There is no more important thing than having the right people. I’ve watched the transition of a single person on or off the roster make a difference of tens of thousands of dollars in a very short time, not to mention the impact on morale and joy in the office. It’s phenomenal. Here are a few tips we’ve learned along the way.

Find The Right Candidates

You’ll be most successful when you’ve got lots of options. Attract good quality applicants to choose from using these tips:

• Don’t Advertise… Seriously - forget about the classifieds ads and the internet listings. First of all, it’s time consuming to sort through the resumes, and second, it’s hard to read people from a sheet of paper. You’re just as likely to toss a winner in the shredder and interview five bad fits as you are to identify a great candidate.

• …Unless you Have To. The exception to this is when you’re recruiting for a position that needs some legitimate certification. If you need an ND, DC or an LAc, for example, you may have to advertise to find licensed candidates? Front desk? Nope.

• Network Instead… The best jobs are found through networking, and so are the best candidates. Not all, but on average, the best are. Spread the word through your friends, family, colleagues and patients. CAM offices are great places to work - you’ll get response if you get the word out.

• …Or Headhunt. There’s a great chance your ideal candidate already has a job - go find them. If you have a great experience with someone in another business, why can’t they work for you? The job you have to offer might change someone’s life - don’t be afraid to offer it to someone already working.

Choose the Right One

Once you’ve got a pool of applicants, it’s time to find your winner. Here are a few rules of thumb:

• First impressions matter. Reception/front line jobs tend to involve short bursts of surface interaction. A moment here, a smile there. A quick swipe of a credit card and a brief chat. A voice on the phone. Make sure you get a good first impression, and be wary if you don’t.

• Trust Your Gut. Your intuition is your best friend at hiring time, particularly when it comes to negative vibes. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.

• Hire for Personality First. This is health care, not widget-making - great people skills are critical for almost all positions. You can teach most hard skills, but a great way with people is almost impossible to learn.

• Test-Drive Before You Hire. This is a great strategy, and has saved our butts more than once. You simply can’t trust an interview entirely. If you’ve narrowed your choices down, then bring them in for a half or full day and see how they do. Pay them for their time for the day - it’s worth the investment.

• Aim to Be Amazed. Don’t settle for someone you know isn’t right. Set your sights high. If it’s an emergency, then hire someone on a clearly defined temporary basis while you look for your dream person. They really are out there.
• Consult your Team… If you’ve got other staff, get them involved. A bad fit will cost you. Let the other people in the clinic help out.
• …and Your Patients. Remember that test-drive? Make sure you get some patient feedback. You might even consider asking some wise patients to drop by that day, or participate in the interview process.

It’s easy to second guess yourself in this process, so make sure you have help. And take your time - finding the right person makes all the difference.

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Here’s are 6 reasons why cutting your hours might just take your practice to the next level:

1. You’ll Be More Efficient

Parkinson’ s law states that “work expands to fit the time available.” You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can get through things if you don’t have unlimited time to do them. You’ll also be surprised at how punctual your appointments can be if there’s someone else waiting.

If your scheduled hours aren’t consistently 70+% booked right now, then you need to carve back your available patient hours until they are.

If you’ve just started up, or have very few patients, you might find yourself carving back too much - use a minimum of 12-15 hours a week, spread over 3 days. That will give your patients more options then just one 8-hour day. You can adjust for your own market and comfort level, but remember:

Being available to see patients all the time isn’t growing your practice.

Really - it isn’t. Providing incredible service is (for one), but you don’t have to make all your kick-ass incredible-ness available 50 hours a week. Putting in all that non-patient face time at the office isn’t helping. So stop.

2. You Can Solve The Staff Dilemma

The natural medicine professions are plagued with staff problems. More accurately, the problem is that small offices and solo practitioners don’t have staff. I know that this works for some modalities, and certain types of practices, but we see far too many practitioners who don’t have any help, and it’s driving them into the ground - personally and professionally.

This is not a case of “easier said than done.” Staffing really can be scalable. One of the scariest things about staff is having them kicking around a too-quiet office. However, if you’ve got an effectively booked schedule, you can cover just those hours that are booked, without falling into the trap of hiring full-time staff to cover a part-time gig.

3. You’ll Create Scarcity

If you’ve ever traveled, you may have discovered that the best food is often the stuff made out on the street. The good traveler’s rule of thumb, though, is always eat at the cart with the lineup. Why? It’s probably safer and better than the vacant street-meat-mobile.

This applies to your office, too. Things that are in demand send a message: there’s something here - you should check it out. We’ve touched on this in scheduling discussions: being perceived as “busy” or “in demand” can be good marketing, and booking patients effectively helps create that.

4. Your Practice Will Become More Profitable

Why pay for a host of expenses during hours that you don’t really need? If you can see more patients in less time, you can reduce your overhead, or even share your space (and costs) with additional practitioners.

That in turn leaves a little extra money each month that you can use during your new-found time off.

5. You Can Find Balance

If you’re on the road to burnout, then less is most certainly more - particularly when we’re talking about working less and earning more. If you’ve got slack in your schedule, then scale back your hours a bit and enjoy it while you can. You can always work more when demand justifies it.

If your schedule is jam-packed, though, you can still cut your hours, find balance, and…

…6. You Can Continue the Shift from Practice to Business

Working less creates an interesting challenge in your practice:

If you’re going to work less, how will you continue to earn the same income, or more?

The answer is in the shift from practice to true business - in finding ways for your practice to generate revenue in other ways besides selling only your time. That generally means involving more people - other practitioners and professionals who can add to your revenue without strapping you tighter to the grindstone.

Working less is a simple way to force this transition, and that’s a good thing.

Objections

You’re going to hear the complete opposite of this advice at times, and that’s fine. Here are a few common objections we hear to working less:

“My clients need me to be open all those hours.”

No they don’t. What they really want is for you to be open 24-7 so they can come in anytime they feel like it. Are you willing to cater to that?

Patients want the most convenient appointment they can get, but they’re flexible - we all are. You can’t meet everyone’s timeline or you’ll be running a 24-7 CAM drive-thru. Pick some manageable, sensible hours, book them effectively, and focus on being remarkable in other ways besides your ability to work super-human hours.

“What about staff? No one wants a part-time job.”

Sure they do. That’s a myth, and with our current demographics, there are all kinds of people who want part-time work. Just look for them.

“I can’t take the pay cut.”

This isn’t about pay cuts. It’s about the same money (or more) in less time. But if you’re booked solid, and worried about cutting your hours, then it’s time to start making the transition from practice to business by bringing in someone else to work some of those hours.

If you’re not booked solid, then just cut back your hours until you are. You can always add them as needed.

Another plea for work-life balance from the good folks at AlternativeHealthPractice.com.

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In that same spirit, we’re excited to announce Train For Humanity, a non-profit organization that I co-founded with a handful of like-minded bloggers, including Mark Hayward, and Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.

How TFH Makes a Difference

The premise is as simple as it is effective: TFH “everyday athletes” (like me) train and participate in endurance events such as triathlons and marathons. The money they raise from sponsors online goes to humanitarian causes.

We’re aiming to raise $50,000 during this pilot phase, 100% of which will flow through to the Darfur Peace and Development Organization. Darfur is currently the scene of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, the biggest U.N. aid operation, and the 21st century’s first genocide.

How You Can Help

1. Sponsor Me

As one of the three pilot project “everyday athletes”, I’ll be running the Niagara Falls Half Marathon on October 26, 2008. You can sponsor my run here. You can sponsor for any amount you like -even a dollar can make a difference.

2. Help Spread the Word

Helping isn’t just about money. If you have a blog, a website, a Facebook or Twitter account, or just an email address book, I’d like to ask you to take just a few moments of your time to post, Digg, Stumble, forward, tweet, email, or otherwise help spread the word about Train for Humanity. You can find pre-written blog posts, badges for your site/blog, and other easy word-spreading ideas right here.

3. Become a Participant

We’ll soon be opening TFH to other “everyday athletes”. Anyone with a desire to make a difference can participate - the only requirement is that you take part in an endurance event, such as running, walking, cycling, or swimming. The distance isn’t important. Some TFH participants will run marathons, others will walk a few miles, but they’ll all be making a difference. You can signup here.

Thank you all in advance for your time, and for helping to make a difference.

With much gratitude,

Dan

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As word spread, it became a common sight to find people scattered about the various shady spots outside our makeshift clinic waiting for la doctora, and trying to get a some relief in a place where a dollar day wasn’t an uncommon wage.

Despite our best efforts to offer free care, though, it wasn’t long before payment started to arrive anyway. Sometimes it was mangoes, other times mandioca, bananas, corn bread and other locally grown goods, but it was payment just the same.

One of the first and most memorable of these, though, was a large plate of home made cheese.

The idea of cheese as money kinda stuck with me, and in a strange way, it’s been a helpful metaphor. So from the good people at the Dairy Department of AlternativeHealthPractice.com, here are a few Gouda ideas about money and practice…

1. Don’t Manage Your Patient’s Cheese

Tara has an expression she uses when helping other practitioners: Don’t manage your patient’s wallet. Your services may be expensive for your client, or they may not be. The point is, you usually have no way of knowing for sure.

In practice you’ll find millionaires who won’t pay for their next treatment, and others who are struggling financially but never miss a beat. Value is subjective, and it’s your patient’s job to manage their cheese, not yours. Your job is to accept the cheese, should they choose to offer it.

2. Unclaimed Cheese Doesn’t Last Long

Accounts receivable are not like old cheddar - they don’t get better with age. And they’re not like Cheez Whiz, either, which, never seems to change with age at all. The money your patients owe you is very likely to be spent on other things if you don’t receive it. The lesson? If you have receivables, keep an eye on them - don’t let your cheese go bad, or be claimed by someone else.

3. You Can’t Afford a Dairy Intolerance

The natural medicine professions seemed to be particularly prone to financial struggle, much of it mental/emotional. We often hear (and to be fair, we’ve said it many times ourselves), “Won’t it be great when we don’t have to deal with this marketing/accounting/bookkeeping so we can just be doctors?”

The truth is, being a CAM practitioner almost always means you’re in business. And being in business means you have to accept money as a fundamental. You can’t have a dairy intolerance. You need to count your cheese properly. Make sure you have at least as much coming in as going out most of the time. You’ve got to care about the cheese. You don’t have to love it or worship it, but you can’t avoid it either.

4. Cheese Isn’t Evil…It’s Just Cheese

Money’s a handy thing. In our culture, though, it’s infused with meaning, not all of it positive, and it’s easy to forget that money is just a simple way to exchange goods and services. Being paid in live chickens, coconuts or tangerines is not always the easiest way to run a business.

The most powerful part of being paid in cheese was recognizing that it was a perfectly valid form of payment, but one that wasn’t negatively charged. Somehow, being paid in cheese was…easier. Part of that was our willingness to simply provide the service for free in the first place, but there was more to it. Stripped of its emotional baggage, it was just…cheese. Even being used as a form of payment, it was still cheese.

Cheese is just cheese, in the end, and money’s like that, too. It’s just paper. It’s a simple tool that makes it easier to be in business. It’s a convenient, universal symbol of value that lets you be a practitioner without your patients bringing squealing pigs and sacks of grain into your office. And trust us: most of the time, it’s a lot easier that way.

Until next time, don’t worry, Brie Happy…

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We asked Randi for a case study from AGS’s work with CAM practitioners, and she was kind enough to share this story. Enjoy! -Dan & Tara

Maggie’s story

Six years ago Maggie started her alternative medicine practice in therapeutic massage in an affluent suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. Things were slow at first, but that didn’t dent Maggie’s spirit. She sent out postcards. She ran an ad in the phone book. She passed out flyers. Everyone she talked to she asked for their name, address and email. She recorded those names in her practice “database.”

Yes, her efforts yielded a handful of customers. However, Maggie estimated she was spending about $2000.00/month in marketing. At this rate it was costing Maggie about $1000.00 to acquire each new client.

Eighteen months later, there weren’t enough clients to cover the rent and the light bill. Maggie dusted off the list of names and addresses she had collected and decided to send out a postcard.

What Maggie never knew was that she had committed multiple marketing taboos. It wasn’t really her fault - her forté is healing not marketing.

Let’s take a look at a few of those marketing faux pas:

1. Never mail only one piece when doing direct mail (i.e., sending a postcard or a flyer to someone via US mail). Studies show it takes a minimum of two, more realistically, three times, before the person you mail to even remotely begins to remember who you are and what you have to offer.
2. Lists should be updated regularly (at minimum every 5-6 months) to ensure contact information is accurate and up-to-date (people move quite a bit in today’s economic climate). Sixty percent of the success of your mail program is tied to how up-to-date your list is and if they fit the profile of what your best client/patient looks like.

Maggie’s marketing efforts were not well-rewarded. She spent quite a bit of money and attracted few new clients. She called AGS in a panic. She needed new clients - and quickly - but didn’t have much money to make that happen.

What AGS & Maggie Did

The first thing we did was assure Maggie that she is not alone. Many of her peer practitioners have tried marketing only to be disappointed with high costs and low returns.

We asked some very specific questions about her practice to ensure that her marketing outreach had all the right components for success.

It boiled down to this …start with the basics:

1. Strategy first (what exactly are you trying to accomplish?)
2. Know thy customer (what does your best patient/client look like?)
3. Know what keeps them awake at night (What is their pressing issue or need?)
4. Show them you have what they need (your message of benefits offered)
5. Give them a reason to call you NOW (your offer)
6. Make it easy for them to learn more about you (without obligation)
7. Choose appropriate marketing tools (a way to package your story, so that you can deliver it to your prospects).

• We suggested Maggie establish a website where potential clients could come to learn about her services. She used an AGS professionally-designed website template which came with instructions for custom tailoring it to her business.

• With her website in place, serving as an online brochure, Maggie could now focus on getting new clients with AGS professionally-designed and written three-piece direct mail program.

• Critical to Maggie’s success, she took full advantage of AGS list service to ensure that she had up-to-date and accurate names and addresses. From there Maggie went to work with her newly found marketing tools.

The Results

Did Maggie’s marketing effort deliver results? You bet. Maggie has a new website and 10 new clients as a direct result of her marketing efforts with AGS. It only cost her $1.30 for each person that she marketed to.

Maggie used the AGS 3-piece direct mail campaign and mailed to 1000 people that fit the profile of her best customer. She also used the telemarketing guidelines and script from AGS to call those people as well. Her website got 300 hits (people who went to her website) – 100 of which actually spent time reviewing her practice information in detail.

She picked up 10 new clients within two months of doing her mail campaign. Maggie figures each client is worth about $1200 (in a one year period). Maggie will make $11,000 (after she deducts that $1200.00 she spent on marketing). Her return: Maggie will make $10 for every one dollar she invested in marketing. Not bad!

Next Steps for Maggie

Maggie is already preparing to mail again to 1000 new people on her list. She is also working with AGS public relations tools to help get “free exposure” for her practice with local magazines and newspapers. She is constantly adding new content (AGS research articles) to her website to keep it fresh so her clients will keep coming back to visit

Some final words from Randi:

• Being a gifted healer is table stakes when it comes to building your patient/client base. People need to know you are out there. How you optimize your outreach so that you can be found could very well mean the difference between thriving or simply surviving.
• Right Now, somebody out there is waiting to use your services… the question you must ask yourself, do YOU know who they are? And more importantly, do THEY know who you are?
• If you are not identifying your key and most profitable customers, AND getting your message out to them, you are missing the opportunity to find new and ultimately long-term clients. An opportunity lost that will go straight to your competitor’s practice.

Never lose site of your overall responsibility. The onus lies with each and every practitioner to take an active role in educating consumers on their wellness options. Then and only then can they make informed decisions.

To learn more about Alternative Growth Streams, and get more information on the marketing tools Maggie used, visit AGS online at http://www.easygettingmorepatients.com

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Summer’s in full swing in our part of the world, and we’re heading out for our annual 2-week hiatus. We’ll be off the grid in solar-powered relaxation mode (right here, to be specific).

A few tidbits before we head out:

Escape 101 is now available in Audio

We’re excited about this one. Escape 101 is a how-to guide for sabbaticals that we wrote during our last escape where we did volunteer health care and community development work in rural Paraguay, SA.

Here’s an excerpt from the Escape 101 post on the new audibook version:

The greatest challenge with a book about recapturing your time is that in order to read it you need to make…well, time. The result of this vicious little circle is that the people who need Escape 101 the most are often the ones who have the most trouble making the time to read it.

The solution? Enter Escape 101, the audiobook. We’ve been eagerly anticipating the arrival of the audio version for a few months. Now you can drive, jog, cycle, walk or otherwise listen your way to planning your sabbatical or career break. For the crazy busy, the audio lovers, or for those who just aren’t big readers, this is a great way to experience the book.

The audiobook is published by Gildan Media, who brought such greats as The Attractor Factor, Blue Ocean Strategy and The Go-Giver to audio, and it’s read by the wonderfully talented Erik Synnestvedt, the voice behind such classics as Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, and Timothy Butler’s Getting Unstuck. We’re thrilled to be in such good company.

You can download the audiobook directly via Audible or iTunes. Enjoy!

TCM Directory Summer Sale

Elie at the TCM Directory let me know they’re having a summer sale on practitioner listings. Using the coupon code “TCM2008″, you can get 85% off. That’s $11 instead of $74!

The TCM Directory is a resource for all things TCM-related. You can learn more at the website.

Have a great August, everyone. We’ll have a case study up for you in our absence next week, then we’ll be back with some great new practice growth content for September and onward!

-Dan & Tara

Post from: AlternativeHealthPractice.com

Summer’s here for our part of the planet, and Tara and I both tend to increase our book consumption a little more than usual. Here are a few of the books that I think have had the most influence on our practice evolution so far - we thought you might enjoy them, too.

The Diamond Cutter
I love, love, LOVE this book. Geshe Michael Roach, a Westerner who became an ordained Buddhist Monk, weaves together spiritual business concepts, an ancient Buddhist text, and a cool story about the diamond industry. The best quote (I’m using it in our upcoming book Healthy Profits):

“Never accept the idea that, because you are in business, you don’t have the opportunity or time or personal qualities which a true spiritual life demands, or that maintaining a deep inner life is somehow contradictory with leading a business career.

The wisdom of The Diamond Cutter says that the very people who are attracted to business are exactly the same ones who have the inner strength to grasp and carry out the deeper practices of the spirit.”

The E-Myth Revisited

Michael Gerber’s E-Myth should be required reading for anyone running a small business. The idea that the technical work of being a practitioner needs to be seen separately from the entrepreneurial role of running the business of your practice is something we should all internalize.

The big message? You need to work on your business, not just in it. Gerber shows you how, in an easily digestible semi-parable format.

Blue Ocean Strategy

This bestseller is a tiny bit more academic than some of these others, but it’s been hugely influential in how our business has evolved.

The authors’ premise - that “red oceans” are crowded, competitive marketplaces, while “blue oceans” are untapped market space - is directly relevant to CAM practices. There are some great case studies in this one, but I think it’s worth getting in print as opposed to audiobook for the “strategy canvas” diagrams.

Blue Ocean Strategy will change the way you look at competition and your marketplace.

Book Yourself Solid

Of all the books on this list, Michael Port’s is probably the one that’s closest to a “How to Grow Your Practice” book. It’s generalized to anyone in a service business, but most of the concepts in the book are directly applicable to alternative medical practice.

It’s well-structured, which gives you a leg up in applying what he has to say after you’re done reading, and it’s a seriously worthwhile read for anyone who feels a bit uncertain in the marketing area.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

What’s a personal finance book doing in this list? Despite its simplicity, I think the concepts in this book should be homework for every practitioner. We’ve seen far too many practitioners struggling in practice because their personal finances are in such rough shape.

If you’ve ever had the idea that “once my practice is successful, then I’ll get my personal finances in order,” then this is for you. Sometimes, things work the opposite of how you might expect…

The 4-Hour Workweek

I first read this book just as we were returning from our last sabbatical in Paraguay, SA, and finishing up the manuscript for Escape 101.

If you’ve ever had work-life balance issues, this is one you need to read. There’s a fair bit dedicated to the internet and outsourcing, but the real value of The 4-Hour Workweek is in challenging what you’ve been raised to believe about how you work, live, earn and spend.

Made to Stick

I loved this book, and mentioned it to Burton Kent, author of Never Market Again. Naturally, he’d already read it, and said it’s his second favorite marketing book of all time next to Influence. It is, indeed, a great read.

This is the most straightforward and practical book I’ve read on how to take an idea and present it in a way that people can grasp. Made to Stick is super-accessible, fun to read, and will teach you exactly how to deliver a message that’s powerful and “sticky”. A must-read marketing book.

I’ve intentionally filled this list with books that aren’t specific to alternative medical businesses, but the core concepts in these books can be applied to almost any practice. Have you got a favorite book (in any category) that’s helped you? Let us know in the comments!

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To see the difference in the search results, click on these two links (they open in a new window):

Naturopathic medicine (non-geographic)

Toronto naturopath (geographically specific)

Notice that instead of just a list of websites, the geographically specific search shows a map with a list of practices.

Here’s what you need to know:

• You can be on that list
• You don’t even need a website to show up.
• It takes only a few minutes to sign up - less if you already have a Google account (for gmail, for example)
• Geographic searches are really important

Why geography rules for your practice
The search engine traffic you want is the geographically specific stuff. Someone searching for “acupuncture for back pain” isn’t that relevant to you unless they’re searching in your area. Someone searching for “Boston Acupuncture”, however, is a new client waiting to happen if your practice is in Boston. For CAM practitioners, geography is king online. And since geographic searches are turning up results differently, this is worth your time.

How To Do It
Back during our practice website series, Bonnie mentioned Google and Yahoo local on her blog - it was something I’d overlooked at the time, but I signed up right away. More recently, I discovered that Dr. Michael Beck of DCPracticeTools.com has a short video that shows you how to sign up - it’s very simple.

If you’re in a rural or lower population area, you may not see these local listings coming up - do a quick search of your town and profession to find out. And remember: More people now search online for business information than in the Yellow Pages - this is a few minutes well-spent!

DC Practice Tools

Post from: AlternativeHealthPractice.com

“Money is in some respects life’s fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.”

-PT Barnum

One of the most common issues we hear about from practitioners is not how to set their fees, but how to learn to feel comfortable with them. It’s one thing to say, “That’ll be X dollars, please,” but it’s another thing entirely to feel good about it.

Over the past few years we’ve made many pricing-related decisions, but the most important part has always been finding a way to embrace those decisions - to own the fees we set, regardless of whether they were high, low or somewhere in between.

Here are seven ways that you and your fees can start to comfortably co-habitate:

1. Remember How You Got Here

It’s been a long road.

In fact, I bet that even if you just opened your doors yesterday, it’s still been a long journey to get to the moment you put that “open” sign in your office window.

You’ve got a lot invested in getting to where you are now. Not just money, but time, risk, worry and a barrel full of other emotional twists that have likely ranged from thrilling to downright terrifying.

Does that mean you should set your prices high? No. But it does mean this: you have the right to set those prices wherever you choose. So do it. Wisely choose the best price for your service in your market, and know that you earned the right to do it.

2. Differentiate Between What You’re Worth, and What Your Services are Worth

Health care practitioners face a greater challenge in separating personal and service worth than many other professions. Because relationships can be so intimate in practice, it’s easy to confuse your own value as a human being with the value of what you do in the office each day.

Remember this: Charging less doesn’t make you a lesser person, and charging more doesn’t make you any better either.

You can set the fees for your services, but your clients will decide their worth. And they will decide, believe me. You can add as much value as you can, but in the end, they get to decide.

When it comes to your worth, however, it’s a different story, and it’s not about fees. Your clients and your pricing don’t get to dictate your worth. You do.

3. Distinguish Between Client Quality and Human Quality

To run a successful business, you need to be able to define people in terms of their customer attributes, without feeling like you’re commenting on their value as human beings.

If you are defining people that way, you should stop. But if you’re simply trying to decide how to run a viable clinic by setting prices that fit your chosen market and keep you in business, you’re doing fine, and you’re going to be fine.

If your business needs to have paying customers to survive, than someone who can’t pay is indeed a lousy customer. It doesn’t, however, make them a lousy person – don’t confuse the two, and don’t feel bad for trying to identify customers that fit your vision, and fees that match them.

4. Don’t Try To Include Everyone

You can set your fees at any level, and you still won’t reach everyone - every clinic excludes someone. Cheaper may mean more widely accessible, but it doesn’t mean accessible to everyone. To use acupuncture as an example, boutique/more expensive acupuncture excludes the less wealthy. Community acupuncture excludes the profoundly poor who can’t reach the bottom of the sliding scale. Free acupuncture excludes the bed-ridden and agoraphobic who can’t leave their homes. And yet, there’s nothing wrong with any of those pricing models.

You’ll always be excluding someone, somehow. Try to focus on the fact that you’re including a whole bunch of others. Building a successful practice is about narrowing the world down to a chunk you can effectively define, attract, and serve. Don’t let your attempts to run a good business make you feel like a bad person.

5. Remember to be Profitable

In the end, if your practice costs more than it makes for long enough, you’ll no longer be in practice. If your fees can’t cover your expenses in a reasonably busy clinic, then you’ll need to adjust one side of the equation somehow. Will increasing your fees make a difference, or will it drive people away? Would reducing them bring in significantly more patients? Can you cut costs? Should you be spending more in an effort to better attract and serve your market?

Remember that you need to make money so you can keep helping, and that your fees are an important part of that.

6. Understand That it Takes All Kinds

The CAM professions need different pricing models. The opportunity facing your practice is not how to scoop the patients from the “wellness” center next door and bring them to your “holistic” center, it’s how to get the huge chunk of the population that’s never even tried alternative care to consider you. Different fee structures - sliding scales, volume discounts, memberships, family pricing and dozens of other arrangements - are one way to make that possible. There’s more than one way, so don’t feel bad if you’re doing it differently. We need that.

7. Don’t Forget How Remarkable You Are

You made a choice to follow this path. You trained for it. You took a risk and opened your doors, or entered someone else’s. You invested in your practice. You’re pouring your heart and soul into running your show.

And you did all this to help people get better.

That’s remarkable. So don’t forget it. You can discount your fees. You can have a sliding scale. You can do pro bono work. You can do anything you want with your fees, as long as you’re not doing it because you feel unworthy.

Whatever prices you set, set them with confidence, and shout them from the rooftops, baby, because you’ve earned the right to do it.

A shout out to Lisa Rohleder at the Community Acupuncture Network, Burton Kent of Acupuncture Clinic Marketing, and all their readers. for their lively discussions on fees, classism and other money-related issues. It’s important stuff.

Post from: AlternativeHealthPractice.com

We asked Jenn for a case study from her client work, and she readily agreed. When I suggested “something different”, she definitely delivered. Enjoy! -Dan

The Client

Mandy Miller has an affinity for animals. She provides animal healing and communication services and is particularly drawn to working with rescue animals and helping assimilate them in new, adoptive homes.

She’s great with the animals – her clients repeatedly tell her so. But her practice was growing at a slow, frustrating pace. She wanted to have enough clients to pay the bills and live feeling supported. But, despite her efforts to get her name out there, and her love of the work, she just couldn’t seem to get the client flow moving.

The Process
When Mandy and I started working together, she had been officially in business for 6 months. The first thing we did together was look at what she was currently doing to market and promote her practice.

Her strategy consisted of posting fliers in various places around town, telling “certain” people about her business, creating a web site, attending a few networking events, hoping, and praying.

I told her that she had a good start, but she needed a couple of foundational pieces, and that she needed to add some active marketing activities in order to balance the more passive things she was doing.

When clients first meet your business, they need to feel a connection to you. The way to do that is to speak their language. In other words, find out how your clients talk about your work, and then talk to others using those same words. So, Mandy surveyed her current clients to find out how they thought of her business. She was surprised because her clients talked about her work quite differently than she did. And she realized that the language she was using in her marketing materials wasn’t making a true connection with other people that needed her.

The next thing that Mandy needed was a way for people to stay in touch with her – such as a newsletter or blog. This way, if she met someone who felt connected to her, she could ask them to become part of her subscriber base, and could continue to stay in touch with them, and they could get to know her and her work.

Mandy and I then talked about active marketing activities. Active marketing activities include things like writing articles, and attending events. Active marketing activities are those activities that put you actively in front of people.

Mandy immediately thought of two publications that she could submit articles to, and a couple of holistic fairs, and a pet event that were coming up.

Mandy was able to easily set up the foundational pieces – changing the language in her marketing materials and on her web site, and she was excited about starting a newsletter. But when it came to the more active marketing pieces, we bumped up against some resistance.

Mandy procrastinated contacting the editors of the publications. And at her first event, she sat behind her table and when someone approached, she didn’t really say a whole lot.

This is not uncommon. When we think about our practice in the energetic sense, we get excited. We see possibilities, we’re open to opportunities. But sometimes, when we’re ready to take our efforts from the energetic, to the physical, we get stalled. Fear comes up, and we sabotage our efforts.

For Mandy, the articles and the events were scary because if those efforts brought her clients, she would have to take responsibility for someone and some other being’s healing. Not only that, but putting herself out there made her an “official animal communicator” as she called it. She would be facing her family, her friends, and anyone she met with that new title and she was afraid of what that might mean – rejection, abandonment. And what if she really couldn’t do this work? What if she failed?

Mandy and I had a few healing sessions together to work through these fears. Along with being a business coach, I’m a Reiki Master and an Intuitive Healer. We got to the root of the fear, we were able to see how it was operating in her life and keeping her stuck, and I was able to support her as she moved forward through the fear and out the other side.

The Results

Once Mandy took charge of her fear, got to the root of it and could see how it was operating for her, she was able to move forward with some of the more active marketing strategies. She was able to fully step into the responsibility of being a healer and an animal communicator.

At the events, she began talking to people when they approached her table. She changed her signage so that it was easier to read from a distance. And she actively asked people to subscribe to her newsletter.

She wrote her first article and submitted it for publication. Not only was it accepted, but she has gotten clients from it as well.

Mandy is starting to see steadier stream of clients building in her business. She has increased her weekly client load by 50% and that continues to improve as she actively gets herself out in front of new people.

Jenn’s Best Advice

One of the best things you can do in your promotional efforts is to develop and maintain a marketing strategy that contains a balance of active and passive marketing activities. The passive strategies become much more effective when you partner them with active activities.

For example, if you post a flier in a health food store, that flier will work much better if you also do talks at that store, or regularly attend events at the store.

Remember, we’re healing arts practitioners, but if we treat our practice like a business, it will be so much easier for our practice to support us, as much as we support it.

Thanks Jenn!

If you’d like to learn more about Jenn’s services or subscribe to her blog, be sure to visit Create a Thriving Business.

Coaches and practitioners: We’ll be featuring a series of case studies over the coming weeks. If you’ve got a practice growth story you’d like to share here on AHP, let us know!

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