Nov

11

The early stages of business planning : difficulties and strategies

Filed Under Getting Started, Our Story, Vision and Mission | 1 Comment 

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Amanda and I have been working on our business plan for our center for natural medicine for a while.  We started planning long before I had any business classes in my program at NCNM.  In fact, we’ve been planning since I started school!  However, we still have a lot of work to do.  Why?

I believe that the early stages of the business planning process are the most difficult.  We have had multiple meetings of 3-4 hours where we did nothing but flesh out the basic idea behind our business model.  We’ve revisited notes from these meetings several times, only to come back at some later meeting to rehash similar ideas.  This process is slow and sometimes frustrating.  Every once in a while I despair that we are making no headway at all!

Still, I think this is all a very important part of building a sound business.  While we haven’t done all that much that could be put in an official business plan and submitted to a bank for a loan review process, our work has been extremely valuable.  There are three major reasons I believe it’s important to take plenty of time to ruminate over the most basic elements of a business plan.

  1. Good ideas take time : Just like cramming for an important test doesn’t leave you the time to comprehend the material, trying to cram for a business plan will find you in a business to which you do not feel passionately connected.  When you first start conceiving of your new clinic, your ideas will be rough and disconnected.  As time goes on, you start to see the relationships among your various ideas and new ideas are born from that fertile ground.  Further, as you accumulate experience simply by going through your normal days you will be better able to refine your current ideas and come up with new ones.  All this time spent will pay off with handsome dividends in the end
  2. It’s more complicated than you think : While your clinic idea may seem simple, with enough time you begin to see the complexities involved.  If you don’t leave yourself enough time to fully explore the plan, you may end up rudely awakened by some unexpected difficulty.  Failing that, you may simply miss out on a great opportunity that you would have been able to take advantage of if you had fully comprehended the intricacies of your situation earlier.
  3. It’s more fun / less stressful if you take your time :  It’s simply more fun to have big ideas and work out their implementation when you have time.  Trying to cram a business plan into the last 6 weeks of your schooling is only going to stress you out.  That’s pretty contrary to the spirit of natural medicine, isn’t it?  Give yourself a break!

Anyway - our business plan is really coming together and with every meeting I get more and more excited about our basic concept.  I’d like to explore that concept in future posts both here and at Deepesthealth.com.  Until then, thanks for reading.

Eric

Oct

6

Why Chinese Medicine is a great healthcare choice during an economic downturn

Filed Under Education, Marketing, The economy | Leave a Comment 

chinese_medicine_economic_downturnI’ve just begun a discussion about Chinese medicine and the economy over at my other blog, Deepest Health. It’s an issue on many of our minds lately, so worthy of a robust conversation.  Here on Natural Medicine Business Success, I want to look at a slightly different angle.  It seems that many people still see “alternative medicine” therapy as an expense that fits into the “disposable income” category of their budget.  In my money management software, it fits most neatly under “Spa” activities, which are in the same place as haircuts and bikini waxes.  I’ve recently gone to great lengths to alter this so I can place it in the same place as “Dentist visits” and “Pharmacy.”  That’s where it belongs.

Now, there are many issues involved in this discussion.  It’s important not to obscure the conversation by leaving them all mixed up together.  One important distinction involves insurance.  Many people still do not have insurance to cover acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine.  In an economically depressed time, people will most likely stop using any healthcare that does not get at least mostly reimbursed by their insurance.  Likewise, uninsured people are quite likely to stop getting healthcare services altogether when their finances get tight.  The whole question of insurance is a separate, but embedded, concern in this conversation.

All things being equal, I still feel that many people would preferentially choose Western medical treatment over any “complementary or alternative” healthcare treatment during tight economic times.  I feel that this is the fault of “complementary and alternative” healthcare practitioners, for the most part.  We are absolutely responsible for being an educational force in the world. When we have fewer patients, we should be doing double education duty out in the community.  Giving talks, getting articles in the paper, writing to our blogs, working on our books and journal articles, teaching cheap and free classes in our clinics - all of these things can help continue to educate the general public about the great benefits of what we do.

If people are more educated about the benefits of Chinese medicine (or whatever modality you practice) they are less likely to see it as “disposable” and thus more likely to continue visiting you during difficult economic times.

Personally, I believe that this sort of socio-economic climate makes Chinese medicine therapy more important for people than ever.  This is also true of most alternative medical modalities.  Why?  I can think of three major reasons, all of which would make worthy talk/article topics for your renewed public education efforts:

  1. Stress relief : Nearly all alternative medical therapies are well-suited to help patients manage stress.  When economic pressures are high, people get tense, and the damaging health and relationship effects of stress are well-documented.  While it’s hard to keep a long-range view when short-range difficulties are so present, being aware of stress’ effects will pay off.  Even from a more short-term perspective, the improvement in daily functioning, work performance and sense of resilience should more than justify the relatively small costs associated with acupuncture (or other) treatment.
  2. Avoiding major illness : When your belt is tightened, the last thing you need is to miss work because of a terrible cold - much worse to have a flare up of your lupus symptoms, need to increase your pain medication, or end up in the emergency room because of some serious health concern.  Keeping one’s body in balance with Chinese medicine or other complementary medical therapy just makes good economic sense from the perspective of avoiding a paycheck draining visit to the MD or ER.  I have seen many patients stay strong through cold season (thus no visit to the MD, plus no loss of work time) when normally they would have had to take sick days.  I’ve also seen patients have the opportunity to decrease pain and other medication (thus reducing costs) because of acupuncture and Chinese herbal treatment.  Think about it!
  3. For some conditions - natural medicine therapy is just cheaper! Let’s face it - Western medicine doesn’t have great solutions for a variety of medical conditions.  Consider Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - Western medical intervention is both expensive and largely ineffective for the majority of CFS sufferers.  Why pay exorbitant office visit fees (even if you only have to pay a co-pay) and fill your body full of expensive pharmaceuticals (that rarely get to the root of the problem)?  While I’m legally obligated to avoid saying that Chinese medicine can “cure” CFS, I can say that I’ve seen CFS sufferers have energy and optimism for the first time in many years after a fairly cheap course of Chinese medicine therapy.  Even a fairly expensive practitioner should be able to make good progress with a CFS suffer for under $1000.  This is a seriously debilitating condition for people who experience it - $1000 is a small price to pay for the ability to go to work, have satisfying relationships and get on with one’s life.

I’m interested to hear others’ perceptions about how economic downturns impact natural health practices.  Please leave your thoughts in the comments!

Eric

Aug

27

The power of networking in natural medicine

Filed Under Networking, Our Story | 2 Comments 

Last week I was approached by the owner of a Portland owned coffee shop with a proposal to offer massage as a benefit to her employees.  She borrowed the idea from Portland’s own Stumptown Coffee Roasters.  Stumptown offers their employees massage as one of the benefits of working for their company.  The important thing about this interaction that I’d like to convey here is:  I met her at my weekly networking meeting.

I’m learning, once again, the power of networking.

I started going to an early morning networking meeting at the beginning of August.  It was a safe bet for me, Continue Reading…

Aug

26

Where do you find help in getting started with your natural medicine business?

Filed Under Business Planning, Getting Started, Personnel | 1 Comment 

This is the last in a series of three articles about getting started in your natural medicine business by Bonnie Koenig.  You can find the previous two articles by clicking on either I’m an acupuncturist, not a business person or Open for Business…I think.  You can find Bonnie’s bio here.

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In the last two articles of this series I have reminded practitioners that running a small business can be a full time job, just as practicing medicine can be a full time job. I then focused on the types of help one could expect.    This leaves the question of where Continue Reading…

Aug

25

Open For Business…I Think

Filed Under Business Planning, Getting Started | Leave a Comment 

This is the second of three articles written by Bonnie Koenig about the first steps in starting a business.  You can read the first in the series by clicking on I’m an acupuncturist, not a business person! You can find Bonnie’s bio here.

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Starting a business after having been a student for years can come as a shock. Instead of being told what to do and what to study, now you are in charge and have to start figuring out what to do and what to study.   It seems like there is so much to do starting out that it Continue Reading…

Aug

23

I’m an Acupuncturist, Not a Business Person

Filed Under Blogging, Business Planning, Getting Started | 2 Comments 

This is the first in a series of three by Natural Medicine Business Success contributor, Bonnie Koenig, writer at the Acupuncture Marketing Blog, among other sites.  You can view her short biography by clicking here.

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The business of being an acupuncturist is very different from practicing acupuncture.   This is often the reason that those students who are the stars of acupuncture classes achieve only mediocre success in their personal practices.

Successful business people have one set of skills and this particular skill set is not necessarily the same skill set required to be an exceptional acupuncturist or other healthcare provider.    Additionally, Continue Reading…

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