Tag Archives: Practice Building

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Top 3 Questions Most Patients Will Ask You

 

 

Today we’re gonna be going over a topic that I get questions about a lot. These really seemingly simple questions that patients ask that sometimes tie us up a little bit.

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 see everybody here and let’s go to the slides.

Today we’re gonna be going over a topic that I get questions about a lot. These really seemingly simple questions that patients ask that sometimes tie us up a little bit. And I’m gonna go over three today. There are tons more at the end. If you have more, shoot me a message. I would love to hear from you and we can always do more in the future.

Big question though that I get asked is if it’s so easy to answer these questions, then they’re seemingly simple. Why do we get tripped up with this? Why do we have nervousness or fears around it? And a lot of that comes down to not having an actual framework for answering these simple questions and taking a second to dive into that framework before blurting out the answer.

So I wanna start this with just an example for you. Actually last week I was thrilled to be sitting on a panel for Men’s Health at the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce. This is where I started my practice in Beverly Hills, and it’s been a great community experience. I do a lot of specialization in men’s health, and so this was a panel discussing the needs of high performing men.

And what was so interesting about this is I’m sitting on this panel with these other experts. Other leaders in the healthcare industry, and what the audience wanted to know most about was acupuncture. We had 10 minutes each to do our own talks, and then it was opened up to q and a from the audience, and it was almost as if I had to start tag teaming questions because so many were directed to me about acupuncture.

So it’s a really exciting time to be in a position to answer que questions that patients. To answer questions that the general public has. And so to be excited about this and not intimidated by it, that’s why we’re here today. So we’re gonna go through some of this and you guys are gonna walk away with an actual framework that you can sit back, relax, and think, okay, what do I need to dig into here in order to have this be a successful answer to this question?

So I’ve alluded to this framework a little. and I wanna get right into it because pretty much any question that you get asked should go back to this. And what does that look like? It’s going to come down to remaining confident. Meeting this person where they’re at with the question and borrowing authority if necessary.

And so we’re going to go through three questions that a lot of patients will ask. The last one might be a little surprise one because it’s really something that patients want to ask and sometimes they’re too afraid to. So we’ll go through this framework in the examples so that you guys can have that really hands-on approach to, how would I approach this example?

How does acupuncture work? I am sure anyone who’s watching this who has been in practice for, even if you’re an intern in clinic and not practicing yet, I know you’ve gotten this question. There are. Quite a few variations to the answer to this question that I’ve heard from people. A lot of times when I’m teaching classes, we’ll ask people, how would you answer this question?

And it is never an identical response across the board. But if we look at it from the framework that I brought up, remaining confident, first and foremost, a lot of times this first step in answering questions is actually what trips people up. Oh gosh. How does acupuncture work? We’re thinking about all of the incredible information that we’ve learned in school.

Chi, blood yin, how are these things going to benefit a person’s wellbeing? Whereas the patient who’s sitting across from us has no idea what those things are. In very rare cases they do. Sometimes they’re interested and want to know more. They might be coming from a place of concern. Maybe they’ve had a negative experience with acupuncture before.

Maybe they have heard about the needles and they’re worried about that. Maybe they asked their doctor and their doctor said I don’t know. I don’t know how it works. Maybe it works, maybe does, then I don’t know. So a lot of times that first remaining confident is where people get a little Huang up because they are worried about where that question is coming from, rather than the second piece of your framework, meeting someone where they’re at.

So if someone is asking you how does acupuncture work, meeting them where they’re at looks like this, depending on who’s sitting across from you, you are going to have a slightly different response for them. You can have a very general response for how acupuncture works, but if you are talking to a western medical doctor, This answer’s probably gonna look different than if you are talking to a 75 year old woman who wants to try acupuncture for her arthritis for her knees, and she’s never experienced it before.

None of her friends have had acupuncture before, and so you want to address the answer. Be something that someone can relate to. So if I am talking to a neurologist, I might talk about the nervous system and the map of the nervous system and how there’s significant overlap with the channels when it relates to acupuncture and the map of the nervous system.

If I’m talking to a. patient in LA I often talk about traffic because that’s something that people in LA can relate to. And we talk about this incredible network of channels and acupuncture points that we have. Being able to have them think about a roadmap and blockages rather than using terms like stagnation.

So first and foremost, Confidence, then you’re going to meet them where they’re at. And the last piece of this is key, because what I hear a lot of times from providers are, look, I just got outta school. How am I gonna have the expertise or the authority to be able to answer this question? What I know I’ve been licensed for two months.

You can borrow that authority. What do we mean by borrowing authority? We mean. You can say research has shown. That’s not saying that you have treated thousands of patients. You’re talking about the research which is there. You can say patients experience X, Y, and Z. That doesn’t mean that those are your patients who have experienced those things.

It could mean that these are other people’s patient. People included in research, colleagues, patients, these are still very true statements that put someone at ease. A blanket answer to this question that I like to give, particularly if you’re in California or a state where people are very knowledgeable about health and supplementation in these types of things.

I explain acupuncture as an adaptogenic. meaning that it helps the body adapt to any type of stress that it encounters. So what does that look like? Physiological stress, physical stress, emotional stress. And why is that important? People understand that stress has an effect on the body. So when you can tell them, it helps the body cope with stress.

That helps them understand why their sleep. When they’ve come in for low back pain, it helps you connect the dots for them. So it’s all about meeting them where they’re at. At the core of answering this question, another really common question that you’re going to get when you are, treating patients beyond how does acupuncture work?

Is, does acupuncture hurt? And this could be someone who’s a new patient coming in. This could be someone you run into on the street and is hesitant about coming in. There’s an important way to go about answering this question that A doesn’t discredit any techniques that our medicine has. We’re aware different techniques cause different sensation in the body, and so we wanna be mindful to not alienate any of those particular techniques, which might be more sensitive than others.

Have more stimulation than others. So again, if we go back to that framework remaining, I know my style and my technique, so I know I can speak to that. You can say acupuncture does not have to hurt to be effective. You can speak specifically to the thinness of the needles. You can talk about the safety of the needles.

You can talk about how yes, certain points are gonna be more sensitive than others. Obviously, hands and feet are a little more sensitive than let’s say the back would be. And these are things that people can understand, so you’re meeting them where they’re at, and then again, that borrowing authority you can reference.

Experiences that patients have had oh, other patients we’ll fall asleep on the table even after being nervous on that first session. Or, oh, my colleague was seeing a patient an X, Y, and Z. Or, research shows that people have improved sleep after acupuncture.

So you’re borrowing that authority to help answer that question and help support your answer to that patient so that they feel comfort. . And the last question, and this one I told you might be a surprise one. This is a question that I have had patients nervous to ask. Had patients who, were like I feel like I couldn’t ask this question.

And I’ve also had other providers tell me that this was a concern for patients. What about my other provider? There is sometimes a misconception that because our medicine has been referred to as alternative previously, now you’re hearing more holistic, integrative, comprehensive, personalized, those type of words.

But this verbiage of alternative makes it seem like it’s an either or. So patients might be concerned if I choose to go to acupuncture, does that mean I’m not allowed to see my other providers or, , you as an acupuncturist are going to ask me to not see other providers or say something negative about Western medicine, and so we wanna make sure that not only are we.

Prepared for this question. We wanna make sure that we proactively address this as well, because they might be afraid to ask it. They might be afraid to come to us. Maybe this is someone you’re meeting at an event while you’re networking or meeting on the street or at a coffee shop. You wanna make sure to proactively address.

This and speak to things like the comprehensive care, the collaborative care, being part of a care team. These are really important things to work its way into that equation. So again, that comes down to the confidence. If you are confident as a provider, you are not going to think that you have to be the be all end all for someone.

You are going to know the value that you can bring to the table and what lane you can be in meeting them where they. That’s anticipating this need, knowing that this could be a question that could come up and proactively addressing it, and that confidence factors into that proactive nature to this question as well.

And again, borrowing the authority. You can also talk about providers that you’ve collaborated with knowing that. Hey, I’m not, trying to be the be all end all for anyone. I love working as part of a care team. These are the ways that I’ve been successful in doing that. And so that helps you look more competent as a provider, look more collaborative, referencing the ways that you’ve done that in the past, and that can really put patients at eat.

Now there are so many other questions that patients will typically ask. I’m always happy to dive into any of those, but I want you all, I encourage you all as you go through answering a question, pause for just half a second. Remember this framework of first and foremost remaining confident because there’s actual research that people.

Better to individuals who are perceived as confident they’re more well trusted they’re more likely to follow your treatment plan if you appear more confident meeting the patient where they’re at, because this is a patient focused care. This is a personalized medicine. We never want to forget the intention of that.

And then remember, it’s okay to borrow authority if you are not feeling particularly c. If you’ve only treated a handful of patients with X condition and you know that it can be successful there’s other things you can leverage like research, like colleagues in order to boost that credibility as well.

So if you do have any other questions, please feel free to reach out. I’m here at American Acupuncture Council and I’m excited to help. Thanks for listening today and as you move on through your week, make sure to plan for next week because there will be another episode of To The Point and you don’t wanna miss it.

 

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4 Recurring Income Streams – Chen Yen

 

 

Would you love to help more people and bring in another stream of income beyond just seeing patients? What if you had more recurring income streams in 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.

Would you love to help more people and bring in another stream of income beyond just seeing patients? What if you had more recurring income streams in your practice? Because. Most of the time in your practice, you might mainly have one avenue. Seeing patients to, to be helping more people and bring in income.

And when you have recurring income streams, then you actually are able to have ongoing revenue coming in even if you aren’t seeing patients yourself. So let’s talk a little bit about the four recurring income streams that you can weave into your practice. And this is Chen. You’re a six and seven figure practice makeover mentor@introvertedvisionary.com.

Where. And also your AAC show host today as well. So I one of the things that, about this with the four recurring income streams is that we’ve helped our clients put these in place and it’s been just so wonderful to see that these are. Avenues in which you could actually help people.

So as you, as I share these with you, the four recurring income streams, I’d like for you to think about which one might resonate for you the most and then see about implementing it into your practice. So the first kind of recurring income stream has to do with more of having a membership kind of a model.

So when you think about this word membership, what comes to mind for you? You might think, oh, okay, so are you saying that I would be providing acupuncture treatments in a membership benefit kind of a way? And that’s it. It’s not just limited to that, by the way. And we’ll talk a little bit about what are some things that could expand your possibility of what this idea could bring for you in terms of recurring income stream in your practice?

But first let’s talk about it in the traditional sense of how this could work within your practice. And so there are memberships that I’ve seen that are for, cuz have you ever had, had patients who came in for care or they got better and, or maybe they didn’t actually get better and then they just dropped off care and you never saw them again and you feel like if they were to have stuck with it, they would’ve also, , gotten better results.

This is where membership could have a role in it, in, in supporting the patient. Or it could have a role more in when a patient’s already doing so much better, they would like to come in for more maintenance and then just tune-ups. But and then you having a structure that supports that.

So this is one, one of those situations. It could also. Where you are offering membership where this could be especially good for those of you who have ancillary services outside of acupuncture or your core service offering. So for example, there’s an acupuncturist client of ours who specializes in fertility and she also offer.

Massage within the practice and then their facials as well. So it, it helps with other people. What helps with your patients knowing more about your other services and actually utilizing those other services, because how many of you have other kinds of service offerings within the practice, but then your patients don’t usually hear about it as much or really understand what it is and never really utilize those opportunities to, to get help that way.

Or those services. And you forget to talk about it too because you’re really busy treating your patients typical. So she ended up incorporating a membership that in when people would pay this monthly membership fee, then they would have their acupuncture treatments at a savings, and they would also have their, the other service offerings.

They can book those at a savings plus they got first priority with the scheduling side of things too. And then she also, and also offers. more of an she offers online kind of courses and that kind of thing. So she also included that within the membership. And there are some memberships that are, have nothing to do with treating patients.

By the way. You need to be kosher with the laws of your state profession and country before implementing anything like this and tends to work best for more cash-based practices only. But here’s another possibility. Of where you can look at membership when it is let’s say you have an insurance based practice, or let’s say you are not wanting to do anything membership model wise with your overall even if you’re cash based, you, you don’t necessarily wanna do this kind of a model for your acupuncture treatments and.

Then there also think about what are other things that you offer within the practice that could be beneficial for patients. For example, there’s a practitioner who offers supplements and he has a membership that includes the savings off the supplements and then also with certain kinds of testing and scans and things like that they get a savings off of that.

For his, they pay an annual membership fee for that. And they get first priority to see him, but there’s no like discounts off of visits or anything like that. So it’s that’s another avenue to look at this, where it doesn’t involve treatments. And then there are, we have another client of ours who is offering a membership where it is purely educational.

So have you ever. I had things where you say over and over again to your patients and and then they don’t always remember it, but then, and you say it over and over again and they still don’t always remember it. And what if you could put that together in something that is either just workshop ish, right?

And you offer that even if you offer it on one topic per month. That could be a benefit to them in understanding their health better, because how many of you feel like when you can treat patients, but, and they, some of them expect you to fix them, and then you feel like they don’t really understand that if they go eat lots of Big Macs and.

and fries and supersize it up, in between the sessions that, that there’s still some lifestyle factors that could affect how well they’re doing or if they just or if they sit there all day long at the desk and then they’re hunch all over that, that, that could have had an effect on on.

What they’re doing, whether you, so you could teach them about movement, you could teach ’em about other kinds of things like lifestyle and nutrition kinds of things in a workshop way. And they can learn from that and benefit from that. Also, enjoy the support of other people, not just you. And so that could be in a membership kind of model thing.

It’s just workshops where every month there is one, and then people pay a monthly thing and that becomes recurring come stream for you. So these are all models that our clients have put in place and successfully. And so these are definitely totally possibilities for you as an acupuncturist.

Now, as far as the, so we just talked about the first recurring income stream and then possibility. Let’s talk about the second recurring income stream possibility. So another possibility is something that we touched upon. Earlier which is this. So those things that you say over and over again, right?

What if you were to put that together in something that’s automated so it does the talking for you . So then what if you were to put that together in an automated online course? and then people can benefit from it and learn from it. And you don’t have to always be educating you just record it once and then you end up being able to sell it, have people purchase it, and then learn from it.

So we have an acupuncturist client of ours who, so there are two possibilities. You could create something and then I’ll just make it available to your patient, base you. The second possibility is you could create it and then offer it to people beyond your patient base as well. And so in terms of.

Let’s talk about how much could you charge for something like this? So we have people who are charging anywhere between, it might either be like, 50 bucks a thing to to over a couple hundred dollars to even thousands of dollars. It just really depends on what it’s. Exactly you’re offering.

It could also be for other practitioners, like you could create an automated online course that is about something very valuable for other practitioners. It might be in your profession, or it might be in another profession, or even things like, the workflow of your practice. Now that you’ve been practicing, you’re noticing, oh, this works really well.

But do you remember how on day one when you started your practice, you’re like, I’m not really sure about this and that. So you could create things that could be beneficial for new practitioners as well, and sometimes, Also for seasoned practitioners, maybe if other kinds of clinical things or even marketing kinds of things figured out.

So that could also be put into an automated online course to offer. And and then for the lay public, it could be on different kinds of health topics. So yeah. So you could be, imagine if you had 10 people paying you a hundred dollars, right? That’s like an extra thousand dollars in your pocket.

How many would love to have an extra thousand dollars in your pocket for doing the work? , and this could be for ongoing months and months. And then you could be, or it’s 20 people in something that’s $200. That’s it’s like $4,000, right? How many you could do with an extra $4,000 a month.

And upwards, $10,000 a month can be total. And even more than that could totally be doable from offering something like an automated online. And then so that’s another possibility there that’s really exciting. And what I was mentioning is that some of our clients, Two possibilities.

One is you just share it with your existing patient. So one of our acupuncturist clients is doing exactly that. So she has something for, it’s like designed for more A D H D cuz she works with kids with a D H D. And then the parents end up purchasing the, this online course that the stuff that she used to say over and over again.

Now she’s just put it in a course. They really appreciate it actually. And she doesn’t really do much marketing outside of that with it for her practice. Like she just has. . And in terms of, she just shares it with her patient base and that’s it. Another one of our clients puts it on her website and she charges like 80 bucks for hers, right?

She’s this is pretty nice cuz I don’t, I just created it once and then she’ll check her inbox. She’s Hey, cool. 80 bucks. 80 bucks can pay. For dinner. 80 bucks can pay for something the kids want. 80 bucks can pay for something splurging for yourself. 80 bucks can also be money you save for retirement.

Like it all adds up, right? She’s this is so great. And she’s so happy. She got it in place. And then some of our clients end up. Offering. It’s beyond their patient base too. So then you just need to get the word out about that too. So other people beyond the patient base, you’re able to touch and help.

Imagine being able to help people outside of your immediate area. You could be helping people nationally, internationally, even, and that’s just the coolest thing when, just think about those things that are so obvious to you now that you’ve been an acupuncturist that isn’t people don’t really know about so many of these lifestyle kinds of things or that could really benefit them.

And they’re suffering right now because they don’t know about it. And they only know about many of ’em only know about conventional options as well. And what if you could educate them about holistic options and also making lifestyle changes? And that can be amazing, could help so many people outside of just your practice.

You’re making a much bigger impact that way. So it’s super, super exciting. So that’s also another possibility is. outside of your practice, you end up being able to touch them and recurring income every single month from it as well, once after you get it created. The third recurring income stream is possibility to explore is also something that we touched upon a little bit earlier, which has to do.

Do you have products or herbs or supplements that you really stand behind? You feel like it could be a lot of benefit to either your patients or people who are beyond your, your patient base too, and. What if you were able to actually educate people more about it and then that, and you’re able to put up a store on your website and then people end up buying from that’s also recurring income as well.

So do you have something like that in place, or have you ever thought about, for example, private labeling? So what is private labeling? It’s so that if you’re offering herbs or supplements instead of people, Seeing it and then feeling oh, I can just get this on Amazon or online somewhere. And you know what, there, there are some negative aspects of fighting things online is on Amazon, for example.

In fact, a lot of the like well known suppliers of. of manufacturers of supplements and herbs. Like they know that there are counterfeit ones being sold on Amazon and they try to police it, but it’s really tough too, and like the story, whether it has the actual ingredients or not, it’s like, it’s a question mark, right?

And sometimes and then also storage. Like you don’t really know how people are really storing it as well. And there are some it’s not. Totally safe for people to be buying it on a place like Amazon, which a lot of people think to buy on places like that. So when you’re able to private label your own line of supplements and herbs and.

Then that can be also supportive and in terms of people getting the best quality that you have vetted. And it could also bring in income from people who need it. They get it through you instead of looking online and just purchasing online and that kinda thing. So that’s an third possibility.

In terms of more recurring income from you, we have had clients. When they put this in place and they have products or supplements or herbs in place and they’re offering it. They have people who are no longer their patients, but they still push from them. You know that relationship, you’ve built it and it’s know, they trust you and you’re able to still help them through this, and then you’re ending up making money from it too.

So that could be also be another recurring income stream to pay attention to that you may not have thought as much about in terms of what if I could private label. So private labeling for example, we have connections with private labeling companies and then there the supplement or private supplement or herbal comp orb companies that you currently use.

You could also ask them to. if they private label as well. Currently. Now as far as the fourth recurring income stream that you could look into is this. So you could have recurring income coming from these different sources or streams and avenues here. You could also have recurring income coming through other people working for you, other leveraging other people’s time instead of your.

And so that could end up bringing in recurring income when somebody else is seeing patients for you instead of you. So what if you were to hire someone like an associate or someone to help you? So associate could be an acupuncturist and associate, could also be health coach or other kinds of practitioners or people who could help your patients and make revenue for the practice and.

And it could even be done virtually for some of you who are like, oh, I don’t know about this. And in terms of hiring an associate and that kind of thing. And because I don’t have space for an associate and that kinda thing. So is there something that, that your patients can benefit from, whether it’s what I just mentioned, like the lifestyle.

Aspects. So we have practitioners who have a health coach hired for this, and then they’re helping people and then they’re making additional income every single month from not seeing the patients themselves, but actually a health coach helping them with their, with nutrition and lifestyle and that kind of of thing.

And we even have practitioners who have those kinds of practitioners doing the work online for them. So it’s literally, it’s like you have somebody. Someone who is, who’s a health. For example, it’s, it doesn’t have to be healthcare. It could be another kind of practitioner too. But they are seeing patients and then you could set it up so that they’re, they are, there’s different ways to set it up.

But you could set it up so that they’re, they are Making money and you’re paying them when you have a patient or when you have a client, like when you don’t then perhaps they don’t get paid. That’s just one, one str pay structure, but possibility. But yeah, so there, there are opportunities for other people leveraging other people’s expertise and help and then be able to benefit.

Your, either your patient based or even beyond the walls of your current patient based and bringing in another stream of income. So that becomes recurring income for you. Like even if it’s, let’s just look at an associate hire, right? If they’re making a hundred K a year for the practice and you end up paying them 50 K or 60 k.

Like that, I’m, that’s like you still, you’re just making between 40 K and 50 K per year without having to see those patients yourself. Could you do with an extra $40,000, $50,000, whether it’s to put towards retirement or to do other things with, and To, to do the things that you’ve been wanting to do or, help with like extra money, storage money or extra money for the kids or things that you wanna do, right?

So without having to think twice about it, like it, it all adds up. So those are the possibilities for that we talked about with the four recurring income streams in their practice. , we talked about membership as being a possibility and looking at it in a fresh way. We talked about online, an automated online course that you could get in place and that could be helping more people and bring in another stream of income.

We also talked about products and supplements and herbs and have you thought about private labeling and bring, and also educating the public about it too, not just your patient base and bringing in another recurring income stream. And then we finally, we talked about leveraging other people’s time and expertise and.

and being able to have either an associate hired or maybe someone who’s like a health coach or other kinds of PR practitioner who could help people and then be, also be bringing, bring in additional revenue for the practice as well. For a more six and seven figure practice makeover tips, go to introverted visionary.com and so it’s introverted visionary.com and to you weaving in recurring income streams into your practice and helping more people and making more money as well.

Till next time.

 

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How to Hire a Virtual Assistant for Your Practice

 

 

There are holistic health practitioners, acupuncturists, and other holistic health practitioners who have virtual assistance, and it can be a great avenue to support you…

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.

There are holistic health practitioners, acupuncturists, and other holistic health practitioners who have virtual assistance, and it can be a great avenue to support you without also having them be physically in your space or having overhead, that kind of overhead involved with having somebody physical in your space.

So this is Chen Yen your 6 & 7 figure practice makeover mentor@introvertedvisionary.com and your host, for our AAC show today, and we are gonna get into how to hire a virtual assistant for your practice to take things off your plate. We’ll talk about what what is the virtual assistant should you consider hiring one, and what are some of the The biggest let’s see here.

What are some of the common concerns that I hear about hiring one and then how to actually get it going? Like how do you hire your first VA smoothly to. I abbreviate as that virtual assistant smoothly va smoothly to, to be able to free up your time so that you can actually do more of what you enjoy doing most.

And so as far as the, should you, first of all what is a virtual assistant? So a virtual assistant as it relates to you as an acupuncturist or a holistic health practitioner. Is, and how they could be helpful for you is someone who can do anything from admin to marketing and even chart noting, did you know that virtual assistant can actually help with chart noting and yes, it’s even HIPAA compliant.

And so the. There are avenues of getting that kind of a support. And they’re virtual, so they’re not physically working in your office. And the benefits of that are that, it you’re able to have an, have someone support you. , even though you’re not necessarily seeing them every day or having them be in your physical space, and they can do a range of different types of things for you.

So you could hire a virtual assistant to just work a few hours for you a week on certain things. They also can answer phones in terms of Fred desk, receptionist possibilities too. So they don’t actually have to physically be there. And this could be good for you especially. Perhaps your, the volume of your practice isn’t that high yet in terms of patient, in terms of the, I’m talking about front desk, right?

Two possibilities. One is if the volume of patients isn’t as high yet, but you’re also not answering the phones all the time and then you’re missing calls and people are not getting attended to right away. So then they go and call somebody else and then end up booking with somebody else before, like when you call them back, they’re already like, oh, I’m already fine now.

. So it you are having some volume, but it’s not like a as high of a volume to the point where you would like to hire someone in your office to be taking calls. And then another possibility though, too related to having a virtual assistant to help you with phone calls is if you are, if your office is very busy, and you would like them to handle the overflow in your office for calls because calls do get missed because your front desk staff is already very busy and not able to really handle that load as well.

So that’s another possibility related to front desk help. virtually in terms of the chart noting side of things. It’s, it is interesting because when I first heard about it, I thought, really, is this gonna be HIPAA compliant? And that kind of thing. And yes you could, there are companies that do this where it is HIPAA compliant and and then you are able to have this taken off your plate.

Where, cuz have you ever felt like you are . You love to treat patients, but you hate the chart, noting part. , it’s such a drag that you end up putting it off and you let it pile up. Maybe at the end of the day, you feel like, okay, I, I just wanna keep seeing patients and have that kind of a flow during the day.

By the end of the day, you’re, it’s time for you to do chart noting and you feel like, Ugh, this is such a drag. And then you procrastinate it. and then you procrastinate it until it feels like even it’s even more of a drag. And then you, and when you go do it, it takes up so much time and energy. I know acupuncturists who do this and then have to stay late to do chart noting and then their family’s are you gonna come home earlier?

Cause you’re like, you’re staying home, you’re staying late at work chart noting and, starting to feel a little guilty about it, but also feeling like but I still have to get this done. Can, how many of you can relate. Like this right now, or comment blow to let me know. . Yeah. So this is something that can be happening.

And you could actually have a virtual assistant be taking chart notes for you during the visit itself, so that at the end of the visit it’s already well written in terms of the notes, and then you could summarize it or, you could tweak it and edit it and add certain things into it.

So it goes so much faster than you having to chart. Partly during the visit, also afterwards. So that is such an amazing thing. We had a client of ours we ended up connecting up cuz we have connections and and we connected her up with this one place and they’re doing chart noting for her and oh my gosh, she’s this is saving my life.

She can’t imagine now not having one. . And then the and in terms of ad virtual assistant being able to help with other kinds of admin things, it could also tie into marketing related kinds of things. So for example, have you ever felt like there are tech things that you don’t do very well, but it would be nice to be able to hand off to somebody else who’s good at doing it.

And, but it doesn’t really seem like it’ll make too much sense to hire someone to come in your office and help you with that on a regular basis. And and so you could hire that out. For example, if you would like to stay in touch with your patient base by email and then you would like to put together something to send to them, the text side of that, or even sometimes the writing side of that can be done by virtual assistant.

In terms of the talent range of the virtual systems, there’s a range, a huge range of talent range. There are those who are strictly, like very good with rote kinds of things like data entry and, those kinds of things. And. The way you do it over and over again. They’re really good at doing, but they don’t, they’re less of strategic thinking kind of people, or they might not be able to do things like marketing and that kind of thing very well.

But then there’s a ra there’s also people who are jack of all trades and they do a mix of those kinds of things that I just mentioned to you right now. And then there are also people who are very zeroed in on one particular kind of thing, whether it’s okay, so I will write up your.

Their, your newsletters for you, or I will do this thing for you, ev all the time. Very specific, more high level kinds of things. So there’s a whole range of talent and experience and and what you could hire a virtual assistant for. And so as such, cuz like one of the most common questions I get asked is like, how much does a virtual assistant cost?

And it’s, so as such it ranges quite a bit because of the level of talent and also where you might be hiring them from. So you could be hiring them from your own country or you could be hiring them from other countries, including. Like the Philippines or India, where places where there’s some really good talent.

However, the the cost of living in terms of the what people tend to make in your country is it might be significantly more than in their country. So they’re actually getting paid pretty well when they’re working for you, but then for you, it ends up being less than hiring somebody from your country.

So it ranges in terms of how much the more charges it range. So much because of the variations of those factors that I just shared with you, the level of talent, what exactly you’re doing for you and where you’re hiring them from. So now what about the. So if you have an interest in hiring someone what are some considerations, right?

It’s oh, I’ve never thought about this. What if I could? Cuz imagine if you could even just take a few hours off your plate even once a week, right? Like even if it was like, if you had three hours. Back in your life to do whatever you would like to do, whether it is seeing more patients and making more money for the practice also, or it isn’t, maybe it’s like you could actually go home earlier, , you could put your feet up and relax a little bit, take a breather for, what would that, what would that mean for you if you’re able to do that?

Just be able to have more time back in your life. Whether it’s a few hours a week, whether it’s 10 hours a week. Whether it’s 40 hours a week it’s like that, that somebody else could. Doing something for you and then you’re able to do more because of it too, right? Like you’re able to accomplish more, you’re able to grow more, you’re able to help more people because you have support instead of wearing so many different hats and trying to do everything yourself, and then feeling burnt out and feel, still feeling like you’re not doing anything.

Any, not anything, but you’re not doing like everything really. Because it’s really difficult to do that. So let’s talk a little bit about if you have an interest in hiring someone, what are some considerations? For one, it’s, I think the one, some of the most the biggest mistakes is, To just get excited about it and then be like, oh, let me go look this up and see who I can hire and then find someone and then hire them and yay they’re gonna take things off my plate.

And from experience. So I have. I’ve been hiring virtual assistants for, let’s see, I think it’s been at least 15 years. And when I first heard about one, this is back when the concept was more new for most people I thought, oh, that sounds like a good idea. And then I went and hired my first one and I didn’t think too much.

I didn’t realize you had to think about all, certain things. And so I just hired them and I thought, oh, this person’s gonna be able to help me, and I’m going to be able. To free up all my time more of my time. And I then I realized, oh, like they don’t read my mind, or, oh, they’re not really equipped to do this kind of a thing.

And so part of that was because I didn’t know a lot of things when I first started hiring virtual assistants. And one thing I wish I knew was that. to be really clear about what you’re really looking for and also understand what a virtual assistant can or cannot do for you. I had certain thing expectations and I didn’t realize that, that the person I hired wasn’t really a, like a fit for that kind of expectation that I had.

And so the first step is getting really clear. Who you’re looking for and what exactly they’ll do for you. And this is much, many times it’s much easier Seth than dad because it’s like you don’t know what you don’t know, right? . That’s something to get really clear on and also be clear about the distinction of what you could hire one for and what may not make as much sense and that kind of thing.

So that’s the first step. Then the second step is then where, as far as well, where to find somebody like that. And there’s a range of where you could look for, and so there’s. You could either be hiring someone directly or you could hire from a company. And if you hire from a company, though, many times there are it ends up being, if you’re looking at costs and that kind of thing, it’ll be higher costs just because, you’re, there’s another middleman they’re involved.

And then there are also like sometimes. Find more of a jack of all trades more if you are hiring someone more directly than go through a company in particular. So then it becomes who best to hire and then Have it really work well for you, right? And what’s your screening process?

That and I didn’t know ha half the things I should have asked back then, , now I know what to ask and evaluate with that. In fact, that’s something that we cover or clients come to us for when they’re wanting to hire, whether it’s a virtual assistant or a for their practice, or it is just an admin person with, for the.

Within their brick and mortar practice or an associate into their practice. Many times when you are hitting a point in your practice where you would love more support and would love to hire out, it’s not like you, you had learned these things in school about what to look for and what to pay attention to, how best to screen someone.

We had I just spoke to a practitioner yesterday and she’s I didn’t really think much of this back then. And then she hired and then, She realized after the fact, she’s oh, I wish I knew these things that now you can help me with. So in fact, she signed up to, to work with us in our four weeks to a new hire program that’s coming up, which is gonna help with both being able to get a new virtual assistant hired and smoothly the process for that and to shortcut that and also our connections too.

I can introduce you to, to the best kind of possible scenarios for you all in terms of where to look for someone and things like that, depending on what exactly you’re looking for, as well as the screening side of things. So this is all, this is for the virtual side of things and for brick and mortar side of things.

So I’m really excited about that coming up. In any case and also like templates from our our recruiting business set that I’ve had as another business and where companies paid us to find the right hires for them. So we had templates and frameworks for like whether it’s interview and what to ask.

Like people tend to tell you what they want, what you wanna hear, right? So things like that, to help you with navigating in such a way that, that you end up finding somebody good and you could suss things out well before you hire them. You could spot, spot for laziness or unmotivated kinds of things that through the process that normally doesn’t show up in the process unless you have certain screening things in place.

In any way, in any case, what I was gonna mention to you, So that’s the second step is where to find them, where’s the best place to find them? And then third step is then finding the right fit and screening for the right fit. And then the fourth step is how are you onboarding them so that they end up Doing really well for you.

So many times the most exciting day of hiring is the day you hire them, but then you know how it turns out can have an effect. It depends, like what you do when you onboard them has an effect on their success. So you could have somebody who’s amazing, but then you just throw them in and you expect them to do certain things and then they might actually feel overwhelmed or they might feel a little bit resentful, even though they’re not telling you that.

And then it may not actually work out as well. This goes for all hires. It’s not just virtual help. But and by the way I, one thing that you may not know about me, So now I’ve run two successful businesses and I’ve never met a single one of my hires in terms of people, my team who’s worked for me.

And for those of you who are feeling I ca you know, I can’t possibly fathom hiring somebody who I won’t be able to see in person and manage them and that kind of thing. It’s totally doable, and I’ll talk a little bit about that in a moment here, but, What I was saying, back to what I was saying about the onboarding side of things.

So what I’ve learned over the years is that sometimes you could have an amazing hire, but you could screw up the onboarding and then they might end up not doing as well as you would like, they may not be as productive as quickly as you’d like, as well. . And so part of it is do you have an a good onboarding plan in place?

And for example, we have frameworks for things like this, like a 90 day onboarding plan. And so that way you’re able to be able to Have them ramped up quickly and taking things off your plate and you’re feeling like, oh, this is so nice. I’ve got hours back in my day, or hours back in my week.

So that’s really amazing when that can happen. Let’s talk a little bit about, I was gonna talk about the most common concerns for hiring a virtual assistant. . One thing that I often hear is I don’t know if I could trust someone. And the truth is that whether you could trust someone or not, it’s a consideration for you, whether you hire them virtually or in person to work with you side by side.

And this is one of the biggest things that I see hold back a lot of acupuncturists and other holistic health practitioner practitioners to growth, which is this thing of I can do this so much better myself, or I can do this much faster myself, so I might as well just do it. Or this fear of trust kind of a thing, right?

And but making decisions based on a small percentage chance of someone not being able to be trusted is small. Think. and we can go about practicing and being distrusted people and stay small and then continue to have a smaller practice than you could really have. And also just what happens when you’re sick, like certain things don’t get done.

What happens when you go on vacation? Again, certain things don’t get done right and all the weight is like a lot of the weight is on your shoulders or all the weight’s on your shoulders. So the upside is really getting back weeks. Time, getting back time in your life, which could add up to weeks of time in your life back in, in a year, right?

So it’s much greater, the upside is much greater than the downside of the fear. So it’s just a matter of having a good certainly being intuitive and going with your intuition, that’s really important too, and having a good approach in place to, to find and. and then also get someone hired.

And then as far as another concern that I sometimes hear is that I’m not sure if I can afford one right now. And so many times this is a concern because of the fear of not being able to cover the expenses of a hire or feeling like you could take home more. if you just like yourself, if you just kept it all in your pocket and not hired anyone, right?

But the reality of it is that a good virtual assistant, or any hire for that matter can take things off your plate to allow you to actually make more money. It’ll free you up more with more energy and time so that you can make more money. Because how much money do you make an hour if you were seeing.

It’s usually a lot more than what a, a virtual assistant or any, anyone you hire would end up being right. But the unfortunate thing is that many acupuncturists and other holistic practitioners end up waiting too long and then get to that point of where they’re really burnt out, stressed, and then they feel like I really needed someone yesterday.

Instead of actually looking ahead and thinking, oh, you know what? I think it would be good to have support coming up here in the next year. So maybe let me start looking at this cuz I’m getting busier my practice or I’m wearing too many different hats, spread too thin. And so I’m going to start looking into this as a possibility and then learning about this, understanding this because remember how I mentioned to you that one of the biggest mistakes I see when hiring a virtual assistant is it’s not really Understanding the distinction and of what what to look for and then how best to really find the right person for you and suss that out.

And so it’s good to learn about this before you actually go about doing it. And same thing with overall hires. It doesn’t have to even be virtual assistant hire, but it could. , anyone you’re thinking about hiring within your practice in hi in your brick and mortar practice as well. So with that, if, for those of you who are interested in my more in-depth webinar free masterclass on this topic then feel, I’m gonna drop a link in the comment below, and so in the chapel, Section below.

So you could see, you could click on it and then watch the more about it. So I go into to answering more of your most common questions about this, how to hire a virtual good virtual assistant and take things off your plate. And then for those of you who would like free six and seven figure practice makeover chips, you can go to introverted visionary.com.

And feel free to ask us about the four weeks to a new. Program coming up as well. If that’s something that is like you’re looking for hiring you, maybe you have hired before you had a bad experience or you have hired before and you would just like to hire someone different now and you would to actually have a good process in place to save you time and energy from.

The process and also to be able to find the right fit. The, in ha have things working for you to find the right fit to. or you are hiring your first hire for you’re an admin person or associate, then feel free to, to reach out to us. So with that look forward to you having more support, feeling more supported, and and doing what you enjoy the most.

Which for many of you it’s mainly seeing patients or doing other things. So with that till next time.

 

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Building Practice Revenue With Retail

 

 

Today’s topic is building business revenue with retail as a cosmetic facial acupuncturist for over 30 years.

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.

Hi everyone. My name is Dr. Shellie Goldstein. It’s always a pleasure to be here with the American Acupuncture Council. Thank you so much for having me. Today’s topic is building business revenue with retail as a cosmetic facial acupuncturist for over 30 years. . But I realized in my practice that it was one thing to work and to see people with hands on, but also building a revenue through retail actually was a very, not only lucrative part of my practice, but it was also beneficial for the patients as well.

So here’s what I’ve learned over my past 30 years, and this is for people who both have a retail. Or would like to start one. So to begin with, think about this. Do you offer retail products in your practice? Yes or no? Are you already offering products? Would you like to, it’s a yes or no question, but it applies to everyone.

And then what percentage of your income is generated from these retail sales? Is it five to 10%, 15 to 30%, 35 to 50, or more than 50%? If you can up your retail sales to hit, say, the 50% mark, what does that mean? It means that you have to work half the amount of time to earn the same amount of money. . So working efficiently is always a great thing to do, particularly when it’s a win-win situation for everybody, both for you but also for your patients as well.

And when we talk about your patients, this is really important or has been important for me is really understanding who my patients were as a practitioner. For me personally, I tend to my primary. Patients were baby boomers in Generation X, but thinking about our practices today, whether it’s facial acupuncture, whether it’s any type of acupuncture, you tend to pull in or target a certain generation of people primarily.

So what and depending upon who you bring in, it’s gonna adjust or have to, it’s gonna affect what retail items you offer and a number of other things too. So do you treat mainly, Baby boomers. So as of now, these baby boomers are in the late, early sixties and seventies, generation X in the forties and the 50 year old range millennials now in their late twenties to early forties.

Huge generation of people that have a major influence in the retail world nation and international. Generation Z, they’re a little bit younger, they’re coming up. But again, all of these generations think differently. And when we think differently, what we’re talking about in terms of retail is what they look for and how they choose to spend their money.

So according to HubSpot when you look at the most important factors in terms of consumers and their purchasing decisions, it’s different. It’s different across the board. So looking at these, we have quality of the product, the price of the product, the features or the functionality, whether the brand has an active community around.

What type of reviews these products get, whether a percentage of the products that are the proceeds from the products will be donated to charity. A brand social media presence, Caesar across the board, the most common factors. But if you look within those parameters, then each of these generations thinks differently.

For example, that most people across the board are gonna look at the quality of the product relative to the price. If the price, if the quality of product is a very high quality, they may be willing to pay. But then there are the other things that are, that people think about. So for example look at the brand social media, present.

Social media. Guess what? The baby boomers really do not consider that as a primary. Topic or primary influencer in terms of whether they’re gonna purchase a pro product or not. They don’t really care about whether somewhat, but not as much as say, a ge, generation Z, whether it’s there’s a proceeds or donated to charity.

But what they are more interested is both in terms of baby boom. is the features of the product, the functionality of the product, how easy it is to use, what it does, and that type of thing. Whereas Generation X, they’re gonna look at what they’re, what’s the community around it? Are they donating to different charities?

So again, taking a look at each of the generations, what’s important to them, what’s going to make them stop and say, Hey, I want this product. So when you think about them also people in general, a lot of people say 68% say they prefer finding new products in the store as opposed to finding in the online.

So that’s good for us. 83% of the millennials say it’s important for the companies to buy it from, that they buy from, to align with their own beliefs and values. I think that’s pretty much across the board, both in terms of millennials and other generations as well. and 82% of millennials will purchase an item if they first see it, and they like it enough the first time.

But across the board, everyone wants that optimal gratification. Getting a lot of use out of the purchase makes me feel like I made a good decision. If you buy it and it sits on the shelf, they likely will not buy it again. But if they buy it, they like it, then they’re gonna come back for. . And what’s particularly interesting about this is the benefits for the patient.

When you think about a product, what you need to remember. And for those of you who have a strong retail product, I’m sure you see this as being true too. It has to be convenient for them. They have to be able to use it. And be able to use it easily. So if it’s a product, say a skincare product, then you have to refrigerate it each time.

I know me, I’m gonna forget. I’m gonna be putting on my things at night, putting on my creams or whatever. And then there’s this one that’s in the refrigerator. The chances of me remembering are not very the same with other things as well. If you’re using, say, a tool or a derma roller or something like that and you have to go find it, Chances are using it are not as high as, say, if it’s conveniently located.

Also, pricing. I know that, and I know for my patients that if it’s a higher price item, it has to come with a higher quality. It has to be relative. The price has to be relative to the quality of the product. And the re, the quality of the product is designated by the results. If it’s a topical ointment for say, pain, it has to work.

It has to slow down the pain or minimize the pain. If it’s for hydrating skin, it has to work. Your skin has to look better. So again, price. Convenience and the results. And when you have all three of these together and the patient actually uses the product and they get the results from the product, there’s a certain underlying sense of empowerment.

They feel like they are contributing to the healthcare of themselves. And we know from the perspective of a practitioner that when we can empower our patients and when our patients feel like they are contributing, it levels the playing field. It’s a win-win for every. , your treatments are better, the results are better.

They, and they are participating in their treatment plan. And so they feel at like they’re a part of it as opposed to you doing it for them. And we know that psychologically that’s always beneficial and it actually leads to better results and. For the practitioner what we know is that when patients are participating in their healthcare, when they are using their home care regime appropriately, your treatment results are better.

So when they, you can encourage them to participate. When they actually participate, your treatment plan, your treatment results are better. They like you, they trust you more. They will talk about you more. They will refer people to you, and at the end of the day, it enhances your income potential. So not only are you are retailing products, but the products are working for themselves and actually bringing in more patients for you.

When we are starting our retail practice or if we are enhancing our retail practice, there’s always business logistics. There are always things that you need to look out for. First one isn’t your inventory. How much does your product cost? Can you afford it? How much inventory can you afford to maintain if a product costs $10?

That amount of inventory is much different than a product that costs say, a hundred or even a thousand dollars. So that’s one of the logistics that you have to figure out. And then based on that, what is your return on investment? If you have a product that costs $10, And you charge 20, you’re gonna need to make, in order to make a hundred dollars, you have to sell 10 of them.

If you have a product that costs you a hundred dollars and you sell it for $200 it’s a larger investment, but the in the return on your investment is a lot higher too. So there’s a balance and every balance, every person. Balance is a little bit different and it’s based on your your product sales, what you think you can sell, and it’s also based on realistically what you can afford to invest in and have sitting on your shelves.

But then there are other things too. For example, what are your state regulations? Can you carry as an acupuncturist or whatever your license is? Can you, are you legally allowed to carry that? I know in the state of New York there are certain regulations about skincare products and the therapeutics of it, and then what’s appropriate and what’s legal within our scope of practice?

CBD is a big issue right now. A lot of states allow you as a licensed practitioner to carry products with cbd. Some do not. You need to know that because a lot of products right now have C B D oil in them. And then for those of us who in most states, you have to collect sales and local tax, who’s gonna do that?

And how are you gonna do that? So you need to get a business license, right? And then who’s gonna file the paperwork for it? It takes time, honestly. It takes some, if it’s, if you’re selling items that are only getting, making a couple of dollars a profit and you aren’t making that much, is it worth your time to actually do it?

I don’t know. It’s up to you. It’s a judgment call. And then also, if you are not a solo practitioner and you have staff, what did they think about it? Are they interested in it? Or because they’re gonna need to learn about the product. So are they interested in taking that extra step for you and for the business?

And again, so you’ve done your work. It’s okay. Ready to go. You’re gonna, who are you gonna target? Your brand. Your brand actually needs to, the products actually need to reflect your brand. So who are you? Who are you both in terms of the clientele that you bring in. Who are you in terms of the cost? What, how much do you think that you can charge for, and that your patients will be willing to pay for based on the effectiveness of the product?

Based on how easy it is to use. If you see a older generation of people and your product is a high tech product, they’re not gonna be able to use it that easily. That’s, and a consumer friendliness too. Do you have to keep the product in the refrigerator? Is it easy to reach? . And then what are the quality of ingredients?

Some, a lot of people these days want more natural ingredients that are organically sourced, that are chemical free or perfume free. That’s important. And then for some people too, what is the efficacy of that product? Based on scientific research, so that some of your products may need to have some scientific research behind it, if that’s important to you, if that’s important to your client, and then also your personal relationship to your product.

So I know that for me, in order to sell something, I need to have tried it. I need to know that I like it. I know that I need. to have it work for me, and then if it’s a product that I as a practitioner stand behind. And maybe work with a company at the manufacturers. I’m gonna need to disclose that.

I’m gonna need to disclose my relationship to that product from both the fiduciary responsibility, but also as a personal one as well. And then for me too, and for retail in general you need to really know if you can sell it and while your patients buy it, because there’s nothing more frustrat. Then investing in retail and just having it sit on your shelf.

If it has an expiration date, you have to throw it out. Or if it’s just sitting your shelf, you’re losing money because you’re not able to turn that. And part of this in terms of maximizing that return on investment is how you display it, how you store it, how you display it. Do you keep it behind your desk or in the closet, in which case you, as the practitioner or the staff are responsible for bringing that product out and saying here’s to your patient, here’s a product I recommend this, or is it in the waiting area?

Where the patients themselves actually are their own salespeople. They can look at it, they can play with it while they’re waiting for their appointment, and then if it’s an awaiting area, you probably need to make it look presentable, clean space, needs space, and really making the appearance of it appealing.

this is common sense, but sometimes we forget . In addition to the appearance of the product, and the display is really knowing everything about your product from the story of the product and a unique story. So for example a chemist, a mother is a chemist and she has a daughter, and the daughter is hyperallergic to so many different things.

And so in her quest, in her whatever topical things the mother puts on, so in her quest for fighting. The perfect product for her daughter. That’s hypoallergenic. She created this product line. Now that’s a good story. That’s a really good story because the personal experience with it is, I can use this too because I have sensitive skin and I use this product and it works for me.

That’s the benefit for the consumer because then the consumer goes, oh, I like this product. I can benefit for this. So there mean most products have a story behind it. What’s the story? How do you respond to that story? What’s your personal experience with that story and what’s the benefit to the consumer about it?

And then how does that compare to other products? So if it is a skincare product, then the, you would want to say the product is all natural, unique ingredient. I know that it works. I tried it and the story, so that would be one way of doing it. If it’s a say, a tool, then we’re gonna talk about guha tools later.

What’s the story behind it? Naturally? Stores, no, no heavy metals in it. So there are many different stories, and the stories count, believe it or not, the stories count a lot. And then how are you gonna promote this? You have your inventory, you have your story, you know the line, your staff knows the line.

You believe in the product, you know that it’s gonna help the patient. You know that it’s gonna be a win-win for all. So how are you gonna promote that product? Because again, you don’t, just on the shelf, sitting on the shelf is losing money. So do you just, do you have enough turnover? In your patient load to just keep it in the office.

Do you want to move it out of the office and say events? Do you have a website or a social media blog, an Instagram account where you can talk about your products, Facebook whatever you have. How are you gonna market it? Are you going to market it through them? And if you are marketing through a blog site, through a website, through social media, There’s that 80 20 rule, 80% educational, 20% promotional, which means that if you have a blog site, so every fourth or fifth blog post, you can talk about your retail product.

Otherwise, what happens, people get bored and they feel like you’re pushing a product on them. So mean, my kind of rule of thumb is let the product sell itself and you help.

and then you can sell. What I love about this part is you can sell a product individually, but you can also gift box ’em, and this is the perfect time. We’re coming into the holidays. The holidays is a really good time to come up with gift box bundles. But again, when you bundle these products, you have to know your patient.

You have to know your patient, and you also have to put it together, put the box together so that it makes sense. With skincare there’s so many different types of skincare products out there, wide range based on the practitioner preferences and consumer desires. So let’s, in this limited time, let’s hold onto that one.

We’ll come back in another presentation. But now let’s think about this. Let’s think about a bundle. Let’s think about our patients. What do our patients want? Do they wanna be educated? Do they wanna read about it first? In that case, you might add a BU book or something into our pamphlet or a booklet into your bundle.

There are some really good, very simple, no brainer products that you can retail that are low cost to you. Low cost to your patients and extraordinarily effective. And for the, these right now are guha, face cupping, derma rolling, and instrument assisted acupuncture tools. So look at this bundle. First of all, when you think about Guha tools, we know that guha tools are palace gemstones.

They’re organic materials, they have unique qualities. Each one of them have different vibrations, different colors, different meanings. So for example In facial acupuncture the gush eye tools of the gemstones that we use Amethyst. What I like about amethyst is it’s very calming, so it’s used, it opens up the crown and the third eye chakra, so it calms the mind.

When you calm the mine, you can calm the skin. So it’s really good for minimizing skin inflammation from a calming perspective, whereas something like. Is more opening of the heart chakra. So cooling versus calming. This is gonna be more cooling. Jade has a cooling reflection to it, so it’s gonna reduce inflammation and tissue irritation by cooling it as opposed to say, calming it.

So when you’re choosing between these different stones, you have to consider is my patient irritated because it’s. Or is my patient stressed, in which case you might choose, say an amethyst or a rose quartz. Rose quartz also is very calming. And so this product is going to calm tissue swelling, relieve stress, enhance circulation, and calm from an emotional perspective.

Whereas something like Jade or citrine is interesting because it’s more related to the solar praxis, your digestion. For the face, a lot of irritation on the face comes from, say the stomach meridian. The stomach meridian runs from the center of the eye, stomach one and two all the way down, straight down to the jawline, across the jawline and up.

So it’s the entire cheek area and lower face area. Breakouts, acne, rosacea, that type of thing are often related to heat in the stomach. So something like a siting would improve applied topically, would minimize facial redness and irritation by improving digestions through the stomach. And so each of the different gemstone personalities are slightly different.

and as well as their shapes. So when you are looking at a guas eye tool, if you wanna do some type of a sweeping motion, you’re going to use something like the teardrop or the dolphin, where it has a really long edge. The left hand side is a long edge or the rectangular square, whereas something like a pointed edge say the top of the waves are the fish.

Those are the wand, those are gonna have pointed edges, and those are really good for pressing into acupressure points as say, an assisted acupressure tool. Whereas something like the rounded paddle, the wand or the spoon, they’re really good for under eye area for very gentle lymphatic drainage and generally different puffiness and limb training.

So the shape of the tool is gonna make a difference as. And then in general, what are we using the for improving circulation, stimulating lymph drainage, harmonizing facial imbalances, improving wrinkles, softening or improving skin thickness. So again, this is the story, right? . This is why it’s different.

This is what’s good about this tool, this shape, this different gemstone. These are all important when you’re selling this particular item. And then when you bundle it, you wanna bundle it with something that makes sense. So maybe a face cut. Whereas the difference between, say, a Guha tool is more improving circulation, stimulating limb drainage, harmonizing and balancing.

And I think of face cups also as. Stronger and more in terms of strong lymph drain and strong, my fascial moving blood in cheek. The risk is that you need to be a little bit careful because if you’re, when you’re teaching your patients what to do you don’t wanna get a bruise on your face, so you need to explain it a little bit better.

In some ways, squash eye tools are a little bit easier to use, but fish cups are effective too. And then also using the appropriate oil to go with it. . And then the third type of product that you might bundle into a roll would be, say a derma roller. In this bundle you’re going, you might have the guha tool, the cup, and then say a derma roller.

So the, whereas the cups and the guha tools are more lymph drainage, myofascial drainage, moving blood and chewing where it’s an application and you can teach them how to do that. This is more for. Skin would be more like building collagen, that type of thing. And so you would educate your patient.

Here’s a derma roller. You write, roll this every other day and you can do your wash off daily. So the story, you need to have the story, the directions, and why you would be using each of these. And I say on this, be careful about serums at, with essential oil, CBD bonds, hydrosols for the same. Essential oils, they may be allergic to the perfume.

C, b, D are you, can you use that? Bombs and hydrosols bombs are too olian. So you don’t get that great slip and hydrosols aren’t enough, so you need a serum. That’s a good thing. So look at this. That’s swine bundle and I’ll, we’ll price these out for you. Another one might be, do they want education?

A book? Give them a book. True confession. This is a, this is, where I need to say, this is my book. I wrote this book, this is my tool. I made this tool. Disclaimer, there are many out there. This is just one, it’s a book and a tool. You read the book, you use the tool, you apply it, and you get the results.

So that, that’s another type of bundle. You can bundle these and make a lot of money. So a beauty box under a hundred dollars. It’s a tool, a tool, a derma roller, some serum, and it’s costs you, and these are, I’m just sourcing lasa, oms. There are many other places, but you would pay between 30 and 30, 37 and $39.

Package it nicely. You can sell it for a hundred eighty two ninety $5. Where is a beauty box? That’s say a. and the tool it would cost you $88. Package it, you can sell it for almost 200. Very simple, very clean, easy to do, easy to instruct, and you have the opportunity to make money. So whether you are doing single products are a bundle.

Again, it’s the holiday season. It’s a really good time to offer beauty boxes, holiday bundles have fun with. Get really creative. The more creative you are, the more excited your patients get. Make it easy, and it’s a wonderful way to earn income. And your patients will appreciate it. They’re gonna buy things anyway.

They’re gonna buy things for themselves. They’re gonna buy gifts for. If they trust you and they know that you have their best intention and they know you and what’s good for you and you, they can explain to you about the people they’re buying from. They know that they’re fulfilling all of those priorities.

They’re getting a good quality. It comes from a reliable source, there’ll be results. The price will be compatible with the results of the product. And so it really becomes a win-win for everybody. So it’s not a selfish thing about making money, it’s about empowering your patients. It’s about helping your patients.

They’re going to buy things anyway, and it helps you too. So why not? And that’s all I have to say for today. So thank you so much for listening to this lecture. If you have additional questions, you can reach out to me on my website, learn more about what I do. In terms of facial acupuncture and teaching facial acupuncture, or reach out with your questions to info hamptons acupuncture.com, or you can follow me at Instagram Goldstein.

So have a great day. Have a wonderful holiday, everybody. We’ll see you next year.

 

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Creating Your Business Plan in an Hour or Less

 

 

We’re gonna be talking about creating a business plan, and the caveat here is in one hour or less really big takeaways that we’re gonna have today are the main steps you have to go through.

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 everyone. Welcome to another episode of To The Point. I am Dr. Nell with American Acupuncture Council, and I’m so happy to have you all here and talk about a really important topic that has been key to how I’ve developed my practice pretty much from start to scaling. So let’s go to the slides. A.

All right. We’re gonna be talking about creating a business plan, and the caveat here is in one hour or less really big takeaways that we’re gonna have today are the main steps you have to go through. A lot of times this feels overwhelming. I promise it will not be. Again, when I was growing my practice, I came out of school.

We don’t get a lot of business training. The schools prepare us so well clinically, and unfortunately we get into practice and have to be small business owners and don’t really know the steps to start that process from start to finish. And we get into this day to day where you’re like, all right, what are the things I absolutely have to do?

What ends up happening a lot of the time is we forget to plan and we take something like a business plan and say, oh, it, it’s too long. I’m not gonna be able to do it. But today you’re gonna walk away feeling comfortable, confident, and I’m gonna give you all the keys for success that I used in my own practice.

All right. So if this is so easy and you’re gonna come away in this short show, knowing these steps, why isn’t everybody doing it? What are the fears associated here? It’s about a lot of misconceptions when it comes to business plans in general. A big one is that, oh, they have to be in a certain format.

And if I don’t get the format exactly, rightly right, it’s just not gonna make sense. Nobody’s gonna wanna read it, it won’t provide any value for me or my business. That’s simply not true. There are several formats to business plans. They can range from being short to long more detailed. To less. There’s different formats if you’re looking for funding, if you’re not.

And that’s another common misconception, oh, I only need one if I’m looking for funding. A lot of acupuncturists straight out into practice aren’t seeking funding. Fortunately there are not a ton of startup costs compared to other industries when it comes to starting an acupuncture practice.

There are ways to start pretty small and scale. Really strategically, but there are still reasons to have business plans beyond seeking funding from I. . Another one is, oh, it can’t change, or it will take too much work for me to change it. Why put all this work in on the front end if I’m gonna have to change it later?

Or, I don’t have everything so fleshed out, so why put in all that time and energy? And we’ll get into how that can be really simple and streamlined for you. And then lastly that they’re not useful for acupuncturists specifically that, oh, if I. A tech startup company or if I’m someone who has a ton of inventory, like maybe that makes more sense to have a business plan, but I’m looking at being a sole proprietor to start.

Why do I even need one? And so we’re gonna go through these really key steps to make this process super easy for you and where you can see this is very relevant for you and for your. But first, let’s get into this, the traditional versus lean startup. There are different types of business plans. Like I said, they are not a one size fits all.

It’s not, oh, this has to be 18 pages long or it’s not worth doing. There’s a format called a lean startup business plan, which is actually very applicable for acupunc. Because we are often starting out lean not necessarily with a lot of inventory. Not with stock options not with a lot of these scaling opportunities that you would see in a lot of other business plans, but this lean startup business plan can be a really great fit for you and for your practice, particularly when you’re starting out.

So do you have an hour? We’re gonna go over this in less than an hour today, but you really only needed an hour to get this framework built because I’m going to give you step by step what you need to plug into this. Some people have this as a one pager, a guide, something they can reference back to.

I’ve had. Practitioners I work with who will start out with this framework as their one pager cover, and then they’ll develop a more traditional business plan and build out each of these sections really thoroughly. But this is just a basic framework that you can literally do in one hour or less, and it helps guide you.

It helps guide your business helps frame your decision making process. When you look at, oh, What are my goals for next year? What are my goals for next quarter, for next month? How did I do this month? You’re gonna be referring back to this plan and adjusting accordingly. So let’s get into it. What are these different sections in the Lean Startup plan?

First we’re looking at key partnerships. So what does that even mean? Keep partnerships. When you’re first starting out, you are looking at not only people you could collaborate with, but what vendors are you using, what distributors are you using? Who are you utilizing for your herbs, for your acupuncture supplies?

Are there opportunities for you to collaborate with those people? Looking at. In your area, if you’re going to be sharing a space with other providers or if there are other providers you want to be able to refer to, who are those key relationships, those key partnerships that you need to look out for?

Next, it’s key activities. This is what does your business do? In the day to day how do you gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace? What are things that make your practice a little bit different than other businesses in the area? With this section, you wanna think about, how are you Selling your services.

Are you’re obviously an acupuncturist, so you’re going to be going directly to a consumer. Are you going to be doing that with herbs as well? Are you going to be seeking referrals and when referrals come in, are you then looking to Do prepaid packages, if that’s allowed in your state.

What are the key activities that you’re doing in your business that are going to lead to that type of growth? And obviously acupuncture treatments fall into this. Herbs can fall into this nutrition advice can fall into this as well. And so thinking about what’s in your scope and how are you going to incorporate that in something that has to be in every business plan?

And this will look different depending on what kind of resources you do have. Some businesses are gonna have, Capital intellectual property. But really what are your key resources? Do you have money in the bank to help fund your business? Where are you at financially? Do you have intellectual property?

Do you have a low to go that’s trademarked? Things like that. And that would all go into key. And as you’re going through these sections, remember that you can bullet point this. It doesn’t have to start out in this really long, fleshed out framework. You can make some bullet points here and start there, and that’s how we get this under that hour.

Next is value proposition, which I absolutely love, and I want everyone to be so excited and so comfortable in talking about because your value proposition is just your compelling statement about what your practice brings to the marketplace. Think about the area that you’re in. Think about the needs that your community has and how are you.

To meet those needs. What are key issues that are happening in your community? Things that you can help solve, and then customer relationships. What does this look like just in the day to day of your business? Is it more automated? Are people. Online booking, is it very high touch? Are you doing house calls?

Are you going into people’s homes? Are you spending longer amounts of time with them? Are you having a higher volume practice than spending less time? But being able to meet needs more efficiently. What do those customer relationships look like? And when you do this section, you’re thinking about really patient experience from start to finish their first touch with you.

All the way through that first visit into how they’re interacting with you for follow-ups, all of that. And that makes us think, when we’re thinking about that customer experience, we of course need to have something about customer segments, right? So what exactly are customer segments? This is your target.

And you wanna be really specific with this because as you are building out a customer experience a patient experience, you wanna think about. Who is this really going to feel valuable to? Who is this gonna feel good to? Your branding for your business? All of that, it’s going to be very different.

What would attract I do a lot of men’s health. So a 55 year old man who’s experiencing andropause, that would look very different. That’s a very different. Segment of the market than a 20 year old female who is dealing with dysmenorrhea and extreme stress. Being at a college age and wanting to protect her health long term very different segments and a different value proposition and a different customer experience that could feel really meaningful for.

Next is channels. So how exactly are you interacting with your patients and perspective patients? Your target market? Are you doing Google ads? Are you on social media? Are you sending out blog posts? Are you doing a newsletter? Are you calling people to follow up and see how their treatment was?

All of these channels can be really meaningful. They also can be really targeted and more appropriate for certain audiences than others. And so you wanna make sure to put a little thought into that. Next is gonna be cost structure and with your cost structure. We think about, all right, what are we charging for acupuncture treatments or what is the increase that we’re gonna have on our herbs?

But there can be different folk eye depending on the type of practice you have. So with this cost structure, what you wanna think about is, are you focusing more on. Minimizing cost. Let’s say you’re doing a community acupuncture clinic and you know that your target market, that your demographic is going to fall into a lower income setting.

You’re gonna be more focused on cost saving. If you’re, in a higher income level and people are really focused on what is this experience going to be like for me, I want it to be high touch. Maybe you’re less concerned about saving costs, but more concerned about enhancing quality and the patient.

So looking at how are we gonna structure costs that it makes sense not only for your business but for the patient demographic that you’re looking to reach as well. Lastly, we’re gonna look at revenue streams. And this is actually one of my favorite pieces of this cuz it gets us thinking a lot of times his acupuncturist.

We called acupuncturists. So we think about the needle, we think about how much am I charging for a treatment, what’s my cash price, looking at what people are paying, with their copays out, out of network. All of those things. We factor in really primarily acupuncture.

However there are additional revenue streams that are available to us. You’re in insurance practice. Insurance isn’t going to cover cosmetic acupuncture or microneedling. Are you incorporating that? Are you incorporating herbal medicine into your practice? Nutritional consultation, Chiang Tai Chi.

There are so many aspects of our practice that we are able to offer to those who truly need it. And quite often we get hyper focused on the needling portion and that can be the only revenue stream It. A lot of you teach do consulting expert witness. There’s so many different revenue streams that are available to you as a practitioner who is so well qualified in this medicine.

So I just wanted you to be able to see quick summary. Lot of words on this. These are simply the ones that we went through and. You have got this. That’s the biggest thing. Did this in my last show. We talked a lot about confidence at the last speaking engagement I did and. I hope that this is something that you can take back to your practice, or if you’re a student, take back to school and know that you have such an easy, simple framework that will help you just like the way it helped me in my practice.

So thank you all so much for being here. Do not forget that next week you need to be tuning in for another episode of To The Point, and we will see you then.

 

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Getting A Constant Referral Flow from MDs

 

 

Today we’re gonna talk about probably one of the most common things that I get asked about as an acupuncturist who has grown her practice in a certain way, and that’s MD referrals.

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.

Hi everyone. I’m Dr. Nell with American Acupuncture Council. So thank you to AAC for having me on the show today. Today we’re gonna talk about probably one of the most common things that I get asked about as an acupuncturist who has grown her practice in a certain way, and that’s MD referrals. So let’s go to the.

Like I said, this is one of the most common things I get asked about. We know that most acupuncturists build their businesses based on referrals. A lot of times that comes from. Patients who are already in your practice who already know, trust you. But there’s always this desire for more referrals, right?

We want to have a constant flow into our practice and really what does that look like? Where are those referral sources coming from? And MDs are a great one. There can be a little bit of intimidation here, but we’re going to go through all of that today and make sure that you walk away with really tangible.

As to how you can get this done quickly and easily.

So you have got this. What does this look like? So again, I told you a little bit about myself. I am with aac, but I’m also first and foremost a practitioner. So I built my practice. Almost solely based on MD referrals. And this was something that felt really efficient for me. As soon as I got a good workflow with it, it worked really well.

So being able to do in-office visits, house calls, get really clear about what type of patient I want into my practice, and then what. MD is to refer to me, is part of the strategy that I employed. So I’ve been on panels with other MDs. A lot of times there’s this thought that, oh MD is an acupuncturist.

Maybe we have to work separately. Maybe we need to stay over here with other allied health providers. That’s simply not true. There is such an interest right now in our medicine and there’s a huge value add that we can have to really any type of medical. And so when I’ve been speaking with other MDs, whether it’s at a symposium, at a conference, on a panel, just as collaborators and peers, we get such incredible feedback about the results that we get for patients.

And so I’m gonna teach you today a little bit about how I employ the strategy throughout my practice.

But first and foremost, let’s address the elephant in the room. Why not? If it’s something that we can be doing, if there’s an interest, why is not every acupuncturist growing their practice in this way? Why isn’t every single MD referring to an acupuncturist? Why isn’t every surgeon saying. We need an acupuncturist to help with post-surgical recovery, or every cardiologist saying, wow, you could help with angina or lowering cholesterol.

Why isn’t this really happening? And so I think first and foremost, we need to address the fears on our end, the things that we can control, right? I’ve heard a lot of times this idea of intimidation, not just about MDs, but. Human nature, approaching a new person. What am I going to say to this person?

How do I get them to buy in? How do I get them excited about what I’m doing in my practice and get them to believe that I can really help them? With their practice as well. And so that fear is first and foremost something that we have to absolutely get rid of today. And we can, cuz we’re going to go through step by step how you can get this done safely, comfortably, and very effectively as well.

But before we go on, What’s the friction? How are we making this difficult and how do we make it easier? So there is a very real and tangible friction there. When it comes to us looking at who we want to approach for referrals. From an MD perspective, and this is coming from MDs I’ve actually spoken to.

So this is not just me pulling things out of thin air or wondering, I wonder if it’s this is actual feedback from other medical doctors. They don’t know you, first of all. There are patients who haven’t had a good experience with acupuncture, and more importantly and more likely MDs just don’t know an acupuncturist.

They don’t know that you’re there. So a lot of times it’s not an unwillingness. On the part of an MD to refer to us. It’s simply I just don’t know any acupuncturists. There’s also a lack of understanding, a lack of education there. Acupuncture versus dry needling. How do we fit into that? Do we do the same things that dry needle layers do?

Can we do dry needling? These are things that MDs have heard about but also need to be educated on. And so if. Don’t know you. They don’t know that there’s an acupuncturist in their area that they can refer to. How are they going to accomplish that? So it is about reducing that friction of making sure that MDs know that you’re there and they understand what you do.

Insurance is another big one that we have to talk about. Patients are accustomed to utilizing their, I. . More importantly though, they’re accustomed to utilizing the same mode of payment. Depending on what healthcare provider they go to, they wanna use the same thing. So for an example, if someone is seeing a cardiologist and they’re paying with their Blue Cross insurance and they get referred to somebody, they’re gonna want it to be somebody who takes their Blue Cross insurance.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t have a cash. Doesn’t mean that you can’t have a hybrid practice. In fact, that’s what I recommend, should talk to Sam Collins about that. But when we’re looking at those referral choices and who we’re going to work with, we need to think about it from the patient’s perspective.

And so there is friction occasionally when you have an MD who is willing to refer to you. But let’s say it’s an MD who is in network with everyone is working with. That’s gonna be a little bit of a roadblock for patients coming in. And it doesn’t mean we can’t work around that or work alongside it, but we first and foremost need to acknowledge it and be aware of it.

And the biggest thing is they don’t know you can meet their needs. , that does not mean that they don’t know the acupuncture works. It doesn’t mean that they haven’t heard of acupuncture before. Even if you’ve, all right I, they know I’m there at this point. They know I’m an acupuncturist.

There is still an innate human need to know what’s in it for me. How can this help me? And that’s from an MD perspective as well. That’s from. A surgeon saying how is this going to help me focus on what I want to do, which is surgery? I don’t wanna walk a patient through the recovery process.

I wanna be able to do surgery and be done with that. So when we’re gonna talk about next is the tangible ways that you can make this happen. One of the things that we’re gonna talk about is reducing that friction, about being really streamlined and targeted with our messaging around how we. The needs of whatever MD we’re talking to at that moment.

So let’s get into it nice and clean and specific. We’re gonna target, connect and follow up. What does this look like? All right. Targeting first and foremost. I do know acupuncturists who have sent out, thousands of letters to every MD in their area. That is certainly something you can do. It’s kinda that shotgun approach, right?

So just a lot of outflow and hope that something comes back. I’m really about efficiency. I know a lot of you that I’ve worked with are about efficiency and. A lot of times you’re running your own show as an acupuncturist, right? You might not have staff, or you have very limited staff, might just be you in the office.

So you need to be really clear about how you’re spending your time, what bandwidth you’re using how much of your cheese is gonna be used up on a project like this. And so if we can get really targeted with the MDs that we wanna work with, then this will be a much more streamlined process and a lot less work.

Let me do this in the form of an example for you. I work with Men’s Health a lot, so if I’m working with middle aged men who are experiencing andropause, I’m gonna say to myself alright. Where is a middle aged man? Normally going for his healthcare at this time when it comes to MDs, likely has a primary care doctor.

Probably has seen a cardiologist or a nephrologist. Kidney issues are very common. High blood pressure is very common at this age and then a urologist because urinary issues, prostate issues are extremely common in middle aged men. So that kind of narrowed my pool already, right? When I’m looking at, okay, I wanna be in middle aged men’s health, that’s who I wanna welcome into my practice.

So now I’m targeting those three types of specialists. Once I’ve narrowed down those three types of specialists, then I’m gonna figure out, okay, how am I connecting with these people? I find them in my area, but how am I gonna do that outreach and really what is my messaging with them? Because that’s incredibly important.

Part of that targeting into connecting approach is knowing that you’ve targeted the right people. Not only are they close by you, because again, if a patient sees someone somewhere, they’re not going to want to go an hour out of their way. So you wanna be really target. Really close close by if possible, least within easy driving distance.

That’s gonna make it an easier sell for the MD to just say, oh, they’re in the same building. That’s the best one. If you’re in a medical building, you can start right there. Very targeted. Who are the specialists that I wanna connect with? Are they close by? So those are two things in targeting.

Another thing is what we spoke about during that friction piece insurance. Do they have a cash practice? Do they have insurance? Do they have a hybrid practice? If they’re taking insurance, what insurance Are they in? Networking. Are you in network with those same those same insurance companies? That is going to matter.

It doesn’t mean that you can’t overcome that with a great value proposition. It just means that it’s something to be really aware of and it’s an additional cell that you are going to give to this MD in this second portion, which is to connect. So when we’re connecting with these very targeted people, what are we doing?

What are we doing when we connect? If you watched one of my previous shows, we talked about introductions and about your elevator pitch, and the main thing I hope you took out of that was that it’s about articulating value to the person you’re talking to. So when you’re connecting with an md, you know you found the right.

They’re close by probably a network with the same insurance company, or they have a cash practice and you have a cash practice, they can send somebody right down the hall to you, right across the street. But what are you saying to them? You need to address meeting their needs. They are humans, just like we are humans and humans wanna know how is this going to make my life easier?

How is this gonna make things better? I would love to sit here and tell you that it is enough to just be able to hand them a thing of research and say, look, acupuncture works. Tell your patients, but if you are looking for not only targeted referrals into your practice, but referrals that continue to come into your practice, there needs to.

An ROI on the other side for that md and that is the God’s honest truth. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve grown my practice in this way, and so if you can be really clear with how you can help them. I’ll give you another example. I work with a lot of surgeons, do a lot of post-surgical care in my practice, and I will research a surgeon prior to approaching.

Not only on their website and what they say that they do, but also on Yelp, on Google Reviews, looking at what are people complaining about? What do they love? What are the pain points for this doctor that I can address? So you bet. If there is a surgeon whose patients are going on saying, Hey, I really loved them.

They were great. The surgery went well, but I wasn’t so happy about the scar tissue. They didn’t do as good of a job as my friend’s surgery. That’s something you wanna speak to. You absolutely wanna talk about how acupuncture can help with scar tissue reduction. You also have to think about just the innate needs and personality of the MD that you’re approaching.

So again, a surgeon, they wanna cut, they wanna do surgery. They don’t wanna hold someone’s hand through the recovery process. Acupuncturists are great at holding someone’s hand through a recovery process. We are all about recovery. All about regulating the body. So if you can speak to that, if you can tell them that you’re gonna meet those needs that, oh, we can start acupuncture the day after surgery.

We can start it immediately. These are the things that it’s known to do. We’re gonna talk in the follow up about good collateral to have. But if you can speak to the things that you can take off their plate that they don’t wanna do. That is gonna pay dividends for you. On the other end of that, cuz it’s one thing to get an MD to refer to you once to just try it out, to say, oh yeah, I know an acupuncturist.

It’s another thing to get constant referrals into your practice from the same MDs and you have to be meeting their needs and getting them really excited about wanting to refer to you. So that’s the connect piece, making sure that you understand their innate needs and that you’re able to address. And then the follow up.

And this is, arguably the most important point because human nature, we’ve been talking about that a lot today. Human nature is out of sight, out of mind. So not only are you gonna give great results to the patients who are referred to you by MDs, but you’re going to have consistent follow up. And what does that follow up look like?

An initial follow up from a conversation can be in the form of collateral. Again, thinking, how do we make this really easy? How do we reduce the friction? Who am I gonna follow up with? Of course you wanna follow up with the doctor that you spoke to, but a lot of times the. Is who is making decisions in that office?

If a patient comes up and asks the staff a question after they see the doctor. The staff is gonna have a book of referrals or they’re gonna have someone at top of mind. And so being really friendly with not only the doctor but the staff as well, is something that will behoove you. So you can do follow-ups.

Talking to the staff. That’s very easy. If you’re in a medical building in the same area, just pop in and say Hi. I like to give one pagers as collateral and. You need to have an electronic option because a lot of people are not liking paper right now. That doesn’t mean you can’t have your old school brochures and that people don’t still like holding onto something.

But again, reducing friction. How do we make this really easy? And so part of making that really easy is that you’re gonna have multiple options so that it makes it the doctor’s choice or the staff’s choice what’s easiest for them. So I have a very. Clean, easy one pager that goes to surgeons and their staff.

And their patients. And then I have an electronic version as well. The electronic’s also great because you can put links in there. It can link to your website, it can link to research if you want. People don’t wanna read a ton of stuff so you can have a great infographic and. For those people who really wanna read a little bit more, they can click on those different links.

You have a lot of flexibility when it comes to those electronic options. It’s also very easy for the staff to pop that into a patient portal, to send it to them or to shoot it to them. Via email if they’re asking for a recommendation. So we always wanna be thinking not necessarily what’s easiest for me or what I like best as a business owner, but what would a prospective patient like the best?

What would the doctor that I’m interfacing with trying to get referrals into my practice, what would they like best? What would make their life easier? And these are also questions that are okay to ask when you’re in that initial conversation. And part of this follow up is being consistent, so I like to set reminders.

When you have a patient who is referred to you should have a system in place to thank the doctor for their referral. They should be signing a release of medical records so that you can send that doctor a report of their care. Not only, become their colleague and be able to liaise with them about this patient, but let them know that not only are you highly competent, but you’re highly collaborative and that helps reduce friction as well.

That is a concern for other healthcare providers that maybe we’re not gonna be super collaborative, maybe we’re gonna try to steal their patient. If you go requesting their medical records and not providing explanations for. , they might think that, oh, why is this doctor requesting these records and trying to take my patient?

You wanna do everything you can to show how collaborative you are and how excited you are to share in the care of that patient. And so with our documentation, you can very easily send that over to a doctor so they’re in the know about what’s going on with their patient as well. And this gets particularly important when you’re dealing with cases like surgery.

Patients who have been diagnosed with cancer you wanna be extra careful, you wanna protect yourself. We’ve done another show on informed consent, so that’s a conversation, you wanna keep going as well, so you wanna do right by the patients who are referred to you and make sure that you have MEChAs mechanisms in place so you can continue that conversation with the doctor and continue the follow up.

So I told you I like efficiency. We kept it nice and short today. Just wanna end by telling you guys, you’ve got this. This is something that I’ve seen other acupuncturists do. I’ve coached other acupuncturists on how to do this. This is solely the way that I built my practice and I know that you can do this too.

And so I just wanna thank AAC again for having me today and you guys have a very exciting. Coming up next week with Poney Chiang, and if you haven’t caught any of his stuff, I’ve done his stuff live. He is absolutely amazing, knows so much, and so you don’t wanna miss that one.