Aug
23
I’m an Acupuncturist, Not a Business Person
Filed Under Blogging, Business Planning, Getting Started | 2 Comments
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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
