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.

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!

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

‘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.

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.

“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.

Creating content is becoming more and more essential for practitioners. It’s hard to create a website that gets search traffic without good words on the page. Newspaper ads work better when you also write articles. It’s easier to engage your clients in the long run when you communicate with them regularly, and that, too, takes content. Even a 140-character tweet or a Facebook update takes the same thing: content.

We’ve written about creating great content to market your practice. but we heard from people who felt they were stumbling before the start line–they didn’t know what to write about.

The good thing is that inspiration isn’t as far away as you might think. We write a lot, and we get our inspiration from some sources that are both free and easy to digest. Here are five of them.

1. Google News
We skim the Google Health News most mornings–I’d say it’s the one source we track regularly. It’s an easy way to get ideas, and it also gives us a heads up about what patients might be asking about. They’re getting the same news from one source or another, and that often leads to questions. Being prepared to answer them is helpful.

It takes me less than a minute to skim the headlines, and perhaps another minute longer once in a while to read a news story that catches my interest.

2. Google Alerts
Instead of searching on Google for your area of expertise every time you want to write something, wouldn’t it be great if Google just kept tabs on that for you? Enter Google Alerts, a free service that will search Google for terms you specify–like “infertility” for example–and deliver you a daily, weekly, or as-it-happens list of the latest relevant Google search results.

3. Alltop
Alltop is an amalgamation of top news stories from blogs and websites in a huge number of categories. You can find the health directory here. Pick a category, and you’ll find dozens and dozens of news stories and articles. Whenever you need inspiration, just surf over and skim the headlines.

4. Twitter Searches
Even if you’re not a Twitter user, you can still skulk around and follow the action. You can search tweets here to find everything from news and research to success stories and more. You may have to sift through a few personal tweets, but it’s fast, easy, and free.

5. Journals & Publications
Many medical journals have open access options, email summaries, or blog or Twitter feeds that let you stay up to date on research and best practices without paying a subscription fee. Check the website of your favorite journal, or if you want something broader, try a journal watch service like Galen’s Watch. You’ll get bit sized research summaries you can easily skim to find something relevant for your prospective clients. (For a free option, you can read the Galen’s Watch blog here to get a feel for it.)

There are plenty more sources of free inspiration – Facebook, association websites, blogs, article directories and other news aggregators. But any one of them will take you a long way.

Here are the two important parts:

1. When something you read inspires you, infuriates you, or otherwise sparks something in you, pay attention. It’s a sign that a) it’s relevant, b) you have something to say and c) you’ll find saying it easier than when you’re trying to simply fill a page. Writing’s a lot easier when you actually care.

2. Capture the idea. You don’t need to write anything now. You just need to capture the source so you’ll have it when you need it. Collect your inspiration in one place–it only takes a second to bookmark a URL, or paste it into a document on your desktop. That way, the next time you need content, you’ll have something to say.

The Short Version of this Post: We Need Your Help

We’ve written a free resource for schools to help students get started sooner on the path to practice success. It’s an ebook called The Gift: 7 Practice Success Ideas for Students and Educators. We’d like to ask you to give it a read and share it with as many students, colleagues and educators as you can.

I’m pretty excited about it, and would love it if you grabbed yourself a copy. It’s a very quick, very accessible read. Just a few pages. No email signups, or any other barriers. Just grab it and read, and then share it in whatever way suits you best (see the ideas below).

The Long Version: We Need to Start Practice Success Sooner

Our philosophy for doing this over the years is pretty simple: strong practices make strong professions.

The more successful practitioners are, the more people they reach. They’re able to build stronger associations and tribes, which gives them more research, better legislation, and broader reach. Then health care gets better. And the cycle continues.

One of the challenges, though, is that the journey to business success needs to start earlier – ideally, more intensively during school.

The Practitioner’s Journey is now being used in practice management classes in many schools across the US and Canada. It’s given us the opportunity to speak to educators in massage, chiropractic, acupuncture, nutrition, naturopathy and more about what students need to be more successful when they graduate.

One common challenge we hear is that it’s difficult to engage students in the idea of being in business while they’re still in school. Students have a lot on their plate, and they don’t want to think about “all that business stuff” until they start practice. Our goal is to change that. Just a little bit.

The Gift: 7 Practice Success Ideas for Students and Educators is a free ebook that aspires to engage students a little sooner in the idea that they’re going to have to run a business, and that there’s a silver lining to that idea that they may not have considered. It’s short and very easy to read, and it’s meant to be shared freely.

How You Can Help

• Read it yourself. It’s short, easy to read and you might find something of value even if you’re not a student. In fact, I’m certain you will.
• Pass the book along to a student.
• Share it with your alma mater, or any colleagues who are teachers in the CAM & Integrative health professions. Or anyone else. There’s something in this book for all practitioners, I think.
• Like this post. Tweet it. Share on Facebook. Blog it. Link to it. Pass it on to your colleagues and ask them to do the same.
• Don’t stop helping students. Yes, it’s distracting to have them in your practice, to take their calls, to answer their email. But they need the help. Just like you probably needed it once.

You can find the book here. Enjoy. Let us know what you think, and thank you in advance for your support. It may seem like a small thing to share a simple link, but small is how all the good stuff starts.

-Dan & Tara

When it comes to practice success, there are just two kinds of habits that matter: the ones you need to create, and the ones you need to undo. What to start doing, and what to stop doing, in other words.

There are things that don’t serve us. Like habits of self-criticism. Or working too long past the point where we’re actually doing anything. Giving in to ultimatums.

And then there are the things that do serve us, and should be habits. Like failing faster. Making a little bit of steady progress on important things every day.  Surrounding yourself with great people. Or remembering to be grateful.

The list, of course, is endless. The trick is that habits are often subconscious. We need to drag them out in the light and intentionally look at them. To do it, the question you need to ask yourself is this:

What one habit could you replace in the next 30 days that
would dramatically change your practice?

What do you need to add, and take away, that would make it more fun? More profitable? More whatever-it-is-you-want?

Here’s the most interesting part: Stopping a habit that doesn’t serve you creates more than enough time space and headspace to create one that does. And doing it the other way works, too–create a new, empowering habit, and it’ll often steamroller right over an old one…

-Dan

PS – An interesting post from Steve Pavlina on How To Maintain Not-Quite-Daily Habits that you might find helpful, too.

It occurred to me the other day that I could describe our clinic this way:

• We’re the most expensive
• We have the worst parking
• We offer the most inconvenient hours

Every one of those is true. But I’m not going to focus on them.

Why? Because faced with the decision to talk about our crap parking or our ability to resolve chronic problems that no one else has been able to, I’ll pick the latter. Why? Because I get to choose. I get to decide whether to a) obsess about the parking problem or b) focus on things that matter more.

I suspect you’re the same. You’re not shouting from the rooftops that you have the most cramped waiting room, or that your website sucks. We all know better.

But that choice we make about how to speak of our practices is the same choice we’re offered when we choose to speak about ourselves. So why, then, do we say things like:

• I’m bad with money
• I’m no good at business
• I’m terrible at marketing

When we could say:

• I’m great a connecting with people
• I make people feel comfortable
• I can listen better than almost anyone I know

It doesn’t mean you should ignore an important weakness. But you don’t have to describe yourself in the context of it. If you choose to describe yourself in negative terms, you’re missing out on far too many great things.

This isn’t just about positive self-talk. It’s about choosing to focus on strengths while you learn. There’s a difference, and it’s a choice. But if you don’t choose, you’re letting the part of you that’s scared decide on your behalf. And that’s a lot worse than lousy parking.