Note: Kevin Doherty is one of the first people I stumbled across a few years back when we started this blog. He built a successful acupuncture practice, then went on to become an author and business coach.

He’s a smart guy, which I like, but he’s also walked the talk, building a six-figure income while maintaining a life.

It’s about time we had him sharing his brain here, so I asked him a few questions about finding success in practice…enjoy!  – Dan

1. You’ve worked closely with acupuncturists, but also with a variety of other health care professionals.   How similar are the practice challenges between acupuncture and other CAM professions?

I would say there are many similar challenges that include getting enough exposure and new patients, retaining them effectively, and creating a scalable business model that enables you to have a life outside of your practice.  Every business owner is faced with these challenges.

The difference I see for acupuncturists is that most of them would really prefer to just treat patients and not have to worry at all about marketing.  Chiropractors are much more motivated when it comes to marketing.  They understand the importance of investing in their practice growth through consulting, advertising, and internet marketing.  Acupuncturists are much more resistant to investing in their marketing education.  Because of this, they struggle more than chiropractors and generally make less money.  Acupuncturists often struggle with the whole notion of marketing in general, as it can feel inauthentic to them.  Because of this, they rely heavily on word of mouth and law of attraction principles.

For some, this works.  But for most, they never see the amount of patients they want because they have an aversion to self-promotion.  This is one of the greatest challenges that individual practitioners face, not to mention the profession as a whole.

2. What’s the biggest missed opportunity for most practitioners?

Fully leveraging the power of online technology to grow their practices.  In many markets, consumers are searching for alternative medicine services in the thousands every month with relatively little competition.  It is just crucial to get your practice positioned effectively on the internet.

3. If practitioners were to focus on one single strategy for the next three months, what would you recommend that would have the biggest impact on their practice?

Make sure you have a professional website or blog that has some current web 2.0 features like an opt in form, video, and integration with social media.  Take the necessary steps through search engine optimization, article marketing, and possibly pay per click to get a lot of qualified visitors coming to your website.

4. Many practitioners are in solo practice. Is it possible to make a good living as a solo practitioner and still lead a balanced life, or is adding associates and other staff a step that  practitioners have to make at some point?

This depends on the practitioner.  I, for one, never had a receptionist. Neither did the mentor I trained under.  We were able to see 50-70 patients per week in 3-3.5 days doing this.  This can only be done if you basically eliminate the need for a receptionist.  You have most patients pre-pay and pre-book appointments and you have an effective script in place that lets them know that they should only call your office to reschedule if it is absolutely necessary, as you run a very busy practice.  Basically, you need to be highly organized and efficient in the way you manage your time.  Otherwise, it can get pretty chaotic and exhausting.

Not all practitioners are able or want to see 3-4 patients per hour.  By far the most successful and lucrative practices are the ones that do see at least this many an hour.

I think it is possible to make a solid 6 figure income as a solo practitioner and have a life outside of the practice, but the truth is that this is unfortunately pretty rare.  You have to be pretty developed both personally and professionally to handle a high patient volume and set healthy boundaries so you don’t take it home with you or just end up pretty much living at your office.  Your marketing needs to be mostly automated through effective word of mouth and internet promotion.  Your practice management systems have to be tight and consistent.  These are things most of us don’t learn in school, which is why I decided to step up as a practice building coach.

Note: I think Kevin’s the real deal – he’s a sincere guy, helping a lot of practitioners reach more people and build a practice that supports their life.

If you need coaching, inspiration or help with any area of your practice (or you find all this internet talk confusing as hell ) you’ll find it well worth your time to check out his stuff. – Dan

Post from: AlternativeHealthPractice.com

Related posts:

1. Acupuncture Marketing Blog Roundup
2. Why Make the Leap from Alternative Health ‘Practice’ to ‘Business’?
3. The Best Acupuncture Practice Management Resources on The Web

The challenge is that waiting lists are harder to use than they seem. Here’s how you can make one work for you and your clients with no cost and minimal effort.

The Challenge

We were doing well with our scheduling strategy, but we still had a lot of holes coming from last minute scheduling changes. We don’t double-book, over-book, charge for missed appointments or use any other fixes that I feel reduce our level of service, but we really needed to do something to get the schedule filled more effectively, while still serving clients even better.

The waiting list was the answer. We just needed to use it the right way!

The Benefits

We were already using a waiting list, but it wasn’t working the way we thought it should. This time, we fixed our process for good and noticed the following in just a few days:

• Less waiting for new and existing clients
• More client visits in fewer clinic hours
• More convenient scheduling for patients
• Better daily flow for practitioners
• Greater revenue with the same or lower costs

To make that happened required five key shifts. Not difficult ones, but each is important.

Shift 1: Work Less

In the past, we’d tend to scale up available hours as things started to get busy. Once the schedule approached the 70-80% mark, it was harder for patients to get in at certain times, so we’d add a few hours here and there. It seemed sensible – after all, if there’s not much room in the schedule, you add more, right?

Wrong. This year, we took a new approach. Faced with a busy appointment book, we actually reduced our consult hours. This was the real turning point.

Reducing available time is really a way to push the adoption of a waiting list. It forces you to find a way to truly use the time that’s available in the schedule.  Why book only 75% of 30 hours when you could book 95% of 25? The deliver similar “billable time” but the latter involves a lot less time in clinic.

The result for us? We’re seeing more patients in the new reduced schedule than we did before, and providing much better service.

Shift 2: Change the Intention

In hindsight, “waiting list” isn’t the greatest phrase. I mean, who wants to be put on a list for waiting?

In the past, we might ask someone, “Can we put you on our waiting list in case there’s a cancellation?” Many would say, “No thanks.” A waiting list wasn’t really a patient-centered offering, and people weren’t interested. And for our staff, who take our clinic values very seriously, the waiting list wasn’t much fun either. For them it felt like a frustrating exercise that was all about making the clinic more financially efficient.

The solution? We changed our waiting list to a rapid care service. I know – it sounds like fluff, but it’s not. It was a fundamental shift in the purpose of the tool. Now the staff can reassure patients who can’t get in as soon as they’d like by explaining our rapid care service that will get them in sooner. Then they delight them a day later when they say, “Guess what? We’ve got a space for you.” Patients love it. It’s helpful for the staff. The practitioners love it. And the clinic is busier than ever, with fewer wasted clinic hours.

This shift is simply about service. A waiting list that is built around the intention of, “not wasting time we could be billing for,” will never work as well as one that’s built to serve.

Shift 3: Just Start

Don’t make this a big deal.  You can start your own rapid care service with a scrap of paper taped to the front desk. That’s what we did, and it worked great. Just get started, and figure it out as you go.

And don’t wait until you’re busy. The waiting list isn’t a tool for booked-solid practitioners. It’s a way to increase the speed and convenience of services in your office for everyone from the clients to the staff to you. That means no matter where you are in your practice, day one or day one thousand, you can use this tool to make life in the office easier for everyone. Even if it’s just you and a small roster of patients, get this habit in place now.

One of our early problems was making this bigger than it needed to be – that kind of thinking puts up too many roadblocks and “buts.” Just get started.

Shift 4: Get Involved

A real turning point was when I manned the front desk for a few days over the school break when we had some staff shortages because of vacation. It’s a job I used to do more in the clinic’s early days, but haven’t done much recently. It’s a great way to appreciate a) the challenges of filling a book effectively, and b)just how often a waiting list can be put to work.

You may be doing your own scheduling, and know exactly what those challenges are, but if you haven’t done the job in a while, it’s worth making a few hours to live in your staff’s shoes by answering the phone and booking appointments.

If you’re not doing your own booking, you’ll still need to be on top of gaps in the schedule. Make a point of checking the schedule regularly through the day. Help your team think of ways to fill any holes. “What about Mrs. So-and-So? She could come in.” Getting your waiting list to work is about changing habits, and that’s going to require you to be leading the charge.

Shift 5: Collect Better Information

To make this work, you’ll likely need to start learning more about your patients than you currently do – or you’ll at least have to start writing it down somewhere. Focus on these three areas:

• Best contact: To make your system work, you need more than just a way to get in touch with people. You need the fastest and most certain way to reach them. If you have a sudden opening in the schedule, you won’t be able to fill it quickly if you’re calling someone at home, but they’re at work for the next six hours. That means you need to know the best way to reach them now. Is it their cell phone? Email? Text? Work number?

• Patient preference: You waiting list needs to have some details – like what service patients are waiting for, and their preferences for times and days

• Patient flexibility: You’d be surprised how many clients have flexibility in their lives. The trick is to know who those people are. They’re the ones that are going to be a) great candidates for your waiting list, or b) the people whose appointment you can shift to accommodate someone else on the list who’s less flexible, and waiting for a specific time slot.

How you collect that info is up to you. Whoever does your bookings will develop a good sense of patient flexibility and preferences, but only if they ask in the first place. You need to be asking patients this information during the booking process. If you can’t reach flexible people in the fastest way possible, your list is going stumble before it gets out of the gate.

Small Effort, Big Benefits

Once you get this in place, you’ll find the benefits tend to spread into the schedule. When you have a great intention, and you can reach flexible clients easily, it become easy to shift the schedule to make it more efficient even when there aren’t people waiting. That frees up more blocks of scheduled time that help you get people in right away without ever having to be on the rapid care list at all.

Don’t be scared to work less to make this work. Test-drive it for a couple of weeks – you’ll be surprised not only at how efficient you can be, but how well your clients will respond.

Post from: AlternativeHealthPractice.com

Related posts:

1. Building a Busy CAM Practice By Acting Like One
2. 6 Ways That Working Less Will Help Your Practice
3. No “Islands” – A Patient Booking Strategy for Your Alternative Health Practice

We generally take at least a week or so off each quarter in addition to this two-week block, plus the occasional sabbatical, but this particular vacation is a real rejuvenator.  If you’re feeling the need for less speed, here are 7 tips for getting some real R&R.

1. Believe It’s Important

Guess what? You need the break. Taking care of people is tough work, and it just keeps getting tougher if you don’t take care of yourself. Even if you’re practice isn’t booked solid, don’t kid yourself. You need to take some time.

Besides, working less is good for business, too. Just about every major breakthrough we’ve had with the clinic has happened outside of the office, and usually on longer breaks.

2. Stretch Yourself

If you’ve never taken longer than a week off, or <gasp> a long weekend here and there, now’s the time to develop brand new skill: taking real time off. A week is great, but it’s a different experience from two weeks or longer. If you’ve never taken a long break, try pushing the limit by doubling your longest vacation of the previous year. You won’t regret it.

3. Plan in Advance

If you think you’re going to squeeze in a week or two off at the last minute, think again. There will always be someone in the schedule and unless you block off the time well in advance, it’s just not going to happen. Most practitioners we know aren’t willing to just cancel a week of appointments on a whim. Best practice? Book all your holidays for the year at one time. Then your job is just to show up and enjoy them.

So – right now, plan your holidays for the next 12 months…

…no really, I’m serious. Do it.

4. Partner

Admittedly, it’s tough to abandon clients who need you. The reason it’s tough is the same reason you’re good at this stuff: you actually care about these people.

But rather than forgoing a long vacation, why not partner with someone who can cover for you? We’ve had local and non-local practitioners cover our bases during vacations for years. And when they take time off, we cover for them. It’s a great win-win. Every gets a break, and patients get the care they need.

5. Keep the Office Phones Alive

Just because you’re away doesn’t mean you need to shut down the lines of communication. Make sure you get that phone answered. At the bare minimum, have someone check your voice messages and email for you. It makes vacation that much more relaxing if you know that someone’s filling your schedule for you while you’re away.

But remember: people don’t always leave messages.

6. Don’t Work While You’re Gone

I’m a big fan of working vacations – there are a some types of “big picture” work things that are best done away from your daily routine. But sometimes you need to really, truly, stop.

If you’ve never done it, force yourself to stay off email and other work. If you’re opting for a “staycation” – taking time off without leaving home – be wary, and be prepared to hit the road if you find yourself slipping back into work mode.

7. Trust

Still feel you really can’t take the time off? Then it’s time to do some mental rewiring. It can really be hard to believe that your practice won’t crumble into dust in your absence (we’ve been there) but just trust me: it won’t. If anything, taking some time is going to keep you and your practice from falling apart.

Have a great month, everyone!

-Dan & Tara

Post from: AlternativeHealthPractice.com

Related posts:

1. Taking Time Off
2. How to Guarantee You Take a Decent Vacation
3. Q: How Do I Value A Chiropractic Practice? (Part 1)

It was a great success, but this year I was trying to pay particular attention to why. Here are a few of our thoughts, but we’d love some further tips. Anyone have any great ideas? Leave them in the comments!

Have a Designated Greeter

This year I spent most of my time serving drinks, and from my vantage point I had a clear view of the main entrance for most of the night. The one thing I noticed more than anything else was how uncertain new people looked when they came in. Fortunately, there were enough of us around that someone was usually able to welcome them give them a tour or point them in the direction of food, drinks, samples, etc., but in hindsight, I think having a “greeter” would have been helpful.

The greeter doesn’t need any special clinical knowledge – it can be a friend or family member. They just have to make people feel like they’ve come to the right spot for the right reason. Next year, we’ll have someone assigned to the front door the whole time.

Spread The Word Widely

People show up from an amazingly diverse range of places. We promoted the event:

• On our website
• To our patient mailing list
• In posters in local stores and shops
• On clinic signage
• In postcards left with local practitioners and other vendors
• In newspaper ads and events calendars
• In various local online calendars and community sites

Many of these sources were free, and they all helped spread the world. It turned out that just about everything connected with someone. As we’ve discovered with new client marketing, you never quite know where the people are going to come from.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Invitation

We sent letters to all our patients to let them know about the open house, and it was a pleasant surprise for me just how many clients seemed to truly appreciate simply being invited. It was a great reminder of how much people long to feel special, or a part of something.  The letter included other services and events, but the lead item was an invite them to the event, and people responded, many with messages of gratitude. It made the whole process of marketing the open house quite enjoyable.

Apparently, Recipes are Big

We had advertised that we’d be sharing recipes for unique and healthy foods, and there were people who came for that reason only. Who knew? Apparently Tara did, which gives you some insight into who does most of the cooking at our place. At any rate, recipes=more people!

Free Stuff Is A Big Draw (and Easy to Get!)

I think this was our biggest year for freebies. Our supplement suppliers and local retailers really came through for us, and it was surprisingly easy. We brainstormed a few ideas in advance, made a list, and simply asked. The people at the open house loved it, and the suppliers were super-keen and helpful. It also had the added bonus of moving people through the clinic. By placing freebies throughout the office, people tended to explore a little more, and become more familiar and comfortable with the space.

Partner

Back when the clinic was a lot smaller, we arranged to have our open house on the same night as the massage therapists down the hall. We were both relatively new in practice, but by holding events on the same night, we were able to create a much busier (and more enjoyable) event for both of us.

This year, we had a local personal trainer and raw food expert spend the evening with us. She blended up some amazing organic green smoothies, and actually turned out to be the biggest hit of the evening. She was a hugely successful addition for us, and was able to promote her own services at the same time. A great collaboration.

Have a Way to Stay in Touch

A good open house can bring a lot of new faces in the door, and it’s nice to be able to get in touch with people after the event is over. Our approach was pretty simple: a door prize that people entered by writing their name and email address on a ballot.

The next day, I simply emailed everyone a short message thanking them for attending, and included a link to the recipes from the night before on our website. The key? Respect their email address, and offer something of use. Having a great email newsletter solution makes things a heck of a lot easier, too.

Anyone else have any practical tips for making the most of an open house or other event in your practice? Let’s hear your ideas!

Post from: AlternativeHealthPractice.com

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2. Practice Management Seminars
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After the last post on collaborating with your colleagues to help your practice, I thought I’d share the ad we put together. This is a full page newspaper ad that we were able to buy for very little cash since we split it five ways.

If you’re interested in giving your practice and profession a boost by doing something similar, here’s a little more behind-the-scenes info on how the process worked.

First of all, why the newspaper? Our community is reasonably small, so the local paper gets a decent amount of attention. We got a special rate on the full-page size, too, so in terms of value, it was a great way to start off our collaborative efforts. (If you can’t see the ad, you’ll find it here. ) In the end, it was a simple project that we could easily come together on.

The objective was to expand the slice of pie – to increase the percentage of the population actually using naturopathy. All our logos appear, but the ad is really about our profession, not us as individual practitioners. We started out with each practitioner submitting 35 words about what makes their practice unique, but I ended up scrapping the blurbs so we could focus on promoting the profession.

Some of the challenges in expanding the market that we tried to address:

1. Helping people understand the level of training required for ND’s to be licensed in our jurisdiction. Naturopaths make a massive time and financial investment before they even open their doors, but as a rule, the general public isn’t really aware of the level of training and education required.
2. Differentiating an ND in our area from other practitioners who are using the same title without proper licensing
3. Dispelling the misconception that you can’t see both an MD and an ND at the same time. People believe it’s “not allowed,” or that the two professions can’t collaborate.
4. Understanding one of the key differences of the profession, which is that ND’s are heavily focused on finding and treating the root cause of health concerns, not just palliating symptoms.

Working Together: Some Thoughts

I think our process was made easier by me doing the artwork (for better or for worse ). If you’re doing something similar, but working with a designer, I’d say your best bet would be to pick one practitioner to be the contact point for the designer. They’d bring the ideas to the designer, and have the authority to work with them to the point of 1-3 acceptable samples that everyone can comment on. Anything else would be chaotic and cost a lot more.

All told, though, it turns out we’re a surprisingly agreeable bunch. There were a few tweaks to the ad based on everyone’s input, but it was really quite easy to collaborate. The biggest challenge was getting everyone’s logo in the right format for consistency. Other than that, collaborating in this way turned out to be an amazing process. We highly recommend it!

Post from: AlternativeHealthPractice.com

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1. Your Alternative Medical Practice as a "Safe" Place for Referrals
2. Alternative Health Practice: The Great Irony
3. Free Naturopathic Community Website: NDUnion

Why, you ask? Because for us, competition really is good for business and patients. Here’s why turning your competitors into collaborators benefits everyone.

1. Collaboration Creates a Bigger Pie

My guess is that about 5% of the people in our area are users of our particular brand of health care. So of the many thousands or so folks that could potentially use naturopathy, only a fraction of them actually are (and that 5% is being generous, I think). That leaves a really big pile of potential patients. Really, really big. And our area is small – the same idea applies just about anywhere.

The real opportunity, then, is not to fight over the same slice of pie (the 5%), but to expand the size of the slice – to tap into more of the 95% who aren’t users of our profession. There’s a whole world of pie out there – why fight over the same old slice of apple?

The challenge of course, is reaching and engaging that other 95%. That’s where competition helps. The more people who say, “I see a homeopath,” or, “I use a chiropractor,” for example, the better off the whole profession is. Competition raises awareness, which creates acceptance and momentum, and expands the market for your services.

• What to do: Reach out.  Pick up the phone or email a practitioner in your field. You’ll be surprised at how many of your competitors really do want to talk with you. They’re just too scared to take the first step. Open a dialogue with a practitioner in your area. Be generous. Share your vision. My guess is that you’ll all sleep better at night, and discover something marvelous along the way.

2. You Can Flex More Muscle

Of that huge untapped expanse of pie, a huge percentage of them use conventional medical care, so the problem isn’t health care need, it’s health care awareness. You need to reach those folks who don’t use your stuff.  Tapping into that group, though, can be an expensive and time-consuming prospect – it’s hard to make enough noise to get the attention you need.

The good news is that there’s strength in numbers. By combining forces, you can create a larger presence and do some marketing that gets attention. In our case,we’ll essentially becoming our own lobby group, promoting the benefits of naturopathic care in order to reach more people than we ever could alone.

• What to do: Pool your resources to create joint marketing efforts. For example, you can take a full page ad out in the local paper for a fraction of the cost of doing it alone, and make some noise. You can have a large booth at a trade show that really attracts attention, or run some amazing clinics, info sessions or classes that offer some real value. Get five practitioners together and you can do five times as much without spending any more time or money than you would alone.

3. Collaboration Generate More Referrals

You and your “competition” might all be massage therapists, or chiropractors, or acupuncturists, or nutritonists, or herbalists or homeopaths, but you’re all unique, too. It’s the ways in which you’re different from each other that offer the greatest opportunity. What do you each love? What do you hate? What are you best at? What does one offer that the other can’t/won’t/doesn’t?

In our group, for example, there’s an ND who’s a doula, and an ND who specializes in cosmetic / spa applications of naturopathic medicine. They’re both great services that we don’t offer, but that many of our clients would love. We’re happy to refer to them for those things. And in return, we can offer things like IV therapy and colon hydrotherapy to their clients. Patients gets better care, practitioners get more business. It’s great for everyone.

The trick is, of course, you need to connect with these folks to truly understand their specialties and explain yours. You can’t do it by reading each other’s websites on the sly or peeking in their windows after hours. You need to reach out.

• What to do: First, connect. Do a lunch or breakfast offsite, as opposed to in someone’s practice space. Get to know what each of you love and do best. Next – and this is the most important part – refer. Send a client to your competition as soon as the opportunity arises. It’s a smart, patient-focused act of goodwill that will benefit everyone, including you.

Start Now

This is a sum of the parts thing. You and two or three other practitioner can generate more total business cooperating than the three (or 6 or 15) or you can working separately. Don’t be shy. You’ll find most practitioners pleasantly relieved to have open dialogue with you.

Focus on your differences, your passions, and the strengths of your professions as opposed to your practices, and you’ll find more patients, more fun, and more pie than you ever would have alone.

Post from: AlternativeHealthPractice.com

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1. There ain’t room enough in this town for the…oh, wait, yes there is…
2. Free Naturopathic Community Website: NDUnion
3. Make It Easy for Your CAM Patients

One of the real advantages to this process was that we came out of it with a concrete, concise template for how to move forward when things get dicey. I’ve gone through the plan and pulled out the strategies that I feel are making the biggest difference during challenging times:

1. Look for Prospects, Not Patients

It’s easy to think that you need more patients, but the truth is that before someone becomes a patient, they often make a pitstop along the way. In sales, they call it being a “prospect” – that’s someone who might become a patient.

In a slower economy people are more careful in their spending. They’re cautious when it comes to resources, and as a result they don’t necessarily want to leap from stranger to client in one step. They want to kick a few tires first.

In practical terms for us, that meant pushing our 15-minute “meet the doctor” visit. It’s a complimentary appointment for people to find out if naturopathy is a fit for them, and how we can help. It gives prospects a risk-free way to explore the idea of becoming patients without leaping right in. It’s a stepping stone to becoming a full-fledged client, and in a slow economy, you need those stepping stones. (And is it worth it? I think so. Over 90% of our 15-minute prospects become patients.)

What risk-free “stepping stones” are you offering for people to discover you?

2. Build MD Relationships

Health care is publicly funded here. That means that a recession doesn’t really change whether or not you can see an MD, or visit a hospital. It may affect how long you wait, but you can do it regardless of your income. The same applies for people with insurance coverage.

The impact of this is that in slow times, MD’s still see a lot of sick people. While CAM usage tends to be out-of-pocket and hit harder by economic changes, MD’s in many countries stay busy. We’re working to create more relationships, and nurture the ones we have with MD’s. The downside? These often take time to build. But like planting trees, if you want to have big ones, you need to start with small ones as soon as possible.

3. Cut Costs

This one isn’t rocket science, but it’s a critical piece of the plan. Here’s what we did:

• Created a quick spreadsheet containing most of the expenses in the clinic
• Used the spreadsheet to calculate the savings on each item, and overall, if we could cut 15% across the board
• Assigned areas, where possible, to the staff. The admin and other support staff tackled things like medical and office supplies, we did things like payroll and others. (Even in a one-person office, it’s actually pretty easy when you just itemize it all and get going.)

This whole process did feel a bit squishy at first – like scarcity thinking, or a step backwards – but one we got started, I realized there were some things we should have done long ago that had nothing to do with the economy. They were just smart business decisions.

4. Stay in Touch with Your Clients

These days, it’s easy and cheap to stay in touch, particularly by email, and when things slow down, there’s no excuse for not connecting with patients. We do a few email newsletters and a couple of print mailings a year, and we’ve stepped that up a bit with targeted mailing to certain groups within our patient base.

If you’re looking for an easy way to start your own email newsletter, we’ve always recommended iContact. Lots of templates, and those great little signup forms for your website, too. No geekiness required, and you get a beautiful email newsletter delivered to your client base for pennies apiece. Two thumbs up!

5. Increase Advertising (but Measure Return)

It’s tempting to cut your advertising when money’s tight, but the truth is that as long as your marketing is working (bringing in patients), then there’s no reason not to spend more.

If your advertising generates more profit than it costs, it makes sense to do more of it.

The trick, of course, is to actually know when it works. We track the source of every new patient so that we know whether a splashy ad, or our website, or a trade show, or an open house are attracting patients. It’s not hard – we just ask patients on our intake form, and clarify as needed – but it’s unbelievably valuable. If you also know the annual value of a patient, then you can pretty quickly see what’s paying off and what isn’t. If we run an $800 ad, and 7 new patients come in as a result, we know exactly whether or not that ad was worth it.

6. Consolidate Debt

If you’ve got business loans, student loans, operating lines of credit, credit card debt, etc., it’s worth trying to consolidate them into one loan in one spot. Easier to manage, and you can often get away with a smaller payment, or a shorter term. It’ll depend on your situation, but it’s worth half an hour with your banker to find out.

7. Expand Operating Credit

If cash flow is tight going into a recession, you’ll need some extra breathing room to be able to advertise more, get through a lean month, etc. If you don’t have a business line of credit to help you through the swings in business, it’s worth checking into. if you do have one, consider expanding it just in case. You don’t have to use it, but you’ll sleep better if you have it.

8. Monitor Your Media Consumption

Unless you’re prepared to take action on bad economic news, there’s no need to be micro-informed about every bit of bad media out there. I’ve ditched news radio in favor of music, changed the news I see on my browser’s home page, and I stay away from television news wherever possible.

This isn’t head-in-the sand behavior – I know these are challenging times and we’re taking action. I just don’t need to hear it 24×7 – I can tune in briefly once in a while to get the big picture. This one wasn’t in our strategic planning, but it really is important. Too much bad news keeps you frozen in place and makes it really difficult to execute these strategies. I’m not usually troubled by any of this stuff, but I can honestly say that avoiding the bad-news mania has made a real difference.

If you’ve got a question about how to implement these strategies or you’d like to share a few of your own, leave us a comment!

Post from: AlternativeHealthPractice.com

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The challenge is that these are pretty big projects, and it’s easy to bite off more than your practice can chew. Instead, I like to think of one principle to focus on in the coming year. It’s a bit like herding – I need one idea that can guide all those tiny details, decisions and actions in the right direction. Each “cow” might have its own unique path and nature, but at the end of the year, I want all those bovine bits to arrive at the same place.

The guiding word for this year? SERVE.

Why Service is Everything in Practice

It’s hard to be the cheapest in this industry. Or to have the biggest selection. It’s not usually that helpful to be the fastest, either. So how do you compete?

The truth is you’re not really competing with the practitioner down the road, you’re competing with a preconceived notion about what health care is. You’re competing with ideas in the minds of prospective clients. Things like “free”, “covered by insurance” “requires an MD”, “needs a white coat”, and “happens in a hospital only”. These are ideas that pop up when someone needs care, and they stop people from choosing you.

So how do you compete, and grow? In this industry, you can best compete by providing incredible service, all the time. You grow, in other words, when you serve. It’s the word for this year, but it’s probably the word for every year.

As Gandhi said:

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

What We’re Doing About It (and You Can, Too)

We have two pushes on for the year to help us serve better.

1. Project 52: We’ve been rolling out a big service push at our office – it started back with the parking bowl phenomenon, really, but our niche has always been high service, and I want to take it up a notch. We’ve started what we call Project 52, which is our goal to make one customer service improvement every week all year. It’s fun, it’s tangible, and everyone gets on board.
2. Random Acts of Service: Sometimes an opportunity appears to go that extra mile. We’re going to try to seize more of them. A client is an avid reader? We send them a book that will really help them. A client loves the warm slippers we provide in a treatment room? We mail them a pair. These are little things that we don’t do for everyone, but that we do when we know someone will really love it. It feels wonderful to do it, and it’s great for business.

The great thing about this stuff is that it’s inexpensive. I bet most of our Project 52 ideas will be free (so far they are) – they’ll be tiny tweaks and improvements that really aren’t hard or costly.

People Who Can Help YOU

Here’s some 2008 gratitude and some 2009 well-wishes to the people out there who are doing their best to serve YOU so you can better serve others. I think these folks are an important part of what we’re all doing to help people get better. I’d say most aren’t making millions doing this – they’re just jazzed about helping you so you can help others. You should pay them a visit. They’ll help you serve.

To all of the following, in no particular order: thanks for all you do to serve, and thanks for the great interactions we’ve had in the last year. (If I’ve missed you please let me know!!)

• Acupuncture Clinic Marketing
• The Healthcare Marketer
• Alternative Growth Streams
• CAMLAW Blog
• Chinese Medicine Notes
• Professional Practice Success
• Acupuncture Business School
• IntegrativePractitioner.com
• Advance My Practice
• Chinese Medicine Tools
• Marketing Matters
• The Healthcare Marketing Connection
• Create a Thriving Business
• Insights for Acupuncturists
• Natural Medicine Business Success
• Community Acupuncture Network
• Build Your Dream Practice
• AltMD Pro Center
• Holistic PR
• The Acupuncture Marketing Blog
• TheBodyWorker.com
• The Integrator Blog
• DC Practice Tools

To all of our regular readers and visitors, and to practitioners everywhere: Thank you, and may 2009 be as remarkable as you are.

-Dan and Tara

Post from: AlternativeHealthPractice.com

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There is no more important thing than having the right people. I’ve watched the transition of a single person on or off the roster make a difference of tens of thousands of dollars in a very short time, not to mention the impact on morale and joy in the office. It’s phenomenal. Here are a few tips we’ve learned along the way.

Find The Right Candidates

You’ll be most successful when you’ve got lots of options. Attract good quality applicants to choose from using these tips:

• Don’t Advertise… Seriously – forget about the classifieds ads and the internet listings. First of all, it’s time consuming to sort through the resumes, and second, it’s hard to read people from a sheet of paper. You’re just as likely to toss a winner in the shredder and interview five bad fits as you are to identify a great candidate.

• …Unless you Have To. The exception to this is when you’re recruiting for a position that needs some legitimate certification. If you need an ND, DC or an LAc, for example, you may have to advertise to find licensed candidates? Front desk? Nope.

• Network Instead… The best jobs are found through networking, and so are the best candidates. Not all, but on average, the best are. Spread the word through your friends, family, colleagues and patients. CAM offices are great places to work – you’ll get response if you get the word out.

• …Or Headhunt. There’s a great chance your ideal candidate already has a job – go find them. If you have a great experience with someone in another business, why can’t they work for you? The job you have to offer might change someone’s life – don’t be afraid to offer it to someone already working.

Choose the Right One

Once you’ve got a pool of applicants, it’s time to find your winner. Here are a few rules of thumb:

• First impressions matter. Reception/front line jobs tend to involve short bursts of surface interaction. A moment here, a smile there. A quick swipe of a credit card and a brief chat. A voice on the phone. Make sure you get a good first impression, and be wary if you don’t.

• Trust Your Gut. Your intuition is your best friend at hiring time, particularly when it comes to negative vibes. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.

• Hire for Personality First. This is health care, not widget-making – great people skills are critical for almost all positions. You can teach most hard skills, but a great way with people is almost impossible to learn.

• Test-Drive Before You Hire. This is a great strategy, and has saved our butts more than once. You simply can’t trust an interview entirely. If you’ve narrowed your choices down, then bring them in for a half or full day and see how they do. Pay them for their time for the day – it’s worth the investment.

• Aim to Be Amazed. Don’t settle for someone you know isn’t right. Set your sights high. If it’s an emergency, then hire someone on a clearly defined temporary basis while you look for your dream person. They really are out there.
• Consult your Team… If you’ve got other staff, get them involved. A bad fit will cost you. Let the other people in the clinic help out.
• …and Your Patients. Remember that test-drive? Make sure you get some patient feedback. You might even consider asking some wise patients to drop by that day, or participate in the interview process.

It’s easy to second guess yourself in this process, so make sure you have help. And take your time – finding the right person makes all the difference.

Post from: AlternativeHealthPractice.com

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Here’s are 6 reasons why cutting your hours might just take your practice to the next level:

1. You’ll Be More Efficient

Parkinson’ s law states that “work expands to fit the time available.” You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can get through things if you don’t have unlimited time to do them. You’ll also be surprised at how punctual your appointments can be if there’s someone else waiting.

If your scheduled hours aren’t consistently 70+% booked right now, then you need to carve back your available patient hours until they are.

If you’ve just started up, or have very few patients, you might find yourself carving back too much – use a minimum of 12-15 hours a week, spread over 3 days. That will give your patients more options then just one 8-hour day. You can adjust for your own market and comfort level, but remember:

Being available to see patients all the time isn’t growing your practice.

Really – it isn’t. Providing incredible service is (for one), but you don’t have to make all your kick-ass incredible-ness available 50 hours a week. Putting in all that non-patient face time at the office isn’t helping. So stop.

2. You Can Solve The Staff Dilemma

The natural medicine professions are plagued with staff problems. More accurately, the problem is that small offices and solo practitioners don’t have staff. I know that this works for some modalities, and certain types of practices, but we see far too many practitioners who don’t have any help, and it’s driving them into the ground – personally and professionally.

This is not a case of “easier said than done.” Staffing really can be scalable. One of the scariest things about staff is having them kicking around a too-quiet office. However, if you’ve got an effectively booked schedule, you can cover just those hours that are booked, without falling into the trap of hiring full-time staff to cover a part-time gig.

3. You’ll Create Scarcity

If you’ve ever traveled, you may have discovered that the best food is often the stuff made out on the street. The good traveler’s rule of thumb, though, is always eat at the cart with the lineup. Why? It’s probably safer and better than the vacant street-meat-mobile.

This applies to your office, too. Things that are in demand send a message: there’s something here – you should check it out. We’ve touched on this in scheduling discussions: being perceived as “busy” or “in demand” can be good marketing, and booking patients effectively helps create that.

4. Your Practice Will Become More Profitable

Why pay for a host of expenses during hours that you don’t really need? If you can see more patients in less time, you can reduce your overhead, or even share your space (and costs) with additional practitioners.

That in turn leaves a little extra money each month that you can use during your new-found time off.

5. You Can Find Balance

If you’re on the road to burnout, then less is most certainly more – particularly when we’re talking about working less and earning more. If you’ve got slack in your schedule, then scale back your hours a bit and enjoy it while you can. You can always work more when demand justifies it.

If your schedule is jam-packed, though, you can still cut your hours, find balance, and…

…6. You Can Continue the Shift from Practice to Business

Working less creates an interesting challenge in your practice:

If you’re going to work less, how will you continue to earn the same income, or more?

The answer is in the shift from practice to true business - in finding ways for your practice to generate revenue in other ways besides selling only your time. That generally means involving more people – other practitioners and professionals who can add to your revenue without strapping you tighter to the grindstone.

Working less is a simple way to force this transition, and that’s a good thing.

Objections

You’re going to hear the complete opposite of this advice at times, and that’s fine. Here are a few common objections we hear to working less:

“My clients need me to be open all those hours.”

No they don’t. What they really want is for you to be open 24-7 so they can come in anytime they feel like it. Are you willing to cater to that?

Patients want the most convenient appointment they can get, but they’re flexible – we all are. You can’t meet everyone’s timeline or you’ll be running a 24-7 CAM drive-thru. Pick some manageable, sensible hours, book them effectively, and focus on being remarkable in other ways besides your ability to work super-human hours.

“What about staff? No one wants a part-time job.”

Sure they do. That’s a myth, and with our current demographics, there are all kinds of people who want part-time work. Just look for them.

“I can’t take the pay cut.”

This isn’t about pay cuts. It’s about the same money (or more) in less time. But if you’re booked solid, and worried about cutting your hours, then it’s time to start making the transition from practice to business by bringing in someone else to work some of those hours.

If you’re not booked solid, then just cut back your hours until you are. You can always add them as needed.

Another plea for work-life balance from the good folks at AlternativeHealthPractice.com.

Post from: AlternativeHealthPractice.com

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