Aug
26
Where do you find help in getting started with your natural medicine business?
Filed Under Business Planning, Getting Started, Personnel | 1 Comment
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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 to find this sort of help.
In the initial stages of starting a business places like SCORE (I looked in my yellow pages for this) will work with small business owners to work out what they want their business to look like and also discuss the types of licenses they might need. At the time I contacted them, I was sent a wonderful packet of business related information that outlined what various government offices (state, county and city) needed what from me.
Another great place to check out online is Insights for Acupuncturists. This site is geared towards acupuncturists, obviously, but it can be applied to anyone who will be in a healthcare practice running a small business. Lisa Hanfileti, the site creator, is an acupuncturist with a biology background. She graduated back in 2000 and she and her husband, a medical doctor, set up their office.
Very often practitioners tend to think small at the beginning. Lisa did not. While she discusses the pitfalls of this at points in her website, the important thing about this is that Lisa had to find out a lot more about various aspects of running a business than many of us have had to. This makes her site a great resource. One thing to remember is that this is a website geared towards anyone trying to start an acupuncture practice. Some information must remain general as exact laws vary state to state, county to county and city to city. Lisa is good about pointing your towards specific offices that may need to be contacted to find out specifics.
If you don’t have a vision of what your practice should look like there are many personal coaches out there. You can search online or ask your friends who they used. Like natural healthcare providers, business coaches use a variety of approaches.
Jenn Givler is a business coach I’m familiar with. Her website is Create a Thriving Business. Jenn works with practitioners who are trying to figure out what they do and do not know about the process of running a business. She says, “I refer to this as putting an infrastructure in place for running a business.” Jenn can take new practitioners through the process of visualizing their ideal practice, focusing on the strengths they have to create this ideal practice (not just their healing strengths but their business strengths) and then help them clarify the areas where they need help.
Additionally Jenn will keep working with practitioners through all phases of their business, whether that be creating new marketing opportunities or creating new opportunities for revenue streams as well as re-evaluating the business and what help is needed as the business vision grows and changes. On Jenn’s website you’ll also find a link to her group which keeps people in contact with like minded people who can offer feedback.
One area many practitioners get stuck is figuring out how to market their business. Of all the business tasks this one is often the most hated task for practitioners. Not only do practitioners seem to dislike it the most, but marketing is one of the most ongoing tasks a business owner faces. If that isn’t enough, marketing is the one task that most often needs updating and changing.
One of my favorite books on running a small business is Lynn Grodzki’s book, Building Your Ideal Private Practice
When I started the Acupuncture Marketing Blogthere were very few sites out there for me to draw information from. The Alternative Health Practice Blog existed (but did not look nearly as lovely as it does today). It’s a great resource, though updated about as irregularly as I update the Marketing Blog.
Kevin Doherty came out with his site Build Your Dream Pracice. Kevin is an acupuncturist and he also does some web design and personal coaching. Kevin’s information is about keeping acupuncturists in business and one area he really focuses on is website information.
Burton Kent is one of the newer names on the scene. Burton began with Acupuncture Clinic Marketing. I’ve had conversations with him about his “No More Closed Clinics” blog post. Burton’s area is marketing. However he’s used acupuncture and had fantastic results with it. He feels that acupuncturists can benefit from the information on marketing that he can provide. He’s also serious about the no more closed clinics. Both Burton and Kevin offer ebooks and some personal coaching.
Another great source that new practitioners might overlook are people who are currently in practice. These people know what has worked for them and what hasn’t. They understand the little pitfalls and misunderstandings based on how you, as a healthcare provider, might think and the way the government offices might think. They can also tell you how to find good help and may know where you can find office space. The downside of another practitioner is that their understanding of the laws may be incomplete so you might not details or get inaccurate information from them.
Finally, when you know you need to find employee help, how do you do so? Many practitioners have gotten good help via word of mouth. While any position may come via word of mouth, nowhere is this more true than with insurance billers. In fact, if you talk to someone specializing in this area, get references from people in your healthcare specialty.
Finding office help can be more challenging. You can post on Craigslist or in your local paper. Ask other practitioners and friends if they know anyone who would be good for a specific job in your office. Very often they may think of someone who is looking or can at least have that person send you a resume. Always check your references.
Office cleaners and laundry services are usually contract positions. You will often find advertisements on Craigslist or in the yellow pages. Again, ask other people in your local area who they use and you’ll probably get some names as well. As many small businesses, not just healthcare providers, use services like these, you may have a larger pool of people to from whom to find referrals.
The biggest gift you can give yourself while your business takes off is the gift of help. As a healthcare provider, I know that finding help was also one of the most challenging things I needed to do. By asking for assistance in various areas of your business you will find you get a lot more satisfaction from what you do than if you try and make do on your own. A streamlined office that is organized and well run is invaluable when you are seeing that one extra who patient who absolutely MUST get in. Further, a well run office can make sure you get to the point where you have that “extra” patient you don’t have time for from time to time.
That’s it for this series!
Bonnie
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, it’s human nature to absorb more from studying those things we love as opposed to those things we are told we have to learn. This means that people who love the business end of running their practice often learn more far quickly than those who run a their practice business rather under protest.
I checked out the school of business at my undergraduate alma mater. They have a total student body of approximately 2500 students. Their business school has 480 students. There is a requirement that in addition to the regular core undergraduate classes that 49 semester hours (students normally average 16 to 18 credit hours per semester, with 20 credit hours being a doable but heavy load) of business classes. This means that if you only studied the business courses, you would need an additional 3 semesters, or a year and a half minimum to learn what this college feels is appropriate to someone who wants to manage a business. This is for an undergraduate degree. The masters level coursework is an additional two years (assuming mostly full time enrollment).
Acupuncture students are lucky to get two business courses during their entire education.
Certainly you don’t need a business degree to run a business, nor am I suggesting this. I point out the fact that business majors get this much subject matter because as new practitioners we often expect ourselves to just know this information. Many business people say that most business information is just common sense. Most of our life lessons apply to business. The problem is that many people who are new to running a business don’t realize what they already know and even if they do, they don’t really know how to apply it.
Initially, I had thought to make this point and offer suggestions in one post, but it’s gotten ponderously long. I’d like to tackle a couple of points in future posts.
In the first post, I’ll discuss the need for finding good help. Good help may start with finding people who can offer some basic business advice to those just starting out. Additionally very few practitioners are strong in all aspects of running a business so at some point we’ll need to find help. Part of this post will focus on the types of help we may need, from deciding if we need a book keeper or legal assistance or maybe we just need someone to do our laundry.
In the second post, I’ll discuss some of the places practitioners can go to find assistance in starting their businesses. Some of these resources are online and some are offline. I’ll offer some potential pros and cons for the different types of services and try to help practitioners set appropriate expectations for the type of help they receive.
Starting up a business requires a lot of effort and energy. Very often, as healthcare providers who have just come out of school we tend to minimize the amount of work starting a business requires. We also like to just push through this part of creating our business because suddenly our student loans are going to come due. However, creating our ideal healthcare business takes time and effort. Thinking carefully about exactly what we want can lessen headaches in later years.
Bonnie
Aug
8
Getting started in the business of natural medicine : Our story, part 1
Filed Under Blogging, Our Story | Leave a Comment
Thanks for hanging in there while we get content production up and running on the blog. I wanted to start out by catching you all up to speed with how Amanda and myself got where we are today. First, it might be nice to know where we, in fact, are today. 
My name is Eric Grey and I’m a 4th (and last) year student of Classical Chinese Medicine (CCM) at National College of Natural Medicine (NCNM) in Portland, OR. I am a blogger at popular Chinese medicine site, Deepest Health and I also have a personal blog over at Ericgrey.com. My passion for natural medicine was probably partly given to me by my mother who was always trying little home cures when I would get sick. I also developed a very close relationship with plants at a young age, which made me interested in using plants for healing. It’s no surprise, then, that my one true love in Chinese medicine is the use of Chinese herbs. I started blogging about Chinese medicine because I saw that there wasn’t much good information out there about the medicine, yet there is an incredible amount of information that could be useful to people. This blog was born out of a similar realization. While there are many (some good) websites out there about business, there are relatively few about the business of natural medicine.
My partner, Amanda Barp, is a practicing massage therapist at Harmony Therapeutic Bodywork in the Kwan Yin Healing Arts Center in Portland, OR. She has been practicing in the Portland area for three years and has only recently combined forces with Harmony. She will be writing on the blog, though I am a more obsessive-compulsive writer than she has shown herself to be.
Amanda and I are planning to open a natural medicine clinic in the Sellwood area of Portland, OR in September 2009. We began planning our business about a year ago, and the process has been an interesting one. Because we are taking so long to work on our business plan, we have been able to go deeply into various elements as well as work out our relationship with regards to business. All of this information can be of use to other people, thus the creation of this blog. We hope that we can share our ups and downs, our research and our questions, our confusion and our a-ha moments with you and that in conversation with you, we can all come to understand how to be both integral healers AND savvy business people.
My first question - how did we ever start thinking that those two (healing and business) were polar opposites? What a self defeating idea!
It will take us a while to catch you up to speed with where we are and our process up until now. We will release a series of posts this upcoming week that will seek to do just that. We are also fortunate and excited to offer a series of posts from Bonnie Koenig of Quantum Lifestyles that will start us off on the right foot in talking about important concepts in natural medicine business.
Thanks for reading, we look forward to interacting with you for years to come.
Eric and Amanda
