Hello. Hello and welcome. Thank you once again to the American Acupuncture Council for inviting me back for one of their To The Point marketing trainings. So I really appreciate coming back here, sharing some insights and wisdom to help guide you towards building a more profitable, more successful practice.

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I understand that many practitioners really struggle with marketing and I don’t blame you. You were never really given the right tools on how to really grow your practice and market your business. And today I’m going to share with you four critical questions to help develop your marketing mindset now and into 2021. And these aren’t about strategies today. It’s not about specific protocols that you could or should be using in your practice. This is just to help you shift your mindset for success for now and into the future. So once again, thank you AAC for inviting me.

My name is Jeffrey Grossman. I am an acupuncturist here in Washington state. I started practice in 1998 and since then I’ve created acupuncture. Media works, where we make marketing tools for acupuncturists. We also do websites for acupuncturists as well at Accu perfect websites. So I’ve been boots on the ground in the industry, both being in practice and also being a, running a business and talking to many, many practitioners over the years. So, um, I’m grateful to be able to be here to dispense, you know, even a simple Pearl of wisdom that you can walk away with that can help shift your mindset and shift the way you grow your practice. So, um, these four critical questions are aimed to help, uh, develop your marketing mindset. And these are things that you could be asking yourself all year long to prepare for greater success. But before I move on, I want to remind you of something that’s very important.

Okay. Here’s what that is. We change lives. Okay. So I want you to think about that for a second. As an acupuncturist, you signed up to change lives every single day in your practice. You’re out there changing lives. We are an incredible resource. We’re natural healers. We know all about immunity. We know all about natural remedies. We know how to transform illness into vitality, reprieve, good health through good, free flowing, balanced cheat. And this medicine is powerful. People need you, right? And they need what you’re offering. And they’re looking for advice and they need your help. They need your services. But what they read, I really need is they really need to know that you exist and what’s in it for them. And by them knowing that you exist, you’ve got to get out there and market your practice. Most practitioners I’ve been in contact with really struggled in their business, especially now after things that we’ve been going through.

And there’s a lot of struggle out there in the world. And many practitioners aren’t even able to financially meet, ends meet. But the thing is marketing is one of those things that you really need to be employing in your practice as a regular thing weekly, you need to be tapping into that. So when patients, um, you know, most people out there don’t even know that you exist, let alone that you can help them with just about every element under the sun. But I want to help you change that. I want help position you as the go to acupuncturist in your community. And to do that, you need to understand three fundamental things about what you do. Okay? Fundamental thing. Number one, you wear the hat of a healer and you do that so well with your point, prescription, your diagnosis and your tongue diagnosis and your differential diagnosis and all of that beautiful stuff that you do as a healer.

You’ve got that fundamental thing. Number two, you wear the hat of an entrepreneur. Yes, you are an entrepreneur. You are a business person. You that’s what you do by, by the shared nature of the fact that you are in private practice. You’re an entrepreneur and you’re running a business. So kudos to you for being an entrepreneur and fundamental thing. Number three, yeah. Is that you wear the hat of a superhero in your community because you do your superhero, you change lives, right. Superheroes, what do they do? They help people change their lives for the better. And that’s exactly what you do. You are the CEO of your business, and I’ll prove that to you in a second. So you take all the duties and the responsibilities that any CEO does. So let’s go ahead and I want to kind of just have you check off a couple things here.

I’m gonna go down a little list and let me know which one of these things or all of these things that check off for you. Um, and you know, Mark them out, down on the piece of paper with each one that pertains to you, right? So are you responsible for leading your business and making major decisions for it? Check that off. If you do, are you the figurehead of your business when communicating with government entities or getting your license done, or even communicating to the general public check, do you lead the development of your business, businesses, longterm and short term strategies? I would assume you do. Do you manage overall operations and make major decisions affecting your business? Will likely do you manage your businesses, resources and finances. And do you negotiate or approve agreements and contracts for your business like with insurance companies? So if you checked off most at at least three or four of these six CEO traits, right then ladies and gentlemen, congratulations, you are an official CEO.

You might not be making sense $250,000 a year, like some CEOs do, but you are running your business, running your company, and you are the spearhead of that. And I know it’s not what you signed up for when you went to acupuncture school, but here’s where you are. You own a business, you make money, you have responsibility. So that’s why I think it’s important with what we have been going through here. Now that we are close to a change of the seasons change of the year. You need to ask yourself these questions that any CEO would be asking themselves. And don’t just ask them once a year, reflect on them, monthly, weekly, and even daily. So my hope for you is that you become prepared, but you start thinking like a CEO that you embrace this new marketing mindset. And of course, change this world.

One person, one needle at a time. Cause you can do that. The goal of marketing is to be, uh, be seen and figure out how to stand out from the crowd. And this is how you build lifelong relationships. This is how you build a stable and strong practice. So here are the four questions that you should be asking yourself to create that CEO mindset. Question, number one, how do I stand out from the noise and get attention? Right? So the old idea of getting attention was look at me. You know, it’s getting out there and you’re, you’re saying out in your shouting and we are bombarded every day by everyone showing up and telling us how awesome they are, right? People are vying for our attention all the time. So much so that we’re experiencing a constant barrage of messages that we’re conditioned to ignore because we’ve been visually bombarded for years, attention does noticed, but it also gets noticed quickly.

And it doesn’t build your practice for the longterm today’s attention that you should be getting is different today. You want to go and their attention by building relationship and nurturing it over time. So how does one get attention and stand out? Good question. So, one thing to do is to let people know that you’re here, right? How can you be remarkable and stand out to people in your community? How can you let people know what it is that you do? What can you do that is uncommon, unusual, and surprising to start building and relationships with prospects and your patients. How can you make people experience that wow, wow. Factor of your clinic and what you offer them. I don’t know. I don’t know what each of you offer and how you can do that, but that is just something to think about. How can you be uncommon, unusual, and create surprise and wow for your patients to build that remarkable relationship?

The other thing that to do is something that you do really well these days is to offer empathy. Okay? And some of us, probably a little too empathic with our patients there, but most businesses don’t seem to care much about you, right? Maybe they have crappy customer service or media, or you might have a mediocre experience at a, at another store or another clinic, but sometimes just caring more than your competitors can be enough. And you already own this, right? Have empathy. You have appreciation, you have compassion. And so probably have a general feeling of, um, well, uh, we’re all in this together. And this is going to get you noticed by your prospects and your patients, empathy and caring and sharing like you do in your practice goals a long way. And then this is what helps stimulate tons of it, referrals and positive reviews.

And the other way to stand out is to realize that standing out from the side, you have noise in your space probably won’t happen overnight, right? But you can use this to your advantage because when many of your competitors get frustrated or bored and move on to other things, because they don’t see any results right away. This is when you persevere, you stay focused, you continue serving your patients with empathy, with empathy and being remarkable and being surprising and really showing up. If you can keep a fresh perspective and stay motivated longer than most of your competition, your voice is going to be eventually heard and you will emerge as that leader in your practice. So the question to you is how do you stand out from the noise and get attention and how will you stand out from the noise and get attention moving forward from this day forward.

I’d love to see your comments in the chat below the video here. Just let me know what, what are you going to do to help stand out and create this wow factor doctor for your patients? Question number two, how do I leverage the season creating marketing campaigns that result in new patients? Great question. So what can you plan now to take you into next month and the months beyond what’s coming up? Are there holidays, are there special events? Are there, um, celebrations are their birthdays, are their births? What can you do now? Project your planning and your marketing in the new season right now you might be tapping into the change of seasons or for fall or winter as an occupant. How can you help that remarkable wow factor or that surprise and share some information and leverage the season to inform your patients about wearing a scarf or tonifying their, their kidney cheek or wearing a horror Maka or special, or, or eating certain foods that are warming and nurturing and things of that nature.

What can you do over the next few months? Right. The other thing to think about too is when you, how do you, what’s your super power, right? What drives you as an acupuncturist now just treating, but educating and teaching. Where do you Excel at? Are you a great teacher? Do you love speaking? Do you love one on one conversations? Do you, are you really good at chigong or tight cheek? Can you teach that? What, what’s your marketing super power. I’d love to find out, put some comments in the chat box. Where do you Excel? I just want to know that about you. I just want to kind of tap into where you guys resonate in that area and through that, how can you tap into that expertise and that experience to, you know, motivate your clinics, educate your prospects, and kind of have this other aspect of growth in your clinic.

So question number two, how can you leverage the season and create marketing campaigns that result in new patients? Okay. Question number three. How do you continue to grow your audience? Okay. And deepen your relationships with them. What are you doing every day? Every week, every month and every quarter to nurture the relationships that you’ve already developed with your patients? Well, there’s a saying out there, I think it’s like called the Sufis effect or something like that. Um, I’m rolling the stone up the Hill to the top of the Hill. Then it rolls back down again and push, push, push, push to the top of the Hill. It goes back down again. And that is the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same results. And a lot of times I see practitioners doing the same marketing again and getting the same results, which are not so good.

And so I guess the question would be is what, you know, one of the things that you have going for you right now, if you’ve been in practice for a year or more, you’ve got a whole database of patients that are in your clinic right now in your folders that might be inactive. Now nurturing the relationships that you have already established is the best place for you to focus your mindset and your attention in growing your practice, because you’ve already built trust. You’re already built likeability and they already know you. So you’ve already spent that time. I mean, energy developing those three factors of relationship building with them. So why not continue to nurture that? Why not continue to tap into that? And instead of going out and spending money on ads or doing some talks fo focus on nurturing the relationship that already exists and continue to grow that audience and deepen those relationships with them.

So what’s in your marketing plan. What kind of content engagement plan will you have? Are you going to be doing any Facebook live on how acupressure can help tonify the immune system or, um, any types of, uh, will you be sharing some recipes on how, um, foods, um, for, for, for healing specific conditions, what kind of engagement plan and marketing plan do you have in place to nurture your patients and your prospects currently? Do you have one? If you don’t have one and you’re struggling, feel free to reach out to me. Uh, you can send me an email at Jeffrey at acupuncture, media works.com and I’d be more than happy to speak with you and try to help you wrap your head around certain ways that you can continue to grow your audience and deepen your relationship with them. And question number four, that being the CEO that you are, you should be asking yourself.

So this is what creative ways can you use content to get clients, okay, what are you good at? And where do you get stuck? Right. So maybe like I said earlier, maybe you’re good at talking or maybe you’re good behind a camera. Maybe you’re good in front of people. Maybe you’re good on one, on one. What kinds of weird things that can you tap into and creative ways to share content with your clients? And, um, you know, especially now that we’re, there’s a lot more tele-health out there, there’s a lot more practitioners that are doing remote sessions. How can you turn that into a benefit for your practice and actually make an income from you for that? So what the idea would to do, it’d be like maybe you could teach a, a webinar on immune health or acupressure for anxiety or breathing techniques to alleviate stress, right?

Easy stuff out there that you could really use content. What kind of articles are you putting out each month to inform and inspire patients about the change of seasons or immune health through acupuncture or acupressure techniques for X, Y, Z condition and so on. So what content do you have at your disposal that you could use and what kind of content can you find out there on the web to help you develop creative ways to stay in communication with your clients? Because if any of you have heard me speak in the past, I talk about the top, staying in top of mind awareness with your patients. What can you do on a regular basis to stay in Toma top of mind awareness. So they know people you don’t fall, they don’t fall out of, you know, your, you don’t fall off their mind, so they know where to turn to in times of need.

So no matter what stage of practice growth that you’re in, you should be looking at the upcoming quarter and planning ahead for 2021 so that you can stand out from the crowd and get attention or well rather create some resonance and build those relationships with your patients. So, like I said earlier, you’re in the perfect position to change lives and the world. And in order to do that, people need to know that you exist. And in order for them to know that you exist, they need to know that you’re out there and how to find you through marketing, through communication, through getting in front of their minds. So they know who to turn to in times of need. What can you offer them? Hopefully today I’ve helped elevate your CEO status and help reframe your marketing mindset. Let me know what kind of takeaways that you’re, you’ve gotten out of today’s training.

I’d love to hear that in the comments below, and again, no matter what stage of practice growth that you’re in, you’ve got this, you’ve got the power of this medicine behind you. You just gotta get out there and share with the masses. You need to make a real plan, come up with a marketing strategy and tap into your superpowers. People need, you, don’t let them down. They need to know that you are here. And for those of you that are truly struggling in your practice, and you want to reach out and jump on a call for sending me an email or put some comments below here, you can reach me at Jeffrey, J E F F R E Y at acupuncture, mediaworks.com. Or you can put some comments here and I will check those for you. But again, thank you AAC for inviting me here to today’s training. And thank you guys for showing up and taking some time out of your busy day to be here, to share some insights and some, um, some, some knowledge, um, jobs, some knowledge bombs on you. So I’d love to hear about some of your takeaways. You can either reach me on an email or you can go ahead and just cover comments here. Anyway, stay beautiful. Change the world. One person, one needle at the time you’ve got this. We’ve got your back. Talk to you guys soon. Stay beautiful. Bye. Bye.

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