So I thought I would share, two principles, keys for attracting these patient referrals, and how to communicate with medical doctors for those referrals as well.

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

I want to thank the AAC for inviting me back to host, um, to the point. And, uh, my name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. I have my practice in British Columbia, Canada. It’s called acrobatics wellness center. I’m also a CPA, a certified professional accountant in a past life. And I’ve written the book I’m missing the point, why acupuncturists fail, what they need to know to succeed. So I brought my clinical experience and my, um, my accounting business experience and share that with my colleagues. And I’m also the founder of healthy seminars and online platform for continued education and the chair of the integrated fertility symposium. So I love coming on here and sharing practice management tools. So you can be those prosperous healers where you’re supporting your patients. You’re experiencing abundance, you’re creating great health, and everybody’s happy for that. Um, my presentation today, and we’ll bring up that presentation now is called two keys to attracting new patients and MD referrals.

And so to build up a busy practice and to heal your communities, you need patients, they need to come and see you and want to see you. So I thought I would share, um, two principles, um, keys for attracting these patient referrals, um, and how to communicate with medical doctors for those referrals as well. So one of the keys here is being patient centric versus doctor centric in the business world. When I used to be an auditor and we’d do consulting, that would be customer centric versus company centric. And the key here is to be customer centric in our case, patient centric, creating that value for our patients being of service for our patients. And a lot of us have the right intention. We believe, we really believe that we care about our patients and we’re patient centric. Um, but I would suggest that on an unconscious level, often we are still being doctor centric.

It’s, we’re making a more about ourselves than we are about our patients. And an example of that would be our brochures and our websites. How many of us have beautiful pictures of people receiving acupuncture on our website, on our brochures make sense? We’re doing acupuncture, right? Or you think it would make sense. And it’s something that we love. Like we’re quite passionate. We love getting our acupuncture. Most of us who are practiced love, getting it and love, um, providing acupuncture. But do you ever think of what your patients see when they see your brochure? And what they see is this actually a large part of the population actually has a deep fear of needles. And so I would suggest unintentionally, a lot of us are being doctor or company centric and not customer patient centric. If we were them, we would think more about what our patient’s experiences are when they come to our website and see our brochures.

I will add that I’ve learned in my practice and I think we’re successful because we don’t really think or believe our patients are coming to us for acupuncture, what we realize. And it’s all based on your attitude and intention. We realize that our patients are coming to us for a solution. And if it happens to be requiring acupuncture needles, then, and they, and there’s research to support it, or we have case studies and competence to say that we can help them. Then they’re open to the acupuncture. If I say it’s taking Chinese herbs or receiving GWAS or cupping, um, or laser acupuncture or [inaudible] or cheek gong, they’re coming for a solution to a problem. And that’s what they’ve come to you. And it’s not necessarily that they want or need the acupuncture in their mind. They’re coming to you for a solution. And it just may happen.

That acupuncture is part of that solution. I just want to give you, so I said, I’m going to give you two key, key, um, steps for referrals. So the first one is being patient centered care and really putting yourself into your patient’s shoes, really trying to experience it from your patient’s perspective. An example in my practice at [inaudible] we’re famously known for fertility, we do a lot of reproductive health. And at the beginning, we used to have a baby pictures on our site and in our office. And we did a focus group and we learned that the patients hate seeing pictures of babies in the waiting room and on our website, we thought they would like it because it shows success and hope, right? Hey, look, look what we can do for you. But most of them say that they’re reminded of them not having a baby they’re failures.

Um, they are miscarriages that are unsuccessful ideas. And so coming into the waiting room, um, added stress and not, um, pleasure or peace to them. So again, getting into your patient’s mind and trying to understand what they want. So the focus here is B is to be patient care. And so we meant that patient centered care is about having that intention to care for your patients. However, the intention, the desire to care for your patients, or you even feeling a believe, you care for your patients is not enough. They actually need to know that you care. They have to experience it and believe it. And I’m going to suggest with you, um, I tip, can we go back to that earlier slide story? I, I that’s that too quickly. Um, I’m going to share with you, um, what I do, um, to show I care and I’m, I like to be known.

I want to be known for simple and powerful and effective tips and tools in my clinical practice and business pearls for you guys as well. So what I’m sharing with you is simple. So simple that it’s easy to be dismissed or ignored. It’s not complicated, but simple doesn’t need mean easy. Simple means anybody could do it, but it does require some discipline. And so I say here, what is easy to do is also easy not to do. And I’d like to send, check in emails or call my patients to see how they’re doing. And you can do this after our initial or after a special milestone. Um, I make a habit and using that word unconsciously, a habit of following up with my patients, um, around their pregnancy test date, um, for an IVF cycle. So I support a lot of women through their IVF.

Our clinic does not just me and we show, we go on site to the IVF clinic, the largest one here in Vancouver, BC, and provide both acupuncture, laser acupuncture on site. And I make a point to check in with them between their transfer date and the pregnancy test day, just to see how they’re doing, see if they have any questions, um, and then asking them to let me know an update when they know whether they’re pregnant or not. And so I encourage you to do that and it could be as simple as the following. I want to sh I want to give you, uh, some of the copy that you can do. It doesn’t need to be a long email. It can be tight. It could be subject line checking in, and then your copy could be hi. So-and-so I wanted to check in to see how you are doing period.

Please send me an update at your convenience and then your name and that’s it. Now the intention behind this is you want to know how they’re doing this is important because if you’re doing it, I believe intention carries some chew with it, some energy. So if you’re doing it because you want them to be your patient, I think on a subtle level, they may pick up on that. The good news is that when you do this, you create mind share. They remember you and likely often they’ll get back to you. Many of them will, and they’ll book more with you if they haven’t already. So there’s good news to doing this wherever your intention is to find out how they’re doing, because if the patient hasn’t rebooked, it could be because you resolve their issue. And so wouldn’t, you want to know that in document that in the file, you can even save the reply and they say that everything’s great.

You could ask them, um, to write a testimonial or Hey, if you know anybody else that struggling with what you struggle with, please send them. Cause as you can see, I love to treat that so simple like that. So your email is, and I’m going to show you some responses from patients that I sent this email to. I just wanted to check in to see how you’re doing. Please send me an update at your convenience. Sometimes they’ll tell you something that didn’t work. So you got to learn from their experience. So, and you may be able to correct that in that email or call them to make it right, but it’s just important to follow up with your patients. So, um, here’s an example of just two examples of what I received back from when I sent an email to patients. Now, I would say over 50% respond to my emails.

And, uh, often they’re, they’re quite nice emails, surprisingly, but good to get that feedback. And then there are those that just never respond. Um, so I sent an email checking in on this patient wanting to know, um, she had any questions and, um, I, and I asked if she could send me the results of her IVF cycle when she knows, um, she said, thank you Lauren, for the email, this is very kind of you to reach out. Remember I sit in their previous slide, they need to know you care, um, saying it or thinking it is not enough. And one way to let them know you care is by checking in via email. My blood work results came in today and it’s positive rate CG is 5 96. The nurse advised that is very good number to have at this stage. Let’s hope everything continues to go well from here.

So, you know, we’re having that relationship that trust, and this is good that she’s actually sharing this March. I appreciate your and Ryan support, Ryan and I both saw her through our clinic. Your clinic has been a tremendous part of my journey. Everyone has been so wonderful kind and professional. Thank you for providing this kind of support to women. I could follow up and say, thank you and remind you that we like to support you throughout the pregnancy. So now I can have that conversation with her. Um, so continue the acupuncture and advice about what we do during pregnancy. I could ask her if we can use her this, um, email, um, for our testimony, if it’s allowed in your, in your state or province to put it on the website. Here’s another example. I willing to respond it from her. Check-in you’re Lauren, your ears have been burning.

Your ears must have been burning because I was just talking about you and how incredibly skilled, supportive and genuinely caring you are. My hubby really enjoyed meeting you as well. And I know you really impressed him as well. So it’s showing you that we care based on their emails back. They’re showing you that little touch point, so simple to do, but again, what’s easy to do is also easy not to do. And you want to create this a habit, a lot of clinics. Um, I would recommend you doing this after the initial, if they have not rebooked. And even if they have within that week, just send in a check in email or any special milestone. It’s good to check in. And if you haven’t seen your patients for so many weeks or after two months, and you think there should be more care based on what you’re treating them for, then send in a, an email. Hi, just want to check in to see how you’re doing. Please send me an update at your convenience. So the next thing for referrals and for good medical care is, um, communicating with other health professionals. And I’m going to give examples of what we send to medical doctors. And you get a busy practice by getting referrals for word of mouth, through patients and also referrals from healthcare providers.

So the key here in anything in life to be successful, any enterprise, whether you’re a clinic, whether you’re selling widgets, whatever you’re doing is creating value for the person that’s buying your services or your products. And, um, in this case, think of, remember, we talked about patient centered care, think of the doctor as a customer of yours as well. You’re wanting them to refer to you, right? Um, so, um, think of them that way and want to create value for them because when you create value for other people, they tend to like you and want to work with you. So it’s important to find out their needs and how your relationship can benefit them. I know most of us are going to them saying, I want you to refer to me and that’s needy and that’s not creating value for them. That’s creating value for you.

And I would imagine those relationships don’t flourish or go anywhere because you started off with what can you do for me versus what can I do for you? So find out what you can do for them. I know in the Canada social system, doctors are quite busy. Um, medical doctors, um, tend not to like to treat the patients that have pharma allergy or list of symptoms. And so, you know, you can ask the doctors, what are the patients that you don’t like to see or take up a lot of your time. And so just start developing a relationship with them and finding out what kind of patients, um, you can help them with. Right? And when I say help them with in this case, um, you know, patients that, um, again, in Canada being social medicine, they don’t want to spend an hour with a patient.

They want to spend 10 minutes, maximum 15 minutes. So if a patient has a laundry list of, of, um, issues, they don’t like those. And so they would love to refer those off to people like me, where we spend an hour with them so they can see more patients. Um, I remember one doctor said, um, he doesn’t like patients that have a whole list of symptoms. And I said, well, I’m a holistic doctor. So I likes it. Patients, the whole list of symptoms. Sometimes a little humor will help as well. You want to create trust, um, and allow time to build this long-term relationship. So it is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. You don’t meet the practitioner or the medical doctor that day and then expect them to be a great referral source. It’s a relationship and over years, um, I’ve been in practice since 2000 over years, you start to develop relationships where these physicians become your champion, where they send a lot of patients to you. Um, and that could take time. But if you’re in practice today, think of yourself three years from now, what do you want? What kind of referrals do you want? And think of in three years, I want that relationship with that MD. So today start that relationship knowing that you’re going to date, you’re going to develop a relationship and over time it’s going to become a healthy relationship.

So I’m sending him a letter to the doctor. I find very beneficial and it’s good medical, um, um, medical care on your part as well. So, um, when you see a patient, send them a thank you letter for that referral. Now here’s a trick for you. Um, send them the thank you letter, even if they didn’t refer the patient to you. So when you do your initial, um, if you don’t collect it on the document, ask the patient who their primary care physician is. And so when you send a letter, um, say thank you for referring such a patient, you’re almost programming them like, oh yeah, I refer them. You know, but even if they haven’t and just let them know, you have this patient and mutual care, and I’ll share a letter that we sent to a doctor here in a moment. So I will give you a little template here that we use that you can now use.

So send them a, you know, what, they’ve come in for what your plan is, and that you’ll send them some progress report. So it’s good to send them kind of your initial findings and your treatment plan, send a revaluation, let them know, definitely refer back to the MD as well for their followup and confidently communicate with them. When you have questions or suggestions, don’t put them on a pedestal, but don’t have counterwill or make them your enemy and fight with them. Either your colleagues working mutually for this patient’s benefit. So own what you know, um, but also read the room and know who you’re talking to as well. And it’s really good medicine to have this integration. So here’s an example of a letter. I apologize, the presentation, put the bullet points there. You don’t need the bullet points, but I took out some names and some information just to preserve confidentiality, but here’s a letter to whom it may concern.

Um, Mr. X presented to our clinic AquaBounty wellness center on Wednesday, August 23rd for pain in his left knee, which he shared with related to osteoarthritis. I’m using a technique. Our clinic calls, laser acupuncture, which utilizes a class three B medical grade, low-level laser therapy in combination with electrical acupuncture. And skeeted, don’t inundate them with too much information, keep her letter short. And also it’s a good thing to remind you, at least in Canada, that when a medical doctor receives a correspondence regarding a patient, um, they’re technically supposed to put it in the file as well. So again, reminds them when they look at their file, who you are in your involvement. I give a brief education of what laser is. So education here, low-level laser therapy has been shown to relieve pain associated with main diseases and syndromes and cleaning, osteoarthritis. It implements red and infrared light to decrease pro-inflammatory cytokines promotes blood circulation and promotes tissue regeneration by increasing mitochondria ATP production through fighter, by my white fire till biomodulation.

And then I give them a two links to go to my website. If they’re really want to learn more, some doctors are going to want to know about this, and they’re going to look it up. I’ve had doctors call me after to go for lunch. Cause he wanted to know more about what we were doing. Cause they had a lot of patients that they have been trying to help with drugs, drugs, or surgery, and they still have not found relief. So they they’re looking for anything to help these patients. Um, my Mr. Patient, uh, so put your patient’s name, your Mr. Patient’s name. So whoever their name is, has received a treatment. So in this letter, just so you know, I was slow. I didn’t send it when they first came in, patient came in and I did not send the letter, but I sent it, you know, I said to the progress reports.

So sometimes you get behind. So I sent them this letter anyhow, um, after they’d been seen with seen by me for a couple of weeks, they received eight treatments, um, since August 23rd and has experienced noticeable improvement in pain reduction by his third session. So I’m showing the progress and how good this was after three treatments, they already have no pain. His current pain level is not existent. Even with strenuous activity. We have not noticed any significant reduction in swelling. So he was quite swollen, but we hadn’t seen much change in that over the past three weeks. And then I let him know. My plan is to continue to offer one or two weekly treatments until he has results from his schedule. X-ray October 2nd. Do you have any questions about our mutual care of this patient? Or if you want to communicate with me about any aspect of his care, please feel free to contact me in health. And then you give your email and name. If you’re sending it by mail, which I recommend, um, I’d say both mail and email, but put your business card in if you send it by mail.

So just remembering being successful as not doing extraordinary things, the, um, thinking about the patient centered care, sending them a check in email, writing a letter to your doctor at best, not extraordinary, right? But being successful is simply doing ordinary things extraordinary. Well, and so you want to make it as a habit and just think for the next three years, if every patient you saw, you sent in a check, an email and you sent a letter to their primary care physician, I’m just curious how many extra referrals you’ll get because the patients now know you care. And the doctors now know you exist.

Do keep in mind. It takes 20 years to become an overnight success. Really the point here is to manage your expectations and that this is a marathon, not a sprint I’m when I’ve coached my colleagues often, they’ll say I did what you said and it didn’t work. And just so you know, this response, I did what you said, didn’t work is one week after I told them what they could do. So if you’re telling me did work after a week, you’ve missed the message on building a relationship and it takes 20 years to be an overnight success. It’s a marathon, not a sprint and just create this habit and do this over time. And then after six months rafter, you’re telling me how it’s going, but definitely not after a week.

So keep this in mind. There’s two types of human suffering. This is by Jim Rowan, a nice quote. Um, look at the image on the left. You can see the fit gentleman inside this obese body drinking soda, water, it’s the pain of regret or the pain of discipline. So either way, there’s going to be some type of pain or effort. So the pain of regret or the pain of discipline. So I’m inviting you to go for the pain of discipline and write these emails. Um, I talk about what we just shared in my book as many other and many other, um, what I consider a key points in mindset and activities to help you build a successful practice. Remember as a practitioner acupuncture, you’re a business, whether you like it or not. Um, small businesses, acupuncturist are always at risk of failing because we’re small.

Just the nature of us being small businesses, lacking resources and money or people to do everything that needs to be done, puts us at risk of not succeeding and then add to it that many of us are in denial that we’re in business or don’t want to learn about business puts us even at greater risk. And so to be an effective healer, you need to have the union balance. You need to know your medicine. So constantly work on your clinical. And we do this well. We’re always putting our continued education forward and a priority. I know this from healthy seminars, seeing how many people are constantly learning. And then you have to also the other side, the young, you have to also give attention to the business side of it. And if you didn’t young or out of balance, you have disease or they separate and there’s death.

You go out of business. And so you can’t ignore the business out of your practice. And if you’re not in practice because your business is failing, unfortunately, then you’re not able to heal your community. And it’s important more than now than ever to have practitioners like you available to heal your community. So continue your healthy seminar studying on the medicine side. And I want to remind you just also study the business side so you can stay in business, have a busy practice, feel fulfilled, um, healing your communities. And if you’re interested in my book, um, there’s free shipping this month go to missing the point. book.com, make sure books in the URL. Otherwise it will go to a different website missing the point book.com. You can order a copy and have free shipping this month. And if you want to contact me, um, you can either go to healthy seminars.com.

That’s where we offer online continuing education. And I get a copy of those emails on my own, a little website called Lorne brown.com, where I interview people on conscious talks and I share, but conferences I may be involved in. So you can check me out there. There’s the website for my book, missing the missing the point book.com. And my clinic is AQI balanced.ca um, stay tuned to future AAC webinars with me. I’ll be interviewing more, um, colleagues over the, over the months and years. And I want to let you know that next week our colleague and our friend Jeffrey Grossman is going to be on to the point for this AAC webinar series. Thank you very much.

Our topic today is growth hiring and culture setting your clinic apart. So everyone wants to work for you today. I’m very happy to announce that I got two other experts joining me in our expert panel today that we each will be sharing ideas on growth, hiring and culture fit.

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hello. And I want to welcome you to the AAC To The Point my name’s Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. I’m a CPA, a chartered accountant, and I’m also the author of Missing the Point- Why Acupuncturists Fail and What They Need To Know To Succeed. Our topic today is growth hiring and culture setting your clinic apart. So everyone wants to work for you today. I’m very happy to announce that I got two other experts joining me in our expert panel today that we each will be sharing ideas on growth, hiring and culture fit. And we got Mark Sklar and Aimee Raupp. let me give a little bit of a brief introduction here. Each of ’em each of our presenters, our experts today. So mark, um, he’s known as a fertility expert, um, and he has over 18 years in clinical practice, helping couples get pregnant.

Um, he’s president of the American board orient to reproductive medicine and a founder clinical director of a very successful functional medicine, Chinese medicine practice in San Diego, where he sees several hundred patients a week. He’s developed a whole online platform where he does coaching and seeing patients also, um, around the world and his YouTube channel has well over a thousand subscribers already. So welcome our Sklar to our panel. We also have Aimee Raupp with us today. She’s known as a women’s health and wellness expert and just selling author. So published a couple of books, body belief, yes, you can get pregnant and chill out and get healthy. Um, she has been in private practice for over 16 years. She’s a licensed acupuncturist, herbalists in the New York area and she has two practices with several associates. I should mention. Mark also has several, several associates, which is why there are my expert panel today.

And Aimee has appeared on the view and has also been featured in goop glamour shape alert and the red book and has received endorsements from some people you may know, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Christine Northrup, um, Ariana Huffington and Gabby Bernstein, as well as she received endorsements from me and mark as well. I don’t know for there on this graph, so we can draw in a little bit of just an overview of growth hiring culture. So I’m going to bring up, uh, a presentation and then I’m going to have mark join us for a little bit on what he’s going to share on growth hiring culture. And then Aimee is going to take us home the anchor of our panel, and she’s going to talk a lot more about, um, cultural fit. Um, so let’s get this started and talk about growth, hiring and culture fit.

So really to have, um, a busy practice, it requires continuous referrals. And in this case, referrals come from having informed admin staff, um, from having, um, informed patients, which we create. And then, um, you being an, a formed TCM practitioner. If you stay to the end, um, we’ll share some key points and where we can go into more detail, cause I’m going to do a very superficial, but big overview for you guys today. Let’s focus on the really valuable front staff. So they’re your first, uh, contact for your patient. So they make your first impression. These are the people that are answering the phones and greeting your patients and exiting when, um, uh, saying goodbye when the exit and making sure if they need to be back in your clinic for that followup appointment. And so without this valuable front staff, um, this alone compare paralyze your practice, if they’re not the right person, because they are your first impression, your staff need to be able to instill the confidence in your patients, meaning they have to know, they have to be able to communicate to the patients that you, the practitioner are the right choice.

And so in my practice of Vancouver, acupoints wellness central, we have several associates been in practice role since two year, 2000. You can do the math there for awhile. We train our admin staff to be as knowledgeable as practitioners. So basically they become like practitioners. They can’t legally treat, and this allows them to become better advocates for the medicine and also, um, to be able to communicate well with the patients and ask for answer a lot of those questions. Um, it may be beneficial to treat your staff, your admin staff, and even their family members, because if they have a positive experience, um, then they’re going to become better advocates of your medicine as well. In the hiring process, often people say, do you have benefits? Do you offer medical benefits? And your answer actually can be, yes, I know the default always is no.

And I hear some of the reasoning, um, you know, we’re small practices. We don’t have that budget for, um, external or medical benefits, but you do actually offer medical benefits. It’s the medicine you practice. So if you’re doing, um, practicing as an acupuncturist or functional medicine practitioner, um, your staff actually be probably quite happy to receive a free acupuncture from you and a discount on, on supplements, um, and free or discounted testing services that you offer. And you may want to extend that to their family as well. So you do actually offer benefits and a lot of the people that take this admin position, the salary that it’s based on often, they can’t afford your services. So even more of a value added for them wanting to join your practice. My biggest mistake was, um, in this cultural fit ideas, I’ve heard some great admin staff, but I hired admin staff that had fear of needles.

It wasn’t a question I had asked. And so, um, it was only when a patient, um, would ask if you had, have you had acupuncture before, or they’re trying to communicate the acupuncture. You could see it in their face. That there’s fear. They didn’t want it. And so that is one of the, if you’re gonna take anything away today, when you’re hiring your front end staff, you should ask the following question. Have you ever had acupuncture before and watch their face? And they’d say yes. And it’s a very uncomfortable phase. They’re probably not going to be a good fit for you. And if they smile and tell you, they love it. That’s excellent. If they say they’ve never had acupuncture, the up question is, would you like to receive acupuncture? Do you have an interest and follow that instinctual facial response. I’m telling you that if they have a fear of needles, if they don’t want acupuncture, you don’t want them being your first impression, your front end staff take it from me. I learned this the hard way with integrity. They can’t tell patients that acupuncture is for them. So let’s talk about hiring for cultural fit. And first of all, let’s talk about the common pitfalls, um, for when you hire for cultural fit.

So some of the common pitfalls are hiring nice people. I’ve done this so often, right? Looking people. I think I get along with this person, this person seems nice, but they don’t have the skillset. So don’t do that. I’ve done that. Not very good for your front end. They do actually have to do the job besides you liking them, being a fit for your practice. They must have the skill. Um, you gotta be able to clearly set out the role and the requirements of the job. So this is your job as the leader, as the owner, the owner of the clinic, um, and another pitfall is, um, keeping them on board. Um, and they’re not the right fit. And so one of my colleagues used to say, you gotta be able to pull it off like a bandaid. If you have to let somebody go. So when you notice those red flags and those first few weeks of hiring somebody, don’t ignore them. And they think it’s better to pay attention to those red flags and let go of the people quickly. If they’re not the right fit, it’s much harder to do it later than it is at the beginning. Um, you know, not delegating properly, um, and, um, not giving them proper feedback. So that’s part of that training.

So we want to hire for the right cultural fit. Um, you know, we used to hire based on resume alone, um, and who we could afford, that was an epic fail. So you really want, um, the, uh, hire for the cultural fit and make sure you know, what your culture is. So I have on this slide, what my Acumatica’s culture culture is, and it’s clear to know what yours is, and then you’re looking for that fit that they share the vision, the values that you do, and having several touch points is key for this. And I have a link there to the community library@healthyseminars.com. Um, I have a much, uh, comprehensive talk on how to hire for culture fit and how to go through the process of hiring. So you can check more out there.

And then this just outlined some of the processes that I mentioned, that’s in that community library that I’m not going to go over here. And also myself, Marc and Aimee in our coaching and mentorship program that we offer for you guys, we go into crazy amount of detail and give you documents on how to do this as well in our rise, transform impact program. And again, these are some of the steps to pay attention to. Uh, and as I mentioned, this is the rise transform impact. So I’m just going to skip this because I want to just do a breath today. So that’s at healthy seminars.com for slash RTI, where myself, Marc and Aimee are going to be putting out some more of these free little clips for you to enjoy. And then there’s also much more that we do in our mentorship program. The real question you want to ask yourself then, because so many of my, um, the people that I’ve coached and talked to, um, they’re running their man, they’re doing their front staff job and really think of it this way.

This is really how you can clarify it. Did your school train you to treat patients or be a receptionist? What is your training and where does your passion lie? Is it in treating patients or doing admin tasks, even if you’re excellent at the men task, where’s your passion. And I think for the majority of you that invested time and money into Chinese medicine and functional medicine programs, I think your passion is in treating patients, not doing the men’s side. And I’ll share with you that if you have a good admin person, you can actually see more people help more people heal because less time answering phones, scheduling, collecting money means more time that you can be, um, taking care of your patients.

Let’s talk about our associates, be clear that this is not passive income. Um, you need to bring value to your associates, but it does add or increase your income generating potential. And it gives you some flexibility with time as well. Also know that you’re changing your job role, your, your leadership role, you’re going from being the practitioner to now managing people. And so if you don’t like managing people, um, then you want to hire and you want to have associates. You may need to hire an office manager to help manage your staff because there’s the entrepreneur, there’s the manager. And then there’s take technician. And we all love being the technician being that practitioner. But once you hire on staff and associates, you now have that managerial role and all that can take away from the entrepreneurial role, the vision of the growth of your clinic.

And so once you hire associates, you now have to manage people. So please know that your role is changing. Common question that Marc and Aimee and I get is, you know, I get staff. So how do I keep them from like leaving me and compete? Um, I will let you know that the non-compete agreement is hard to enforce. And there are other ways that we do in our mentorship program where you can set up systems. So they want to stay with you. And if they leave you, you won’t be resentful. Won’t be costly as well. So there are ways to do this that has integrity, that your associates feel great about. And you feel great about, um, there is, uh, a quote by Richard Branson that says the following train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough. So they don’t. And so a lot of this is about, um, how to train your staff.

So, um, they are great and they couldn’t leave you, but treat them really well. And this is what we go through more in our program. Um, so they don’t want to leave you. This is key, and we’ll also give you our non-compete, um, contracts. So all the things that we have put into our agreements and contracts. So the key here though, is to invest in your people. And there’s a meme going around saying, I’m the CEO and the CFO are having this conversation. What happens if we invest in our staff and our people, our associates, and they leave us. And the response from the CFO is, well, what happens if we don’t invest in our staff, we don’t train them and they stay in our company. And so you don’t want uneducated and untrained people in your company. Um, they will, they will bury you, um, in David Pink’s book dry, um, he talks about what motivates professionals and you are professionals, if you are practicing medicine, and this is that whole motto treat them well, may, will stay, but basically the factors that lead to a better performance and personal satisfaction out of the following, having autonomy.

So you want to have the sense that you, you are in control. You don’t want to feel controlled. So autonomy is important. So when you have associates, you don’t want to have your thumb on them, but it’s also not a free for all, but they got to have autonomy to be happy, to want to stay with you. Um, second one is mastery, um, to be able to reach for their potential to constantly have growth. Well, if you’re a practicing medicine, you never arrived that, you know, enough, as we know, there’s always opportunity to learn and grow in, uh, in your medicine. Um, so if you don’t have that mastery, like your drip looking envelopes, then that can become very boring. And it’s hard to stay in that job. But again, remembering that in Chinese medicine, that is not the case, having purpose, feeling like feeling what you do matters that has value.

Um, this is important. And then the last one is recognition. Um, your staff have to feel appreciated, have to feel valued. This is where I have failed early in my career. When I hired admin staff and I, our associates, I’m a self motivator. I’m doing all this great work for myself, investing myself, but I didn’t make time to talk or connect to my associates. And they felt not appreciated, not valued. So I did lose some associates in the early days and I adored them and I loved them and I did value them, but I didn’t communicate it to them. And so regular, um, connecting with your staff is key because if they don’t feel appreciated, this is another thing in the research that shows that people won’t leave. If they don’t feel valued or appreciated by you in his book, he shares that you can pay people fair market value, or even 10% below fair market value.

And if they have autonomy mastery, purpose, and recognition, they will stay the same thing as you pay them way over from market value. So the monies is better than they could ever imagine, but they don’t have autonomy mastery, purpose recognition. They’ll still leave you. So money’s the, uh, it’s not the driving force for people to stay. So, um, I do want to let you know that there’s a lot of talk about the renumeration. So what do I do? Is it a salary? Is that hourly? Um, do I pay, do they pay rent? How do we do this? Right. Um, how many rooms do we give them? So really these things come down to how you’re going to set up your clinic, because how you pay them, how many rooms they get is going to be based on a what’s your clinics, Val, um, um, goal and mission, meaning that acupoints minor all employees, because we’re a full on team.

Like we are a unit, that’s one of the things we have. So they’re all employees and how you do this really is what’s the value you’re creating. So there is no right way to do this, but there is a right way for your clinic and your vision, which myself and marketing, when you go into more detail in our programs. And so I will share with you that these are some of the ways that people do it. The key point here is what’s the value you’re bringing to your associates and what value they’re bringing to the clinic. And that’s how you determine the hourly, the salary, whether it’s commission rent, et cetera. So I’m going to bring on our experts. I just want to let you know that we do run a mentorship program, a coaching program, the three of us, um, is called rise, transform, and impact. And, um, if you want information on that or sign up for some more of our three little chats, um, then go to healthy seminars.com for slash RTI. I would like to bring on, um, mark now. And mark, I would like you to share a little bit about how we can do this, um, the growth and the hiring, the culture fit so we can grow our practices and people set ourselves apart. So people want to, um, want to work with us.

Absolutely. Well, first and foremost, thank you, Lorne, for, uh, inviting me to be part of this. And, um, you know, I think this is such an important topic for all of us as business owners, for the very fact that you mentioned in your slides, that, you know, we are not taught these things when we are in school, right. We’re taught to be clinicians and doctors. We’re not taught to be entrepreneurs or business owners. So if that’s the direction we want to go, then we need to take a step back and evaluate things a little bit differently. And in the first place that we need to start to evaluate and really consciously think about is growth. You know, where do we want our business to go? Where do you want to take your business? And, and when do you want it to get there? And so I think it’s easier to break this down into five-year chunks.

I mean, certainly if you want to look beyond that to have this really big, big goal, that’s fine. But I always like for all of you business owners to then say to yourself, where do I want my business to be in five years time? And this sets the stage for how those five years are going to go for you. So once you decide how you want the next five years to go, like what you’re trying to accomplish in those five years, maybe you want to have multiple clinics. Maybe you just want to grow your one clinic to have, uh, you know, 10 providers. Maybe you want to have an, uh, brick and mortar and you’ll have an online presence as well, whatever it is, that’s in your dreams, wherever you want to take your, your business, your little baby. I want you to set that intention consciously of where you want that to be in five years and growth doesn’t happen just by setting that intention.

Although that’s the first step it has to happen in baby steps, but we need to break down those baby steps based on that big goal. So we’re going to work backwards, right? So if, if in five years we want to, uh, have our brick and mortar and an online presence, then what do we need to accomplish in those five years to get there? And how does that need to be broken down? So then what you’re going to do is you’re going to set out for yourself to maximum of three goals annually that you’re trying to achieve. And the easiest way to do that is to say to yourself, okay, well, if I want to achieve that in five years, what do I need to do this year to take me closer to that five-year goal. Again, it, it, we all have our to-do lists and those to-do lists can be overwhelming and daunting.

But if we break down that to-do list into two or three annual goals, then that’s much more achievable. And then we’re going to take those two to three annual goals, and we’re going to break those down into quarterly. What do you need to do quarterly? And then what do you need to do monthly? And that’s how you’re going to make your weekly and daily to do list to accomplish all that. Now, if you can just accomplish one or two things on that checklist every day, if you can just check off one or two things every day on that checklist, you will be moving very quickly, although it might not feel that way, but you will be moving very quickly towards that bigger goal that you’re, that you had set for yourself. And that’s really how we’re going to achieve our overall growth for the business is setting that five-year goal, breaking that down into annual goals, and then breaking that down into bite sized chunks that you can accomplish on a daily and weekly basis.

And if you haven’t done this, I really want to encourage you all to go ahead and do this set aside with time, uh, this weekend to consciously make a choice for where you want to be in five years, and then start to break that down for yourselves. It feels really good to cross off those things on the list you feel accomplished, you feel like you’re moving closer to your goal and you get there much faster than you would think. But again, it happens with baby steps and those baby steps start to jump and start to look like big jumps and leaps, which is how I’ve been able to accomplish all the goals that I’ve had. And I know that Aimee and Lorne also do something similar, which is why I’m talking about that part of baby steps. And part of growth is also hiring. So, you know, when you’re, you’re in your clinics, you’re, you’re in your business, whether it’s virtual or brick and mortar, at some point, you’re going to come to a point where you need to hire staff.

And I know for many of us, our first goal is when do we get to hire that associate? That’s going to work under us. That’s going to, um, you know, start to work with, uh, patients who are coming to see you. Well, I would ask you all to, uh, to question that and maybe even put hiring associates on the back burner. I believe that we all do need to hire for growth and to achieve the goals that we have, but we need to start by hiring managers. And I think managers are going to allow you as an entrepreneur, as a business owner owner, and as a doctor to accomplish much more because as Lorne had mentioned, you know, we, we, weren’t trained to be receptionists and to run a practice. So shedding those things and giving yourself the ability to focus in on one treating and two, being an entrepreneur to have to think clearly to brainstorm and to create for your business are going to be the two most productive ways that you can take your business further and that you can grow.

So instead of hiring associates, first, I want you to hire two specific managers. One is an office manager who’s going to help you run the day to day running of the business, who can also serve as a front desk reception initially, who can also help you, uh, facilitate all the admin stuff while you are dealing with the clinical side of things. And then the other person that I want you to hire in terms of a manager is, uh, a social media manager or a marketing manager. Those are the two most important pieces and hires that you’re going to make because they’re going to free up your time. And it doesn’t mean that you lose control of these things, cause you’re still have your overall vision driving those. You’re still meeting with those managers to make sure that they’re on point and that they are facilitating your overall goal and vision, and that you’re still on the same page and that they’re running the business the way you want them to, but you are giving up the day-to-day management of the minutia and the detail of those tasks, which again, will free up a lot of your time and energy and resources, um, and get your mind thinking more about growth and clinic, which is where it should be versus running the day to day business.

If your mind stays on the day to day business, you’re going to have a really difficult time getting out of that and growing to where you want to be. And then part of any growth and hiring is culture. And I know that Aimee’s going to go into this a little bit more, but I have two points that I want to mention when it comes to culture. The first one is that anyone you hire to bring on has to believe in you. They have to believe in you as an individual. They have to believe in the medicine that you are providing. And they have to believe in the mission, the goal, the vision of where you want the business and the practice to go. So part of the questioning, um, that Lorne had discussed is going to be really valuable in hiring someone who believes in what you’re doing, where you want to go and how you’re trying to support, uh, patients.

And then the second part of hiring and growth is going to be trust that obviously you have to trust in them to facilitate what, what you’re trying to achieve, but they have to trust in you, right? They have to trust that you have their best intention at heart that, and they’ll have to, and they have to trust in you that you have your patient’s best intention at heart. And if those two things are, uh, are accomplished, then you can grow. You can achieve whatever it is that your heart desires, as long as you have the right path, the right support and the right culture in place to achieve that.

Thank you, mark. And, uh, two things I want to mention it, cause it comes up to me is that I can’t afford to hire an office manager. I will share with you that 13 years into practice. I burnt out and out of desperation. I decided to hire an office manager. And in my mind I was like, I’m going to make this much less this year because I’m paying an office manager. Now I didn’t choose to do it proactively, like is suggesting I was forced to do it because of my health. I burnt out guess what happened? So I hired this office manager, pay her salary, the clinic grew and paid her salary and was even more profitable because it freed up my energy to do what I do well, and she runs the clinic better than I could. So I did bring that in. If you’re saying, how am I going to do this?

I was prepared to make less. And sometimes it’s three steps backwards, 10 steps forward. I invite you not to have to burn out to find that out, to have to our office manager. I suggest you do it in advance, mark. Great points. Thank you very much. I’m looking for looking forward to continuing our work together and RTI you just a great communicator and you’ve shown it and I’m glad you’re teaching it. All right. Next up is I consider Aimee like a celebrity cause she’s been on all these cool TV shows and magazines. Um, um, and she’s our anchor today, Emmy. Um, Aimee, can you please talk a little bit about, um, cultural fit and, and fitting in? I know you have a lot to say on this.

Well, and I think what the point you just made about, um, you hired the office manager when you burnt out is, was my experience with hiring an associate? Um, I was, my practice was so busy and I was doing everything myself as we all do. And it was probably seen about 60 patients a week. I did have an assistant who was an acupuncture student. Um, but my, the same time my father had gotten diagnosed with a pretty aggressive cancer and was not doing well. And they were in California. I was in New York and I wanted to start getting there and spending more time, but I didn’t really have any backup. I didn’t have any help. And then, you know, a crisis happened, I actually had to get there and I was cornered into hiring an associate and it worked out she’s still with me, uh, 12 years later.

Uh, but it was, it’s an experience that I don’t think you want to put yourself in. You want to be set up to, um, hire and have your people aligned up. Who’s going to be there to support you. Who knows the team of the team, they, the brand’s mission and who can represent you. Right. I was really fortunate that who came in and literally saved me and saw my patients and basically helped me generate continuing to generate money so I could pay my rent and be with my family, um, worked out and she’s not just an acupuncture associated of mine for the last 12 years, but she’s also one of my lead fertility coaches at this point in my online business. And I think for all of us, it’s it is that I was never in that position where I felt like I could give things up.

I needed everything I was taking in. I thought bringing on an associate like similar to Lorne’s perspective with hiring, um, admin was gonna cut my income. And the interesting thing was, I think I missed 30% of my work days that year that I brought on my first associate and my income went up by 30%. And, and she also, I also provided enough income for her that she could quit her second job. And it was, it was a tremendous learning experience for me. And I was really, you know, tends to be how I do things is I can get thrown in. And then I kind of learn after the fact, but, um, from that experience and really every big growth point I’ve had moving forward from that point on was an understanding in what I like to call synergy, right? So my, my team synergy, my personal synergy, my business synergy.

And I think that is, you know, mark made some really good points about growth and the brand and the mission and trust, and that all has to be there in order for us to experience the kind of growth that we want and deserve. But it must also start with our own synergy with ourselves. So, and by that, I mean like, what is our alignment with ourselves? What is our alignment with our goals and our mission? And if you hate doing all the admin stuff or writing the blog posts or doing the social media, and then you’re also in the clinic, and then you also have to do the superbills and you, you know, you start to get very spread thin and you’re not aligned with the true purpose. And that alignment is what is key for the growth to happen the way you want it to.

And I think we can often get bogged down in kind of what mark was talking about as well of the day to day to do is, and we’re missing the bigger picture. So for me, as I’ve grown and you know, now I have the luxury of looking back and I didn’t always do everything in the correct order following the right steps. But what I tend to say, what was always true for me was, was the synergy in my alignment with my passion to help and to serve. And so for you to understand that if like coming home to that first, that, okay, is my alignment in check, is my synergy in check and similar to what Lorne learned and what I learned, how am I showing up for me? How am I showing up for my business? How am I protecting my business? How am I protecting my health?

And that is what constitutes, I mean, now I feel like I can step back and say that and see that from my own experience. Um, what constitutes a good leader too, is, is the leading by example piece. But you, you can’t do that if you’re not clear on what the vision is, what the values are, what the goals are, and you need your own checks and balances to come home to on, I think a weekly, even a daily basis, what is, what is my mission for today? What is my purpose for today? And what are the things that I need to do to grow my business? I know in the beginning for me, uh, you know, I had an assistant who was an acupuncture student, who is now my other associate. She’s been with me as well for over a decade. And, um, and then I was cornered into hiring an associate.

And then I had assistants over the years. And then as my other parts of my business grows, I started to write books. I started to have there wasn’t so much of an online presence, um, with my first book coming out. But as the years went on, then there was Facebook and there was social media and everybody was writing blogs. And I did not like all of that organization. And so I had to, again, I actually hired someone more of like a coach type situation, a business coach who helped me align and get clear what, you know, similar to what mark is saying, what, what is, what is the vision, um, where do I want to see my business in five years? What are the things I love to do? What are the things I hate to do? What are the things I need to take off my plate so that I can achieve these goals and these desires.

And it wasn’t until I was able to do that and prioritize that. And it was an expense, but it really helped streamline my business, move things forward. And I could start to put things into their containers. And that’s what really started to allow more growth for me. But it was, it was rooted in the synergy that I had with myself first, the alignment with my goals, my visions, and then now, as my team has grown, you know, I now have a chief of operations and she basically, as a Jack of all trades, she does social media. She helps with my newsletters. She does all the things that I don’t really love to do. I like to go on video and talk and be live. So I’ve gotten very clear about what I like and I like to be in the clinic. And I like to coach, I like to work with clients.

I like that one-on-one time. Right. Everybody is going to figure out what, what they like and what’s their special split space to be in, in their business. And then I think you, you think about hiring on support and another thing that is, uh, you know, mark and Lorne both touched upon is everyone who’s ever worked for me actually started as a patient HIPAA compliant or not. I don’t really know don’t really care cause it’s worked out for me. Um, and they believe in the medicine. They believe in me. They trust me, they get me, they understand my message. Whenever I’ve written a book and had a big book launch. If I had a PR campaign, a public relations campaign, I always made the head of a campaign, become a patient because no one could understand me unless they were a patient of mine. That’s really what I started to see.

And again, that comes back to the synergy cause they saw me in my element. And so, um, for you to think about that too, of like what lights me up, what is my alignment? And then how can I convey that? And that’s so much a part of what you’re conveying as you’re growing your business as you’re growing your brand. Um, and also as you’re hiring, because then once you start to have this team, um, and, and Lorne touched upon it too, is a, without your synergy and alignment, the business doesn’t have that strong center, right? And it’s, it’s impossible to grow if you are wishy-washy anywhere in that sense of alignment and synergy, it can always change and adjust. But what are the, what are the core principles of, of your business? And then also you need from there, these clearly defined goals and expectations of your team, whether they’re associates, whether it’s your front, front desk person, your acupuncture, assistant your head of social media, what, what are the pillars of the business?

What are the core mission statements? What is the synergy and the alignment, and are we all on the same page? Are we speaking the same voice? And I find that the, you know, critical number one way to get there is you have to own it yourself. You have to lead by example, you have to believe in the practice that you are doing. You need a team that also believes in that practice and believes in you and you need regular meetings with your team. This was something I greatly resisted. I never was in the corporate setting. I always, um, laughed at the idea of having a meeting about a meeting. It would just drive me insane. Like I was like, this is just the most inefficient use of time ever. And I don’t want to have meetings about meetings. Like I will never be that person.

And I’ve realized I need meetings about meetings because it’s actually what keeps my team together. And I had a recent situation where my virtual assistant she’s my admin. She basically runs everything from a virtual perspective with clinic and online. She couldn’t make our regular team calls because of a, pre-pub another commitment and her internship. And I started to see the team fall apart. There started to be miscommunications. There started to be just, there was the synergy was disappearing. And so I had to get her on the phone and we talked it through and I was like, well, we have to find a time because this there’s going to be a breakdown in the system. We’re a small team. We have to find time every single week that everybody is on a video call and we’re hearing each other’s voices. We’re making sure that we’re, we’re on the same page, that synergy, we have to come back home and remember, what is our mission?

What is, what is our purpose here? What are our goals? Right. We have our monthly goals. We have our quarterly goals from a financial perspective, from a business growth perspective and also from a service perspective. And so without that convening on a regular basis weekly, you’ll start to see things get broken up and your team will lose its it’s synergy. And without that synergy, it’s, it’s very challenging for the growth to reach the next level. So to me, it’s about, you have to come back home to you and your own personal synergy, getting very clear, similar to what mark said about your goals, your plan coming back home to that as often as you can. And then when you have your team, it’s the same thing. I have weekly meetings with each of my associates where we go over cases, we’re talking Chinese medicine constantly, even though we’re both, you know, we’re all seasoned practitioners at this point.

We’re just, what’s our goal. What’s our mission talking the same talk, feeling, you know, understanding the case in the same ways. Super important. I do that with my team as well with my chief of operations and my assistant. And so, and then we also have a broader group call once a month with everybody and again for synergy. And so we can all see and hear and understand each other, have compassion for each other, know that our goals are aligned and that’s what really helps support that growth in that culture. And, um, you know, I don’t, I, at this point haven’t had, um, people leave the team because they feel very heard. They feel very purposeful. They feel a part of something and they’re, they’re seeing the results. So to really think about that when, um, in your growth vision of how aligned are you and, um, what is, what is your synergy that you’re bringing to your mission to your business? And then as your team grows to that, you have constant check-ins around that synergy.

Thank you, Aimee. And I’ll share with you guys that on the RTI page, healthy seminars.com/rti, um, sign up because we’re going to be offering some three little short webinars like this, where we’re going to go into more detail about hiring associates and staff and other things about growing your practice, because we’re in this, uh, when we talk about our practices and growth, we’re in this because we want to help you, our communities, we do this because we love it. And, um, and that’s, that’s the focus and that’s why we want to grow because, uh, in life we can’t just stay still that stagnant. You’re either shrinking or expanding. And so let’s expand and help heal our communities again, Marc and Aimee, thank you very much, uh, for participating in having you as my experts and enjoy doing the coaching and mentorship with you guys. And again, I want to thank the AAC to the point, um, for inviting me to offer these, uh, practice management, uh, seminars and webinars, and, uh, check in for next week. Um, cause we have another special guest on the AAC To The Point. So tune in and listen to that webinar as well.

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