we spend the time to understand each individual deeply to create a treatment plan that is individualised to target that specific persons’ needs.
For example, I had three clients all been labelled with fibromyalgia (a condition that causes wide spread pain and tenderness in the body). Instead of giving pharmaceuticals to mask the pain, I investigated the individual circumstances for each.
– One of the clients had grown up on a sheep farm where she had fallen into the drench as a child and her lymphatic system (body’s immune and sewerage system) was completely overloaded with chemicals. So we focused on clearing out the sludge in the lymphatics as the first healing step.
– The second client had a deeply traumatic experience as a youth and what showed up in her body upon investigation was that her nervous system was distraught thus I focused attention there first.
– The last client had Epstein Barr virus (Glandular Fever) that was still causing havoc to her system and thus the first step was to clear out the liver and gut.
By looking at the whole person as an individual to find the root cause of the symptoms is how we are disrupting the current health paradigm.
Did you become a disruptor by choice or by necessity? Tell us more about the journey.
Claire Dunkley: My journey in the healthcare industry started early as both my parents battled with HIV / AIDS in the late 1980’s and 90’s. I saw first-hand the damage pharmaceuticals can have on the body when symptoms are treated over causes.
I watched my parents endure years of side effects from the drugs that were supposed to be helping them, only to have them withdraw from ALL treatments to ensure my parents had some quality of life before their deaths.
Even as a four-year-old, I would dress up as a nurse and hurt my brother in order to fix him again so knew this path was always for me. However, after years in the hospital system, I saw Drs spending less and less time with their patients to discover what was wrong and writing scripts became the norm. I could see that the healthcare system itself was flawed.
As a nurse, I started feeling like a pill-pusher as I would give the patient one pill, then three more pills to counter the side effects of the first pill. I could see that this is just a band-aid solution and not actually working on what was really wrong.
I just knew there had to be a better way to help clients and I just didn’t stop looking until I found that solution. So a mix of choice and necessity.
Now for the main focus of this interview: Many readers may wonder what are the biggest challenges women entrepreneurs must overcome to be successful?
Claire Dunkley: For me personally, when I first started out, nobody Google’d “Nurse with ANF Therapy” for pain-relief.
Gaining the trust of people to try an unknown new health technology that speaks about ‘frequency’, has been our biggest challenge when starting the business.
Whilst I have been in the health industry for 20+ years, I have been working in hospitals as a Registered Nurse. It is a different kettle of fish to create a holistic health clinic and inspire people to come try the ‘sticker’ therapy. Imagine all of the differences of owning a business vs having a job (marketing, sales, administration, financials, operations, no previous client base etc), then on top of that, add something that nobody has ever heard of that will impact their health. Sometimes people find it easier to invest in a tangible new gadget compared to investing in their health.
However, when the biggest sceptic gives it a go, the look on their face from going from 10 out of 10 pain upon palpation, to 0-5 out of 10 pain within moments of disc application, is priceless. These are my favourite clinical moments.
In addition, whilst the clinical trial of 1100+ cases worldwide has delivered ridiculously good results, we have to wait for it to be published before sharing the results. Very tough to navigate when health professionals are trained to follow the research.
As a female entrepreneur experience, at the start one of the biggest challenges was putting myself out there to inspire clients to try ANF and to charge what I was worth.
How did you overcome these obstacles? Who helped you during these difficult times and how did they?
Claire Dunkley: A main way I overcame the obstacles was by having phenomenal client results where almost ALL of our entire client base to date has been through word of mouth referrals. Since Cluzie Clinic was founded in 2018, 1500+ clients have been ANF disc’d whilst working part-time.
Two older friends also supported my mindset through personal and business coaching. We met weekly on the ‘Balcony of Bliss’ to discuss all things business and personal. They were massive in assisting me to know and own my own worth.
The ANF Therapy inventor – Dr Mikel HG Hoff as been a personal mentor to me on this journey available every step of the way as to how best to approach every case. Plus, he has been instrumental in working to get the clinical trial completed and published.
Investing in publicity training by Kate Engler from The Publicity Princess enabled us to be written up in the local newspaper which meant locals flocked to the clinic with their back pain. This allowed us to do a mini study on 50 clients with back pain reducing from ~6/10 pain to 1/10 pain after just three visits – PHENOMENAL RESULTS.
Lastly, I couldn’t do this without my wife, Suzie’s, support. I love working with people and getting them results but as soon as I need to look at the numbers or spreadsheets – my mind starts to drift. I am so lucky to have the marketing, admin, financials, and operations all completed by Suzie. Plus, with her being a project professional, everything is streamlined, automated and works so effectively.
How did these lessons shaped the way you conduct business today?
Claire Dunkley: Firstly, I don’t take it for granted. I am so grateful that I can deliver these life-changing results for my clients and will do everything to continue to be able to do it.
As insurance and pharmaceutical companies feel more pressure of us being a threat to them, it has made me even more determined to be as disruptive as possible. In addition a long-term goal is to have ANF Therapy introduced to the hospital system within Australia as a primary pain-relief and rehabilitation tool.
Lastly. I became an instructor of ANF Therapy so that I can train other health professionals and thus have a much larger impact on more peoples lives changed for the better.
What advice you wished you had received when you started, that you’d like to share now with aspiring women entrepreneurs?
Claire Dunkley: My advice is always to trust your inner knowing and to just keep going. You’ve got this!
Out of all of your proudest moments as an entrepreneur, is there a particular one that stands out the most?
Claire Dunkley: It is a daily experience for me where I get to pinch myself with the results I can get for my clients. Daily I have people come to see me where the medical profession has given up on them as they have no solutions left to combat the debilitating pain they are experiencing. For example, a client has had pain for 30 years and within 8 sessions at Cluzie Clinic, they are completely pain-free. IT IS MINDBLOWING and absolutely lights me up daily that I am on my true path.
From an entrepreneurial standpoint, 5x my business revenue from one financial year to the next in my second year of business was pretty outstanding.
Lastly, I was so proud to be selected to be one of just 13 instructors of ANF Therapy WORLDWIDE.
What do you plan on tackling during the 2022 year? Share your goals and battles you expect to face.
Claire Dunkley: 2022 is all about increasing the number of health practitioners trained in ANF Therapy. The more therapists trained means exponentially that more people can become pain-free and live full and happy lives. This is the biggest impact I can have in Australia currently.
Biggest challenge for this is waiting for the worldwide 1100+ cases research paper to be published. The results are phenomenal and once the study is published, this positively influences the current battle of “where’s the research”.
I am planning on increasing my instructor education in September by attending training run by the ANF Therapy inventor – Dr Mikel HG Hoff in SPAIN! However, just hoping COVID doesn’t shut borders again.
Lastly, 2022 is all about creating space to raise a toddler and enjoy this time with him.
I’m sure our readers will be very thankful for the insights you have shared. What is the best book you’ve gone through lately and please share some take away lessons from it.
Claire Dunkley: “Oh, the places you’ll go” by Dr Seuss.
This book reinforced for me that life is about experiences whether good nor bad, there is always a lesson.
Plus, there is always space for fun and to make the most of life.
Thank you so much for your time but before we finish things off, I do have one more question for you. When was the last time you did something for the first time and what was it?
Claire Dunkley: Last weekend I went camping with my one year old and wife for the first time and it was AWESOME! We went to Elliott Head’s near Bundaberg in QLD and explored the mermaid lagoons.
Our son did take a while to go to sleep the first night as he was so excited exploring all the zips and pockets of the tent… he especially loved the airbed.
I personally LOVE doing new adventures and make it a requirement of our relationship to do new things regularly and keep the spice of life going.
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Claire Dunkley for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Claire Dunkley or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin
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