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

Hi All,

In related news, I’m opening up more speaking dates for 2012. If you’re looking for an engaging speaker at your conference, convention, or classroom, you can learn more here. Thanks in advance for spreading the word to your schools, instructors and association leaders!   – Dan

A reader recently asked me:

What is the best way to arrange speaking arrangements or workshops, etc. and where is the best place to do them? I’m starting a practice and haven’t done any of this yet. Any insight would be much appreciated.

This is definitely not the first time I’ve had this question–there seems to be a lot of mystery surrounding the idea of speaking to groups.

There are really two ideas here, though. The first is how to actually find the opportunities. The second is how to turn those opportunities into paying clients. You can tackle both of those with these four steps.

Step 1. Prepare…But Just a Little

Don’t fall for the trap of preparing a talk before you have anyone to talk to. This is most certainly a ready, fire, aim type scenario.

“But wait,” you say. “Before I go looking, don’t I need to prepare my keynote, and shoot some video of me speaking, and create some PowerPoints, and do some research, and find some funny cartoons on the internet?”

No. Don’t do a SINGLE BIT OF WORK on any type of presentation until someone actually wants you to present. The closest you need to come at this point is to ponder a list of topics you might like to speak on – stress reduction, fertility, improving your golf game, boosting energy, treating IBS. Whatever fits your game and floats your boat, with the knowledge that you might well speak on something else if someone asks.

The key: These topics aren’t about what you DO. You’re not going to speak about massage per se – you’re going to speak about stress relief. It’s not about acupuncture, it’s about how you can remove years from someone’s appearance using acupuncture. It’s about your potential audience’s problem first, you second.

Step 2. Find Speaking Opportunities

It turns out there’s a special technique to arranging speaking opportunities. It’s very advanced, and highly secretive:

You have to tell people you want to speak.

Really. There are speaking gigs waiting to be found, and there are ones waiting to be created, but they all come out of the same basic idea–you need to put it out there in the world that you want to speak. (In fact, this applies to most things. Tell people what it is you’re looking for, and you’ll be surprised at how few people you need to tell to find help.)

But…who to tell? Here are a few ideas from our experience:

• Service Groups. Many non-profits and service groups, like Rotary, have a steady stream of speakers for their meetings. Your local clubs aren’t hard to find.
• Special Interest Health Groups. There are support groups for everything from diabetes to cancer and MS.
• Schools. You can often land a gig speaking to teachers on professional development days. (And in our world, they have great benefit plans.)
• Local Business. Corporations often offer learning opportunities for staff. Particularly if they think it’ll reduce sick days and increase productivity.
• Grocery Stores & Restaurants. Our local grocery store has a community kitchen space for lectures and cooking classes. All you have to do is make up a topic and submit it.
• Health Food Stores. Health food and supplement stores would love it if you could speak to a group in their space who might then buy a bunch of product.
• Partners. Why not team up with a complementary practitioner or business (like the health food store above?). You can both spread the word twice as far, and tap into each other’s client base. How does it work? You call up a practitioner and say, “Hey. Do you want to do a public talk together? Let’s get together and discuss.” Then the details have a magical way of working out. It’s just the call that needs to happen.
• Existing Clients. Don’t forget them. They might not need you to speak, but they almost certainly know someone who does. Email them all. Put a sign at the front desk.
• The Rest of Your Local Area. Put a page on your website that says you’re available for local speaking engagements. Post it on Facebook. Tweet.

Sidebar: The Big Secret to Having the Guts to Book Speaking Gigs

Here’s what’s important for you to remember: you don’t need guts or sales skills. You’re doing a favor for most of these places by offering your services. You’re helping them out–I promise. Many service clubs have mandates to bring in speakers, and the poor sucker saddled with the job is always on the lookout for someone. Many workplaces like to offer lunch-bag learning options. Many health support groups are desperate for someone to speak to their members.

You don’t need to feel like you’re asking for a handout. You aren’t. You’re offering a valuable service.

Step 3: Speak. (And One More Thing That’s More Important)

Do your thing. And do it as well as you can. Don’t read slides to people. You can use slides, but remember that most people in attendance already know how to read. The goal of speaking is not to present PowerPoint slides. For a better set of tips than I could ever create, check out Seth’s post.

Here’s the important part, though: your job is to somehow get permission to contact the people you speak to. Not everyone–sometimes not anyone–is going to become a client right away. You need to capture their contact information–likely an email address–so you can continue to speak to them. Here are a few suggestions:

• Offer a takeaway. When we’ve done cooking classes, we’ve sometimes given the recipes out to people. But other time’s we’ve passed around an email signup sheet so we can send the recipes after. That’s smarter.
• Offer a prize. A door prize or draw is often enough to get people to offer an email address.
• Offer a free consult/service. We do free 15-minute “meet the doctor” visits. You can do what works for you, but if you ask for email addresses so you can contact people to give them their free service, you’ll usually get a decent response.
• Offer your slides/handouts. If you’ve got useful content–which I’m sure you do–then offer to email it out, rather than printing it on dead trees.
• Just ask people to sign up. Just pass around a sheet of paper and a pen and just ask people to sign up. They will.
• Give people your blog/Facebook Page/Twitter name/ etc. At the very least, make sure you tell people how they can hear more from you.

The key here to just do it. You only need a piece of blank paper and a pen. Write “email address” at the top and pass it around. It’s that simple.

Step 4: Follow Up

• Contact participants. Contact everyone within 24 hours. Thank them for coming. Fulfill whatever you offered, and ask them to call if you can help in any way. Suggest they take some action – call, like you on Facebook, subscribe to your blog, etc.
• Contact the host. Thank them, too. And…here’s the important part. Ask if they’d be willing to write you a one-sentence testimonial. You can even offer to write it for them. I find that hosts tend to thank you right back, and offer positive comments. If they do, just ask if you can use their kind remarks on your website. That’s it!

Tips:

• If your clinic/office space works, consider offering some public talks in your space. It gets people in the door. Beyond that, try your local library for space, or just ask three people. Someone will know where to find something cheap/free.
• Don’t make this bigger than it is. Just tell people you want to speak to them, and then speak to them. If you’re nervous, then good. You’re supposed to be. The only people who aren’t at least a little nervous are narcissists and people with a lot of experience. You likely aren’t either.
• If you’re really nervous. Or you think of yourself as a practice introvert, then you have a choice. You can decide that’s just how it is, and market your practice in other ways – you don’t have to speak. Or you can decide that speaking is a skill like anything else and get on with learning it. Including maybe screwing it up a couple of times just to speed up the learning.
• You might also consider getting someone else to do the speaking. We brought in a guest speaker this year who spoke to a full house on a topic relevant to our clinic. It took some work to fill a whole theater, but we didn’t have to do the lecture.
• Focus on illness, not wellness. You’ll get more interest in a talk focused on problems, then one focused on “optimal health”.

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.

Hi all – if you want to skip the ‘why’, just scroll down for the how-to part. It’s easy. There’s also a clinic sign we made at the bottom that you can download in PDF… -Dan

Facebook has become one of the largest sources of traffic to our clinic website. And the more traffic we get from it, the more we play with it. And the more we play with it, the greater the potential seems.

We recently set up the clinic as a Facebook “Place”. While a “Page” is like a Facebook profile for your business, Places is a location-based side of Facebook. It lets people use their phone or mobile device to “check-in” – to say to their other FB friends, “Hey – this is where I am, right now.”

How Places Can Help Your Practice

1. Traffic and Awareness

When someone checks in to a Place, an entry goes into their FB feed. It look something like this:

My FB friends (or friends of friends, etc, depending on privacy settings) can then click on the clinic link to take them to our Page, or they can comment on my location, or Like it. I can also tag any FB friends who happen to be with me at the time – all of which serves to basically send the clinic name and link spinning around Facebook in one form or another. That brings people to our page, where they can Like the clinic, or visit our website. All of which trickles down  into someone eventually showing up.

2. Deals

Places also offers you the ability to create “deals” – essentially rewards to your clients for checking in when they arrive at your practice. There are four kinds:

We haven’t used any deals yet – I’m not sure they’re a fit for every practice – but we may test it out. Regardless, I’m intrigued – if anyone’s tried it, let us know in the comments.

How To Set Up Facebook Places

This is one of those things that’s really easy, but isn’t necessarily intuitive. You’ll need to be at your practice with your mobile device to get started. Here are the instructions I used. They worked just fine, although the last step of merging our clinic Page and Place seems to be taking awhile. But it only took a few minutes to get it all up and running.

(For those of you really into this stuff, merging Places and Pages seems to be in flux, with various pros and cons, including problems with multiple locations. Might be worth waiting a little while to merge, but there’s no reason to not set up your Place anyway. If this all seems like Greek to you, just go ahead and set up your Place, and forget about the merging part for now. )

A Sign for Your Waiting Room

I’m not convinced that there’s a heap of traffic in our waiting room that will check in via phone, but I’m curious. I thought I’d put up a sign in the clinic letting people know they can do it. Here’s a generic version of the one we made – you can download the PDF here if you want to print it out and do the same, or drop in your own name or logo.

One of the barriers to practice marketing is getting caught up in trying to make things perfect. You put things off because you need to figure out X, or get just the right Y, or get some advice from Z. And the time ticks by.

And, of course, you really can’t get things perfect. Trying to hit perfect is a recipe for a) not getting anything done, and b) feeling like a loser for not getting anything done. It turns out, aiming for perfect is really just afraid to screw up in different clothes.

To beat that, we’ve been trying to, in essence, fail faster. Essentially the opposite of getting things perfect.

Really?

Yes. Really.

What The Hell I’m Talking About
This idea can be a hard sell, so I’m always on the lookout for…well, failures. As it turns out, there are all kinds of them once you start looking.

Here’s one:

Each year we try to connect with our best referrers. Some of them are patients who are real champions of the clinic, others are health care professionals who tend to send people our way.

Connecting helps us discover why people refer. Or how we can do better. But always, it’s just nice to show our gratitude.

To shake things up this year, we decided to offer our best referrers some certificates for a free initial visit that they could give away.

We’d never done that before, but we have extra help at the clinic and it seemed like a good experiment to try. It gave our referrers a way to give something in turn to someone else, and a way to reduce the barrier to entry for what is a costly service for some.

Rather than spend a whole bunch of time figuring out the best way to do it, though, we just…did it. Just pulled the trigger with limited prep.

The Results

FAIL.

So far, it hasn’t worked out. Last time I checked, not one of the certificates had been redeemed. Nice.

But of course, the best part about screwing up is what you learn.

Lesson #1: Be Specific

There were a couple of simple mistakes we made.

1. We didn’t put an expiry date on the gift. I wouldn’t normally do that for gift certificates that people pay for, but why didn’t we do it for one’s we’re giving away? Oops. We should have limited the time frame. Never even crossed my mind, though.

2. We didn’t tell our referrers what we were looking for. This became clear when one person said, “Thanks. I know just the person. They’re really active, healthy, and into nutrition. I’ll give it to them.”

WTF? Someone who’s active, eating well, and healthy has no reason to come to us! We’re looking for sick people who can barely function, not healthy ones! We should have said something like:

Do you have a client, friend or family member with a chronic health problem that no one seems to be able to help? Please pass on this certificate with our compliments.

Or we could have gotten even more specific, identifying three health concerns that we have the most success with. We did neither, and as a result our gifts are now languishing in desk drawers, glove boxes and under fridge magnets filled with grocery lists and kid’s schoolwork.

Both of these mistakes were simply problems with not being specific. Easily fixed for next time. But of course, there’s a larger lesson here. (Isn’t there always? )

Lesson #2: Failing Faster Works

Part of sharing this with you is so that you don’t have to make the same mistakes, but also to point out something more important: that we were better off screwing this up, then not doing it at all.

Here’s why.

The stakes in health care are high. People are trusting you with their most important asset. Most regulated professions have a whole infrastructure to protect the public – accredited schooling, ethics and jurisprudence training, licensing exams, continuing education. There’s a lot that goes into making sure you screw up as little as possible.

Here’s the thing, though: the stakes in marketing your practice are low.

Marketing a practice is mostly cheap. A bit of time here, some paper there, a few bucks over here. Even in a fledgling practice, a lot of it is small potatoes – mostly time. But your training makes you risk-averse. And that can bleed into your practice marketing efforts.

It’s okay to screw up. In fact, it’s essential. When you try to not make mistakes, you start looking for perfect. But Perfect is a distant destination, somewhere out beyond Never and Ever. Looking for it is a recipe for not getting anything done.

Our whole experiment cost a few dollars and a few hours. It didn’t work – at least not yet. But who cares? It’ll work next time, because we failed forward. Now we can do it again, better. If we had waited for perfect, we’d have nothing done, and still not know how to get it right. And in the meantime, we’ve connected personally with our best referrers to say thanks. And that definitely works.

• Been wanting to start a Facebook page for your practice? Just do it. It’s free.
• What about that email newsletter? Just do it. Screw it up if you want – it’s free.
• What about your Google Places page? Who cares if you make a mistake – it’s free.
• Twitter? Why not? How badly can you go wrong with 140 characters? And it’s free, too.

Not all these may be a fit for your practice – that’s fine. But if they are, don’t let fear of failing hold you back – the stakes are low.

Next time you think perfection is holding you back, ask yourself, “What’s the real cost of screwing this up?” Most of the time the true cost is a lot smaller than you think, and what you gain in experience is well worth it.

Reader J. writes:

“…how do I revive my practice after leaving it for a 6-month maternity leave? I took on a locum and I went from seeing 30+patients a week to her seeing a mere 10 patients per week at best.

I know many of my patients wanted to wait until I got back, but I also know that many will have dropped off the planet unless I am proactive about generating new business and reviving my relationship with past clients.”

Whether it’s a maternity leave, a sabbatical, some down time, a return to school, or any other reason, a long absence has the potential to wreak havoc on your practice. We’ve been there. Here’s what we did, starting with the year leading up to our sabbatical.

I: Before You Go

Absences are a bit like prevention – you get the best results from starting early. You might not always have the luxury of planning in advance, but if you can, it’ll pay off.

a) Reframe Success:
A big turning point for us in the sabbatical planning process was to reframe what we were expecting from the practice. We started out this way:

How do we lose as little money as possible while we’re gone?

And one day we reframed the question this way:

How can the practice make a profit while we’re gone?

That may seem like just semantics, but it changed the way we looked at things. And that, it turn, changed what we did before we left. That simple shift led to adding new people and services that enable the practice to be profitable during a 5-month hiatus.

b) Diversify
Those new services were really about diversifying – about ensuring that less of the practice revenue was coming from one person’s efforts. If you have some lead time before your absence, now’s the time to start planning. What can you add to your practice? New people? New products? New services? Focus on things that can deliver revenue beyond what a locum can generate by working with your clients.

c) Get More Help
If you’ve been running a one-person show, it may seem counter-intuitive to hire office support when know you’re leaving. But it’s worth considering. If you feel like you don’t have time to expand your practice before you leave, perhaps you need more admin help – paying a receptionist part-time, for example, might free up the time and head space you need to diversify, or spend more time marketing your practice. Plus when it comes time to leave, you’ll have someone ready to fill your shoes on the administrative side.

II: While You’re Gone

a) Stay in Touch
It’s just not that hard to stay in touch with your client base any more. If you haven’t already, now is the time to get that free MailChimp account and get your email newsletter started.

If you’re already using email, a blog, social media, or print to keep in touch, keep it going while you’re away. You’d be surprised at how interested your clients may be in what you’re doing. You don’t need to do a lot – just share, encourage, and educate people like always.

b) Don’t Completely Bail Out
You may well be in a place where you want to completely abdicate all responsibility for the practice. That’s fine – sometimes that’s what you need. But understand completely disengaging will come at a cost without some amazing people and processes to fill your shoes. If you do decide to fully leave, just give yourself permission to change your mind. It’s hard to predict how a long absence feels until it’s happening.

III: When You Get Back

When you return, energized and ready to tackle practice again, here are some things to consider.

a) Go One-to-One
Now’s the time to pull patient files, and pay attention when clients pop into your mind. People love being personally contacted for legitimate reasons – our experience is that they particularly like email. Keep up the email newsletter and other mass marketing, sure, but it’s time to start reconnecting personally.

It may help to break it down into small actions. Everyone has time to email one client every morning. If that’s easy, step it up to three or more. Just start building the habit. Do it every single day.

b) Leverage Your Experience
Is there something about your time off that you can bring back to your practice? Your newfound experience with infants? Your expanded education in a new modality? Can you share your experience in another country in the form of a public presentation, or other speaking gigs? It may not apply to every absence, but almost every change in life brings new wisdom – why not share?It’s a great way to create marketing opportunities without really feeling like you’re marketing.

c) Reconnect with referrers
Despite your best efforts to stay in touch, your biggest fans still may not even know you’re back! Get in touch with them – one-by-one, in whatever way seems best. Again – turn it into something small you can do every day.

One Day, This Will Be a Small Deal

Leaving your “baby” seems like a big deal – and it is. But one day you’ll look back at it as less of a big scary deal, and more of an amazing experience that you’ll remember forever. And perhaps one that changes your practice for the better.

While it may be easier said than done, try not panic. Figure out the worst-case financial scenario for your absence. Decide if you can accept it, then get on with building your practice, and enjoying some amazing time away.

It’s amazing to me how many of our practice building efforts involve writing. Blog posts. Website content. Articles for newspapers and magazines. Fliers. Patient forms. Letters. Facebook posts. Email newsletters. The list goes on.

Of course, we like that medium, but I don’t think that’s the whole picture. I see writing as crucial for any practice. From the signs on your walls to the content of your website, your clients are experiencing your practice not just through their interaction with you, but through the written word.

For some, though, the importance doesn’t matter – the empty page is still a source of dread. It’s too big, too hard, too overwhelming. Many a blog, website and newsletter never see the light of day because of that dread.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

I want to share with you our basic process for writing short-to-medium length content like a blog post or article. I’ve broken it into multiple steps for simplicity, but the truth is you can do all of these in a very short time. (Total time for this post: Under 40 minutes)

Before we get to the steps, though, two principles to carry along the way:

Aim for Short

Long is too hard, too scary, and too costly. Most of all though, people don’t read long – if anything, it scares them away. We think long because we spent years in school being taught to write a certain number of words instead of just trying to deliver the message. Time to start losing that programming.

If you’re struggling with getting started (or getting finished), help yourself by deciding that you never need to write more than three paragraphs. That’s it. You might write more, but don’t set yourself up for failure at the start.

Eliminate Yourself…at Least at First

One of the easiest mistakes to make is to talk about yourself and what you do when you really should be talking about other people’s problems and how to solve them. Yes, you do nutritional counseling. But there isn’t a client in the world who has a nutritional counseling problem. Nor do any of them have a gluten or lactose intolerance problem. They have digestive pains so severe they can’t work. Or a skin condition so bad they can’t go out in public.

If you struggle with this, try simply refusing to use words like “I”, or “we” or mentioning your tools or modalities in your first draft (more on first drafts below). Focus on the other person’s problem, and only mention what you do in the context of solving it.

Now for the writing. I’ve listed some rough times for this post, just to give you a sense that the process is actually fairly brief.

Step 1. The Outline – Put 1-3 Ideas on The Page (2 Minutes. Plus pondering over breakfast.)

I’m big on outlining. Once the actual writing starts, I’m easily distracted…oooh! shiny!…by other ideas. For this post, I wrote down six phrases to help with the first draft:

• Short
• Not about you
• First draft free-flow
• Wait
• Rewrite
• Help

That’s it: that was the skeleton. It changed a bit, as you can see, but that’s all you need to get started. If you have trouble with a skeleton, try this generic one to start:

• A health complaint and its symptoms
• What causes it
• Solution(s)

Step 2. Write The No-Editing Allowed Draft (20 minutes)

Using your skeleton from above, just write a couple of sentences in each part of your framework. That’s it. If you need more, write it, but don’t be obsessed with quantity. Remember: short is usually better. Just fill in the blanks.

Also, do not edit what you’re writing. Give yourself permission to just free-flow it right from your brain to the page. Fear not: no one is going to see this draft. Get over it.

Step 3.Wait (Optional, 0 minutes)

Ideally, I’ll wait at least overnight after a first draft. I count that as zero time, because there’s no work involved.

What’s going on here is you’re creating a fresh perspective. A new set of eyes. It’s hard to rewrite and edit what you’ve just written. You can’t get a good sense of flow, and you skip over the same errors time and time again without seeing them.

So take a break. You don’t have to, but it’ll make your next step easier, and your final product far better.

Step 4. Rewrite (10 minutes)

With your fresh eyes and a good night’s sleep, take a spin through what you wrote. At this stage, I’m mostly looking for flow – does it make sense? Is there a clear idea? Is it useful?

This is where things start to stitch together. A clunky bunch of sentences starts to tell a story. You can’t write well without rewriting – don’t skip this part.

Step 5. Get Someone Else To Read It (Optional, 0 minutes)

It’s hard to see your own mistakes. Get someone to take a spin through and point out obvious errors and stuff that just doesn’t make sense.

Step 6. Polish (5 minutes)

Do a final tweak based on comments from step 5. Read through, do a spell check.

That’s it! Not counting the optional overnight waiting and your friend’s read through, you should be able to do a short piece in under an hour. If you want to go shorter and faster, you can use steps 1, 2, 4 and 6, and do even briefer post or email newsletter content in just 15 minutes.

The real key parts for moving forward, I think, are the outline and first draft. You need to give yourself permission to just go. Write it down like you’d say it aloud. Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or about self-editing. That voice in your head that’s saying, “You suck at writing,” is in everyone’s head at some point. Forget about it. It goes away as you work through the steps, and as you write more.

Writing is, like everything else, a skill. It’s a muscle that grows with exercise, and the stronger it gets, the more power it has. Give yourself a chance to build it up.

As I start the early stages of our next book, I’m becoming more and more intrigued by practitioners who grow their practices very quickly. Sometimes it’s right out of the gate, other times they seem to limp along for years, until something changes and they take off.

I think there’s great inspiration in these stories – they’re worth sharing. I’ll break this into at least a couple of parts, with more CAM professions to follow. Regardless of the modality or profession, though, like always the advice is readily transferable.

Many of the people I’ve spoken to were seeing one or two patients a month for a long time, then took off. Take heart…

Happy New Year, everyone.

-Dan

Brooke Thomas, Rolfer
New Haven Rolfing

Many of you will know Brooke from this blog, and from our last book. She grew her third practice from zero to 15 clients per week in a month, then went on to start a great program for wellness pros. She’s an amazing model for the power of building a few key relationships.

Specifically the thing that helped the most was by connecting with, and offering free work to, the holistic community in New Haven. There was going to be a lull period of a few weeks before I received my new license to practice in the state of Connecticut, so I couldn’t charge for my work. I figured instead of sitting on my hands, I could put them to use by running what I called my “Help for the Helpers” promotion.

I put out word to the holistic community (mostly by introducing myself to the owners of a couple of big wellness hubs in town- a yoga center and some wellness centers) and let them know that I had this lull where I couldn’t charge.

Lots of people came, many of them are still my long term clients and many have also been my biggest advocates in town. It’s been the best thing I did for sure.

Laura Allen, Massage Therapist
Thera-ssage

Many massage therapists will know Laura. She’s very active in the profession, and very supportive of practitioners. She took her practice from zero to $300,000 a year in 5 years, and put her advice in her book, One Year to a Successful Massage Therapy Practice.

The one thing that makes the biggest difference for me is that I SCHEDULE my marketing time. Every single day I specifically devote a half hour to doing marketing activities for my business. It is scheduled just like a massage appointment.

I might be working up a new ad, calling clients I haven’t seen in a while, sending out birthday cards with a discount coupon, or anything else that seizes me on that day.

Tonia Winchester, ND
Arbour Wellness
Tonia’s first naturopathic practice was, in her words, a “flop.” She was seeing less than two patients a day, on average, but she tripled her practice in a six month period and is still growing steadily.

I followed a link to Brooke’s blog, and really connected with her style and approach.  So in a blink I signed up for her course.

And then did nothing with it until after my wedding.

Then in August 2010 it was like a switched turned on, or the faucet started dripping, and then pouring.  I did the first module of Brooke’s course, she calls it The Cleanse.  The reframe of “my why” was probably the most vital thing I have done in my practice building journey so far. I realized that I don’t NEED patients so I can pay my bills, but I know patients will benefit from my unique, amazing, gifted me.  It would be a pity not to share the goodness that I can bring to the world.

Things were differently immediately.  There is still lots of room for growth, but the trend is stupendous and I know it will continue until I’m at a place where my schedule is filled.  Patients are starting to refer, people who see my talks are starting to book, people who see advertisements for my talks are starting to book.

In sum, in all honestly, my progress has been due to a mental / spiritual re-understanding of my place in this world.

Ann Ross, LMP
Urban Healing Arts Studio

When she first opened her doors, Ann was seeing only 2-3 clients per month. After vowing in the new year of 2006 to make it happen, she grew in that year to 8-15 clients per week, and has grown every year since. She’s now on track to earn six figures this year with the addition of three new therapists to her business. She helps other therapists do the same at her blog Massage Marketing Mentor.

I recommend that therapists team up with other health care providers in attracting clients. If it had not been for renting space within a chiropractic clinic I don’t believe I would have grown my business that quickly.  The exposure I had was incredibly valuable.

Therapists need to seek out relationships with complementary businesses.  Chiropractors, Acupuncturists, Yoga Instructors, PT’s, Naturopaths etc. are great resources when looking to gain exposure. I recommend therapists create some type of offer to the customers of the other business.  Because the other business already has created a trusting relationship with their client base, those clients will be more likely to book a massage appointment with the therapist.

I love how each story is a little different. At the end of this series, I’ll share some common threads that I’ve seen.

If you have a story of turning your practice around that you’d like to share, feel free to get in touch – it might seem to you like it’s not important, but you’d be surprised at how one little idea can change someone’s life. – Dan

Back in 2006 (wow) we listed five things we wished we would have done in practice right from day one. Since the New Year is almost upon us, it seems like the right time to pass on a few more. Even if you started your practice long ago, you can still pretend like the new year is a fresh start, right?

1. Think Illness Not Wellness…

…at least when it comes to marketing. We all want to feel like we’re in the wellness business – and we are. But for many practices, people who are already well don’t make great clients. Time and time again, we find that people seeking “wellness” don’t really need that much help. They pop in for a visit and the reassurance that they’re on the right track, then they vanish.

People with problems you can solve – sick people – make great clients. And they refer others. And the people who you help out of illness are far more likely to buy into wellness programs – they know first hand what being sick is like. Advertising “wellness” isn’t nearly as effective as marketing a solution to a health problem.

Get people in the door because of illness. Then keep them by getting them well.

2. Restrict Your Hours

Work less, earn the same. Have a life. Why? Here’s why.

3. Book Effectively

When the schedule looks like a wide open slate, it’s easy to think that booking efficiently isn’t critical. It is. I wish we’d spent more time early on focused on how effectively the hours were booked, and less time on how many of them there actually were. Get a waiting list going. Book wisely. Enjoy the results.

4. Use Social Media – Especially Facebook

This one’s a  bit of a cheat, because Facebook wasn’t around when we started. But if it were day one for us right now, I’d be all over it.

Facebook is quickly becoming the largest source of traffic to our website other than Google searches, and there are vast amounts of people in the right demographic. More than half of users are women, and the older age groups – those with both health concerns and the money to spend on them – are the fastest growing by far.

If you’re already doing this, great. If not, start with the easy part: get a Facebook account and just start exploring. Don’t be scared – you can lurk and learn at first. When you’re ready, here’s a good resource for starting your practice page.

5. Create Marketing Partnerships

Sometimes you can’t reach everyone you’d like to. It takes time, money and energy to market directly to people who might user your services. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone could reach some of them on your behalf?

I wish we’d spent more time creating partnerships early on. Not just Please-Can-You-Send-Me-Some-Clients referral relationships, but partnerships based on cross-promotion and offering value to each other’s clients. Added bonus: sometimes health care is a lonely job. A few more colleagues is a nice thing to have.

It’s never to late to start any of these. And if you’re inclined toward Fresh-Starts-In-The-New-Year, maybe there’s something here that’s a fit. -Dan

One of the most frequent comments I hear from practitioners is that they know what they should be doing to grow their practices, but they can’t seem to actually get it done.

The go-to reason for most practitioners that we speak to is time – that there’s just not enough of it. I’m not so sure. Time is tough, and we almost always wish we had more of it, but I think that there are more insidious barriers. They come disguised as not enough time, and that makes them all the more dangerous.

These 4 simple questions are ones you can ask yourself to identify and beat those barriers. The next time you feel like you’re “stuck” somewhere in the marketing process, run through these four questions until you find the barrier – it’s there somewhere.

Question #1: Have I simplified this enough?

Say, for example, that your to-do list – mental or otherwise – reads “Email newsletter”. It’s definitely low-hanging fruit – an email newsletter is cheap, easy and remarkably effective – but it’s been on your to-do list for so long you can’t remember when you put it there.

So why isn’t it done? The answer in this case may be complexity – you haven’t broken the task down into small enough pieces. “Email newsletter” is a big, amorphous blob, made up of a bunch of tiny steps. Each of the tiny steps is actually quite simple, and requires very little time. But the blob? It doesn’t have a starting point, and before we even get a chance to tackle it, our brain has said, “I don’t know how to do that,” and we’re back to checking email or Facebook for the hundredth time.

Solution: The answer to complexity isn’t to change the task, or ignore it, but to break it into smaller pieces. What’s the very first step you need to take to make your email newsletter happen? For us, it was to find a tool to do the job. Sending a newsletter out manually is a drag – you need a tool that lets you add addresses, puts a signup form on your website, let’s people unsubcribe, gives you cool templates, etc.

Here’s what “email newsletter” looks like when we simplify:

1. Choose a tool for the job
2. Sign up
3. Add addresses
4. Enter content into the template
5. Proofread
6. Send

Let me help with the first two steps: Go to MailChimp, and sign up. It’s free for up to 1000 subscribers and 6000 sent emails. That’ll handle the newsletter needs of most small to medium practices with no up-front risk.

Voila. First two steps of 6 are done. Total time: 3 minutes. Do one of each of the remaining steps each day, and you’ll be done before the week is out.

Question #2: Am I making this bigger than it has to be?

That same newsletter can get stuck at step 4 because we’ve turned the actual deliverable – the newsletter – into a big, hairy deal. In our minds, it’s this long and intricate email filled with articles, photographs, book reviews, recipes, testimonials from patients, a survey, a special gift for subscribers and an audio interview with the Dalai Lama.

Cut yourself some slack.

Give yourself permission to send out a newsletter that’s a hundred words long, that has no other purpose other than to be useful for your patients. A simple health tip. A link to a video. A great book you just read. That’s it. One hundred words is just a fraction of this blog post. Total time: 10 minutes.

Question #3: Am I aiming for perfect?

How many times have you taken something almost all the way there? An article. A presentation. A sign. A flyer. You get job almost done, but then it languishes at the “I just need to tweak it a bit” stage forever.

Perfect is the enemy of done.The solution? Choose. Do you want what you’re doing to be perfect, or do you want it to be done?

It’s your practice, so you get to decide. But you can’t have both.

Question #4: Do I need help?

Sometimes you really don’t have the skills, the time, or the tools to get the job done. Don’t let that stop you.

• Is there someone who can do a marketing job better than you? Write an article? Create print materials? Organize events?
• Is there someone who has a skill set you simply don’t have? Creating a website? Using social media?
• Is there someone who can do things that you really don’t have time for? After all, you can’t be in two places at once – maybe someone else should work the health show booth on your behalf.

Looking back, I really wish we’d hired a kind of catch-all marketing person whose job was to delight clients, write press releases, go to networking events, organize our marketing, talk to patients. I think it would have paid off handsomely.

Dealing With Your Next Marketing Barrier

The next time you find something languishing on your to-do list, run through these four questions. More often than not, you’ll find one that pops out as the culprit. Once you’ve identified it and beat it, you’ll find things happen far more quickly and easily.