‘Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.’
- Stephen King, On Writing

Replace “art” with “practice”.

You can agree or disagree, but I’m pretty sure it’s important to choose…

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It’s true. No one needs what you do.

No one suffers from a shortage of acupuncture or a lack of massage. No one is experiencing a chiropractic outage or struggling with insufficient naturopathy.

What they are short on is what those things do.

Or, to put it in limerick form for Saint Patrick’s Day:

In an office atop Mount Wapuzz
A practitioner tried to build buzz
Said the guru in the cave
With a dismissing wave
“‘Ain’t what you do. It’s what what you do does.”

Note: I’m pretty sure that last sentence has never, ever been uttered in the English language. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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We spend a lot of time trying to remember things. To-do’s. Appointments. Lists.  It’s the core skill set we’re taught in school, and we have a whole world of external memory tools to help us out–things like day timers and post-it notes, to-do lists and software programs, calendars and smart phones.

One of the great benefits of those tools is that they give us permission to unload our minds. To free up mental space with the confidence that there’s a system so that we won’t forget.

But what if there are things we should forget? Things like:

• The naysayer who told your patient that what you do is nonsense.
• The teacher who said it’s wrong to earn a living.
• The friend who said that telling people how you can help is just sleazy marketing.
• The colleagues who said it’s impossible to make a living because of competition or the economy.
• The pseudo-statistics that it takes five years to pay yourself, or that half your colleagues will be out of business in two years.

Those things are taking up mental space, too. And they hang around, and hang around, and hang around. We can’t remember what we had for dinner three Wednesday’s ago, but we can’t seem to forget that one person who criticized our work.

Unlike remembering to buy broccoli, putting these things in your ‘calendar’ by dwelling on them only makes it worse. We don’t need to remember these things. We need to let them go. We need to forget. And that starts with understanding that that you can’t remember what you had for dinner three Wednesday’s ago not because your brain is flawed…but because you decided it wasn’t worth remembering.

There are things worth remembering. And things that aren’t. Maybe part of success is knowing the difference.

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1. No One Needs More Information

Furred one digs, searches
Feathered one pretends, avoids
Both heads in the sand

Which one are you in practice? The ostrich or the dog?

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The greatest misconception among health care professionals is that your training is enough to make you successful.

It isn’t. It’s not anyone’s fault, but the challenge, whether you’re in your first year or tenth, remains the same:

The skills that got you to graduation aren’t the
same ones you need to successfully grow your practice.

School taught you how to help your clients. But it probably didn’t teach you that much about how to find them. It didn’t teach you how to market yourself, manage your cash flow, deal with staff or provide amazing customer service.

So what now?

The good news is that those are all learn-able skills, and the one thing you’ve proven you can do is learn.

The trick, though, is that you can’t learn the missing stuff the same way you learned the other stuff. You can’t learn business the way you learned how to rub, poke, adjust, supplement and coach. Sure you should read books and take classes–there are great people doing great things out there. But you’re going to need something else, too: a little trial and error.

What makes us uncomfortable about learning the new skills we need isn’t the trial and error, though. It’s that we don’t get to learn them in the same context. You don’t get to do it all from the safety of a classroom or textbook. You don’t get to practice marketing on pretend clients and classmates. You have to do it all without a net. You have to get out there.

You can’t change the fact that you need to keep learning. But you can change how you look at the new context. Is working without a net scary? Squishy? Unethical? Dumb? Not for you?

Or is it the last piece of the puzzle that finally lets you do what you’ve wanted to all along?

I like the last way better.

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1. Are You Waiting to be Picked?

Hi All,

Next year is almost here! Thanks to the many (wow!) of you who took advantage of the pre-order special on The Practitioner’s Journey workbook. The offer ends on December 31. Before then, you can get the digital workbook for just $9.95, or the original eBook and the workbook together for just $14.95. Click here to order. (Update: The workbook is here! You can get both the eBook and the workbook/stats package here.)

-Dan

The New Year is just around the corner. Here are four ideas to help you hit the ground running…in the right direction…

Strategy 1: Pick One Big Thing to Work On
It’s a new year, and the temptation is to try to radically transform everything. Forget it. You’re not going to change everything in your life or your practice overnight. Pick what you’re most passionate about. Or what will have the biggest impact. Solve your biggest problem. But pick ONE big thing. If you fix that thing, you can always move on to the next one, but start with one?

And while you’re at it, decide on what “done” looks like for that one thing. Things like “make more money,” or “grow my practice” don’t have finish lines. No finish line means you run forever.

One race at a time, with a finish line, will keep you focused.

Strategy 2: Decide That Your Practice Must Serve You

Remember when you were a kid, and you’d say, “You’re not the boss of me!”? It’s time to regress a few years and put that tactic back to use in your practice. It’s time to decide who’s the boss. Here’s the org chart as I see it:

In short: Your clients are the boss of you. You’re the boss of your practice. 

Your practice works in the mail room. It’s job is to serve everyone. Especially you. It’s there to make sure people get care, and you get paid. Nothing more.

Make the decision that your practice is there to serve YOU, which it does by providing you with income. I’m not kidding.

What does that look like in practice? You pay yourself first. That may sound trite, but it’s amazing how the bills always seem to find a way to get paid, but not so much the practitioner. Even just changing the sequence of paying yourself first, then the bills, can make a difference.

Letting your practice push you around is like choosing to let your car drive itself. It’s a painful and costly process that never gets you where you want to go.

Strategy 3: Plan to Take a Risk

Since most practitioners don’t start off as entrepreneurs, they also don’t tend to be big risk-takers. In fact, your job may well be about spending your time trying to reduce risk–the risk of injury, the risk of disease, the risks of aging, the risks of modern lifestyle.

The problem, of course, is that part of what you get paid for in practice is taking risks. That means if you want your reward to increase, you may have to increase your risk as well.

What it looks like in practice:

• Hire someone. Do you really need help, but are afraid to take the leap? Maybe it’s time to try. You don’t have to hire someone full time – try a smaller commitment first.
• Bigger space. Are you busting at the seams, but can’t do more in your existing space? Maybe it’s time for a move.
• New offering. New service? Product? What can you invest in to bring to your practice that will offer more to your existing clients, or attract new ones?
• Try a new marketing technique. Particularly one that scares you, like networking or public speaking.
• Invest in yourself. Do you understand marketing? Finance? Managing others? Spend some time and money on yourself to fill in the missing pieces.

There are of course, many more. What will yours be?

 Strategy 4: Choose to Be in Business This Year

More accurately, that should be “choose to accept that you’re in business,” because you don’t get a choice if you’re running a practice. It comes with the territory, and everything works better if you just choose to swim with the current.

Why? I think our free ebook, The Gift, says it best. You can download it for free. No signups. No catch.

What it looks like in practice:

• I think it looks a lot like this.

We’d love to hear your suggestions on how you plan to make the most of next year. Good luck in 2012!

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1. 3 Ways to Keep Chatty Clients on Time
2. How To Earn $80K in Your First Year of Practice
3. Help for Your Practice in 2012

Even the most devout anti-resolutionist has a tough time not thinking ahead at this time of year, and we’re no exception. If you’re like us, your thoughts are turning toward the New Year, and how to improve your practice.

Here are three upcoming happenings here at TPJ for 2012 that we think will make a difference for you, including a way to get The Practitioner’s Journey for just $5 if you haven’t already got your copy.

1. How To Make 80K in Your First Year of Practice
We had the pleasure of interviewing a fantastic new practitioner who took home $80,000 in her first year of practice. I’m going to share her story early in the New Year. It’s interesting stuff. Her story should be required reading. And you can all do what she did – even if it’s not your first year of practice.

2. The Practitioner’s Journey Workbook – NOW AVAILABLE! Click here to order

We get a lot of feedback on The Practitioner’s Journey, but it’s the framework – the figurative journey that helps people better understand their practice growth – that gets the most comments.

What we’ve been asked for is a way to better put that framework to active work in practice. Enter The Practitioner’s Journey Workbook:

• Some 30 pages of exercises, assessments and tools to help find your difference, attract new clients, and leverage your existing ones
• Print it out as a paper workbook, or fill it out the interactive PDF right onscreen on your computer or iPad.
• We’ve also added an easy to use, but powerful spreadsheet tool for tracking your practice statistics. You can easily track your numbers, and watch your practice grow in vivid color. You just enter the basic data, it cranks out simple metrics that give you insight into your progress.
• If you haven’t yet read the book, you can get the original eBook, and workbook/stats package for a reduced price.

Click here to order your copy!

3. Our New Book: The Go-To Guru
After all the websites and business cards, the tweets and posts, the speaking gigs and networking, all practitioners are really trying to do the same thing: get attention.

We’re all clamoring for attention, and the truth is that attention (and the business that comes with it) flows to those best able to establish themselves as what we call The Go-To Guru. That’s the title of our new book, and it comes out in 2012. Woo! It’s based on our experiences and interviews with dozens of successful “G2G’s”, and the principles they use to become the practitioners of choice in their area. And, of course, like The Practitioner’s Journey, it’s not quite like other books…   Pre-order info and reader discounts to follow!

Here’s to 2012!

Thank you all for reading, sharing, and spreading the word.

-Dan

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1. 4 Ways to Start Next Year Right
2. The Practitioner’s Journey: The Path to Practice Success
3. 3 Ways to Simplify Your Practice Marketing

‘Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize
how close they were to success when they gave up.’
— Thomas Alva Edison

Our next book is in the works.

Like The Practitioner’s Journey, part of the writing process is looking for patterns. I’ve been interviewing successful practitioners for the past few months, digging into what distinguishes the practitioners who make it from those who don’t. The traits of those who love what they do. The decisions of those who earn a great living, versus those who vanish. The behaviors of those who thrive instead of burning out.

There’s one consistent message emerging from these conversations: Practice success stories are stories of persistence. They’re tales of not giving up. Of embracing failure as a means of moving forward, not back.

That doesn’t mean that giving up is always the wrong choice. But it does mean that reaching success is going to require finding the thing you won’t quit.

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A practitioner once told me, “I’ve cried a lot of tears from comparing myself to others.”

What she meant was that constantly comparing yourself to other practitioners is exhausting and destructive. She meant that feeling like everyone around you is more successful than you are is a tough way to go through life, and ultimately, does nothing to help your practice.

But there’s a flip side to comparison that isn’t acknowledged enough. We do it when times are tough as a way to make ourselves feel better. As in, “Things are slow, but everyone’s been slow.” or “I’m in trouble, but at least I’m not that guy.”

Don’t set the bar that low. Choose your own set of standards. Create your own yardstick. Don’t find success in the fact that other practitioners are suffering, and don’t suffer when others find success.

Don’t compare. You can study. You can copy, and improve. You can teach and learn. But don’t compare. It either lowers the bar or it lowers your confidence. Neither is helpful.

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2. The Habits That Make & Break Practices
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“No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.”

-Seth Godin

If you’re in a busy market, competition does a funny thing to your brain. It makes you want to stand in rows with everyone else who offers what you do, and raise your hand like a schoolkid and hope for the best.

When your practice slows down, the same thing happens–fear and anxiety freeze you, and you want someone else do the work. To tell you what to do next. To fill your appointment book for you.

Don’t be seduced. Yes your clients need to choose you, but no, you don’t have to stand in line with every other practitioner with your hat held out. Before your clients can pick you, you need to pick yourself.

What Waiting to be Picked Looks Like

• When you put an ad in the Yellow Pages and hope for the phone to ring, you’re waiting for clients to pick you.
• When you market yourself as what you do, not who or what you help, you’re waiting to be picked.
• When you say, “I just want to treat clients and not worry about this business stuff,” you’re waiting to be picked.
• When you ignore the obvious problems in your practice and hope they go away, you’re waiting to be picked.

What Picking Yourself Looks Like

• When you decide that being in practice also means being in business, and you learn those skills the same way you learned acupuncture, or massage, or chiropractic, you’re picking yourself.
• When you decide what you love, and go looking for it, you’re picking yourself.
• When you decide that you’re going to focus more on your great work, and less on that of your competition, you’re picking yourself.
• When you stop telling yourself that you suck at “this business stuff,” you’re picking yourself.
• When you tackle problems in your practice head on, you’re picking yourself.
• When you tell people, “I can help with that,” you’re picking yourself, and making it easy for them to pick you, too.

Picking yourself is about choosing by taking action. That makes people pick you. It also dials down the fear and anxiety almost instantly.

Waiting is a form of dying. That includes waiting to be picked. Stop it. Pick yourself first, or no one else will.

Related posts:

1. How To Use a Waiting List in Your Practice – No Matter How Busy You Are
2. 4 Ways to Start Next Year Right
3. We May Not Be Good, But at Least We’re Slow