You got this! Grow your practice now and in the future – Lorne Brown

 

 

Thank you again to the AAC, the American acupuncture Council for having me host To The Point. UMy segment is on practice management. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a CPA. I’m also a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. I practice in Canada, Vancouver, BC at Acupuncture Wellness Center. I’m the founder of healthy seminars, previous known as Prodigy seminars.

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I’m the chair of the integrated fertility symposium. And I’m also an author. I have a couple of books out there. The one on practice management is missing the point why acupuncturists fail, what they need to know to succeed. And I enjoy coming on to this segment of the show to share my practice management pearls, because I have both the clinical experience and being a CPA, the knowledge and auditing experience of what it seems to take to, uh, to succeed. Um, our topic today is on, you got this, how you’re going to grow your practice now and for the future. So what I plan to, um, talk about today are the following three things.

Um, my prediction for, um, a future, what’s the future opportunity for Chinese medicine practitioners? I think that’s a lot that’s on our minds a lot. Um, how do I not only survive and, uh, more so how do I thrive now when there’s any other major events happening in life? This has been throughout life. Um, not everybody survived, so there will be what we call casualties. There will be, um, from the practice side, people that will not be practicing. And so my expectation is to help more people, um, make it way, make their way through any change in life. So any type of difficult change in life. So that’s what I’m hoping to share with you today. And not only so you can just survive and get through these challenging potentially challenging times, but also, so you can come out through it, um, thriving and better for it.

So I’m gonna talk, I’m gonna give you my prediction of what I think is happening for the future. What are the future opportunities for the Chinese medicine practitioners? Um, I’m gonna talk about, uh, how you can change just one perception just by changing one perception. You will start to see opportunities that have always been there, but you’re blinded to them. And by changing a certain perception, um, all of a sudden more opportunities will open up to you. And then I I’d like to share a mind hack, um, how to support you in being able to see those opportunities, um, that are available to you, but you’re constantly I’m missing those. So first I’m going to share my predictions. Now when it comes to entrepreneurs and guess what? You are small businesses. If you are practicing on your own or you are a contractor, regardless, you are, um, a small business.

And, um, if you’re going into succeed, we’ll call you an entrepreneur and entrepreneurs, um, tend to look for needs, where are their needs in the world that need to be filled. And then they find ways to fill them. So they look for these needs and then they fill this need by either providing a product or service. And so there is a need in our world right now as well. And my, for the future of Chinese medicine right now, I see it that if you could learn to focus on treating long haulers, um, so post COVID infection or any infection from a pandemic, but in particular long haulers, um, I think you would have a thriving practice and also, wow, what a service to the community, because there are people that ha get infections. We’ve seen this route throughout history, throughout the history of Chinese medicine and throughout our history of us living on this planet.

And now more so with COVID-19 that some people, um, get these latent pathogens in their body and they struggle to get back to normal. And right now it’s very new, but there is evidence and documentation of people. Once they’re no longer infected with the, COVID not showing up positive, they are not back to normal. And some of the symptoms they are experiencing are fatigue, joint, pain, brain fog, and mental health issues. Lots of things that we see already in our practice, that we are probably pretty equipped at supporting and Chinese medicine has an excellent way to deal with these latent pathogens on the way we’ve mapped out the body. We have, we have tools that can support people. And to let you know, I was talking to a dentist friend of mine that teaches in the dental school here in Vancouver at the university of British Columbia.

And I just said, how are dental is doing right now. Are they struggling? Because you know, people are afraid to go to dent what’s going on for your industry. He said, they are busier than ever TMJ jaw pain because of COVID and all the stress and anxiety that people are experiencing. There has been an increase in people clenching and grinding during the day and at night, which is leading to TMJ and other job pain disorders. And so, um, they are very busy treating jaw pain, and I’m apparently I think acupuncture can do a good job at TMJ as well. So, but nobody may not know this. And so this is, um, my prediction for us is post COVID long haulers. So learning to really treat well these long haulers and seeing what the main symptoms are. There is some neurological symptoms, but the most common ones are fatigue, joint pain, brain fog, and mental health issues.

And then just on his own mental health issues, um, people are experiencing and will continue to experience anxiety, feeling depressed and insomnia, um, from the uncertainty in our world. Um, and then taking your practice online, a lot of people are taking their practice more online to offer consults, supplements, verbal acupressure chigong. So having an online component, I think would be a great idea. I do want to let you know that eventually, if you are able to make it through this period of time, you can’t do acupuncture online. And so there will be a need for our service eventually because it’s something that just can’t be done online. So I just want to remind you of that. However, you have to adapt during these times, and this is the time to really, um, get this knowledge and really learn how to treat post viral infections. According to Chinese medicine principles, I would encourage you.

So my prediction is if you want to, if you have a practice that’s not booming. If you’re a new practitioner, if you don’t have a waitlist doing what you do now, um, then now’s the time to start to prepare yourself, um, and get those, um, tools and that knowledge. So you are able to help this population because there is going to be a large population needing this help. So who am I like, how do I have the credibility? Why would you want to listen to me? Do I have the knowledge and experience to share my predictions? And so far, I think I’ve been a good at predicting, um, or going into things that have turned out to be the right prediction. At the time I was told I was crazy and many of them, and I’ll share a few of those. I’m the first Canadian clinic to focus on reproductive health back and around.

I started in 2000 by around 2001. And just so you know, many of you know, that people treat fertility with acupuncture all over the world. It’s common. You see it everywhere in 2001, that wasn’t the case. Just so you know, I think if you and I was on the web with that, if you went on the web and you search, I think two people would come up mainly in the States, Mike Berkley and Randy Lewis, nobody else really had websites, um, or many websites. And definitely not just focusing on fertility, think about it back in that day, back in 2001, um, fertility and your gynecology, Chinese medicine textbooks was under miscellaneous diseases. It didn’t even get its own chapter. So it wasn’t something that you would think if I treat mainly fertility I’d have a busy practice. When I went into treating just fertility, it was a passion of mine.

I saw a need for it. Um, I was told that I’m going to starve to death and not, it’d be crazy because back then people with fertility issues, weren’t seeking out Chinese medicine acupuncture. There wasn’t that policy study that put us on the map. It hadn’t happened yet. So, um, when I decided to do this out of passion and saw a need for this and this niche, um, I was told that, um, it was practiced suicide in you. You’re not going to have a busy practice. And I ended up having to hire many associates because word got around and my practice became so busy that I actually only would treat reproductive health and, um, I couldn’t handle the volume. And so I needed other practitioners and so five or six acupuncture practitioners now and naturopathic physicians and mind massage or in my clinic and acupuncture.

So, um, that one would, I will check off saying, um, it was a good prediction. Um, I’m a CPA. Um, and so, um, I spent years auditing companies. So from that experience I’ve seen, what has, um, why some companies have been successful and why some companies are not successful and don’t survive. And so I bring that, and not only the knowledge of being a CPA, but an experience as being an auditor, I’ve seen how, um, I’ve seen what, what can happen. And I bring this to you as well. When I share this with you. Um, I pioneered online learning with, uh, for Chinese medicine back in the day, it’s around, um, 2007 ish. It was just pro D seminars was the name of the company. It’s now called healthy seminars, but it was protein. Then when I launched it and it was just us in blue poppy that were doing online learning, and I was told that this was a bad idea.

Who’s going to want to learn acupuncture online while you can see now, um, online is everywhere. And people take courses all the time doing online, their doctorate, a doctorate in Chinese medicine, et cetera. So, um, back in 2007 ish, not too long ago, um, more than a decade behind you, but back then I was told that’s not a good idea. And I made that prediction that this is where learning will go. It was feasible, no hat, no planes on have to travel, no taxi. Um, all the people in rural communities, just very easy to access people and to access these great speakers with textbooks. Um, wouldn’t it be great that we can get them online versus having to find them once or twice a year and travel to them. So I, again, it’s obvious now, but it wasn’t obvious when I started out. And again, I was told that would not work.

Um, I launched the integrated fertility supposing in 2015, um, and we sold out five years in a row, 2015, 16, 17, 18, and 19. Now, the reason that was special is the ifs was related only to fertility. So it was a condition specific conference and it was a destination conference for Americans. Now, back when I was planning this in 2014, um, a lot of American conferences were struggling that tendencies was get tendons was getting lower and to put a conference for Americans in Canada had never been done and was not considered a good idea cause they can’t even fill them in the States. And then to pigeonhole, um, fertility conference, they didn’t think it would work well. And many of you have heard of it or attended it. It did very well until 2020 when COVID I’m interrupted would we would have sold out. We were almost sold out and we chose out of health and safety to counsel the conference.

And again, predicting we counseled the conference before conferences were really being counseled or at the adventure being counseled. We did this, um, early on in February just to just, just decided to not risk people’s health and safety. And then, um, three weeks later, um, everything got shut down anyhow. And one more thing for my credibility is I wrote a book called missing the point. So I’ve taken some time to do my research and write a book. So what I would be doing and what I am doing as a practitioner, if you don’t have a waitlist, um, I would be looking into developing your knowledge and your skills. There’s lots of ways to do this. Now, online healthy seminars, we’ve put together some online classes, um, to address mental health issues like anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder. Insomnia is we’ve got lots on there. Um, plus we have some herbal courses by Sharon Weizenbaum and Hein or fruit Hoff, and many more verbal courses.

And then there’s acupuncture. There’s guash awe there’s the acupuncture of the balance method, acupuncture som uh, Korean style acupuncture. There’s many things out there that people are discussing that could help, um, these long haulers. So, um, it’s an opportunity for you now to, um, to address that. And so again, if I was an acupuncturist, starting out two things, I’d be really focusing on how to communicate to people, um, why and how I can help you. Cause you remember there’s a need, but they don’t know you exist. For example, they’re going to their dentist, they have job paying, Oh, jaw dentists. So they go to their dentists. So it’s your role to educate through communication. Some people call that marketing. It is marketing is educating. So educating the public, um, how and why you can help them, um, with the need and the need here is do you have, if you had COVID fatigue, brain fog, you know, lifts up the symptoms, educate them, educate them how Chinese medicine has a long tradition of treating pathogens and viruses where people are struggling afterwards.

So this is not new. And then I would increase my knowledge cause you want to be congruent and have that knowledge. So now it’s a time you’ve been trained to just kind of sharpen that tool and really look to reading journals, textbooks, online courses, um, finding ways that you can get your knowledge to a great level. So you can communicate clearly to your patients and constantly treat them with the tools you have acupuncture. Gwoza herbal medicine. Now I always say, I like Einstein’s quote, make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. So it’s simple to say the prediction is there’s going to be a lot of long-haul up haulers and there’s an opportunity for the Chinese medicine profession to step in and support these people. There’s going to be there is people now with mental health issues, anxiety, um, feeling depressed and insomnia so that, that there is a need for people to support, um, in a non-pharmacological way to support these people.

But knowing is not enough. So you’re going to need to take action and up your knowledge and get the word out. So again, just hearing this going, Oh, that’s great. Not going to help you. There is effort on your part. So simple, make everything as simple as possible. I’ve given you my prediction. I gave you a little bit of my history just to let you know that I’ve been fairly good at a fairly good track record. And some of you are like, yeah, that’s obvious. Yeah, to me, it’s obvious as well. But for some people they’re still focusing on what they used to do and how they used to treat. And I’m suggesting that things have changed and now you want to adapt and a huge opportunity. If you’re flexible and willing to not do everything the way you used to do it and see that there’s another opportunity available to there is a need out there and you are set to fill that need.

The other thing I said, I want to talk about. I said there three things. I want to talk about how you can change your perception, um, and how this can shift you from living basically from lack and abundance. And it’s a simple concept again. So going with that theme make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. And so the perception is how you look at an opportunity. And so most people look at, um, when they’re going to do something, invest in themselves, they look at the cost and not what the return is, not what it’s going to bring back to them, how they’re going to benefit what we call an accounting return on investment. And of course, I like to use an example of, um, a Jane Littleton course that we offer. Um, cause it’s, it’s not, uh, it’s not the least expensive course.

Not the most expensive course either, but it’s about $500 for her course, 19 hours of continuing education credit. And a lot of people see that as a sticker price and go, Whoa, I’m not going to take that. So just by seeing that price, they’re like, I’m not, I’m not interested. That’s intimidating. Some patients are like that with your services as well, by the way, most people look at the cost. I’m saying, look at the benefit as well, actually more importantly. And so for those that treat infertility and, um, you will know that majority of your patients will come for like 24 visits, maybe 12, because as you learn in Jane Little sins course, and other fertility courses, it’s recommended to treat on average three months, um, twice a week for acupuncture. And if you can explain why and my patients, most of them come in twice a week at the beginning, and then if they need maintenance afterwards, so minimum of 12 to 24 patients.

So if you’re looking at the return on investment, how many patients do you need to see to kind of break even right? If I’m going to spend $500. So if you are charging $90 a visit, now I know some of you would charge many more in the fertility world for that. And many of you charge much less. I just chose that number. If you’re charging 90 U S or Canadian dollars and whatever it is in your currency, um, because we’re using the currency 500 a us dollar, so let’s call it 90 us dollars. How many patients do you need to see? Well, the mass says once you’ve had six visits, so one patient, because one patient will come 12 to 24 times, once six visits happen at $90, you are actually now profitable. Those six visits have now covered the cost of the course. Plus you’re profitable.

I share this as an example, because if I had to see 10,000 patients or 10,000 visits to pay for that, I may wonder whether that’s a good benefit. Is there a value there, but by taking that course and having confidence to treat infertility, know how often and how often to treat and what to do in those treatments. And I can communicate to that patients, to my patients, just seeing some six visits we’ll pay for it. So that to me is an easy, like right away, which is what I did. And now I carry the course. I went and took Jane’s course right away. It was a no brainer for me, cause I always start my perception. I don’t look at what it costs. I look at what it costs of course, but I’m more interested in what it’s going to benefit me. So for an example, to take another ridiculous example, let’s say you found a course for $25.

Now that’s not too expensive. That’s not a sticker price. That’s going to prevent you from taking a course. It’s $25 and it’s a course to teach you how to do acupuncture on astronauts on the moon. Now, even though it’s cheap, my return on benefit, the return on investment. Hmm. How likely is it that I’m going to get to the moon? Probably not going to happen. And I don’t even know if there’s astronauts hanging out on the moon on a regular basis. So I wouldn’t, even though it’s a low in cost to get into that course for 25 bucks, I probably wouldn’t take it cause that 25 bucks is gone and I’ll never make that $25 back. Cause I’m never going to go into the moon if I take another invest. And this is for anything, you invest in a piece of equipment for your clinic.

When I invested in laser therapy, these are 20, 30, $40,000 lasers. I have, I had to do the math and see how many visits it would take to cover that cost. And how long would that be? Months or years. So what I’m sharing with you is just a change in perception, your patients have the same thing. So they come in and they go, Oh, this is this much. You need to be able to communicate the benefit to your patients so they can decide whether there’s value to spend the time and money to see you to get that benefit. If they don’t get the value, how they’re going to benefit, then it may be difficult for them to part with their money. Just like you find it hard to part with your money. And so that’s why I use that example because you’re going to start to invest in, um, maybe certain products to carry, to treat the long haulers, certain supplements, certain herbal remedies or herbs.

Um, you may need to bring in, um, you may need to take courses, um, to get your knowledge to a certain place. So you can confidently and effectively treat these long haulers. And so when you do this look and marketing, you may start to update your website or brochures. So when you do all this and there’s a cost outlay and you’re like, Oh, I’m already feeling lack right now. I don’t have the money to do it. So how am I going to do this? Think about the investment and how this is going to bring back tenfold to you hopefully or more. Okay. So I just wanted to share that part with you. And then the other part I wanted to share. Um, but I think because of time, I’m going to save it for another date. I’ll come back and I’ll do another day. I wanted to share with you a mind hack.

One of the things I didn’t share with you is that I’m trained to clinical hypnotherapists and I love to do mine hacks, um, basically to get into your operating system. And there’s a really cool one or two mine hacks that are, again, are really simple, that help you see opportunities that are there, but you’re missing it. You know, like there are so many things that are available to the subconscious, sees everything. And when you’re, when you get into a certain, um, whole brain state, I’m an alpha brainwaves, you start to access parts of your brain that aren’t always available to you and certain areas of creativity. They’ve done this with research, that there are certain, um, creative ideas that are there, but you’re missing it. And when you get into this place, you’re able to access them consciously and come up with these cool ideas, you know, think about when you’re the stories you’ve heard, where somebody is focused on a difficult problem.

And then they, um, um, they go decide to take a walk or take a shower or bath. And then all of a sudden the relaxing in a hot, the answer comes to them because they’ve gotten herself into a different state. Well, you can purposely do that. You don’t have to work yourself into a frustration and then leave and get, um, get access through surrender. There’s a way to mind hack that and get into that on a regular easy basis. So I’m going to save that for another session, um, where, how you get into your, how do you hack your mind? So you can see these opportunities that are always available to you, but you’re just missing them. It’s like unlocking that certain level on a video game for those who play video games, it’s there, but you have to be able to unlock it. I’m going to help you unlock that.

So what I wanted to talk about today and just a quick review is what does the future hold for acupuncture profession? I think for those that are going to survive, um, it’s really promising. One is acupuncture, still something people they need to come in person. So if you’re doing GWAS Shaw Twain on massage or acupuncture, that they’re gonna need to go online to get consultation, herbal stuff, and supplements that can be done and diet that can be DOL done online and more, more people will be doing that online, but the physical part of the medicine they need to be in person. And I think there is a need now how to support these long haulers, how to support people that are post viral infected that are experiencing the fatigue, the pain, the neurological symptoms, the brain fog, and then mental health issues from post viral infection, as well as just because you live in the, if you watch the news, if you’re on Facebook, you probably have some form of post traumatic stress disorder and are experiencing some anxiety, depression, insomnia, et cetera.

Um, and so how do you remain attractive for the public to choose you for the healthcare? Well, continue to invest in yourself. You know, there’s an express, there’s an expression. I heard that, um, um, health is not an expense. It’s an investment and the same thing. If you want to be attractive to the public, then invest in yourself and then communicate that value to them. If you don’t communicate, then they don’t know. Just like I mentioned, the job pain people go to dentists. Cause that’s what they think about. However, it’s up to us to educate people that we can treat pain really well, like jaw pain. Okay. So next week on the American acupuncture council, to the point, we’re going to have pony Chong and his normal Radian and integrative acupuncture. I will let you know that Poney Chiang has numerous courses on healthy seminars and they are fantastic.

So definitely check him out at the AAC To The Point. And if you want to study with Poney, you have that opportunity to do that online. You will be blown away. You can check his free previews on healthy summers as well. You’re really unlike them. Definitely check them out on to the point, um, next week. And I look forward to seeing you in the future. Um, you can find out more about me@ healthyseminarsdotcom and mybook is available at missingthepointbook.com. You have to put book in the, um, in the URL, missing the point book.com and the best way to either email or contact me with your questions is through healthyseminars.com. Thank you very much until next time.

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