So I want to just introduce this topic of what you may be missing that can literally transform your practice in a relatively short period of time to be a busy practice.
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hello and welcome to AAC To The Point. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. I’m a CPA. So a certified or charter professional accountant as well. Fellow of the American board of Oriental reproductive medicine. And I’m also an author. I’ve written a book called the acupuncture fertility diet, and a practice management book for acupuncture is called missing the point why acupuncturists fail and what they need to know to succeed the topic today is about the difference between a busy practice and not a busy practice, a successful practitioner and not a successful practitioner.
And it’s quite interesting because I’m doing my research for my book. It was my experience in talking to other calls. That it wasn’t always the ones that did best in school or the ones that were incredibly gifted, quite skilled at their craft that had busy practices. And it became very apparent to me that to have a successful practice did not always mean that you were talented.
We obviously want that right. Integrity. We want you to be clinicians that are helping patients helping your community. But we also want to know about some of the practice management sides and I’m very aware of being part of our profession. That some of us have an aversion even to talk about money or business.
So I want to just introduce this topic of what you may be missing that can literally transform your practice in a relatively short period of time to be a busy practice. The part that I just want to share with you just to help remove any aversion. So you’re open to receiving what I have to say is.
We can look at our practices from a yin-yang perspective and we have our clinical knowledge and we have our practice management or business knowledge, and to be successful you, and to be healthy, you have to have yin and yang and relationship. And when union yang fall out of relationship, we have illness and we need y’all separate.
We have death. And so same thing with your clinical practice. If you only focus on the clinical side, And never focus on the practice management side. You could have your uni young out of relationship and be so talented, but yet not seeing very many patients. Or the worst case scenario is uni yang separate, and you actually have to close your practice and find a different career in order to eat, live in and pay your bills.
And so my goal is to have union young in relationship. So you are actually have the talent to help your community, and you have the practice management skills to attract them into your practice because it’s become very evident that. Patients can’t tell the difference between a good acupuncture prescription or a good herbal prescription, why they didn’t go to Chinese medicine school.
So how would they know that the points you’re using are correct or not? And to say that well, it’s all about results. I know for those of you that have been practicing for many years, know that some of your patients that are the best referrals are the ones that you weren’t able to do. Resolve their problem, but yet they refer a ton of people to you.
And then there’s some that you had miracle cures with. Even you are surprised that they got well so quickly based on their history and what they were presenting with. And yet within one or two, maybe three treatments, you resolved it and they don’t refer anybody to you. So there’s something also.
So when I do these lectures to the point with the AC, I want to get to the point and that’s what I’m going to do now. And I like to share what I hopeful hopefully are short and impactful ideas or concepts for you. And so the concept today is going to be around specialization or focusing and. What successful entrepreneurs do.
And an entrepreneur can be an acupuncturist because basically somebody who is accepting money for their service or product. So by definition, you are a business. So you could be an entrepreneur. If. You behave and know the principles of it being in business does not make you an entrepreneur. They’re all entrepreneurs are in business, but if you’re in business, that doesn’t mean you’re considered an entrepreneur, somebody successful like that. And so one of the key principles is to be able to fill a need, see a need, and then fill that need for the public. And that’s what becomes valuable, attractive to the.
What we call patients, what businesses would call customers, our patients, to be valuable to them. We have to fill their need. And I want to share with you a blog post. I did a couple of weeks ago, and I ensure I’m happy if you’re online to answer, or even after in the chat app, you can ask some questions.
But I want to talk about specialization focus in particular. I want to talk about. Two conditions that I think if you got competent and confident to treat it well and learn how to communicate to the public, that you are treating this, that you would be lined up in a heartbeat pretty quickly, where you would need associates or you need to find a new solution for yourself to handle the volume of patients.
One of the pushbacks around focusing in a certain era of specialization is they say, it’s, it’s we should be generalist. We should treat everybody. And I agree you should treat a lot of people, different types of people, but when you specialize, it makes you very quickly an expert in that area.
When you still see them in your clinic, you’re still treating them holistically. So for me, I. Famously known for treating for treating infertility. But my patients that come in have headaches, they get sore knees, they hurt their backs. They may have diarrhea. They may feel cold. They may have psoriasis.
So I’m not just focusing on their ovaries or for the men on their sperm. However when they look me up on the website, They are looking for somebody that can solve their problem. And so most people, when they’re looking for somebody, they don’t want somebody that lists a hundred things. They treat that’s a generalist, which makes you a master of nothing from the public’s perception.
And if they go to your site and they see that you’re treating one to three things that starts to give them confidence that you’re the right person, because you’re treating that. And it’s like in the old days, I’m old enough to have yellow, the phone book when there were yellow pages. And if you’re looking for something in the yellow pages and you’re looking for a therapist, cause you have a phobia and you had a phobia of lad.
And somebody had an ad. Same. I treat fear of snakes, fear of ladders, fear of flying fear pencils, and the list goes on and on. And somebody else had an ad on that yellow page book. And it says, I specialize in fear of ladder. Most people would choose the fear of ladders. They’re just wanting somebody to be an expert.
You don’t go in Western medicine because that’s the framework they’re coming from. If you have cancer, you don’t go to a GP. You go to the oncologist. If you have hurricane candy, heart disease, you go to the cardiologist or the dermatologist for. And so I know in the clinic, how we treat is very holistic, but we have to be patient centered to care and get into the shoes of the patients and how they think, because the key is, can you get them in the door so you can treat them because if you know how to treat many things very well, but you can’t get patients into your clinic, you’re not really helping your community very much.
You’re not seeing these patients. So we need to make sure they come in to see you. And this is the in young. You want to be competent and skilled at treating them? Obviously we don’t want to be charlatans. We really do want to be able to help our community. So I want to share with you a blog, I’m going to read it a bit and then I may pause and ponder elaborate a bit, but I just thought I’ll be to the point.
And so I don’t miss anything. I’m going to read this. So I’m talking about viruses in particular. You might’ve heard of the COVID variant the code, the COVID disease. And basically I say, you must be aware. We are currently in another surge in COVID as a result. We not only have both restrictions in place, but also more people are getting vaccinated or getting the virus or both.
This means that more people are going to experience post-inflammatory conditions. Triggered by the virus. And these are known as long haulers are triggered by the vaccines. Yes. There are some people who are experiencing long holler symptoms. Following the vaccine. Please note that this talk I’m doing is not about the marriage to vaccinate or not to vaccinate.
That is not what this talk is about. This is about being your time to shine and to be of service and great value to your community. The opportunity is presented as. And the question is, are you going to act on it? The definition of luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
And actually the opportunity now has presented itself, and I hope you are prepared or willing to become prepared now. So back in back a few months ago, I was out for dinner with some friends and I used to be a chartered accountant. And so a lot of my friends are professionals, lawyers, doctors. Scientists and I’ve kept these friendships and we like to get together and meet.
And it was quite interesting. We were up for dinner and one of them being a medical doctor said before Christ shut most of our social life down. So this was when I was out with my friends. So we were still able to go out for dinner right now. We’re locked down. And he said, you alternative doctors. Yes.
I know I should. I, when I, when they said that and I wrote it in my blog, I thought, should these be my friends anymore? The fact they refer to me that way, but they do care about me and they didn’t mean it as an insult. And I and I took it with a grain of salt. Anyways, you alternative doctors should be so busy now because there are so many long haulers that look like fibromyalgia.
And that is what you are really good at. And we don’t really have a solution for these people. And I know again based on their common columns, alternative doctors and how they, don’t understand these are my friends and they still don’t understand really what I do. I treat fibromyalgia in their mind, but let’s just talk about what is the reality is more and more people understanding what we do, but there’s so many more people that don’t.
And so education is really important and communication is really important. And if you can educate to the public that you can. Support or treat these long haulers because there’s nobody else is treating it. You will become the go-to person, but you have to become the early adopters. Somebody’s going to figure this out.
And if you haven’t figured this out yet, and you haven’t gotten the momentum, you’re going to be left behind us as acupunctures. So I want to focus on what good came out of that. It is a Jew. It is Chinese medicine docs that are trained and experienced to treat complex syndromes. We are now seeing and conventional medicine are still trying to figure this out.
Eventually they likely will, but now is your time to. Actually some hospitals have already set up long hollered clinics and have hired acupuncturist as part of the team. Another reason to buy you, to make this area of focusing your practice. And I’m going to share at the end of this, what I’ve been doing with my long haulers, some of the early stages of what I’ve been doing and some of the results I’m seeing, it’s quite promising and exciting.
I want to let you know that I recorded an interview with Christine Kaiser and she’s a licensed acupuncturist. She has her DOL. And she’s a fellow of the American board of Oriental reproductive medicine as well. And she serves as the clinical manager of acupuncture and quality at the university of hospital, hospitals corner, whole health in Cleveland, Ohio.
And she shared that her hospital has established an integrative team to treat long haulers, which includes seven acupuncturists. And they currently have a three month wait list. Let’s pause on that. So a hospital has set up an integrated. PR to treat long haulers. The sum of the team members are acupuncturist.
They have seven, acupunctures dedicated to treating long haulers and they already have a three month wait list. The concept is already proven. If you have a slow practice and you become a proficient at treating long haulers. And part of that means the confident to communicate clearly to your patients, how and why you can have.
Then you could become very busy and we’re going to talk about that communication in a minute. I’m often asked by colleagues, what areas should they focus or specialize? And I usually respond with first find what you were passionate. And then I list three to four areas that are attractive to patients.
That’s the key. You have to be passionate about it. So that’s your part. You got to love what you do otherwise. You’re not going to put the work in needed to become confident and competent, and it has to be attracted to the patients. So patients have to care about it, right? And so certain areas are more attractive to patients than other I’m in long haulers is my new number one condition right now.
Fertility is another one. And there’s some other areas I can tell you, but I’m actually wanting to, oh, so in my blog, I talk about, I’m looking to hire somebody in Vancouver to take over a long holler area in our practice. I currently know of six people who develop symptoms following either the vaccine or the virus.
So I’m motivated to make sure someone on my acupuncturist team is passionate about helping them as I’m aware that more people are going to be. Are going to develop these post-inflammatory conditions, the common symptoms that I’m seeing of the six people only at this stage that I know of. And I’ve seen my, my third and my practice.
We’ll talk about this. They have fatigue, not all, but this is the group of symptoms. I’m seeing fatigue, peripheral neuropathy body pain, severe brain fog, skin rashes, anxiety, headaches. And so I just want to talk about the focus of specialization in what’s important here. So I’ve been talking about a few of the patients.
I’ve seen the first one they came in. I wasn’t confident I wasn’t prepared yet, so I didn’t confident, confidently establish the treatment regimen, what to expect and she’s come in ad hoc. I haven’t seen. Very regularly may be three or four visits, but over quite a long period of time. And so the last time I saw it was a couple of months ago and she saw some improvements in some areas, but not in others.
And to be honest, I don’t know if it’s having any effect what I’ve done, because she could be having those kinds of improvements just based on the time right now. But I was more prepared when patient number two came in and she was interesting because her post-inflammatory condition, her long hauler symptoms came after her vaccine.
So she got the vaccine and it triggered a post-inflammatory condition. Now I know this is a heated debate, so I’m just going to pause a bit about vaccine to not vaccinate. Because this is not what it’s about, what I want to bring to you. I’m just going to bring a factual thing, talking to that, the group at the IO clinic and talking to other people, majority of the people that are long haulers are people that have had COVID.
There is a very small percentage of people who get vaccinated that also develop those simple. Compared to the long haul or the percentage is a big minority, but it still happens. And because so many people are going to get COVID, there’s a higher chance just by numbers. No matter what the percentage is that some will get post-inflammatory conditions because they got COVID.
And because so many people are getting vaccine. There are going to be some people that get post-inflammatory conditions. And this theory, how we treat Chinese medicine, who cares, whether you call it a vaccine or you call it COVID we already know this has been around for eons. We’ve seen this with other viruses Epstein-Barr virus and in Chinese medicine, we’ve seen these latent pathogens in the body wreak havoc.
So this is not new to us. It is a new virus in the west. But the thinking from Chinese medicine perspective, this is not new. This is very old. And we do have an approach for this, my second patient, a young woman, healthcare provider herself. So she got triggered from when she had her second vaccine and she had peripheral neuropathy down her legs, insomnia and anxiety, and extreme fatigue and extreme brain fog.
And I used herbal medicine for her. I use acupuncture for her and laser acupuncture for her and within seven to eight visits she’s 99% better where it was a little bit different is I was familiar because of some of the courses we offer our healthy seminars for treating long haul. I was just a little bit more familiar and I was more diligent at telling her, this is how I want to see you.
We’re going to do this and you need to do it this way. Like the herbs, et cetera. My first patient, I just treat her like any patient. But I didn’t give her direction on how often to come. I wasn’t, I didn’t strongly recommend the herbal stuff and I just didn’t do my job well enough to communicate. How to get the best results patient.
Number two, I did. And and she seen right benefit patient number three came in yesterday and he is 46. He is a highly functioning individual, used to be a credibly. Professional and which requires concentration and being sharp. And his he’s had it since 20, 20. He’s been a long holler after he got the virus.
And so it’s been a while and he has incredible or severe brain fog. He has shortness of breath and some malaise, mostly related to the brain fog. I only saw him yesterday by the way. And, but I was able to clearly see. How to come in. So I’m going to be seeing him two to three times a week in the early stages.
We planned out an eight week treatment plan and then recess he’s on verbal. And he’s going to be having laser acupuncture because there’s so much that we already learned how photo biomodulation. Late low-level laser therapy can help with the lymphatic system mitochondria inflammation. So it’s just a, it’s just a marriage when it’s treating long haulers or any type of inflammatory condition, having skills in needles that skills and low-level laser therapy.
It is a marriage made in heaven. And so I’m very excited to use both what I did though yesterday. And can we share do a share screen, please? I just trying to share with you what I did yesterday. So yes. I went through my healthy seminars courses and I went and searched our COVID long holler courses.
And I just went through cause we have a series of. And I went particularly to David jewelers acupuncture in treating post viral inflammatory conditions. We have a few on, here we go. One by CT, we got our herbal one from Heiner. We got a scalp acupuncture by Darrell Wallace and David jeweler. I went to this one and I had to review.
For the following. So I was the moderator for the lecture, but as a moderator, I hear, but I’m not as focused as you guys, as if you’re attending. I got other things going on in the back end. So I hear something things. So I was aware of what I could do, but I wasn’t aware enough. So in between patients.
Late until the evening. I reviewed a lot of the material and I have a good fortune because I know now David, I contacted him as well about my case. How can I do it a little bit better for the next gentleman? I’m happy with what happened with my first, but I think I can do it even better and quicker. And so I reviewed this.
I also. Purchased a functional medicine course, because I wanted to understand how it’s being treated and understood from the Western perspective, because that gives me the language to talk to my patients because they’re Googling and they’re part of these massive Facebook. There are massive groups now for these long haul.
That’s why I view become the known to treat it. If you treat one person really well, and they’re part of this group and they tell people in the group, you could have several hundred people contacting your clinic in a short period of time because they don’t know how to get well, they can’t find anything because for that tangent they’re Googling.
And the Googling is talking about Western medicine and they don’t have an answer. There’s not a lot about Chinese medicine or functional medicine. So I went to understand the functional medicine because they do a very good job explaining what’s happening from the west. So I can understand what they’re seeing from the west and why, and talk the terminology.
Cause they’re familiar with it. They’ve become experts in their condition. So to give them the. I do want to understand from the Western perspective of what’s happening. And it just makes me an informed practitioner to understand what else can help them. So I can be a resource and let them know what else besides what I’m doing can help them.
And I find for myself when I hear and understand things well from the Western, I’m able to reframe. Into Chinese medicine, for example, in the west, they’re talking a lot about the inflammation in the lymphatic system, and I’m able to understand how I can use my low level laser therapy on certain lymph nodes to improve lymphatic flow, to help detoxify.
And when you want to think about that from a Chinese medicine, for me, a lot of the reframe, how they’re presenting and how I had read some of these research papers. It sounds like a lot dampness Denton is leading to inflammation. And I’m understanding that more low-level laser therapy is increasing blood flow and lymphatic flow, and basically it’s helping resolve Daphnis and drain down.
This is what I’m seeing in my clinical practice. You can stop the sheriff. Thank you on that morning. And I went in started doing David’s course. I’m a busy guy. I have a busy practice. I read healthy seminars, but it’s one thing to say, oh, I want to treat something. I want to get good at it.
And I, and put on your website, I’m treating long haulers, but you do, this is the young interrelationship. So just like. People in our field get upset. If you talk about money or business, I also questioned people that put things on their website. I treat long haulers, but they don’t do anything to become competent or confident or become experts in that.
So you do want to get behind what you say. You don’t just want to put that on your website. And patients are too educated today, 20 years ago less access to the website over 20 years ago at the time of this. Not a lot of people had web pages 22 years ago. It was just come around. But now the patients are educated and so in a visit, they can talk about their condition and know if they understand it much better than you do.
And that’s not good for the patient’s perspective that hurts their confidence. And so the key here is to get really good at something. I was up for crazy hours yesterday. Cause I wanted to learn, I want to help these people. I have friends that are long haulers, so I want to be able to help them. And I now have I said my third patient, I’m going to call back the first one now.
Cause I feel like I can do differently and better for her. So I want her back and I’m excited to treat this gentlemen because I already saw what I did with patient number two and it worked really well. And then reviewing David’s mature. I know I can even do it better, I believe. And so therefore, hopefully quicker see them re see this person recover and I will update my website.
I’m going to start to blog about this. And I’ve already found out, I didn’t know that there’s a long hall or clinic in my city. I didn’t know this fan. There’s a Facebook group full of thousands of long haulers. And the patient I’ve seen is very educated and his wife is helping him because it’s hard for him to get.
On Facebook, he doesn’t have the brain fog. The focus is just too difficult for him. So she’s been his advocate. She found us through Googling that low-level laser therapy is helping people with COVID and long holler syndrome. And she found out that we’re very well versed and experienced in using low levels, laser therapy, and they contacted us.
And that’s how he came to my. Preparation plus opportunity. There’s your luck? I got lucky. And I am fully confident that if we help this gentlemen, more of the people from his group will come in to our clinic. I will reach out to the long haul or clinic and see what they’re doing. So I have resources for my patients, and I imagine if I have good results and I can communicate to them how I can help their patients, then I’ll become a resource for them to refer to because currently.
They don’t have an answer in the west and they will figure this out. We just do. We figure these things out and somebody is going to figure this out, whether it’s naturopathic physicians or Chinese medicine doctors. And the question is, do you get seen as the expert for this year? And we circle back to the beginning of this talk where I said, my colleagues, when I was out for dinner with them said, man, if you guys aren’t busy now, you’re never going to be busy.
Cause these long haulers look like fibromyalgia and isn’t that what you guys are experts at. And so they want to refer people, these patients because they got nothing for them. And so if you can stand up and become good at this, then you can become that expert in that go to person in personally. I’m focusing on fertility historically, I’m going to be, I’m very interested in long haulers.
So I’m going to learn how to treat this better. But I get asked all the time, Hey, I’m in the Vancouver area. Can you recommend somebody in San Diego, in Australia, in Toronto, in New York for fertility? And because I know people who take our courses on healthy seminars and I’m I’m a member of the, I’m a fellow of the, a BRM, the American board or into reproductive medicine.
I’m easy. I can refer him and I will soon be needing long holler referrals because I know quickly I will become known for it. Cause I’m going to communicate it well. And I’m getting myself up to speed pretty damn quick. That I’m going to want to be able to refer people. I do recommend we can go back to share screen.
I want to show something and then we’ll close off. So there’s some courses here. SU Suzy Hayes did a great course. I really like David jewelers cause he explains how you get this post-viral inflammatory conditions from the west. And then he goes into the classical Chinese medicine. He also explains how it can happen with the vaccine as well.
So it was. Enlightening. So I can use that language with my patients. This was great by sea, by Ross Rosen. I think I said CT earlier. It was Ross Rosen who did a talk on the orthostatic tachycardia. A lot of people get that. Rapid heartbeat. Heiner did one on herbs and then David and Darrell did one on Wyness EY on the post-inflammatory conditions.
And we’re about to add another one from Daryl on divergent and extraordinary meridians for post-inflammatory conditions. So multifaceted approach. On my website for specialization. You don’t recommend you list a thousand things. I recommend you list three things. Even on my website, there’s too many here.
We’ve got six things, right? It starts to dilute you being an expert. It’s okay to treat many things, but how you communicate on your website, you really want to let people know you’re an expert in a few areas because that will give them confidence. And then in your clinic, you can have information on other things and obviously treat other things.
It’s one way to, to do it. I will be moving this or playing around with this and we’ll be adding a COVID long holler section to year as well. So when patients come they’ll know that we can help them. Okay. You can stop the shares as well. So if you’re looking to balance your yin and yang, your clinical practice management skills, I recommend my book and there’s a couple other practice management books out there called missing the.
The website is missing the point book.com or you can email me and ask me for the link. I also suggest looking at other resources out there, there is lots of content out there on using acupuncture, herbal, and even laser therapy. For long haulers, I’m not talking about treating active COVID by the way, I want to make sure nobody’s making that assumption.
Not that Chinese medicine is not a great resource or could be great resource for people that active infection in my clinic. We are not. Based on our health health professionals act regulation, we’re not equipped to treat active COVID. So we do not treat active. COVID active COVID does not come into our clinic at this time because we don’t have the safety equipment.
We don’t have the procedures or regulated to treat active. COVID however we can treat long haulers and no matter what, whether it’s from mono Epstein-Barr virus COVID. Vaccines or line, whatever it is, this is something that our medicine can treat well. And I would invite you to look at a good course of star with is David Mueller’s, palpation based course, and then branch out from there.
And then there’s other courses available on the web, not just from healthy seminars, but get educated because your confidence is key. And if we want the union balance, it’s not just to say, I want to and put on your website, I’m treating long haulers. You want to be competent. And so you do want to do. Increase your knowledge.
You have the Chinese medicine skills. And if this is just to refine it, you’re not going back to school. It’s not a big step. I’ll tell you that right now. It wasn’t a big leap. If you are a a competent acupuncturist herbalists then it’s not a big. To fine tune it so you can help treat people that have been diagnosed as a long hauler.
And again, you want to be communicate that the other specialty is fertility. My goodness, the IVF. Are more busy now than they ever been ever since they got shut down back in 2020, if you guys remember that back then they got shut down for two to three months since then they’re having record number months of IVF cycles and women and men, but women in particular are looking for things to conceive naturally and to help decrease their IVF success.
And so that’s the secondary to still specialize in and unhealthy seminars. We have the largest life. Of courses for acupuncturists and functional medicine for re reproductive health for fertility. And we have many courses and we have to help you prepare for the American board oriented reproductive medicine exam.
We have many prep courses, so long haulers or fertility I’m known for fertility and you’re watching it in real time. My success is because I’ve been an early adopter. So in closing. Back in 2002, I started treating fertility by 2004. That was my focus. Sometimes you may not be able to say specialize where you live.
So you can say that your focus, your practice focus by 2004. That was my focus in my country in Canada. Nobody else was really doing it. I was told I was a fool. You’ll never be busy cause nobody was seeking us out then for fertility, they weren’t right. It’s the miscellaneous disease in Chinese medicine.
And you may see one. If you’re lucky now, patients look for acupuncture for fertility. Every acupuncturist says they do fertility, but were you an early adopter? That’s key. Then I did online learning for acupuncture. So I told them I was told that it was going to fail. That started in 2008. Now it’s everywhere.
But healthy seminars back then was called pro D seminars. We were the early adopter before people were. I’m one of the early adopters in my country for acupuncture is using low-level laser therapy, chiros and physios been doing it a lot longer, but as an acupuncturist, I’m one of the early adopters.
And I am the pioneer, I believe for laser, for fertility outside of Japan, we’re one of the and our clinics definitely early adopter there. And so we have people traveling to our clinic for that. And now I’m going to be an early adopter as for tree long haulers. And you can wait a year and then join the group.
Or you can become an early adopter. Take some courses, get knowledgeable, join some groups because your communities need you entrepreneurs find a need and fill it. That’s what makes them successful. They find out what people need and they feel it and that’s attractive to the public, your patients. All right.
Thank you for listening. I want to let you know that next week we’ll have up Chen Yen on the AAC to the points. So tune in next week to listen to Chen and thank you very much.