Tag Archives: Practice Building

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Top 3 Things to Never Say When Networking

 

 

Today we’re going to be diving into one of my favorite topics because it’s the most heavily asked thing that people come to me about is networking.

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 am Dr. Nell with American Acupuncture Council, and welcome to another episode of To The Point. Let’s go to the slides. Today we’re going to be diving into one of my favorite topics because it’s the most heavily asked thing that people come to me about is networking. And we’re gonna go specifically over things that you do not want to say when you’re networking.

Things that could be damaging could prevent you from accomplishing what you wanna accomplish when you’re either . Networking with other providers, trying to get referrals, trying to build more people in your community. And so we wanna make sure that we’re not doing these three things that we’re gonna go over today to get the most value out of that experience.

First, let’s just address something real quick. Why do we get this wrong? Those harsh truths when it comes to why are we saying potentially the wrong things when we’re engaging in something like networking? First of all, we’re human, so let’s acknowledge that we’re not gonna get things right every single time.

But a lot of times when it comes to networking in general, the issue is we’re so focused on our needs and not about providing value for the person that we’re talking to. So we can be selfish by nature. A lot of times when people think about going to a networking event, they’re thinking, oh I’m going here so I can get more patients or, so I can find more referrals or, so I can meet somebody who’s gonna be part of my care team.

. A lot of times we’re focused on, yeah, what is the bottom line for us, rather than what is the value that we can provide? And then of course there’s a fear component, right? Again, that goes back to we’re all human. Fear of, I don’t know exactly what to say if I’m too forthcoming with why I’m going to this networking event, how is that gonna come off?

Am I ? Going to feel confident enough to accomplish my goals when it comes to talking to complete strangers, that’s not an easy thing to do by any means, and it’s something that does require a little bit of practice. So what I wanted to do with this presentation really nice and quick today and value driven is just go over.

The commonly heard things that don’t provide a lot of value for people. The biggest one that I hear, and I’m gonna put it first, is people say, I want to pick your brain. This is one of the most. Common things that will come out of somebody’s mouth when they go to an event. When they call up somebody as a follow-up.

I get this all the time, people I know a lot or don’t know very well. Now granted, if you know somebody really well, you have an established relationship with them. Let’s say you’re a former student of mine that I’ve met several times, I don’t mind someone saying, I wanna pick your brain. The mistake that gets made however, is, we are excited to meet someone.

We admire that person. We feel like they would provide a lot of value for us, and then we shoot them an email to try to set up a meeting and we say, I wanna pick your brain. The reason that this is problematic is, First of all, there’s an assumption here that person values their ego more than their time, right?

So you’re telling them, oh, they have something to offer, and just assuming that they’re gonna give up their time in order to share that with you. So it’s not a value driven statement to make. So we wanna do something else. We wanna shift the focus so it’s more value driven for them, something that we can provide, something that we wanna share.

Being more specific about what we wanna talk about, saying to them. You know that they’re the person who could answer X question for you and you’re going to do X, Y, and Z. That doesn’t mean that everything has to be transactional. Really, though, we just wanna make sure that we’re providing value anytime we speak to somebody.

And so you never wanna say to a perfect stranger, oh hey, I wanna pick your brain, and just assume that they’re going to be able to make time for that or want to make time for that. The second thing that I hear a lot is whenever you have time, This goes a little bit into that third piece, that fear component that someone would say no to us.

Not wanna hop on a call with us, not wanna have a follow-up conversation to one that we had when we are unspecific like this and say whenever you have time Everybody feels like they’re busy and they don’t have time. So we wanna shift this a little bit to say when you can make time, when it’s convenient for you give them specific times in the next week or so.

I’m available Tuesday through Thursday at these times. People do need guidance and you wanna make this process as . Easy for someone as possible. So if I get an email from someone and they say, Hey, I wanna pick your brain whenever you have time. To me that ends up being a lower value email. It’s one of the last things I’m gonna get back to because I have all of these more specific requests from people.

I think generally people do wanna help. They do wanna engage, they want to cultivate community and cultivate relationships. But it can be really difficult in the society that we live in the day and age that we live in where people are generally very busy and they need a little bit more specificity and a little more guidance as to what that ask is.

And this one I put in very specific for our industry because as much as . I love the acupuncture community. I love our profession. We have a tendency to engage in medical jargon. And when I say medical jargon, part of that tradition that we hold so dear in our medicine, things like. Chi Blood Yin.

We’re so eager to talk about how we can help people. We’re so eager to educate about how incredible and effective our medicine is that sometimes we tend to. Overwhelm people with information and overwhelm people with information that is not particularly valuable to them or relevant to them at face value.

So if I’m someone who’s never heard of this medicine before and you’re talking to me about chi or blood, I might have an idea of what I think blood is. And that’s very different than what we mean about blood from a clinical perspective. So when we’re trying to . Cultivate a relationship with someone or provide value to someone.

We wanna make sure that we’re meeting them where they’re at. So if someone is a very busy, stressed out business person and we’re talking about how we can provide them value rather than talking about cheese stagnation that they may be having, we wanna talk about stress relief better sleep, things that are gonna be a little bit more relatable to them.

So at the end of the day, the things we wanna remember, ’cause we’re going back to the don’ts. Why we don’t do this right all the time. Yes, we’re all human. So that is the truth. Whether, we’re saying something like, I wanna pick your brain. Just think if you would wanna hear something like that.

Or whenever you have time. . Not specific enough for me or the person that I’m talking to. So you wanna remember that? Yes, we’re all human, but you wanna first and foremost focus on the needs of the person that you’re trying to reach, that you want to take time out of their day to have a conversation with you, to network with you, to build a relationship with you and.

Let’s get rid of the fears because if you are coming from a good wholehearted place, if you’re coming from a place of wanting to provide value, there is never any reason to fear that connection with someone, that conversation, or that desire to build your network. So again, I told you it was gonna be nice and quick and value driven.

If you have any questions for me, you can always reach out. I’m at the American Acupuncture Council and be sure to tune in next week for another episode of To the Point. .

 

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3 Things to Keep Your Practice on Track

 

 

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 welcome to another episode of To The Point. I’m Dr. Nell with American Acupuncture Council. Thanks everybody for being here, and let’s go to the slides today. We are going to go over . Three really simple, effective, very quick things that you can be doing to keep your practice on track. Played with the title a little bit of this because I wanted to tell you they can be done in less than five minutes.

So I think we go through a lot of misconceptions when we’re running a business. It’s hard to stay on track with things we think that. We have to analyze everything that we have to, have this whole system in place that’s gonna take us way too long, every day. And so what ends up happening is we end up having reasons that are silly, that we don’t keep our practice on track.

And it doesn’t have to be that complicated. But the reasons we’re not doing this, it really is that paralysis by analysis. We don’t know what we need to look at. We’re looking at too many things, trying to make this way too complicated of a. Or we’re not prioritizing. One of my coaches once told me that if you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any priorities.

So we have a hard time narrowing that down sometimes, and sometimes there’s a very real reality to this of capacity. So we’re focused on our day to day. Sole proprietor, small corporation, trying to make sure that the absolute necessities get done in our business. And so if we’re not focused on some of these just anchor practices that don’t take us very long, but can be really helpful, really effective for staying on track with growth, we don’t get to the point where we can enjoy scaling or enjoy taking some admin off of our plate.

And so today we’re looking at three really simple things that you can do. They take less than five minutes each, so we’re looking at less than 15 minutes a day to make sure that we stay on track with this. So the first one is highs and lows. Sometimes you may have heard this referred to as roses and thorns of your day.

Pros and cons of your day. You can take less than five minutes a day, and sometimes you’re gonna have to search for something because we have a tendency to overgeneralize when it comes to our day or when it comes to themes that we had throughout the day in our practice with patients. So we might say, oh, it was a really challenging day, or, wow, I killed it today.

But to really drill. Scroll down into that in a short period of time and just say what was really one high of the day and one low of the day. And that’s going to allow us to then take data from that and say, all right, if my high from the day was I stayed on track with timing, then we can look at what things did I do differently?

To stay on track with timing that made that really successful, or if the lowest today was like I was always running behind. Are there ways that we could have accountability in that and could tweak that a little bit? So it can be something just as simple as what’s one really positive one area of improvement that we can make, but just a quick check-in with that on your highs and lows every single day that you’re practicing.

And then you can implement this weekly as well, right? You’re gonna create two lists as your second thing so fine. Two can have an A and a B. So maybe this ends up being four things total, but you’re gonna have two lists that are gonna help keep you really on track. And this says, who owes me and who I owe.

This is not favors or anything like that. This is your task list. Things that you said you would get to people. Maybe it’s a list of therapeutic exercises that you were supposed to get to a patient. Maybe it’s that a patient was supposed to send you lab work and they didn’t, so you’re gonna have two running lists at all times.

That’s going to be who owes me something that I need to check in with, and who do I owe something to? And so this keeps you accountable every single day for that quick check-in. And with the who owes me something that could be as simple as shooting something through your patient portal. Oh, I wanted to check in, make sure nothing fell through the cracks on this end, because I’m seeing that your labs didn’t come through.

That quick check-in with a patient does so much. It allows them to know that you’re thinking about them, that they’re still a priority in your mind, even though they’re not in the office at that moment. That can have a huge ripple effect. Just that quick check-in and it helps you keep on track because you were probably needing to do something.

When you get that, who owes me something? The who I owe. Same thing. Go through your list and what can you knock out at end of day or first thing in the morning, however you choose to implement these three things throughout your day, whether it’s at the very beginning or at close of day. I like doing both.

You’ll get to that point taking that five minutes on either side, but this helps you have that running list so you know really what your priorities are for the day. And you can look in order of magnitude, who do I need to reach out to first? Who’s owed a status update from me? Who do I need to send things to?

This really helps you stay on track and allows things to not fall through the cracks. And the last thing is one person to outreach to. And I wanna challenge you to make this a different person from someone who was on those two previous lists. So if it’s someone that you were owing something to, or they were owing something to you, I want you to try to think outside of that.

I want you to try to think about someone who you can add value to, someone who could be a good . person to add to your care plan for a patient, another provider that you wanna keep in better contact with a colleague that you could send a quick article to. So again, thinking about it in these five minute brackets, one person you’re gonna outreach to help in that day.

And that might be by sending them content. It might be just checking in with them and see how they’re doing. . It might be, you can have a running list for this too. One of my leadership instructors calls it a drip list. So people that you wanna continuously keep in contact with and make sure that you stay updated with them.

So really, those are the three things that are going to, in less than 15 minutes a day, allow you to stay on track. It’s nothing complicated whatsoever, and it’s simply. What are my highs and lows for the day? Not thinking in general terms. Get really specific with this, and then you can take action items from that for improvement or things that you wanna keep doing because they’re going really well.

The second thing, being those two lists, who do I need to get things to and who needs to get things to me? And make sure that we’re constantly working those lists every day. So things. Don’t fall through the cracks. And that last thing being who am I adding value to today? Who am I staying in contact with today?

Who am I continuously cultivating a relationship with? And pick that one person to outreach to that is not gonna fall into one of those other lists that you needed to keep track of those three things. Help you stay on track in less than 15 minutes a day If you have further questions. You all know I love efficiency hacks, simple and effective ways to keep practice on track.

I hope this has been enjoyable for you. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions at a c and don’t forget to tune in next week for another episode of To the Point. .

 

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3 Tips to Boost Your Practice in the Summer

 

 

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.

Has it been slow in your practice this summer, or maybe this month tends to be a slow month for you and you would like to get ahead of that, so because you’ve been experiencing a dip in your practice or concerned about it being slow, typically this time of the year Today I’m gonna share with you three hot tips to boost your practice in the summer.

This is Chen Yen six and seven Figure Practice Makeover Mentor, an introverted visionary where we help introverted visionary acupuncturists and other holistic health practitioners with growing their practices to be really fulfilling and consistent as well. So that way they could just focus on helping people instead of and also changing the face of our healthcare system.

Instead of worrying about where to find patients. And then for our our clients who are at a stage or practice where they’re already busy, then we help ’em get to a place where the practice runs more without them or bring in another few income. So I’m your host for the a c show today, and I’m super excited to share with you these three hot tips.

So what do you, what have you noticed is. People just end up not coming in. What could you actually do? So the first hot tip is to send out an email that or more than just one email. ’cause have you ever had the . Experience of where even some of your patients come in for one thing, but they don’t even realize you can help them with other things.

So how could you educate your patients on how you can help ’em with different kinds of health issues? Or perhaps you have other kinds of service offerings within the practice that they may not really know about or be as aware of. And how can you educate them more about those other offerings or how acupuncture or Chinese medicine can help with certain health issues?

So what do you actually come up with to send and. Many times I, what I often hear from a lot of acupuncturists as well I end up racking my brain or I feel like I don’t really have time to come up with things and, or I’m, I don’t have any a email software thing, so then I just don’t.

Don’t do it right because that’s just ends up getting tables as a on the back burner and never ends up getting done. But if you are slower in your practice or if you would just love to have something automated. ’cause imagine if whenever you were slow, you just had certain emails that were automated that you could.

End up using to educate your patients for potential patients, perhaps those who have inquired about your services, but then they didn’t end up coming in. And I’ll share a little hot sip related to that. Like how do you actually get their email address right? You’ll share that with you here in a moment.

So as far as the email that you send out a couple of hot tips related to what to think about with, what to send out that I’m gonna share with you from our new patients from email system that our clients use. Is that one. Ideally vary the length of whatever you send out. Have you ever felt oh my gosh, I get so many emails , and do you ever notice that you don’t open every single one of ’em, but if they are your patients, likely they will open like you’ll have a decent kind of an open rate because

You are their practitioner, you’re their, your health a healthcare provider. For them, it’s very different than them just getting some random kinds of emails from all kinds of different things. So first of all, your emails are more likely to be open anyway, but. Just because there are a lot of people who get a lot of emails, how could you end up being an email that people look forward to getting?

So one hot tip is to vary the length of your email. So sometimes super, super short. It might just be a couple sentences. So one type of email you could look at sending might be a very more personal ish feel, an email. And and checking in on how things are going for them and with their, what they had come in for from before.

And then bring up that, that, whether it’s time to schedule and another visit, or in case they come across a, someone they who’s dealing with, x, y, z kind of health issues. Then in case they come across one or two people who are dealing with X, Y, Z kind of health issues, feel free to. To also share with them, to let them know about the practice.

So that’s one kind of an email you could look at sending to help increase patient flow into the practice. Another kind of an email you could consider sending. Is what I talked about earlier, which is specific to a health issue. And maybe one, kind of one email you talk about at certain Like digestive kinds of issues or another email you talk about a different kind of of pain issue, like injury.

And some people may not realize the extent of how acupuncture can help with other things. When there might be a. A first aid type of trauma related things happening or or maybe supporting with pregnancy. Some people may not know about those things and yet you might help them with that.

Think about the different topics that you can educate your patients on. And then, so that’s one. One hot tip is sending out emails and I’ll, I promise to share with you what to do to also be getting emails from of people who maybe call your practice, but then they never end up booking. So what happens with those people?

Because maybe they, they call and they ask around and then they decide to do something else, but something else might change down the road and they could have a need for your services. And again, so it’s if you’re able to stay more top of mind awareness and continue to educate them until they understand the benefits of working with you, and also see if they resonate with you or not, then they’re more likely to come in.

So one thing that you can do, It’s before every single person who calls and doesn’t end up booking before, hang up the phone with them to say something like let me send you something that can be of help to you and with your, your X, y, Z health issue. And ideally if you had a good way of navigating the conversation with them, whether you’re having it yourself or your front desk person is having it, that conversation, then you would Have found out what they might be dealing with that made them decide to call you in the first place so that way you can end up staying connected and send them something that could be helpful for their issue right now.

And then you could end up, asking for permission to continue to keep them in the loop about updates within the clinic or other helpful tips related to different kinds of health issues they might, they or their family might encounter. So the second hot tip to giving your practice a boost when it’s slow in the summer is to think about how can you communicate.

Why now is an important time to come into the practice. So one reason why people may not be coming in is they go on vacation, they fall off the bandwagon, or they just are feeling, maybe they’re feeling Fine. And maybe feeling fine is okay for them to not come into your practice if that’s a part of your philosophy, but maybe what you’re treating them for, maybe they’re feeling fine, but they’re not making as much progress with the core health issues they’re having if they’re not getting consistent treatment or care.

So how can you convey and communicate to them why now is an important time and to come in to get that taken care of, whether it’s from a clinical perspective or. Overall with it should be from a clinical perspective anyway. And some, something to think about with this is, have you ever thought about how retail stores, they often have these different sales throughout the whole year?

I. Next time you, you see maybe a brand that you love and you end up buying things from them. Notice how often they do sales and what times of the year they do sales and what do they say about why they have the sales, right? So they’re all kinds of different holidays and all of a sudden, every, those kinds of places end up having sales.

And why do people buy? Because . The, those stores or companies are mentioning why now is a great time to buy because you’re going to be getting a significant savings or because it’s Mother’s Day and it’s, it’s a great time to buy a gift for your mom, or it’s for, upcoming. It might be labor Day.

And it’s, it is time to really give yourself a breather and and reset as you get into the fall. And it’s great time to come in for acupuncture and also bring your family for To, to get them back in the swing of things or back to school. It, so there’s so many things that you could think about why now is a great time to come in.

So think about that and communicate that in an effective way so that people are presence to how important it is to come in now, or or are inspired to come in. One for clinical reasons. Another could be also for, stress, relaxation and resetting or helping with other things tied into the season.

One of our clients actually brought in five figures in a month from supplement herb sales and using, like being strategic about how he was doing . Sales. And that, that can happen when, if you would love to share more about something you offer within the practice and also experience a boost in the practice.

And part of what worked well for him was highlighting why now is a good time too to be getting those supplements or herbs. The third tip. Oh, and another thing I’ll just give you a tip that you could use right away as well, is that if you’re experiencing a slow week or slow day, one thing you can do is to either post this up in, in your social media or email it to, or text your patients.

Something about how you’ve got a few open spots on x. Such date and such date. So you might say a few spots. I have a few openings on Thursday and on Friday. And you could give a couple spots. You can say, I have a couple spots opened up for Thursday and Friday. Such and such day and times.

You can give a couple of those times. And if you wanted to come in today, make give me a call and I can work you in. So then that way it presences people to the the idea that you do have open spots. ’cause have you ever had patients who have told someone else, they told you, oh, I told someone else about you, but then that person didn’t come in yet?

Sometimes it takes more than one time letting their friend know or someone they care about, know about your services because have you ever been to a. Have you ever had the experience of where a friend told you about a restaurant? They were all excited about it and you thought, oh, wow.

I should check that out. But what did you do? Maybe you didn’t check it out quite yet, right? But then you, your friend brought up again and then you ended up going. Or you heard about it another time and then you ended up going, so that can totally happen even if you have been told by your patients that they’ve referred, but then that person hasn’t come in yet, they could still totally come in.

So if you are letting your patients know about open spots, you could also bring up how they could let their, if they or a friend of theirs had wanted to come in, they can come in. And so that can also. Remind them of how they could mention it to their friend again, and that you have spots this week.

So that has also helped our clients, our acupuncturist clients, and other holistic health practitioners, clients with getting more patients coming in the door when it’s slow. A third hot tip to boost your practice when it’s slow in the summer is to be clearing out. The non-supportive belief that, oh, this time tends to be slow for me, and this is something that I often hear from acupuncturists and other holistic health practitioners is that comment.

It’s August tends to be slow for me. Everyone goes on vacation and. And in my first business, the one, I had grown to seven figures in less than five years. So in, I remember someone on my team, so she had owned her own business for, in the same field that, that my business was in for over 20 years.

And she would always say to me, December is usually really slow because everyone goes on vacation. And I remember saying to her one year, I said, , What if December was our busiest month? And what if other people who think that, they it’s really slow. What if we actually ended up helping those people who weren’t able to be helped by other people because, They’ve, , they had this mindset that it’s gonna be a slow month.

Let’s help those people. Shifting that belief and what happened that year, we had our biggest month in December. So just because other people are having slow months doesn’t mean that you need to have a slow month either. Part of it is energetically your underlying belief about what you What’s possible for you and what’s possible for other people as well, so other people can be slow and you could be the busiest you’ve ever been this month.

I hope these three hot tips have helped you and for more six and seven figure. Practice makeover tips. Go to introverted visionary.com and start putting in place just even one of these hot tips within the practice. I shared with you several possibilities and you can even just one thing put in place, can bring in a boost in your practice even when it’s slow.

Till next time. .

 

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Is your Practice on Fire or Burning Down?

 

 

Holly Battrum is gonna be talking to us and our topic today is on, is your practice on fire or burning down, putting resilience and power back into your practice.

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.

Welcome to another episode of the American Acupuncture Council, to the Point, I’m your host, Lauren Brown. And I’m a C P A. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine founder of Healthy Seminars and author of Missing the Point Why Acupuncturists Fail and what they Need to Know to Succeed. And today I have a colleague and friend on our episode.

It’s gonna be Holly. Holly Battrum is gonna be talking to us and our topic today is on, is your practice on fire or burning down, putting resilience and power back into your practice. So let’s bring Holly in here and I’m gonna do a brief introduction here, but just let you know that she is also a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine.

She’s been doing great in her practice since she started it back in 2015. She’s also an. N l p coach and mentor and before she did Chinese medicine she was involved in business leadership. And Holly, it’s good to have you on and I’m looking for you to share some of those practice management pearls today.

Hi Lauren. Thank you so much for the invitation to chat with you and of course, the American Acupuncture Council for hosting these conversations. Yeah, we’re gonna have some fun. We’re gonna have some fun. So, you know, your title is Practice Is Your Practice on Fire or Burning Down and Putting Resilience and Power Back into your Practice?

And you and I I have had, you and I have had this conversation that. People want this work-life balance, and I don’t know if that’s a realistic expectation, but I’ve heard you talk about not so much work-life balance to have joy and succeed in your practice, but you talk about rhythm. Can you kind of tell me what that rhythm is about and how that is different from a work-life balance?

Yeah. I think that for me particularly, rhythm makes so much more sense, right? When you talk about balance. What are you walking on a tightrope or we’ve, you know, it’s a very fine line of things that you’re trying to achieve. Even when we’re talking about harmonizing in Chinese medicine, we don’t, we are not necessarily trying to balance the system.

We’re, we’re trying to harmonize it and move things around and so, If we get sort of trapped in this balanced concept, I think we put a lot of energy into staying in this very narrow window, right? We have our boundaries and we need to keep those boundaries and, and it’s almost like those latency patterns that we have in Chinese medicine start going into kind of holding everything in place, which becomes very taxing.

So, Right. If you look at rhythm, rhythm is ebb and flow. It’s the what we talk about all the time and. In our medicines, but we don’t necessarily apply it to ourselves. And maybe that means you don’t have a daily habit, you have a weekly habit. I know for one thing in my practice it’s, it’s really hard the way I have my clinic set up for me to get every single thing I wanna get done every single day.

But for example, when Mondays are my really long day and I may not get my workout in, I may not get all of my. How stuff done that I wanna get done because I’m spending 12 hours in practice, whereas I’m not in the clinic on Thursdays. And so I’m able to allot more time on Thursdays for some of those other things.

So I, when I started to look at it from this rhythm concept, it just took a lot of pressure off and made the burnout less and made sort of this challenge of keeping all this structure together a little bit easier. So what do you see as the some of the factors or why people are burning out?

Because we do hear practitioners, colleagues say that, you know, they went into this, they went into this to help people but they find they’re struggling. They’re becoming a. Exhausted, disenfranchised. And I’m curious kind of what do you think some of the reasons are behind that? Maybe it’s that whole rhythm, work-life balance you just discussed, and then how can somebody assess where they are in their practice to know whether they’re going in that right direction?

Yeah. So I think in medicine in general, but particularly in our, our profession, one of the things that happens is we’re taught from sort of this authoritarian concept, right? We have, which is it’s all good information, but we’re taught from a lineage standpoint. And so everything that we do then becomes, this is the way somebody else did it, our masters did it, and you.

And you’re trying to almost replicate that. And so when that happens, we know you can’t think as well in your own sense. So you can’t think as deeply of bringing your own purpose and root into what we do. So though a lot of us do go into these fields trying to help people, we’ve kind of lost ourself in the process.

And so if we try to change our mindset a little bit, and I don’t even wanna say necessarily mindset, but if we start thinking outside of that box, then we can start thinking with more of an abstract concept, and that’ll leave some of that burnout. And do you have any like specific examples, like from, did you come right outta the gates and it’s, and it was all perfect?

Or did you learn through some of your own mistakes that I know that’s, that’s where I got a lot of my lessons and that’s how I share with my colleagues. So what about yourself? Do you have any personal stories that you don’t want people to repeat and then kind of what you’re doing to have this.

Rhythm. And, and I’ll just add, cuz you were sharing, we’re talking about the work life balance and then you’re talking about rhythm. You know, everybody. If you think you’re having work-life balance on a daily basis, those are probably difficult expectations. And I liked how you said you, you know, Monday’s your busy day, so you’re not getting your workout in that day.

But if you look at it over a week or a monthly period, it looks more like balance. And so going back to my, my question, I’m just curious, like what was kind of your experience and what are some of the things that you’ve learned that you’d wanna share with our listeners? Yeah. So no, mine was perfect day one.

I’m just kidding. . I’m totally kidding. I think you go into practice and you go into this sort of, I have to make this work. And that’s great. And that’s where that motivation comes from. And you use those resources where you push yourself forward and you continue to try and try and try, but then you start to reach a point, or at least I did where.

Everything looks great on paper, right? You have this successful practice. You’ve got all these things going on, and, and everyone’s getting better. Not everyone necessarily, but PE people are getting better. People are coming in and, but you maybe don’t really feel like you can take a breath. And that’s where I started to notice this concept of, of what is this rhythm looking like and how, what is my definition of success and how does that look?

Throughout so that I could then kind of almost take back and start that concept of running my practice versus allowing it to run me. Oh, I like that. Can you Talk a little bit more about that and emphasize that, that, and to me that’s a really interesting mindset going from or going to running my practice versus my practice running me.

Can you give examples of what it looks like if your practice is running you and, and what it looks like if you’re running your practice? I, I, I’ll throw it. One, tell me if you agree with this, but in the beginning, my schedule I would, whenever patients wanted to come in, I would see them. So at seven in the morning, seven at night.

And then eventually I created hours. Even though, you know, you wanted patients, you wanted to be available cause you wanted to help everybody. And also you wanted to have a busy schedule. So let’s say you wanted to see eight people in a day. You would maybe work 12 hours to get those eight people in. And then I realize if you’re using one room, this should be done in eight hours.

And if you’re using two rooms, this should be done in four or five hours. That was a good example for me. My practice was running me and then I started running my practice that way. Is that an example? And do you have any others you can share? I, I think that’s absolutely a great example. I know when we first start, we do need to kind of bend over a little bit and, and say, oh, maybe our schedule does need to be more broad.

I know when I started, I, I worked two evenings a week and I worked Friday mornings and you know, a whole four and a half days kind of thing and a couple long days and, and, and now I’ve kind of isolated that to three days a week and I only work one evening. And, and that’s a great example and you sort of.

Kind of work outside of your boundaries. And now I’ll still, I don’t put those so concrete that I have to control them. So I think that’s where this, this little bit of a shift concept works with the resiliency. I mean, resiliency is sort of an elasticity and sometimes I do need to see somebody when I wouldn’t normally see them.

But I’m a hundred percent okay with that before I might be putting all these people on my schedule and really just being frustrated by it. And so if I keep myself within my parameters of my rhythm most of the time, then I’m able to offer more compassion and understanding to my patients when I step outside of that.

So that is a one great example. And then I’m so sorry. If you can kind of repeat the question a little bit, Lauren, then I can Yeah. Add to that and I, well, I was talking about examples of you running your practice versus the practice running you, but you just said something about cuz that flexibility and elasticity a sense that I’m getting is that you really gotta get clear on who you are, what success looks.

Looks like for you. And so it’s more about this inner work as well. Cuz when you choose to work outside your schedule, where’s your mindset at? Like, are you doing it out of fear? You’ll disappoint other and they won’t like you. Are you doing it that then they won’t come back? That to me is the practice running you.

But if your mindset was, I’m feeling. I’m feeling resourced. I really want to help this person. It would bring you joy. You’re not doing it out of guilt, out of, out of neediness, out of fear. You’re doing it out of compassion, and as you shared compassion and you really want to do this and it’s an exception more than the norm, then it sounds like that keeps you in your rhythm.

And so I, I like how you shared that. And to me that’s, that’s about getting clear on who you are. What do you want? Having healthy boundaries. Healthy, well, weighty, right? Mm-hmm. . We talked about an example of, of your practice running you versus you running your practice. Cause I think that’s what a big, when you said that, that was like, that is a good reason why we have burnout.

Mm-hmm. , most people practice. Are running them and they’re not running their practices. What do you think? So I was looking for another example besides your scheduling, but if, but another question, if you don’t have another example right off the bat is just as we get closer to wrap up, what do you think practitioners can be doing to have more of that resilience and joy back into the practice and, and what they may not want to be doing so they don’t run into burnout?

Oh one thing that I would say that we wouldn’t want to be doing is sort of the constant mind chatter. So you’re talking about that inner work. If what we choose to do is you nailed it, you know, put a nail on the head of, of if our stuff comes from a place of lack or comes from a place of should.

Then that is when we start to realize that our practice is running us. If our joy comes from a place of groundedness and oh, this helps my purpose go forward, then we’re gonna be much more in charge. Of our decisions. So that’s the big thing of like, I think what we should and shouldn’t do one thing that I think we miss out a lot of is that creativity.

And so if you’re struggling, you’re listening to this conversation and you’re saying, oh yeah, duh, I know that, but what do I do about that? It, it starts to do the self-work, but come from it as a place of creativity. If we are more creative, which might be just giving ourselves time to let our mind wander.

We forget, we take all this information in, especially this day and age, we’re trying to download more and more information in our brains, and we don’t necessarily give our brains time to process that information or daydream. For one thing, and that can be a part of creativity. If we have a creative mind, then we’re more innovative.

So if you’re struggling with what does this look like for my practice and I wanna keep, you know, a lot of people wanna keep their lineages and I think that’s absolutely amazing. But what can creativity, can you bring into that where you’re bringing your purpose and a little bit of yourself into that as well.

So a couple quick things that you can do is, you know, even just simply as picking up a new hobby, it doesn’t have to be one that you go back to. A lot of times we talk about that and we’re like, well, I used to knit, or I used to play the drums. You know, maybe that was 10 years ago, Lauren, and maybe now you wanna actually pick up a new hobby.

And while you’re working on that, you’re gonna start thinking about your purpose and your life and things like that and your practice. So that’s, that’s absolutely one thing that we can do. The other things is a couple great assessments. So you can either take a top down approach and say, Hey, what is my purpose?

What is my vision? And does everything that I do come from that standpoint? Are my yeses because I’m furthering my vision and my purpose? Or am I yeses once again from that should so you can come at it from that way and just take some time and look at that. The other way that you can do, if that feels like.

Too much is a, is a more of a, you know, bottom up approach. And so you can literally work through almost every task that you do on a daily basis and write it down and say, Hey, I have to do this. Does that feel good to me? Do I wanna do that? Do I not wanna do that? And then once you take that assessment, you can start breaking down and, and using that as, as more of like a how do you wanna feel versus what do you wanna do?

And that’ll help you align as well. And I’ll, I’ll add to what you’ve shared, cuz I like that, that I find the top down that purpose vision, basically, if you really get clear on who you are and how you’re showing up in the world, and then your practice is an extension of that for whatever reason, it just seems like the universe kind of collaborates with you and.

And you find your tribe. So if you’re authentic and you’re, like you said, trying rather than trying to be your lineage or trying to be, you know, if I try to be Holly I may not get those patients cuz it’s not authentic. But if I’m me I’ll find my tribe. Mm-hmm. And so, mm-hmm. To me that’s that. I think of on a spiritual level, conscious, more of a conscious work, really getting clear on who I am and and bringing that into my practice and getting aligned and being authentic.

And then the, the bottom up part I like that I was just actually listening to re-listening to. The book by Eckhart Toley called The New Earth. And he actually said that in it that he’s talking about there’s certain things in during the day that you may not want to do, which is normal, right? He’s talking about feeling good.

And he says, but if you can look at all your tasks and some of your tasks, like you said, are just things you’re not gonna like, but check in on how you feel and if you can just become truly present. So now we’re getting a little, again, back onto consciousness on presence. Mm-hmm. . If you can just be honest with yourself.

You don’t like to do it, but it needs to get done and just focus and be present with it versus thinking, I shouldn’t do this. I don’t want to do this. Just do it with mindfulness. Then it, and, and accept and full acceptance that this is what I need to do right now, just now. Then it has less of a drain on you.

And then I’m sure we’ve talked about this off camera. If it’s something you don’t like to do, You can always find somebody who likes to do that and do that well, and that’s somebody you can hire and delegate that too. So you don’t have to do everything. But at some, some at the beginning you do, right?

Mm-hmm. , you can start to delegate that, those things off. So you’re doing more and more of the things that you, that bring you joy that you’re really good at. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Let me just I know we need to wrap up, but couple little things along those lines. One of my friends. Said this to me a long time ago.

We were talking about paying bills. She’s like, oh, you know, my husband always tells me that I should just be super grateful that I have the money to pay the bills. And I think that is such a different frame of reference. It’s like, oh, maybe you don’t want to pay the bills, but, you know, changing it and like, oh, I’m grateful that I can do this.

And then my other friend runs sort of a, a cleaning, like a house wife blog kind of thing. And she always calls her house cleaning instead of cleaning. And I just sat. It was a huge shift for me. Cause I’m like, oh my God, I hate cleaning. And I’m like, oh wait, no, I’m cleaning. mindset’s so important in life.

Right? And, and it comes to our practice too. I, I, I agree. So Holly, if people are looking for some coaching and a mentorship how do they find you if they wanna follow up more with you? Yeah. You can absolutely just go to hollyBattrum.com and current offerings will be up there. Shoot me an email at holly@hollybattrum.com and I’d love to chat.

Perfect. Thank you very much Holly. And I wanna remind the listeners as well that we have lots of practice management courses and some with that spiritual twist on healthy seminars.com. And also, if you like the consciousness discussions we have on my website on lauren brown.com. I have lots of conscious talks on there as well.

So healthy seminars.com for those practice management talks. And you can email me if you’re looking for that link, but, The other website is lauren brown.com and you can check out my book as well called Missing the Point, why Acupunctures Fail and What They Need To Know to Succeed. And again, thank you to the AAC for this opportunity to be your host and to our guest today, Holly.

 

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The Do’s and Don’ts of House Calls

 

 

We’re gonna be talking about house calls, do’s and don’ts bringing this straight from my private practice, my extensive experience with house calls, and also other practitioners that I’ve worked with 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.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of To The Point. I am Dr. Nell with American Acupuncture Council. So excited to have you here. We’re gonna be talking about house calls, do’s and don’ts bringing this straight from my private practice, my extensive experience with house calls, and also other practitioners that I’ve worked with as well.

So let’s go to the slides.

So when we think about house calls there’s a few misconceptions that come up and things that we wanna address straight out the gate. And I first wanna tell you a little bit about my experience with house calls in general. I built my practice treating primarily post-surgical patients. So house calls or being on location were really a necessity for the patient demographic that I was working with.

And as my practice continued to build and as I continued to network directly with surgeons and gain referrals directly from. Surgical practices it really grew and grew. And so then when Covid happened a few different things shifted, and I started looking at, all right, how are we gonna continue to build our business?

How do we safely continue to treat patients? Things had shifted quite a bit and started looking at the numbers. Because my lease in Beverly Hills was up for renewal. And a lot of you who have brick and mortars, you’ve looked at medical leases, sometimes they’re a little bit longer trying to make these really big decisions around what to do next when it comes to your practice.

And when we looked at the numbers, we realized that over 80% of our revenue was from house calls. And granted, this was definitely a situation where it was very much based on our business model, treating post-surgical patients, but at the same time, house calls can be incorporated into most practices.

We are gonna go through these misconceptions, but also just know. Having primarily house call patients is not for every practice. Some people are gonna do this about 20% of the time, 10% of the time, and we’ll go through some of those different options. But first, let’s talk about the misconceptions.

There is an idea that house calls are not safe. That they’re not cost effective. You’re gonna be leaving your office and running over to a patient’s house or that they can be cumbersome. You’re lugging equipment, you’re not able to do everything that you would normally do in office, and there is some truth.

To actually all three of these. And so they’re really good and bad ways right and wrong ways. And then with the little bit of ambiguity that’s gonna be around what your business model is what area you’re in. So is it really feasible to be running back and forth? How does that work? So we’re gonna center this around these three different areas and look at some good do’s and don’ts for each one so that.

These misconceptions are not your reality if you wanna do house calls in your practice. So first, let’s look at the safety issue. We have personal safety and then we have the professional or practice safety, thinking about things like malpractice issues, but what we’re thinking first and foremost about our own personal safety.

We’re talking about going to a person’s home, right? So someone that maybe you don’t know very well. Or maybe you’ve seen an office once before who was a referral or maybe even a cold call, and that can be a little intimidating and that can certainly be an unsafe situation. So are there certain safeguards that we can put in place to stay HIPAA compliant in this situation?

But also allow ourselves to be able to safely navigate into someone’s home. And some of that will have some overlap with talking about logistics at the end and how we safeguard some of those safety issues. But first and foremost, we wanna just acknowledge that this is a different environment.

It’s not exactly the same thing as when you’re in the comfort of your office, the comfort of your practice. You don’t get to have everything set up exactly how you want to, you’re not gonna have cabinets at. Someone’s home probably have things at an arm’s reach. So we’re really thinking about what things are we going to bring with us so that we can keep safety paramount.

What we wear to a house call is particularly impactful in this case. So if we were in office and we like to dress. Business casual. Or we like to wear business casual with a lab coat. Might be easier to wear scrubs. I had always worn scrubs for house calls, and then when I was in office I was a little bit more dressed.

And then during C O V I D I was wearing scrubs the entire time for both in-office. And on location. So that’s something to think about, like what you’re physically wearing to someone’s home. Also what are you bringing with you and how far are you traveling safety-wise? So I do house calls where I have to get on a plane and fly to patients.

Now, because I’m between a few different states where I’m licensed. And so when I do that, you’re thinking, okay, safety-wise, like what am I bringing on a flight with me? There are certain things that you might take locally that you’re not gonna be able to safely carry on an airplane. I will tell you I have never had an issue with acupuncture needles, microneedling devices even eim units on a flight for a carry-on.

So just as an aside for those of you who are thinking about doing that but we wanna think about like things like batteries, like being safe when we do that and going to someone’s home I will tell you from my practice, we don’t do just. Direct cold calls. We are primarily referral based, so when a patient calls, they’ve been referred directly from a surgeon.

And this can be a really safe way to do this process because you at least know the referral source. Someone who is Requesting that this person see you, this person is like, Hey, my friend or my doctor told me that I should come to your practice and that you do house calls. So I know providers who don’t even advertise online that they do house calls.

They have their regular practice structure, and they do the house calls on an as needed basis for us, because we were primarily referral based, it was really easy. We always involved the surgeon in that care and in that visit, so that patient knew that someone was going to be reported back to, they were signing paperwork that said, Hey, my information can be shared with my surgeon.

And so we were saying, Hey, like we’re gonna let your doctor know when we’re on the way to your house and let them know how that went. So at least then they know there’s another party involved in that and that gives you a little bit more of that safety. When I was doing this on my own as a sole proprietor and I didn’t have an office staff I was still very referral based, so there was still that communication, but I would always let someone know that, Hey, I’m going to a house call and I would listen.

Someone know Hey, I’m done with that house call, and that doesn’t mean I need to share the patient information. All of that information would be in my E H R, which is HIPAA compliant. But just to be able to let another party know that’s that was happening and that makes you feel a little bit safer.

When we talk about cost I will tell you industry standard from practitioners I’ve worked with and talked two throughout the industry is just doubling the cost of your in-office visit from a cash perspective. I would say that there is no one size fits all approach when it comes to cost.

However, you really have to think about where you are and what it’s going to take for you to get to that patient. For example, me being in Los Angeles, it takes a lot to leave a practice, get in a car. Drive somewhere. It’s very different if you’re in a more accessible city that maybe has public transit or that allows you to pop in and out of the office or, maybe you have a very densely populated area where you’re treating people in super local confined area so you’re not traveling that much.

That’s gonna be different time taken out of your office. So you have to consider when you’re constructing your costs, okay, how is this really gonna work? If I’m normally running three rooms at a time, what am I actually losing by walking out of my practice, the time that is spent away? How many patient visits is that truly?

And as long as you are in compliance with ADA and like people can easily access your office. It’s fine to give people a choice. I would keep my pricing exactly the same for in-office and going to location, and I would charge separately for a travel rate, and that was a way that I was able to safeguard to just.

Be able to say to people, Hey, you’re welcome to come into my practice if you would like me to come to you. This is the travel fee. And so that way you’re keeping your fees the same. And so it’s really a conversation about your time and the money that’s spent with that. So that’s one option and one way to go about it.

But the most important thing when you’re considering cost is what does it cost me to leave? And does that make sense? It might not make sense for your business model when you are looking at. What that is going to cost you leaving your office and going to someone’s home. And then the last thing is logistics.

And the reason that I say this has a big overlap with safety is because look at the picture that we have here, cupping, right? When I do house calls, I don’t do fire cupping. I just don’t I love doing fire cupping in office, but I use suction cups when I go to someone’s home. They are easier to transport.

There’s less of a safety issue there. Logistically it’s a little bit easier to navigate one simple suction cup and maybe an oil or ment rather than having to worry about. Am I going to have a tray accessible? Am I going to be able to deal with fire in this person’s home? Are they going to feel safe?

When it comes to that? We wanna think about things like linens. Really, when you’re thinking about the logistics, you wanna think about that entire experience. What is that gonna look like from you getting in your vehicle or getting in the transportation that it’s going to require? Are you lugging a treatment table?

We’ve. Purchase treatment tables for patients before, when we have a post-surgical patient who’s committing to say 24 visits after a surgery, that is not a big deal for us to then have a treatment table to keep at their home so that our providers are not then lugging that treatment table every single time.

And it’s something that’s a huge value add for patients usually that they really appreciate as. Part of something that is going to make life easier for you but be a value add for them. So it’s set up, it’s easy when you get there. You wanna think about things like sheets. I used to always bring linens to house calls.

And then when C D happened and people were a lot more careful, we started having patients providing their own linen for treatment tables. And it’s about the way you frame that, you frame it, that it’s for their comfort, their safety they know it’s not being reused. They don’t have to trust that you’re washing it properly or disposing of things and reusing, or not reusing.

There’s no guesswork involved there. So that’s another thing that can be done. But really, if you’re thinking about that process from start to finish, how do we make this logistically sound? I like to expect the unexpected anything that has come up in a previous house caller that we could anticipate we do.

So everything from knowing what the gate code is. Do you prefer the provider to stay with you next to the treatment table or would you like them to wait, outside? Do you allow shoes in your home? Cuz you have to think about that from a clean needle technique perspective. Not wanting to walk around completely barefoot.

Things like that. Is there, are there gonna be pets there? If you’re having yourself or a provider go to a home and you’re allergic to dogs or cats, that’s probably something that you wanna be aware of. Some people are very, free with their animals. They let them jump around. You wouldn’t want that to be, become a safety issue, and it’s something to anticipate logistically on the front end that makes that process a lot more simple.

So obviously if it’s just. You can ask a lot of these questions on the front end. It gets even more critical to be clear about these logistics when you have other providers that you’re employing going to someone’s home. So knowing all of those variables upfront can be really impactful and just make for a very simple experience, even knowing if someone, let’s say a post-surgical patient.

I’ve had post-surgical patients that can’t get out of bed, or they’re in a hospital type bed at their home, so there’s no reason to bring a treatment table. Knowing those things on the front end not only help you deliver a better patient experience, but it makes the patient so much more comfortable with what that is going to look like, and it helps manage those expectations.

So as we briefly recap these are the three things you really wanna be thinking about when it comes to house calls. First and foremost, it’s always gonna be safety, your personal safety your professional safety. Protecting yourself against anything that could potentially happen. You wanna think about costs.

Does this logistically make sense as well? Is it cost effective for me to be leaving my business to be doing house calls? And then the logistics of not only that actual house call, but how are you setting that up? How are you framing that? How are you going to fit that in logistically to the way that you practice even considering things like scheduling?

Do you want to. Devote, certain hours of the day to house calls, which is something I used to do. So that you aren’t bouncing back and forth oh, my Monday afternoons and my Thursday afternoons are going to be my house call days. So logistically, how do we make this a sound process? So if you keep those three things in mind, and of course come from a personalized perspective like we do with anything in this medicine looking at your individual practice and how this makes sense for you.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to me if you have more questions about this. I love looking at the safety aspects. Obviously working with American Acupuncture Council safety and that protection is paramount in my mind. But really how could you make this work from a business perspective?

So thank you so much for your time. And don’t forget next week to tune in for another episode of, To The Point.

 

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The Acupuncture Wow Factor – Lorne Brown

 

 

And so the Wow factor that I’m talking about is for your patients to have a shift on your table and experience a shift so that they are able to relax and therefore have the trust and confidence to follow your treatment plan.

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.

Again, thanking the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to share with you my colleagues. My name’s Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist. I’m also a C P A. I’m a certified professional accountant, and I wanted to talk about the acupuncture Wow factor.

And I’m gonna set my intention that this will be simple and yet powerful and effective. That comes from the Einstein quote that make things as simple as possible but not simpler. Meaning let’s make it simple so we, it’s easier to implement, but we don’t make it so simple that it loses its effectiveness.

And also my intention is to do a small sound bite here. So you can just take one concept or one idea and run with this in your practice. I have found that sometimes the things that. Help practitioners be the most successful, are the most obvious, but yet they’re not obvious until somebody brings it to your attention, to your awareness that you’re like, oh yes, I want to intentionally do this.

And so the wow factor that I’m talking about is for your patients to have a shift on your table and experience a shift so that they are able to relax. and therefore have the trust and confidence to follow your treatment plan. Now I’m gonna unpack this for us, and I’m gonna talk about this from, I guess materialistic and quantum level here.

So when we have resistance, then we block flow and receptivity things that happen for us in life. And you’ve probably experienced this, where sometimes you just have flown receptivity, synchronicities are happening and things just seem. Easier. They just happen and flow for you as if there’s these invisible hands coming down from the heavens and opening up doors you did not know existed.

You’re probably also aware where you’re putting effort and more effort and the more effort you do, it just seems the higher things get and things just aren’t easy and there is no flow. And on a quantum or spiritual level, when we have resistance, we are blocking. This receptivity and flow, we have a beautiful term for this in Chinese medicine is called cheese stagnation.

In conscious work, I often hear it call as resistance or friction. And this ties into our patient’s ability to heal because the body has this beautiful, innate ability to heal. And I see my role as a practitioner, as a facilitator, I’m not healing, I. The person in front of me. We are learning more and more through really cool research.

Again, quantum physics level research, that it seems to be that it’s the patient’s need that determines the healing. And we as practitioners have to be that clean vessel. But we are the facilitator and even our nervous systems, our parasympathetic nervous systems, our subconsciouses. They’re syncing up.

They’re doing this through FMR, F M R studies where they can see that the nervous systems are syncing up beyond our conscious awareness, and there’s a healing, an exchange of information that happens. And we use our needles sometimes to do that exchange for information. So the wow factor for us now, I want to unpack this and go back into this patient’s innate ability to heal.

That if they have resistance, they’re not sure if you can help them. They’re not sure if it’s worth their money. There’s that trust issue. Do I really believe this? Does acupuncture work? Work? You know what the skeptics are saying, what conventional medicine’s saying? , all this can get into their psyche and disrupt their ability to receive and have flow.

So disrupt that innate ability to heal because that placebo impact, which has such a bad rap placebo, is not inert. We know this in 30% of Western trials, sorry, in Western. Random controlled trials. Sometimes it’s common that 30% and up to 90%, but it’s common 30% they attribute to placebo. From a Chinese medicine perspective, or at least from my perspective, what we are doing is engaging the individual’s capacity to heal.

They have this innate ability to heal. It’s amazing how we try to dismiss this, but I guess from our materialistic perspective, from conventional medicine, we have that ego that we’re doing the healing , but really it’s the individual. They take the medicine and through that medicine, they incorporate it in heal or through our needle or through our communication.

The healing process starts the acupuncture wow factor to allow the resistance to be lowered. So the patient is in that state of receptivity and flow to really accelerate and accentuate the innate ability, heal. That healing process comes from them feeling an a, an experience, a shift on the table. And so I’m gonna give you at least two examples here, and I’m thinking of recent lectures on healthy seminars.com, where I hosted in one week, both Pony Chung and David Uler.

It’s actually pronounced Oiler, but spelled Uler . David Uler, you probably know him if you read his name, but David Oiler and Pony Chung and their style of acupuncture gives the patient this incredible shift. On the table that even if they don’t have resolution on the table in that one treatment, which is, let’s be honest, it’s we don’t get that resolution for chronic conditions in one treatment.

But because they experience that shift, they now have that ability to have trust and confidence to follow your treatment plan. And it’s been my experience in my own clinical practice using their style of treatment and also call my colleagues that. Patients then leave the treatment room and book their 12 to 15 treatments in that two to three month period because of the experience they had on the table.

So when I talk about shift, let’s bring up David Jeweler first as a concept, and then I actually have a video demonstration that I have with Pony Chong that I’ll share with you with David Yuler. He does palpation based acupuncture. He study with Kiko, Matsumoto and her teacher, and it’s a really cool style of somatic acupuncture where you’re palpating tender spots on the body and based on those tender spots, those are called reflex zones, you needle other areas to release the tender spot.

And by doing so, that experience for the patient is an aha moment. So I’m gonna share a story with you, for example, and I’m gonna do the David Oiler idea of palpation, how this works in the treatment room. But here’s one of my. Own clinical stories and I’m gonna share one about Shen disturbance that David shared recently in his lecture.

This woman came to me after two, two months post C-section delivery of her baby, and she had poor quality of life because of the incredible lower abdominal pain that she had since the birth of her child. And she went to back to the surgeon, the gynecologist. They ruled out any infection they ruled out.

anything left inside and they just said, there’s nothing going on there. There’s nothing they can do. Obviously, she didn’t want to take high dose or pain meds because she’s breastfeeding. She had saw massage. They had referred her for some physio for post-surgical to help. Nothing had helped over those.

Two, two months. She came to my practice. She knew of me because I actually was the practitioner that helped her with her infertility, and I guess we have branded ourselves so well at fertility that because she wasn’t trying to get pregnant, she didn’t think to come back to my clinic until later say, do you think you can help me with this?

It didn’t even dawn on her that maybe this is something we can help. . And so she came into my practice with her lower abdominal pain and right away I thought about the tsu. And for those that are not familiar with that term, it’s basically a reflex zone for blood stasis. And when you have this, it can wreak havoc in the body.

Cause remember, it’s a system and we have a serious stagnation. It inf it interferes with the flow and receptivity. And I press down on her tsu and she’s oh. Like incredible pain. And so after pressing in on the tsu, I go to the distal points that are used to relieve that. It’s just two acupuncture points.

And I hold my little device, just the tube of the needle actually. And I try different angles on liver four and asking her as I palpate, does this reduce this pressure? Pain? And she goes, oh, you’re not pressing as hard. So she thought I was trying to fake her out because. She went from like a 10, outta 10 to two outta 10, and I said, I’m pressing the same.

How about you press so you take my hand and you push down? So she took my hand and pushed down while I used the handle of the tube. No pain. So I go ahead and I needle those points. I also noticed that her immune reflex was really sensitive, so I did the immune points and a week later I did follow up with her and she was immediately at that treatment.

90% relief. So she had 90% relief immediately after that treatment, and one week following, she still had 90% relief from that treatment. That’s where somebody like that now refers anybody and everybody to the practice and any plan that I would have for her. She is more relaxed, as in con, has the confidence trust in me.

One is she had relief in her symptoms, but I’ll share with you that even if the symptoms aren’t relieved, when they experience the fact that I can palpate an area, a reflex zone and then needles somewhere else, and then that zone is gone, they see that it’s doing something and it gives, it inspires them to now follow your plan.

In his course also, he talked about the reflex zone and the sternum for anxiety and shen disturbance. And there’s points that we do on the back for this. And there’s points that we do distally for firepoint on the pericardium and heart channel. We test the fire points to see if they’re tender as well.

And then we use metal and water points. To relieve that. And again, when patients come in and they’re really anxious, so the difficult trusting cuz they’re sympathetic. They’re sympathetic, is on high alert, that means can’t trust, right? They’re rarely cautious, paranoid, almost really feeling worried and anxious, palpating the sternum and it’s tender for them.

And then going and touching reflex zones on the back. And then if that relieves it, great. If not, then I go to the fire points on the palm and then I check the acupuncture points. And if that relieves it, you can just see the melt on the table. So that’s my example as a shift on the table. And so learning styles by like David Yuler is a way to really grow your practice.

Now, I was trained as what I call a barefoot doctor or Zg Fu acupuncturist, which I think many of you have been trained as well, meaning like if you have blood deficiency, it’s stomach 36, it’s red 12, it’s spleen six, bladder 17. Really? These are my herbalist, acupuncture herbalist from China teaching me acupuncture and.

Because I host healthy seminars. I’ve had the privilege and the opportunity to witness different styles of acupuncture and realizing that there is a really deep history and style of acupuncture more than how we were trained in TCM schools, where you can get really good results. and also there’s that impact on the table.

And so David Oiler is one of those examples of studying with him and being able to just palpate some points, relieve them right there, that first treatment in 20 to 30 minutes with that treatment, and then they continue on for their condition because they’ve seen such an experience of that. Plus, they also are getting resolution for what they’ve come in for.

Let’s talk about Pony Chong. Another style of acupuncture and where they’re in common is he shows a shift on the table. And in the video that we’re gonna bring up is from a lecture he did recently in our community library. And what he’s demonstrating is he’s doing a, an acupuncture point, spleen 12, and he talks about.

In the Canon and the classics, just where it travels on the Sinu channel and how it impacts what muscles, what ligaments went tendons basically in modern day. So he can treat certain conditions in the lower extremities and he’s going to needle the point. And then he tests the point with a pointer plus, and he does this because of two reasons.

One is when you. Test it. It lets you know you’re in the right place, cuz I’ll share that sometimes we always have the right intention. This is where I think SPLEEN 12 is on this individual based on landmarks. But Pony has shown through his style of acupuncture that it’s reproducible, that you can be really precise based on reading the description of what this acupuncture point does on a muscle skeletal level.

And seeing that muscle shift or move or fsic. When you touch it with a pointer Plus from the patient’s perspective, it is a wow factor because they know where their pain is in whatever their leg, and when you put a needle in and it co and they feel that sensation going down, that whole muscle, they now have the confidence that you are in the right spot.

The second reason it’s so important that I went on a quick tangent there about the patient’s experience is sometimes we have the right intention of where we think the point is, but points actually drift. They’re not. The same based on the book location on every individual, there’s a little bit of drifting and pony style of acupuncture.

Teaching shows you that you can actually get exact and know that you’re in the right spot by testing the needle. And I have to share when I use this in my practice, sometimes I have to reinsert the needle two or five times to get it. But now you get better results because originally my intention was this is the right spot for this point, but I can test and show whether I’m really in that spot or not.

This is also gonna be important for research to make research reproducible. Now we know we’ve given them the right acupuncture point for where it is in their body, and so this wow pa factor is crucial in having patients relax. So lowering the resistance, having confidence and trust to follow your treatment plan because they experience a shift, that first treatment, not let’s treat you for the next.

10 or 12 treatments and see if there’s a shift, and then we’ll reassess they believe after that first treatment. So let’s bring up the video. I’ll share with you the first five seconds, the volume’s low or 10 seconds, and then it kicks in. And this is just a discussion that I was having with Pony in one of his community lectures while he was demonstrating this idea of testing a point and how the patient experiences this.

So please bring up that video now.

And pony, this is what I mentioned in our introduction. If you could just go back to that video for a moment. Okay. That when patient experience a shift on the table and in this case when needle, when pony needles, the point and then he stimulates it with his pointer plus the structure of the leg. The muscles watch the leg move in the bottom left eyes, watch the leg move.

Confirming he’s in the right location cuz it wouldn’t move he was in, if he was in the correct. Two things happen. One is he has now accurate needle location because we have good intention and we say we’re putting it in SEN 12. We put the intention, but PONY is showing that there’s an actual real spleen 12 for each individual, and it can drift a bit from how it’s described in the book and based on the person.

And he’s confirming that he has reached spleen 12 based on what he’s seen in the leg. So a for effectiveness preciseness. Two is the patient is seeing what’s happening, she’s late leg and it just her leg gives them the confidence and trust to then pretends machine on the needle lake move. And that’s why I invite you to check out PONIES courses in the library and then really do a deep dive and he has those courses on demand so you can learn how to do this in your practice.

Thanks. No problem. Yeah. Thank you for Lorne. Thank you for mentioning the way intentioned to, that’s something I emphasize a lot when I teach the course is that we taught that, okay, you have to have good intention, right? And then, and your intent drives the cheat. Okay? And so drives the, your cheap, but also to the needle.

You drive the patients cheat. But that’s pretty much the end of the education. I got an intention, it just. But extreme attention’s the same. But the way I see it now, based on my experience in all my research, is that there’s a different intent for each specific point, and now you can predict and agree on that intention if you understand anatomy.

So for example, here, screen 12, the anatomy is the femoral neurovascular bundle. So the intention that we, when I have, when I come to Neil’s point, is that I want. This to activate the quadricep muscle, and if I apply electricity to that, it’ll activate all the quadrant muscle in the new extent. Okay? So it could be a sensory nerve in, in which case we know what that nerve travels, the duchess sensor should be felt to that area.

It’s not a guess word. You should know exactly what that intent for that specific point should be. and know if you got it or not, based on whether it moves what it should, ghost by sensation where it is. So then your intent is actually very clear and precise and it’s not just assuming that intents the same, it’s not just all heavy achy sensation e everywhere, anywhere.

Okay. But also coming back to, to like the buy-in the wow factor, patients are gonna remember. The times that you don’t succeed. But when you, if you tell them, okay, I’m needling this, I’m checking this. I’m, they don’t know what’s what they’re supposed to see, right? Only you know that. But you tell them that I’m, the reason I’m doing this, I’m checking to make sure I’m precise, but you stimulate it.

You tell them, you may feel a sensation going down the top of your quadricep. You might feel a little contraction in your muscles and quadricep. And if you say that and you try it, and if it’s one of those, one of those times that you succeed, they feel that’s instant. Because that’s pro, that’s in a way prophecy, prophesize what’s gonna happen.

And then it actually happened. More average mortal human beings don’t have the ability to prophesize. So that makes you different, that you can do something and make it happen. Exactly what you said, it’s gonna happen. They’re not gonna remember if it doesn’t happen, but they damn remember it when it does.

And that is the wow factor that Lorne is talking about before their. You’re even done treating them. It’s the first treatment. They haven’t solved the result yet. They’re already asking, do you treat this for my brother? Do you treat this with that? Okay, this is from my personal experience.

So I like his term, the prophecy. So you’re prophesizing for the patient and then they experience it. And that is a wow factor. And like he said, can you treat this? Can you treat this for my family members? Because you’re able to predict what they’re going to experience. And so from a practitioner with integrity intention, you’ve got the accurate point.

So you, you want the results, so you know you have the accurate location and then. From the patient’s perspective, they’ve experienced this prophecy on the table, which gives you that guru status and why some practitioners are constantly looking to fill their practice. And like others, like my practice, I usually have a two to three month wait list because of that Wow.

Factor on the table. And then when you learn from like a David Oiler, Or Red Yuler, but pronounce Oiler or Pony Chung. They give you language too to help with the prophecy. So going back to David’s talk where I mentioned he, for anxiety, he’ll palpate the typical area on the sternum. And when I go and palpate these reflex zones and they’re tender, and then I needle elsewhere, and then those reflex zones go away.

That’s the prophecy, cuz I’m telling them that if we can remove the blockages in the body that are preventing the innate ability to heal, if we can lower the resistance and bring back chief flowing, your body will start to heal regardless of the Western diagnosis. I just gotta remove some of these disturbances in your biofield and that is why I think.

To my colleagues that studying with Pony and David or having that wow factor where a patient experiences your prophecy in the treatment room cuz they experience the shift is important. And the last thing I wanna share for a wow factor, or just what I have found in my 20 plus years, sometimes complicated cases come in.

And I have to remind myself that it’s not my job to fix the patient, and if all I do is listen, really listen and let them know I hear them, then the healing process starts as well. Remember that there is something, and we’re this is being studied, that we know that there’s communication through our facial expression, our eyes, pheromones, and even biophotons light and packets of energy that are.

Transmitting between us that we now know that there’s information being exchanged. And what we’re noticing is that when somebody feels really seen and heard, that lowers their resistance as well. They start to relax, the flow starts to come back, and the healing response is engaged. And so really taking time to listen to your patients.

Let it Showing compassion that you understand and get what they’re going through with is really important as part of the healing process. So really making that time to hear them feel, understand, they feel understood. That lowers the resistance, and again, on a unconscious level, not something that you’re doing or they’re aware of, something is happening between the two of you.

Something has been triggered and there is an exchange of information. Add onto it when you do your treatment and you can prophesize that. When I palpate here. Anywhere there’s certain, there’s points all over the body and they’re tender. And I needle elsewhere, and that tenderness goes away. Then we have lowered the disturbance, the resistance in the body, which will support its healing.

I will share that when I was at the Society of Acupuncture Research Conference, one of the presenters there shared her research where they have. Shown a, what’s the word? They have shown that when there’s organ issues that down distally in the fascia that there’s disturbances. So tender points or even nodules or gunness happens.

So they’re sharing that this is happening. And when I heard this research, it made me think of David Oilers palpation based acupuncture style, because that’s their style is going along the channel and palpating these points. And if they’re. Tender. Then there’s other points to needle, to reli to relieve that tenderness.

And what I suspect is happening is we’re lowering the disturbance in the body, the resistance, and therefore the channel flow becomes free. And then the organs become healthy and the organism us become healthier, and so I just wanted to share that with you. Lectures by both Pony and David are available on healthy seminars in the community library.

They also have C E U proof courses on healthy seminars.com in that area as well. and a good way to just find out what I’m up to. If you like this Quantum idea and biophysics, do check out just my website, Lorne brown.com. Then you can see information about my practice management book. You can hear about my Conscious Fertility podcast, things that are doing at Healthy Seminars.

I created that website cuz I like to do a lot of things. And I decided to create that website so you can find everything in one place. So Lorne brown.com is to just go where everything is, aggravate is collected, and then healthy seminars.com is where the continued education, the community library, the mentorship, and the online learning is for healthy seminars.

So I hope what I shared with you is simple. For you and you’ll find it powerful and effective. It’s been my experience, my colleagues, and for the patients. They have found it powerful and effective. And I wish you the best of luck in your practice. I do believe we need more prosperous acupuncturists because we need more of people like you working in the C communities to help heal our community.

Cuz the world needs lots of healing and this starts with healing ourselves. Obviously. I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council again for this opportunity. To share some of my clinical and business pearls with you.