Tag Archives: Practice Building

3 Secrets to Creating an Online Course and Income Stream

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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors. Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Do you feel like you have a busy load of patients, but so you’re not wanting necessarily to get busier with patients in your practice because you’re tapped out and you’re starting to feel even a bit burnt out. However, you have all this knowledge and expertise to share. What if you could put it together because.

Do you ever have people? Do you feel like you ever, you say things over and over again to repeat yourself to your patients and they may not remember everything. What if you could put it together in something that is beneficial to them? That’s educational that helps them with things like lifestyle changes and, or other kinds of things.

And you could even bring in another stream of income from it. So this is Chen Yen, 6 and 7 Figure Practice Make-over Mentor at introvertedvisionary.com and your host for our AAC Facebook show it today. So super excited to see you here. Go ahead and comment below. Let me know your, where your your name and where you’re practicing and that way it will be good to see where you are, and also what drew you to watch this?

So I could be really tailored to what you most want to know about with this. How do you actually create an online course and even another income stream? So one we’re going to talk about three secrets. To creating an online course and even another income stream. We’re going to talk, discuss the biggest myths about creating an online course.

We’ll also discuss how to decide what to design your online course around and then the most effective tried and true approach to get the word out. And as far as the the thing that we’re talking about is putting together what your knowledge and expertise in something like an online course that can be accessible at any point in time.

Even when you aren’t working. And so some of the myths that I hear about this, so are that I’m not really sure how this all works and the tech thing feels all complicated. So I don’t know if I want to really look into this right now. I don’t have the time. So let’s talk. Yes, because how many of you could relate to this, right?

You like the idea of bringing another stream of income and helping reaching more people, help them helping more people at once outside of the boundaries of your brick and mortar practice and your geographic location. Imagine being able to reach people. In your state in other parts of the country and even around the world.

So many people, especially during these times, what are different kinds of health issues that you can help them understand and get benefit from and have help with perhaps even doing certain things at home too. And as far as the tech stuff, just so that there really is. Too much that you need to be worried about with a tech.

You just need to have a sense of what would be a good online platform to use, to host your online course. And then I also. What to have a page that educates people about what you’re offering within the online course, and then have a way of marketing it. That’s all, there’s not much that you need beyond that.

That’s super, super complicated. Aside from also, if you wanted to have people be educated more about your online course through for example Educate your patients by email about it, or within the office about it. So we’ll talk a little bit about what is the most effective way to get the word out so that you’re not spending all this time trying to figure out well, how do I find people who would be interested in this?

So as far as you’re not sure how this works and that kind thing, and how much to price, something like this. And so I’m in courses could be what we’re to talk a little bit about what kind of stuff. Coming up here that you can consider creating a topic on that people would want to pay you for, because it’s one thing that, to have something that you think is really helpful and interesting.

It’s another for people to want to pay you for it. And so the I’ll share with you the first step. To create an online course, decide what to create your online course on that will help you with having people sign up and pay for it. And first let’s talk about how much you could charge for something like this.

So it really depends on what exactly you’re teaching an offering and how much credibility you have in terms of you being seen as a go-to practitioner as a go-to acupuncturist. And. And in this area of expertise that you’re doing an online course around, of course you could do. If you have other interests like playing the violin or tennis or other kinds of things, you could also even create online courses about something that you’re really passionate about or your hobby, or even cooking that kind of thing.

But in case back to this. The as far as the so we’re gonna talk about that in a moment. However, let’s talk briefly about pricing, where you could charge anywhere between it could be something that’s more like $15 to 40. $7 to $97, 250, or even 9 97, for example, depending on exactly what you’re offering and you could be offering the online course to people who are lay public about teaching them about a particular health topic, for example, or it could be, have you ever figured things out within your practice that.

Work really well, whether it has to do with, do you remember how, when you first came out of school and how you weren’t really sure how to even run your office smoothly you weren’t sure how to generate new patients and Or so, or there are certain things clinically you weren’t very confident about.

Do you remember those times? Now that you’ve been in practice, perhaps I, for those of you listening, who’ve been in practice for longer than that, then you figured out things, whether it’s clinically or efficiency in your office or as it has to do with marketing your. So what, if you could put that together in an online course and make it available to other acupuncturists, it doesn’t have to even be limited to other occupant trusts.

It could be other holistic practitioners. It could be conventional medical providers as well. So you have knowledge and expertise to share. Cause so those of you who might feel like I don’t really know enough. I think I need to get more training on things to be able to teach something don’t underestimate what you already know right now.

For example, if you’re a new grad and you want to offer a, an online course, think about. What is a topic that you have a passion for and an interest in you already know much more about that health topic than typically a lay public person with no. And so you can already offer an online course around that.

And then if you’ve been seasoned in practice, think about all the things that you figured out over the years that you could impart on other people and other practitioners as well. And so in your online course, Include you teaching about it. It could also include things that make things handy for people such as handouts templates or things that people can copy and paste and use or checklists or trackers, do you have patients, you have been encouraging them to eat differently and you recommend it to them.

And then a week later they come back. Two weeks later, or a month later, they come back and then they didn’t really do that thing. You suggested to them. What if there’s a way to hold them more accountable through something that is an accountability, a tool where they’re tracking it all the time.

So these kinds of things can be incorporated in your online course. Okay, so those are some ideas. Are you getting excited here because how many of you are thinking about, oh yes, there is this area that I have an interested and passionate about. Anna do know something that more than the lay public does and so that you can put it together in our online course and even charge for it.

And. And pay and make money from it. Let’s have a look at this. Let’s I’m gonna pull out my calculator here. So let’s say you, you actually offered an online course. That was $50. Let’s just say $50. And you had even 10 people in it. That’s still 500.

The dollars into your pocket that you didn’t have to see patients for that you didn’t have to.

So I think conservative with what you’re charging and the, what if you had more people in it. So let’s say you had instead of 10 people, right? Instead of 10 people, what if you had 50 people and you charged $50, that’s an extra $2,500. Could you do with an extra $2,500 a month, which works out.

An extra $30,000 in your pocket per year. That’s if you charge $50, we have clients who are charging much more than that also. If you’re charging, let’s just say if. $150, right? You charge $150 for an online course, and you’re, you’ve got 10 people in it that is an extra $1,500 a month or an extra $18,000 a year.

Or if you had, let’s say you had 50 people in paying $150 a month. That’s $7,500 a month. And that works out to be $90,000 a year. So have you been getting excited here? Like even making anywhere from an extra 500 bucks a month to an extra 90,000 a month, how many of you would like that? Now let’s talk about how do you decide what to design your online course of round?

This is a very key secret because I have met too many people who have created online courses. In fact, I had a someone call me a holistic practitioner called me and she said she was creating these videos for. And she was really struggling because why? Because she said she was creating these videos that she thought people wanted.

And then when it came to offering it nobody took her up on it. And then she was seeking help with marketing it. So the way that we actually teach our clients many times is to And I’m going to talk about how to decide what to offer it around, but the way we teach our clients many times is to even already have a concept for your online course, be talking to your patients about it or other people about it and are ready.

Awful. And get an interest, see what the interest is like and have people on a waiting list. So when you’re that way, and even have people sign up for it, we have clients who have even pre-signed up in a presale kind of a thing before they even created the online course. How many of you would love to be paid before you even go create something it’s like.

Do you imagine having more excitement about creating something when you already have someone paying you for it versus would that give you more motivation? And that way you already know it’s a concept that people are interested in. So that is something is a very hot tip that many acupuncturists overlook when having an interest in offering an online course.

So even if you feel afraid that I can’t possibly sell something that I haven’t created. Think about this. What if it truly, you feel like you can’t deliver it? Could you just give them a full refund, right? Or even if you still are really afraid of doing something like that, then you could still, again, you could still start talking about the topic of your online course to people, your patients or potential clients so that you can gauge the interest in that before you’ll create, spend time creating an online course and then offering it come to find out.

Nobody’s interested in it, but in the way that you’re talking about it, for example, there is someone who I know who created an online course around, like, how do you how do you have. Have practice how’d you put it how it’s around longevity. But the way that, that this person has shared about this online course, are there online courses on longevity that people buy all the time?

Absolutely. But the way that this person shared the online course, but he’s fighting. So if you’re able to get a gist of that early on before. Before even spending all the time, creating it and then be able to tweak how you design it or what you include in it, or how you talk about it before it gets marketed, then you’re going to be way ahead.

You’re going to, you’re going to be more likely to sign. And even have people sign up for it and pay for it before even created. Okay. So that’s a hot tip. Now, your first step to deciding what to create your online course around as far as topic wise is this. So it is to think about what is a practical issue.

That people have perhaps the health issue that they are struggling with and dealing with that, that you would like to help them shift or have a transformation around or help resolve more. What is the practical issue? That people are dealing with. Cause see one mistake that, and also what is the thousand dollar problem with that practical issue?

So what’s the definition of a thousand dollar problem. It doesn’t have to cost them a thousand dollars to, to actually get help with it. But rather that I’m saying that to give you some perspective of, okay, what’s a dollar kind of a problem. What’s a thousand dollars kind of problems. So dollar kind of a problem might be something that, that people have an issue with.

They didn’t sleep very well last night, but it’s not like that happens all the time for them. They just didn’t sleep very well last night. Whereas a thousand dollar problem is more like someone who had has sleep issues all the time has insomnia all those times. Do you see the difference between a dollar came from versus a thousand dollars a problem?

And then how can you create what you can educate people about that can help support them with their thousand dollars? And that way, you’re more likely to actually have people interested in what you’re offering in your online course. So just to give you a very specific example, would you like to have a very specific example of maybe a specific example?

Go ahead and like this, if you’re watching this right now, A specific example is this. So you could also look at how you apply it to your situation. For example, if we think about what’s the practical issue people have. Oh cause see, this is a mistake actually. We’ll talk about a step before that is oh, I want to help people with Twain.

And so I’m going to create an online course about 20, not and how to help people relax. So is this. Dollar kind of problem, or is it a thousand dollar problem in the way I’m talking about it? How many of you think this is a dollar problem type in the chat? You think this is the dollar com? How many of you think this is a thousand dollar problem type in the chat?

If you think is a thousand dollars, the way that I just talked about it, right? Probably more like a dollar problem, right? Because helping you relax. Okay. How many cars, how many of you would like to be relaxed, but how many of you would actually want to purchase something to help you relax? There’s a difference isn’t there, right?

Maybe some of you are and some of you aren’t. And so how can we move the needle more to where most of the people who have that issue will, or more of the people who have that issue will be more or interested in purchasing, learning about it through your online course. So for example, 29, to help you relax, isn’t a thousand dollar problem Twain out to help you relieve your stress, maybe more of a thousand dollar problems.

Twain out to help with stress. When you have a, when you’re constantly under pressure and deadlines in your job is more of a thousand dollar problem. Twain when it, so it’s just do you see how we’re moving the line even more to how it’s a more urgent problem? That’s how you could talk about it and how you can shape your program around it.

So another, even more thousand dollar kind of problem related to TuiNa, what could it be? For example, a very specific group of people like Twain off or baby. Who are having trouble with sleep. So if it were just 29 for babies to help them relax, that would probably be more of a $1 problem. But then the Twain outs too, to help babies be able to sleep because they haven’t been sleeping very well.

And keeping the mom awake at night and parents awake at night like days on end, that is the thousand dollar problem, or here’s another thousand dollar problem helping moms with postpartum lactation because 29 can support postpartum lactation. How can you help with the 29, if you shape your topic around that, then you will be more likely to get interests.

Why don’t you do compared to. Overall to help relax. Do you see the difference? So that is your first step in deciding what to design the course around. And then we need to look at well, what is the desired outcome? What is the desired outcome that you would really like someone to get towards? And in terms of the desired outcome is it to help them be able to sleep through the night?

Okay. That’s a desired outcome. Now what the next thing to look at is what is a quick win milestone to that desired outcome. What does a quick win outcome to that desired outcome? For example, just to give you an example of, let’s say you also support people with losing weight in your practice.

A desired outcome could be losing 10 pounds, but maybe the first quick win, isn’t just losing that 10 pounds right off the bat, or but rather it is. Clear your body of toxins and help you feel clearer headed. And that also supports your body next in being able to then lose a weight. So that’s an example of a quick win because they could feel less foggy brain.

They could feel like they’re their body is more energetic, feel that quick win because they might be able to feel that quick win in a shorter timeframe. Whereas maybe it might take a bit longer to lose that. So that’s an example of what would be the first milestone of a win that you could design your online course around so that people don’t feel like, oh my gosh, I’m doing this online course for six months and nothing’s staged.

So then Create something that is a short milestone, gives them a quick win. They get excited about it, and then you could also create other online courses beyond that, to support them. And perhaps even at higher price points too. So that’s a hot tip. So finally, let’s talk about what is I just shared with you how to the biggest myth about.

Creating an online course. We just talked about how to decide what to design your online course around. And then let’s talk about what is the tried and true most effective approach to get people signed up for your online course, because it isn’t fun to create something and then be all excited about it, but then no one ends up fighting for it.

Have you ever experienced that before? It can feel discouraging or if you haven’t experienced it before it kudos to you that you have landed, you have, then had Providence. In listening to this right now, because you can get help with this and fast track things and actually be doing this the right way so that you end up getting, paying clients for your online course sooner rather than later.

So as far as the different things that you might’ve heard about how to get the word out about an online course is that. What number one is, oh, you got to post on social media about it and about your stuff. So people know about it because otherwise, how do people know about it? But then you feel like, oh, I don’t have the time to do.

And it sounds like it’s a lot of work. It I’m supposed to post there every day like that. I just don’t have time for that. Let alone, in my practice, I already have a lot to handle whether it’s the paperwork, the billing, the admin stuff, or maybe even if you’re not doing that anymore, you can have patients to see, and I am already a full plate, so then you don’t have to always be posting on social media. We’ll talk about what is an effective strategy that is not social media, and that could actually help you get those paying clients quickly. Another myth that I often hear is that, oh, you have to make sure to focus a lot of your energy on building your list, getting more people.

To to certainly, yes, you do want more people to understand about what you do, but you don’t have to take forever to wait until you build this list and a bigger list and a bigger list because it takes time. It takes time to do that. And so there’s actually a shorter path to that. I could get people interested in signing up versus sitting around feeling like you got to do all kinds of things to try to build your list.

Also another myth that often here is that you have to build like the tech stuff is the people you might hear things about, oh, we got to build this kind of funnel thing. And he starts to feel like, oh my gosh, this is, it sounds like it’s so complicated to build these complicated funnels and that kind of thing.

For those of you who have heard anything about online courses before, right? You might’ve heard something, things like that. And the truth is you don’t. We have clients who don’t have complicated funnels and they have people who are buying their online course already right now. So there are two ways to build a summit, to get people sign up for your online course that are very effective.

The first way is a way that involves your existing patients and connections. And the second way is beyond that, right? You’re going to have a certain capacity of how many patients you currently have and their interest in this when your connections, and then you’re going to be tapped out. And you’re going to wonder how are we can get the word out beyond that?

So let’s talk a little bit first about the first way with the existing patients. So as far as existing patients have you ever thought about this? You have an advantage over other people who have online businesses, right? You actually have an advantage. Why? Because you have a brick, many of you, I know some of you have virtual practices, but many of you have a brick and mortar practice or have had a brick and mortar practice at some point.

And the kind of relationship and connection that you develop with your patients is so much richer and deeper that typically than anyone could build typically in just an online, a relationship. So you have an advantage over other people who just strictly have online businesses and have to start it from scratch, for example.

You can share your online course with your patients and have them do the online course. For example, we have a client of ours who helps people with like kids who have ADHD. And so she created an online course that she offers to the patient’s parents to do and like to purchase. And then do that online course as a part of her.

She’s an acupuncturist. As a part of the journey to their child’s transformation from ADHD, in addition to seeing their child for acupuncture treatments. So then you could easily offer it to your patient base and your connections. That is one thing, but then at a certain. Oh, and also what I was going to say is then you just need to have a system and an approach to how do you market it to your patients?

What is the best way to do that? How do you talk about it so that they will actually understand and take you up on it so that you start bringing in another stream of income from it? So these are the things that we help our clients with because they’re the fine tune tweaks that actually make it work versus not.

So now let’s talk about the As far as what is a way to get the word out beyond just seeing people, what is a way to get the Beyonce thing he’ll be, but beyond just sharing it with your patients, I, by the way, for those of you who have an interest in this and getting an online course already.

So we’re talk about this in terms of how to get the word out, but if you already have an interest in creating an online course and want to get, explore, getting help with it, you could always go to introverted visionary. Dot com introverted, visionary.com and then click on the button there. It says free strategy session and just click on it to book a free chat with us and happy to see how we can help you with getting your online course off the ground and start making another stream of income or even attracting new patients into your practice.

Using an approach. I’m going to be sharing with you now. As far as, how do you get the word out beyond the walls of your brick and mortar practice or people you’ve, in your who were already in your circle right now? What is the most effective way aside from having to post on social media all the time aside for feeling like you, you need to be building up your lists all the time and that’s gonna take a while and say, you don’t feel like you have the energy or the time to do it, and then think just we’ll do it.

So from those kinds of things, what is most effective? Is to teach and educate people about the topic about your course and why it would be helpful to them and how to do that. You could do that through something like a webinar. Oh, or you could do it even by educating people in person at these times.

Also, there are like, we have people who are doing it in person in front of small audiences even right now. And so those are a couple of avenues of getting people interested in your online course. And the. The CU, the reason why this is so effective is because one of the reasons why, because think about all the different things that are out there and at you C or a different online courses that you might have come across, for example, some of you are wondering what platform to use to, to offer your online course.

Just, I’ll just give you one platform to look at, right? Teach them. Teachable. If you go for that teachable, it’s a platform where you can host your online course, look at all the different courses out there. Do you think everybody buys every single course there? No, not really. But why?

Why is, why does everybody buy every single course on. Because they just, because it’s there they might not understand why they, it would be helpful for them and how it will really help. So that is the main thing standing between someone interested in your online course versus not. And so if you are able to educate them about the topic of your online course, In something like a free webinar or a video and they understand how it can help them, then they will be more likely to sign up, pay you for your online course.

So for the formula, the system of what our clients are doing to fill up their online courses, And with the most ease and without having to always be marketing all the time this formula, the system can also help you with. Attracting patients into your practice as well, because for those of you who are busy, you might still feel like, okay, but I still want to have a consistent flow of patients.

And maybe some of you would like a consistent flow of patients for an associate to hire down the road. Or maybe right now, they’re just not busy for as, and so you do want a more consistent flow of patients with. Formula the system will also help you with that. So I’m going to give you the free training to that to get started with.

So you can go to www dot, get booked speaking.com forward slash virtual. Again, www.getbookedspeaking.com Forrest. Virtual also pop it in the link below here. In the comment section below. So that you can actually just click on it easily here and and get access to it. And then as far as the I’m like, there’s some things, something that I was going to mention as well, is that late?

Let me reflect on this. Okay. So in any case, That is the next step that you could take. If you have an interest in offering an online course and reach four people at once, help more people. And imagine this where you are eating, sleeping, you’re on vacation, hanging out with family and imagine being able to open up your inbox and look at it.

And, oh cool. I made an extra 150 bucks. Oh, cool. A few more sales came in. Awesome. I just made a thousand dollars this month, extra thousand dollars this month from a passive income source. And by the way, as far as when I was talking about educating and teaching and speaking to educate people about your like through a free webinar or something that educates people about the online course to get them interested in it.

And the one thing that’s awesome about it too, is you could even automate that once you it’s working for you, you can get your webinar automated. So that means that you don’t even have to always be educating people about this. That’s when it becomes on autopilot, that’s when it brings in another stream of income passively.

And then for those of you who feel like Okay. I hear the word speaking. Like it cuts third. I don’t, I get nervous when I speak. I don’t want to be on camera. And so I’ll confess. I I never thought I’d ever speak in front of people. I So it was a traumatic experience when I was little, because on Sunday mornings my dad, when the paper newspaper would come, we I would be jealous of other kids. I would sit there and think, gosh, I wish I were like other our family was more like other kids. So I came from a family of very strict parents. First-generation immigrants from Taiwan. And on Sunday mornings when the paper came, instead of being able to look at the comics section of it, my dad went, this was around when I was eight.

Henry do current event talks every Sunday. Can you imagine the dread that would come from being forced to do current event talk every Sunday and I hated it. And the reason I hated it, because I didn’t really care about reading about current events and the news back then, I still actually don’t on some level, with the immediate news new stuff that’s out there. But I also got criticized quite a bit by my dad and I’d be left in tears. Complete tears. I felt really inadequate and it was a complete traumatic experience for me. This has happened every single Sunday where I would just be in tears because my dad was very, he spoke in a very different style than I did.

And in the sense that he was very just research scientist engineer and he was very critical and analytical. So that’s how he critiqued me to be able to speak. And so I vowed to myself. I will never speak in front of public. When I grew up grow up, like that’s something I’ll never do, but what got me to end up speaking and even being on video today with you, right?

Is because. I love teaching. So when I was little, my idea of fun was getting these kids around the neighborhood, think of a worksheets. Like there I go to my third grade teacher, get worksheets for them, for my friends and other people in the neighborhood. And then I would give it out to them, give them homework every week.

That was my idea of fun as a kid. So I love to teach. And so that was the only reason why I later on decided, okay, I can learn that it’s this. But I was terrible at it because I had so much performance anxiety with it just naturally came to me. I would feel so nervous. My heart would pound so fast and then I would feel so hot and red.

And I felt like I went up to hide under a rug because the way that I spoke was to the point where it didn’t make any sense. Sometimes I would listen to myself and I realized that I truly didn’t make. Since at all, when I saw it was that bad. So the reason I bring this up is that if I can go from being that terrible at it to too, and now when I look back at some of the videos, when I first did them too, I feel so livid.

I feel a little embarrassed, but at the same time, it’s, it was progress. And then also with with being on video, you actually don’t have to be on video in terms of educating people through a webinar about what. Offer. So you can just get that and worry about not worrying about it. And then you can always get a bit more comfortable later if you want to too.

Cause video does help build connection, but it’s optional. I hope that inspires you in the sense that if I could do it going from that place of being completely terrible at it, nervous with it, not good at it to now speaking on and being invited to speak on national stages. If I could do it, then you could totally do it too.

And you don’t even have to be very polished for people to be interested in what you have to offer. In fact, it could be very endearing when you’re not perfect. So sometimes not being sometimes being nervous is great in the sense that people will cheer you on. And so as long as you’re willing to be open to share, people will secretly be cheering you on.

They’ll see that you’re nervous and they’ll actually cheer you on and you just keep talking about what it, what will help people. And so then you just need to have a way of getting the word out what where w how do you get your webinar? Right without having to spend money on it or or have to be constantly trying to figure out how to figure this thing out.

So that’s what I’m going to show you in the system that you can learn from in the free training coming up, and you can go there and click on the link below. Get booked speaking.com for slash. And then sign up for the free training. Or if you already know you want help with this to shortcut things so we can help you grow your practice faster in a way that brings in another stream of income beyond just seeing where patients one-on-one, you can go to introverted visionary.com.

So next week, check out Michelle Gellis, and she will be on your host for next week’s show. And till next time.

Health Models As We Navigate Uncertainty

So this is, this talk is actually about health models and really like a new paradigm in which we are finding ourselves as acupuncturists, Chinese medicine, practitioners, and brick and mortar businesses.

Click here to download the transcript.

Hello and welcome. I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for actually producing these informative Facebook lives and YouTube lives. My name is Tsao-Lin Moy. I am the founder of Integrative Healing Arts Acupuncture in New York. And I’m very excited to be with you today when we’re going to talk about new health models.

And let’s go to this.

Okay, so where we are. So this is, this talk is actually about health models and really like a new paradigm in which we are finding ourselves as acupuncturists, Chinese medicine, practitioners, and brick and mortar businesses. So I’m also a brick and mortar business. I have an office in a union square in New York city where.

Patients in person. And so what we’re really going to be looking at is are the hell are the health models that can actually support you and your patients and your practice as we’re navigating. What is uncertainty? This is about resilience for your acupuncture and Chinese medicine practice. As we enter what I’m calling , which is year three of the pandemic.

And that’s. 2022 for you future listeners in the archives. And all right, so we’ll go to the next slide. So where are. Versus where are we heading? So traditional brick and mortar businesses and services have been suffering especially if you have an in-person service. And this is something that I want to point out was already true before.

COVID hap especially true right now for acupuncture, massage therapy, businesses like hair salons and other touch based services. And so the. But I want to just say, is there really, isn’t a substitute for a touch in person service. And as much as, a lot of the telemedicine that has been going on and virtual this and virtuals that realistically.

Human touch is extremely important. Of course, research shows that makes a difference, right? Babies that don’t get touched and have having psychological problems and developmental problems. And this is not just limited to children. It’s also, it shows up later on. So some in person services, I’m going to point out, we’re able to pivot because they were able to offer virtual substitutes or a.

So this is something like yoga, right? And in fact, I looked it up, there was a an uptick in yoga from the pretense pandemic, in terms of going virtual now, yoga has been a trend which is really good for us. The similar what we call an avatar or a person who. Actually does yoga is also going to be someone who’s going to be interested in acupuncture, Chinese medicine, other natural ways of healing.

And my screen just went down. Okay. So what we’re looking at is 10% of people were doing, let’s say online and then I’ll online before the pandemic, having like virtual classes and then during the pandemic, 90% of students were taking on online courses and what’s estimated as post as we get out of this pandemic, 65% will still be online in addition to in-person and that’s anticipated.

And this is. What’s happened is this what we’ve been forced to do something in a virtual space? We’re really not going to be going back to the way it was. So people are still going to seek services. And what it is really about having choices and something that’s delivering. Deliverable, and I know this might be blowing your mom.

Like how can you make a, something like acupuncture, massage or what it is that we do? Virtual I personally, have resistance around it which is why I’m actually talking about it. Excellent. Okay. So really what we’re doing, we’re living in what they consider uncertain times.

We’re at, you hear this we’re living in unprecedented times. But that’s not really true. Uncertainty is defined as doubt, right? So we’re very doubtful about the future. We’re uncertain about the future. And this uncertainty is because we may be operating from a paradigm that doesn’t accurately reflect what we need to focus on.

And therefore it’s no longer serving us. It’s not really useful. And so if you’re finding yourself. Stock or I can’t do anything about it. Then this is going to be like an area we really need to look at a lot of people. What am I going to do with my business? There’s a, another surge happening. And can we continue to every time there’s a surge where, like interruption closed, et cetera, et cetera.

Okay. So we’ll really need to look at, this is an opportunity, right? It is shifting a paradigm. In the way we practice. And I know there’s that word, mindset all over the place, mind shift, mindset shift, and really what this is understanding a different paradigm, right? We are in a different reality than what we want to be.

So if your language is about going back to the way it was like, oh, I can’t wait to go back to the way it was pre pandemic. Then we’re really thinking in terms of the 2019, but we’re living in a 20, 22 reality. And I hate to point this out. Some of the previous generations always are talking about, I remember when milk was 35 cents a gallon, or I remember the time and.

We can’t romanticize the past in that way, it’s really a matter of okay. That’s, we need to look at where we are and in terms of change our thinking, and this is a really big thing. And the beauty is if you practice acupuncture, Chinese medicine, it is a different paradigm.

And. Awesome go with the next slide. So we need this mindset shift. So we’ve got to stop using what’s considered a transactional model. So when instead we should be using, what’s known as a transformational. And so the, health paradigms, what we call the Western medicine paradigm is transactional.

It’s based on a broken and fixed model and it’s very cookie cutter. I go, I’m sick. I go, you give me medicine. I get better. I also want to point out because I noticed this is really like creeping in, or it has been creeping in to acupuncture, Chinese medicine practices, especially the more.

That insurance is being taken. The more we speak in terms of Western medicine terms, of, how many times does it take to for an ankle to be, to treat an ankle. And then we’re trying to, some not me or trying to work within oh, insurance only allows X amount of treatments and therefore.

How we practice begins to surround what is based on someone else defining that for us. And what I want to point out is, there’s a lot, that’s an evidence-based, there is a no. Point of language. And I may be going off a little bit before I come back in with this. And that really, when we look at evidence-based it really means a minimum care of standards.

It’s not the same as patient centered, so we can always use it. Yes. Research has shown that this is effective, but research doesn’t determine exactly what’s going to be the right plan for your patients. It’s always nice to get recognition that they did some study, but most of those studies are really very poorly designed and they do not reflect Chinese medicine, that holistic model. They’re looking at this lamination of a very narrow focus based on very narrow parameters that there they are measuring. And oftentimes the results are well, not significant difference. Great. So people are treated according and in that model, people are treated according to a minimum standard.

And when that happens, they get minimum results. It’s all the things that we complain about the education system. Oh, not enough of the standard. So we have to look at, there’s a big system-wide attitude. There’s a whole paradigm in which we’re educated. There’s a paradigm that also.

Trickles down to medicine. And so what we have to look at is really take a look at how you’re treating your patients. Are you doing the minimum daily? Is it like, are you saying, oh, three sessions or before you really can determine that? And are you actually addressing all aspects of, of their health and their life, remember this is holistic medicine. Excellent. Okay. So Chinese medicine is holistic and personalized, right? So this is the challenge is going to be, how do we bridge this high level of care without diluting it? So there’s this big gap right now, right? And this gap needs to be filled or rather bridge.

And I’ll reiterate, there is no substitute for the human contact, but there are ways to create order considered touch points with your patient. And so this is the difference that we’re going to make.

So using the paradigm that is Chinese medicine to bridge or create those touch points. So people right now are more aware of their health issues than ever before. Social media is our friend. And it’s also our, I will say is, very deleterious but people have been trained to go virtual for most of the activities and services as possible.

So virtual space has become a main form of communication. Just like this broadcast that we’re on right now. If you had to sign up. Clear your schedule traveled to a place, listen to a lecture, that would have been very limiting. But, and also people are searching for virtual or hybrid ways to stay healthy or solve a health problem.

They’re also looking for what we considered done for you formats to follow. And this is good news because this is something that you can help them with.

So what our touch points are ways to connect with your patients and show them that you care about them.

Excuse me. They come in the form of newsletters, text messages, calls, videos, offerings, articles, or they cards, right? Recommendations. I put an asterix there and programs.

So creating something like a wellness program is going to offer solutions to better serve your patients. So this is one of the health models. It’s also a way for you to leverage your time and serve more people. And so what I’m going to ask right now is any of this resonating with you in terms of where you getting some ideas about what you might be able to do and how you can serve your patients.

If you’ve been practicing for some time, you have a way that you work with your patients and your way of doing things right. And that’s what we would call your style. And one of the things that I just want to make a shout out to all the tri-state. And even though tri-state college is no longer operating.

One of the things that we learned in terms of how we’re going to treat was creating your own style. We had to question that, what is your style? What kind of style do you practice? And, that means incorporating many different things in how you treat. And so this was a really important topic, as you started to integrate all of your learning into how do you treat your patients, right?

This is also what makes you a unique healer. And so the question is why do you treat, what are you great. So you, maybe you’re a great at being a pain specialist back pain or sleep, weight loss, helping people with sugar fitness, right? Sports anti-aging, fertility menopause, what you become an expert in is oftentimes who’s coming to you.

You have great success with right then that becomes, what’s known as your knee. And really the question is like, how do you treat it? What kind of recommendations do you make? So this is something that if you haven’t thought about it, that you already are treating in a particular way and that you can actually put two together in, let’s say a package, so that is in, that will be referencing done for you format. It’s still, it’s not cookie cutter. It’s your style, your way of treating, but put into a form in which you’re able to, help many people and you utilize, what’s known as the virtual space.

So acupuncture and Chinese medicine is considered alternative or complimentary to Western medicine. But in reality, it’s completely different paradigm. So when I referenced, evidence-based and really what kind of research is done? Those studies are always looking at having something like Chinese medicine or east Asian medicine to fill in some gaps where, you know, but staying in that same model.

But if we really, we look at the fact is that we’re not like a, like an assistant that we are a complete paradigm and a complete way of looking at health. Health model, then we can separate ourselves from, being let’s say subservient right in that hate to use it.

But this idea is that, the we’re just like a little helper. But we look at, mainstream. Mainstream medicine that standard really does not serve. And so I want to just bring this back to you that you went to acupuncture school, you studied all of this shift in the way we think about health and not to lose sight of this.

So people come to acupuncture and Chinese medicine because the standard health model doesn’t get them results. So we don’t want to just put them back into the standard health model. We need to like really take a look at this. And right now, where we are, people are stuck at home.

People are more aware of health issues than ever before. We are aware of the many gaps in. System, it’s a whole system. And we have to really take a, zoom out and take a look at this. Where do we fit in? We may not fit in. We maybe have to look at, that and accept that we’re not, involved in the same system.

We are aware that most people are uninformed about their health, and very vulnerable to misinformation. People are searching on Instagram tech, talking YouTube, and they’re finding a lot of misinformation. So I don’t even want to get started on this topic because I am just, all the Tik TOK videos, Wausau, cupping, you name it.

It’s it being used out of context. So you are a licensed professional, right? So you have the. Credibility. We have a profession, we have professional organizations, we have licensing. And also with your current patients, you have a relationship, right? So this is also really important. They know you for the most part, patients don’t really know their primary care physician.

In fact, there are all of these like walk in places which are cropping up all over the place. And it’s great for actually. But not for personalized care.

So here’s where we are. I love this this is actually, the character is really for a wit risk way G right? So we’re at this point right now where we can either move forward, right? There’s a danger of loss, but also an opportunity of success. Now, this Character has been used. A lot to look at like being used for like disaster or that moment of oh, danger opportunity.

It’s being used as oh, where there’s this disaster happening or. Where we are right now in a pandemic it’s danger and opportunity. But the reality is we’re looking at this moment where we have a choice, right? And the risk is if you don’t shift and make adjustments to the way that you practice, you have, you can lose something.

And the beauty is this Character used as risk, which is also, which is really more accurate. It has both the aspect of the unit in the arm, right? The two kind of oppose it there they’re connected together. So the way we practice has to shift and we know it’s not going to go back, even though we want, we would love for things to be back to 2019, but it’s not going to go back directly.

Homework for you. So here’s where you get to look at what’s happening this coming year. Take a look at your practice to look at the things that you say, day in and day out. Like one of the ways that you can create touch points. went over quickly. A list is you can do short videos.

There are things like. Where you after you have a session with someone, you can just say, Hey checking up on you. Or if you’ve given them instructions to drink more water, to get more sleep this is an area also where you can create a touch point for them, right? With follow up emails send them articles.

Do you, Facebook lives have small groups. You can even do like a book club, right? So you Cate, the, you have that contact with your patients. I also suggest that you create something like a dispense. And where you can actually, help people. If you personally like a supplement, you can share that you like this supplement, that this is what you do so long as within your scope, right?

How you treat, you can do that and you can send them emails and recommendations, and this is a way to be much more personal than. Most practices don’t do that. Some of you may already be doing that. Reinforcing those of you that actually do make those connections.

Your patients love you. They come to you right. For your unique style and how you treat them, that relationship. And this isn’t really a matter of what we do. That makes a difference. It’s that personalized care. So your homework is to do an assessment of your practice. Look at the things that you say day in and day out.

What are your, what are your aligns, your tagline? And use them as a subject line in an email or use it as a post on social media tag people make those connections, they’re going to need to hear from you. And also that is a way for you to, create health programs and things for them.

And I know I touched very briefly about health programs as well. It’s a whole a whole thing, but I wanted to just put that little buzz in your ear to think about it because realistically practices are going to need to do some form of a hybrid. Great. And this is good, right?

The, we can actually utilize the technology and also help people. So I want to thank everyone and just to remind you that next week we’re going to have Chen Yen is going to be on the broadcast. And thank you for that.

7 Techniques To Tonify Your Practice In Slow Times

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi folks, Jeffrey Grossman here again, to bring you a, another live broadcast from the AAC. Thank you for this opportunity yet again, to share some practice and marketing insights with you. For those of you that don’t know me. My name is Jeffrey Grossman and I’m the founder and owner of Acupuncture MediaWorks, Accu downloads, and Accu perfect websites.

And we’ve been helping acupuncturist grow their practice, attract more patients and keep patients in care. 2002. So we’ve been in the business of helping practitioners build their business for quite a while now. I am here to share with you some ideas on how you can grow your practice, how you can stay on top of mind awareness with your patients and how you can also become more successful at what it is that you do.

In the business and marketing end of building your practice. Because when we were in acupuncture school, we weren’t really given all the tools that we need to build a successful and sustainable business. We didn’t know what to say and when to say certain things and how to give a report of findings.

And how to use social media and why social media is important and you know how to get people back in care when they fall out of care. We’ve developed a lot of programs for that. And also through the AAC, we’ve been talking about different various types. Throughout the year on the different avenues at which how you can do all those things, which are attract, retain, and reactivate your patients.

People out there are looking for you. They want your help. They need your help, but they probably don’t even know that you exist. They are looking to feel healthy. They’re looking to feel balanced. They’re looking to feel less stressed. They’re looking to feel that their immune system is robust and strong and you might.

Have the skill and the technology to make that all happen for them, but they might not know you’re there. They might know that there might be an acupuncturist in town, but they know nothing about you. There’s nothing essentially that has built. No and trust factor, right? There’s a journey that you need to walk your patients down and through.

Every single time they come on board and that’s called the patient’s journey. And we’re not going to dive deep into that today. But the beginning part of that is getting people to know you, right? Getting them to really understand who you are and what it is that you do. And that you’re actually there for them.

Get them to like you get them to understand. At how you can actually help them with their particular problems and then get them to trust you, which then gets them into your clinic and onto your treatment tables. And then from there, it’s keeping them in care, keeping yourself in top of mind, awareness with them and having them follow through with their treatment plans.

So I want to help you change that. I want to help. People understand that you do exist and I want to help you get more people on their table. And that’s what these talks are all about. To help you be seen to help you be heard and to ultimately help you bring people into your practice. So you could make more money and help more people.

And if at the end of today’s talk, or anytime you see this talk, you are looking for more help or you need some guidance or you just need to. Bit of inspiration. Please feel free to reach out to me. You can reach out to me by putting a comment below the video, or you can reach me at Jeffrey, J E F R E Y at acupunctureMediaworks.com.

Okay. So today I want to talk about seven techniques. To quantify your practice in slow times, I’m going to talk about some in-house marketing ideas. I’m going to talk about some events that you can create in your practice that have transformed my practice. When I, when it was going downhill, totally turned it around for me.

And also how to tap into getting more word of mouth referrals. Before I go on, I want to ask you this simple question. It’s rhetorical, because I’m not able to answer your questions at the moment, but what business are you actually. Okay. So some of you might be like I’m in the business of helping people get I’m an acupuncturist.

I put needles in people. I help them alleviate these problems and so on. But plain and simple, you are in the business of marketing acupuncture care. And you must actively find and attract the right people. And have your marketing consistently turning and moving and having multiple marketing poles in the water.

So you could bring those people in your practice because you could be the greatest acupuncturist in the world. You have the most amazing needling technique in the world, but if you don’t have patients coming in on a regular basis, then. How are you going to be able to use your techniques and your protocols?

So the important thing to really understand is that you are in the business of letting people know that acupuncture is awesome. And the business of marketing your practice, right? You are not only an amazing healer, but you’re also an entrepreneur and a business person. Okay. You’ve got to wear all those hats in order to make this happen.

Marketing takes time, and that’s another important I want to get across to you. Even though you do an event or you put an ad out or you do social media marketing that it’s not going to reap the benefits immediately. Okay. That you’ve got up plant the seeds and you’ve gotta be in it for the long haul.

Okay. So if you do host a class or if you do an online training, just be aware that if there isn’t. Conversion that happens immediately or within a day or two, that it doesn’t mean that what you did was wrong or what you did was bad or what you didn’t work. It’s just that you’ve got to plant the seeds over time.

And the more that you are planting seeds, the more that you are cultivating awareness about you, your practice and how you can help you. Okay. And as an acupuncturist, so you, you owe it to your patients to be a great marketer, right? Because if you can’t keep your practice open, your patients are going to be forced to seek help elsewhere, and probably even go to a non acupuncturist.

So maybe try someone who does dry needling or some other technique that might not be acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine overall. So in that respect, If you are an acupuncturist, which I assume you are, if you’re watching this, you owe it to your patients to be a great marketer, so you can stay in business so that you can be there for your patients when they need you.

Okay. So a couple of things I just want to get across before we jump into the seven techniques to tone your practice in slow time, the first. They don’t want to talk with you about is to one of, one of the great tools that I’ve used in my practice is to put on a patient appreciation day. So for those of you that aren’t sure what a patient appreciation day, it’s an event that you can hold at your clinic.

Two or three months, and it’s an opportunity to connect with your patients, an opportunity to celebrate you and your practice and your patients, the way to give things. And it’s a time to have fun and to step out from behind the treatment table. So you can be present with your patients and meet their family and remove yourself from the.

Doctor acupuncturist position to, Hey, I’m just an average person. Okay. And I’ve got a life, I’ve got a family. Here’s my daughter is my wife. Here’s our dog. And so on. So people can really relate to you. So you’ve gotta be relatable in that way. And patient appreciation days are one way to make that happen.

And it’s basically your hosts. A party at your clinic and you can connect up with other local restaurants and other businesses to support you during these events. One thing that I would consider doing in the year coming in as part of your marketing calendar is. Set up at least one or two patient appreciation days throughout the year.

So you can celebrate you your practice and your patients. And the next thing that I want to talk with you about the tech, the second technique is hosting an acupuncture happy hour event. Okay. And this is by far the number one thing that allowed me to. Transform the influx of patient of new patients coming in.

So I was able to bring in, I think, 17 new patients from one event alone by hosting an acupuncture happy hour event. So what is an acupuncture happy hour vet? It’s basically a patient attraction system that allows you to qualify new prospects. And get them into your clinic, literally to try acupuncture, right?

And you’re doing two points 0.0 of the ear and Shen men of the year, which as an acupuncturist, do you know that if you do those points for most patients, they are going through. Field transformed. And for those of you that are of my age range, remember Calgon take me away. That basically is somebody in a bath tub who is completely relaxed and on cloud nine.

So for those of you acupuncture when you host a happy hour event, the goal of that is to help reduce. And anxiety and who doesn’t need that these days. And one of the beautiful things about hosting a happy hour event is it overcomes some of the main objections that occur with it, with acupuncture, which do the needles hurt technically not because you’re just doing two points in the ear, super thin tiny needles, pretty painless.

When you do those points. Does it work, or acupuncture doesn’t work, that’s a big objection. And if people will leave there and they’re shifted and they’re relaxed and their anxiety has been reduced, it works. So to alleviate that placebo effect and what you know, and whether or not it’s going to help them.

And that’s a conversation that you will have with them afterwards. Okay. So the happy hour event, it’s nondiagnostic, you’re not making any diagnosis. It’s, you’re just actually just doing 0.0 shed. Man. What I do is I set aside times on Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons where it’s like a walk-in clinic like community acupuncture style and people come in and they sit down, they fill out a form and that form is specific to.

Clinic information and their name, their phone number, their contact information. And it also asks you a couple of series of important questions. And these important are these questions of this form are important, which are, have you received occupants yes or no. Good for you to know whether or not they received it.

So you can ask them what, what their experience was, check off any of the following symptoms and signs that you had in the past year. Back pain, allergies, knee pain, stress, neck pain, fatigue. And how these problems have affected their lives, right? It affects their home life, their work life, their activities, their family, their sleep, et cetera, because this form that they fill out before they get into the treatment chair.

We’ll help you Tran transition from the that the acupuncture happy hour event to to, to a conversion process, which gets them to a first time paying patient coming in for a comprehensive evaluation. So this form that they fill out after. Receive their stress reduction treatment. You’ll sit down with them and you’ll be like, so Jeffrey, I noticed here that you checked off that you have allergies and you’ve got cold hands and feet and you’ve got headaches.

What are you doing to treat those? So you hear what they’re doing or what they’re not doing for that. And then you just communicate to them that. A special or you’ve got a comprehensive evaluation or whatever your offer is to get them from that low cost or free happy hour event into the first time paying patient.

If you’re interested in this form, I have no problem giving it to you guys. Sending you a PDF of it. It’s been great. You could send me an email at Jeffrey, J E F R E Y at acupuncture. Media works.com and say, give me the form and I’ll give you a league to access is not a problem. And this is the one thing I’ll also include a couple of links to some other videos that I’ve done about this particular topic.

Acupuncture happy hour technique is the second way to help tone of fire practice. The other thing is to get social. Okay. Number three is to get social. So you should be getting social on Facebook and Twitter and potentially Instagram, and really make those part of your everyday life. I know some of you are cringing and moaning and groaning right now about the idea of using social media in your practice.

In today’s day and age is something that we really need not necessarily to bring in new patients, but to build relationships with your audience, to make people feel more comfortable before they actually come and visit you. And it also allows you to showcase your authority in who you are. And it starts building that.

And trust factor, which is super important for you to to really bridge that gap from, people who just kicking tires and don’t even know you. And they’re just trying to try you out to people who really want to try your care and who really know what you have to offer them. And the fifth thing, the fourth thing that is really important to do the fourth technique to 25 year practice in slow times is to make sure that you stay in Toma.

Okay. And Toma is top of mind awareness. Okay. And it’s important because you’ve got to, once you spend the time and the energy to get a patient on board. Okay. So you’ve got to. Keep yourself in top of mind awareness with research or new updates about how you treat a particular condition or reports or things that you find that you want to share with your patients so that you would be less likely to fall.

Off of their vision, their peripheral. So that you, that they’ll be less likely to fall out of care. So the goal is to get a patient in and then treat them for a few times, but then don’t lose that. Don’t let them just drift away and become part of your patient inactive file because.

I’m sure many of you have more inactive patients and active patients, but one of the ways to stem that slow drip of inactive patients is to make sure you’re staying in top of mind awareness. You do this with newsletters, you do this research, you do this with industry news. Social media with just picking up the phone and connecting with your patients.

So there are many ways for you to stay in Toma with your patients. And it’s one of those important things to be doing every week so that you don’t have to go back out there and be like Sisyphus, where you’re pushing up the new patient, rock up the hill, you get some new patients and then they fall out of care and it falls down the hill and you push the new patient, rock up the hill and it falls out of Karen sell up.

You don’t want to keep repeating that. The definition of insanity. Okay. The fifth way technique to tonify your practice. And so times is to create a new patient referral program. Okay. So one of the things I encourage my my coaching clients to do is to actually have a. Have an in-house patient referral event.

And they’re like, what, like an event around that’s going to make me sound desperate, but it’s not true in my experience when I’ve hosted patient referral events in the clinic, patients were excited. We literally had a giant. Whiteboard with a thermometer drawn on there and the thermometer wasn’t, we’re like our goal is to get 30 new patients this week is we write it on top.

We have a thermometer drawn and then we have like hash marks for every new patient line that goes up to 30. And then every time a new patient comes. Color it in, we fill it in, we call her in it and and and everyone in the clinic gets excited. Even the patients cause they see the thermometer turning redder and redder in the sense more patients are coming in.

So the first thing to do when you do that is to really think about who your. Patient is right. Who is your ideal patient? And you probably can think of a few patients right now who are on your books or in your clinic, or maybe even on your treatment tables at this moment that are your ideal patient.

Okay. You want to communicate with them first? Do you want to tell, say something like, Hey Jeffrey, you wanna let you know that we are. We are opening up for new patients right now, and we are starting a we’re hosting a month long referral event. Our goal is to get 30 new patients this month.

And we’d like to know if you are able to help us. And they most likely be like, sure. Yeah, no problem. Do you need me to do? And then you would give them a gift certificate or a call to action card or something that would, that they would then hand out to their. Or family members or coworkers to come in to see you for whatever your whatever your call to action is to get them in happy hour event or low cost evaluation.

So on. So that’s important to make sure you recognize those who are most likely to refer to you. Okay. And the sixth thing to be doing in the clinic is the host of healthcare class. Okay. So hosting healthcare classes, these days could be done through zoom. And I know you could host classes on so many different types of topics you can tell.

Seasonal changes, right? How to stay healthy in the winter, how to support your kidneys, how to use these particular points for helping move key or help alleviate headaches and help alleviate pain. You could talk about Qigong or Tai Chi or breathing techniques or Oregon sounds or. Mantras or moodra or point location is right.

So there’s no lack of things that you could teach on and host a health care class. That can be done through zoom that could be done through. In-house live, but that positions you as an authority that keeps you in top of mind awareness that gives you the opportunity to share this messaging on social media, to get people, to talk about you, to bring in new people, to get more referrals to come in for this particular event or to share it through.

Okay. And the final thing is to make sure that you have a an a patient reactivation program, because inevitably patients are going to fall out of care. Inevitable that people will fall out of care for a number of reasons. They’ll just forget about you they’ll they’ll think that they’re better and that they don’t need your help anymore.

Maybe their hours changed, it, lot of times in my experience, I’ve assumed that they fallen out of care because it was my fault, oh, I did something wrong or I’m not getting the results, but it, after asking a lot of patients over the years Determined that it really wasn’t me.

It was just some circumstances. And there’s their lives that got them to have to, change their timing that I fell out of care because I wasn’t staying in top of mind awareness with them. So a patient reactivation program is very simple. Identify what your call to action is, what you’re going to use to get people into the clinic.

When you reach out to them and divide your clients into three categories, a, B, and C, the patients are the ones that you love. 100% right now, the patients that you can think of that you love love. And then the C patients are the ones that you’re like when you see them in your schedule, you’re like, oh man, okay, I can do this.

I can make this happen today. In the B patients are a common one between. Start with the eight patients who have fallen out of care and reach out to them with a phone call and then reach out to them with an email and then reach out to them with a letter and the phone call the email and the letter can be the same conversation in different formats sent out to them.

And basically, just follow up with. Simply, just checking in with them. And again, for those of you that are interested, I’ve got some patient reactivation letters that I’ve made available for you. If you want the survey and the the for acupuncture happy hour and the patient reactivation strips and.

Feel free to reach out to me. Jeffrey, J E F R E y@acupuncturemediaworks.com. I’ll be more than happy to send those over to you, but in any case, thank you so much for joining us here today. You guys are beautiful. You’re awesome. Have happy, safe, and healthy holidays. Next. We’re going to Tsao-Lin Moy, going to be here, sharing some insights and some wisdom as she always does.

So again, thank you AAC for inviting me back here. You guys changing the world. One person, one needle at a time. You are awesome. Stay beautiful. And I would talk with you guys soon.

The Top 5 Reasons You Need A Social Media Strategy

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I’m here on behalf of the AAC to provide you with some amazing content and information to help you grow your practice.

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi there and thank you for this opportunity to share some practice and marketing insights with you. For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Jeffrey Grossman, and I’m here on behalf of the AAC to provide you with some amazing content and information to help you grow your practice. I’m the founder and owner of acupuncturemedia works, Accudownloads and acupressure websites. And I started my practice in 98 and I had a lot of trials and tribulations and a lot of struggles. And I noticed that I had a problem in not knowing how to market my practice and how to properly communicate with my patients. And all I wanted to do was to treat people and I didn’t want to market or do any of that. Um, so the struggle was real. The struggle is real, and it took me down a path to start my companies, but that’s a longer story, best reserved for another time.

But what I want to do today is to share with you some insights and information about how to incorporate social media into your practice. But before I do that, I want to encourage and inspire you with the fact that you are an incredible resource. You’re natural healers. You know how to get people to feel balanced and healthy. We know how to, um, help people with safe, natural methods. And we change lives every single day and people need your help. They want your help. They need your services, but many people don’t even know that you exist. So I want to help change that. I want to help get you more people on your table. And that’s what these talks with the AAC are all about is to help you be seen, be heard and to ultimately bring people into your practice so that you can make more money and ultimately help more people.

So you are never alone. I want to remind you that, okay, I’m here for you. And at the end of today’s talk, or you feel like you need help getting set up or becoming focused, or if you just need a little motivation to move forward, please reach out. There are a lot of opportunities that, um, I can help you with in supporting your practice and you aren’t alone. I’ve been through this, I’ve worked with other practitioners who have been through this. So, um, use this talk as a resource, use me as a resource and just one or two simple changes, um, and aha moments from today’s talk can make all the difference for you. Okay? So let’s go ahead and get started. I want to talk with you about the top five reasons. You need a social media strategy and how to get started. Now, social media is an online marketing tool that allows you to communicate directly with your audience.

And there has never been a time in history when it’s this easy to connect with your patients. And today, every practice owner knows that it’s essential to have a strong social media presence and engage with your market online, excuse me, but few actually know how to do it effectively and get results. But the key difference between those who succeed and those who fail is simply planning. Okay? So practitioners that use social media successfully do so because they have a solid strategy in place and they take the time to plan this strategy with a big picture view, and then implement it in a systematic way. So your practice can absolutely benefit as well. And the time it takes to develop this strategy more than pays off, once you implement it and start getting closer to your practice goals. So today I would like to talk with you about five reasons, why you need a social media strategy and what you need to do to get started now first is that you have to maximize the effectiveness of your social media presence that allows you to attract the right kind of patient to your practice.

You then have to focus your energy and your time creating this strategy. So you can continue helping more people with your acupuncture treatments, right? So if you want to bring them in, you have to get in front of them consistently. All right? And then you have to know what type of content converts these prospects into paying patients. So you can make sure that your strategies actually working and that you’re reaching more of your marketing goals. And it’s important to find the, uh, the motivation to implement and post content every day. And I’ll show you how to make it a lot easier. And it’s going to be easier than you might think. And finally, you need to know what tools are important to measure your social media success. So you don’t waste your time and money on something. That’s not giving you a positive return. Okay?

Sound good. So many practitioners make the mistake of thinking that social media works like this. You log in, you check out your feed, you post some stuff, you interact with your commenters and you watch your grades gradually rise. Nice. Right? Sounds fair. But not quite. It doesn’t exactly work this way and it can, but it won’t be as effective as it can be. And here’s why if you don’t have a strategy and a plan, you won’t get any results from your social media activities. You may grow some followers by simply being there, interacting with them, but that won’t get you closer to achieving your practice goals. All your activities, including posting on Facebook or Twitter should help you get closer to your goals or it’s a waste of time. So developing a strategy first and foremost helps you link these activities with your goals. For example, if you’re using these platforms to nurture leads by sending them to your free report or your free evaluation, and just getting them to join your list, you’d post different content in a different way than you would, if your goal was to get them on your schedule directly, right?

So goals like raising brand awareness awareness, or building a base of loyal paying patients, motivating your prospects to schedule with you or stimulating more referrals or building your credibility for offers that you pitch all require you to do different things on social media. They all have different outcomes and need a different strategy and plan to get there. The first step is to identify your goals and what part of your activity will play into them. This is a key foundation of your strategy. Action steps would be to one, identify your current practice goals. Are you looking for referrals? Are you looking to double your new patients or simply increase your followers to identify what part of your social media activity plays into achieving these goals? Okay, so let’s move on to the next step. You are focused. If you develop a social media strategy, it streamlined your activities.

So you know, just what to do and you can focus on where you get the best results without the proper focus. You’re taking shots in the dark and hoping that people take the action that you want them to take. So with a strategy in place, your actions will lead them down a path to take a specific action that you want them to. For example, you may post a video and discover that it gets four times as much engagement as your text content. So this means that you need to work on your video into more video into your content mix and sharing a new video each week. So the time that you spend producing your videos will pay you back more than the text content. So one important part of any social media strategy is automation. Automation means letting a software program or app handle certain tasks and aspects of your activities.

They include things like social listening, chatbots, content, curation engagement, and also growing followers. So using software and apps to do these tasks, you, um, saves you time, saves you money, and it can really keep you focused on what you like doing. So an example of a program that you can use, like is like a scheduling software, uh, for your social media, like buffer or Hootsuite. So these are programs that can, you can post on a schedule, you set it up in advance, so you don’t have to do it manually. And it’s great sign time-saver and it it’s a task that you don’t need to do yourself each and every time. But there’s something that you need to consider with this, which is authenticity. So being authentic is the key to good social media marketing. So there are some tasks that you just can’t automate. You have to be there personally interacting with your audience.

So when you get crystal clear on your strategy, you’ve got a real plan for separating what you can and can’t be automated and using for the best results, action steps, number one, create a schedule and content strategy. So that each day, you know, what needs to be done when you sit down and log in, number two, look at social media automation tools such as buffer or promo Republic or hoot suite, and consider which ones might work best to suit your strategies. Okay. So now it’s time for reason, number three, creating content that converts ultimately will, uh, will determine your success with social media. And it’s this content that you, that needs to be engaging in. Interesting. It has to address the pressing questions and the pain points of your audience so that they will want to, like, it they’ll want to comment on it and they’ll want to share it.

So it should frame you as a helpful expert, who has a great deal of value to offer. And part of strategic planning will give you control over the content that you post. So you can decide on topics and formats and content type and create a mix and schedule so that you’re offering a variety of different types of media. And once you start posting, you’ll get feedback instantly to see which content works best. And then you can refine for even better results. And once you start, you need to maintain consistency and maintain a regular posting and marketing schedule. One way to do this is by using a service like tack you downloads, where you can find done for you, blog posts and graphics and newsletters and marketing tools at your fingertips. And it’s a great service to help support you in your strategy. If you don’t know what type of content already that you want to put forth.

Um, so what you’ll need to do is research and create a profile, uh, that will include the interests and of all of your patients, right? So that is part of engaging with your clients is to know what they want. Okay. And to know what type who your ideal patient is. And I teach this in my practice management class, and one of the exercises to map out who your ideal patient is, your avatar, who they are, what they read, what they eat, et cetera. And this becomes your intimate and, um, ideal prospect finder. So you could speak directly to them. And as part of this research, you’ll analyze your competitors and influencers and see what type of content performs best on, on their platforms. And you’ll choose some to follow and you’ll gain insights, following them to help you create your own unique content. So the result is that your content will have further reach, and we’ll be more laser focused when you have your ideal prospect in mind, as opposed to just trying to market to everybody.

You’re focused on who it is that you want to market and communicate to action steps, one identify topics, and the type of format and the content types that you want to share, and then create a posting calendar to get you started. Then this will, uh, you’ll refine this. Once you start implementing it, number two, create an outline of your ideal patient avatar and number three, perform a SWOT analysis on your competition. So you know, where, where they’re falling short, where you could step in. Okay. So this next reason is critical. And one of the best things about having a solid social media content plan is that you have somewhere to go, right? So it’s easy to get into a slump with social media where you’re not sure what to do each day, and you don’t see the results and your motivation starts to lag. But when you have a good strategy in place, you’ll know how to plan for each day.

And your to-do list of important tasks is ready to go. And this takes the work out of interacting with your audience. So you can just have fun and enjoy it. And it won’t feel like work at all, but just hanging out with your people at, you know, and that you love that you want to support in your community. And when you’re enjoying what you’re doing, this will translate to better content and more authenticity, which your audience will enjoy as well. So the best way to create daily task lists is to start big and work your way smaller and smaller. Start with the practice goals that you identify and how social media fits into each of those practice goals. And with that, and your content schedule, you can see the milestones that you have to reach into achieve in each day is a step towards each of those milestones.

You may also want to break up tasks and prioritize them. For example, first priority might be posting new content. Next priority might be replying to comments and re following people who started following you. So with leftover time, you might scroll your feed, looking for content ideas, or content to share, or spend time researching your audience. Excuse me, action steps. One, create a weekly plan for each day of social media activity and finish up each session with a list of things to do for next session to get you started. All right, so now I’ve covered most of the essential reasons why you need a social media strategy in order to get results. And the last thing we’re going to look at is how to measure the results of your strategy. So the question is, how do you know if you’re actually making progress toward your practice goals?

Right? Many practitioners don’t even have practice goals nor do they even know how their progress is moving forward. One of the most important advantages of social media strategies that you can set out a plan for monitoring the results of your actions using objective data, and you do this by setting key performance indicators that you can check regularly. For example, if you want to grow your followers, you can check how many times you’ve got new followers. You can set a goal for new followers each week. If you’re looking for more referrals, what will you do to track that? Okay, so this data will tell you whether your strategy is working and if it’s not working what you need to do to shift it and what you need to do in order to improve it, performance metrics can be tracked using analytic tools or a simple in-house spreadsheet.

And there’s programs that monitor these metrics for you, um, and, and set up and create a report for you, uh, that you could download and take a look at. So, um, your strategy also includes documenting your efforts in this’ll help you refine it and make your marketing for your social media more effective. So you can learn from your success. You can learn from your mistakes. You can learn from what worked and what didn’t work, so you can take, make your strategy better and more refined moving forward into the future. And an important factor in social media success is monitoring the improvement and the metrics of the documentation to help you do this action steps, take your practice goal and decide which metrics would help you determine whether you’re reaching it or not choose the metrics and put them into a timeframe or a spreadsheet. So you can measure and see the results regularly.

And look at these metrics, the tools, and choose which ones to use, start with a free ones or popular ones, and easy to use programs and upgrade with them as you needed. Okay. So I hope you that received some insights today. And if you’re ready to start implementing more practical steps to help you develop a comprehensive, manageable and motivating social media strategy, that delivers results reach out to me. I have a program that I’m launching over the next few weeks. So these are tips are just the starting point for you to help you focus, to get motivated for that. So if you’d like to learn more, um, I’d love to have you reach out to me. My email address is Jeffrey, J E F F R E y@acupuncturemediaworks.com and, uh, just shoot me an email. Let me know that you’re interested in learning more about social media marketing and how to implement strategies into your act, do acupuncture practice. So thank you again so much for the AAC for allowing me to come here yet again, to share some insights and marketing with you and next week, join us when Poney Chiang comes on board and share some insights and some inspirations with you. Take care, stay beautiful. Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye

2 Keys to Attracting New Patients & MD Referrals

So I thought I would share, two principles, keys for attracting these patient referrals, and how to communicate with medical doctors for those referrals as well.

Click here to download the transcript.

I want to thank the AAC for inviting me back to host, um, to the point. And, uh, my name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. I have my practice in British Columbia, Canada. It’s called acrobatics wellness center. I’m also a CPA, a certified professional accountant in a past life. And I’ve written the book I’m missing the point, why acupuncturists fail, what they need to know to succeed. So I brought my clinical experience and my, um, my accounting business experience and share that with my colleagues. And I’m also the founder of healthy seminars and online platform for continued education and the chair of the integrated fertility symposium. So I love coming on here and sharing practice management tools. So you can be those prosperous healers where you’re supporting your patients. You’re experiencing abundance, you’re creating great health, and everybody’s happy for that. Um, my presentation today, and we’ll bring up that presentation now is called two keys to attracting new patients and MD referrals.

And so to build up a busy practice and to heal your communities, you need patients, they need to come and see you and want to see you. So I thought I would share, um, two principles, um, keys for attracting these patient referrals, um, and how to communicate with medical doctors for those referrals as well. So one of the keys here is being patient centric versus doctor centric in the business world. When I used to be an auditor and we’d do consulting, that would be customer centric versus company centric. And the key here is to be customer centric in our case, patient centric, creating that value for our patients being of service for our patients. And a lot of us have the right intention. We believe, we really believe that we care about our patients and we’re patient centric. Um, but I would suggest that on an unconscious level, often we are still being doctor centric.

It’s, we’re making a more about ourselves than we are about our patients. And an example of that would be our brochures and our websites. How many of us have beautiful pictures of people receiving acupuncture on our website, on our brochures make sense? We’re doing acupuncture, right? Or you think it would make sense. And it’s something that we love. Like we’re quite passionate. We love getting our acupuncture. Most of us who are practiced love, getting it and love, um, providing acupuncture. But do you ever think of what your patients see when they see your brochure? And what they see is this actually a large part of the population actually has a deep fear of needles. And so I would suggest unintentionally, a lot of us are being doctor or company centric and not customer patient centric. If we were them, we would think more about what our patient’s experiences are when they come to our website and see our brochures.

I will add that I’ve learned in my practice and I think we’re successful because we don’t really think or believe our patients are coming to us for acupuncture, what we realize. And it’s all based on your attitude and intention. We realize that our patients are coming to us for a solution. And if it happens to be requiring acupuncture needles, then, and they, and there’s research to support it, or we have case studies and competence to say that we can help them. Then they’re open to the acupuncture. If I say it’s taking Chinese herbs or receiving GWAS or cupping, um, or laser acupuncture or [inaudible] or cheek gong, they’re coming for a solution to a problem. And that’s what they’ve come to you. And it’s not necessarily that they want or need the acupuncture in their mind. They’re coming to you for a solution. And it just may happen.

That acupuncture is part of that solution. I just want to give you, so I said, I’m going to give you two key, key, um, steps for referrals. So the first one is being patient centered care and really putting yourself into your patient’s shoes, really trying to experience it from your patient’s perspective. An example in my practice at [inaudible] we’re famously known for fertility, we do a lot of reproductive health. And at the beginning, we used to have a baby pictures on our site and in our office. And we did a focus group and we learned that the patients hate seeing pictures of babies in the waiting room and on our website, we thought they would like it because it shows success and hope, right? Hey, look, look what we can do for you. But most of them say that they’re reminded of them not having a baby they’re failures.

Um, they are miscarriages that are unsuccessful ideas. And so coming into the waiting room, um, added stress and not, um, pleasure or peace to them. So again, getting into your patient’s mind and trying to understand what they want. So the focus here is B is to be patient care. And so we meant that patient centered care is about having that intention to care for your patients. However, the intention, the desire to care for your patients, or you even feeling a believe, you care for your patients is not enough. They actually need to know that you care. They have to experience it and believe it. And I’m going to suggest with you, um, I tip, can we go back to that earlier slide story? I, I that’s that too quickly. Um, I’m going to share with you, um, what I do, um, to show I care and I’m, I like to be known.

I want to be known for simple and powerful and effective tips and tools in my clinical practice and business pearls for you guys as well. So what I’m sharing with you is simple. So simple that it’s easy to be dismissed or ignored. It’s not complicated, but simple doesn’t need mean easy. Simple means anybody could do it, but it does require some discipline. And so I say here, what is easy to do is also easy not to do. And I’d like to send, check in emails or call my patients to see how they’re doing. And you can do this after our initial or after a special milestone. Um, I make a habit and using that word unconsciously, a habit of following up with my patients, um, around their pregnancy test date, um, for an IVF cycle. So I support a lot of women through their IVF.

Our clinic does not just me and we show, we go on site to the IVF clinic, the largest one here in Vancouver, BC, and provide both acupuncture, laser acupuncture on site. And I make a point to check in with them between their transfer date and the pregnancy test day, just to see how they’re doing, see if they have any questions, um, and then asking them to let me know an update when they know whether they’re pregnant or not. And so I encourage you to do that and it could be as simple as the following. I want to sh I want to give you, uh, some of the copy that you can do. It doesn’t need to be a long email. It can be tight. It could be subject line checking in, and then your copy could be hi. So-and-so I wanted to check in to see how you are doing period.

Please send me an update at your convenience and then your name and that’s it. Now the intention behind this is you want to know how they’re doing this is important because if you’re doing it, I believe intention carries some chew with it, some energy. So if you’re doing it because you want them to be your patient, I think on a subtle level, they may pick up on that. The good news is that when you do this, you create mind share. They remember you and likely often they’ll get back to you. Many of them will, and they’ll book more with you if they haven’t already. So there’s good news to doing this wherever your intention is to find out how they’re doing, because if the patient hasn’t rebooked, it could be because you resolve their issue. And so wouldn’t, you want to know that in document that in the file, you can even save the reply and they say that everything’s great.

You could ask them, um, to write a testimonial or Hey, if you know anybody else that struggling with what you struggle with, please send them. Cause as you can see, I love to treat that so simple like that. So your email is, and I’m going to show you some responses from patients that I sent this email to. I just wanted to check in to see how you’re doing. Please send me an update at your convenience. Sometimes they’ll tell you something that didn’t work. So you got to learn from their experience. So, and you may be able to correct that in that email or call them to make it right, but it’s just important to follow up with your patients. So, um, here’s an example of just two examples of what I received back from when I sent an email to patients. Now, I would say over 50% respond to my emails.

And, uh, often they’re, they’re quite nice emails, surprisingly, but good to get that feedback. And then there are those that just never respond. Um, so I sent an email checking in on this patient wanting to know, um, she had any questions and, um, I, and I asked if she could send me the results of her IVF cycle when she knows, um, she said, thank you Lauren, for the email, this is very kind of you to reach out. Remember I sit in their previous slide, they need to know you care, um, saying it or thinking it is not enough. And one way to let them know you care is by checking in via email. My blood work results came in today and it’s positive rate CG is 5 96. The nurse advised that is very good number to have at this stage. Let’s hope everything continues to go well from here.

So, you know, we’re having that relationship that trust, and this is good that she’s actually sharing this March. I appreciate your and Ryan support, Ryan and I both saw her through our clinic. Your clinic has been a tremendous part of my journey. Everyone has been so wonderful kind and professional. Thank you for providing this kind of support to women. I could follow up and say, thank you and remind you that we like to support you throughout the pregnancy. So now I can have that conversation with her. Um, so continue the acupuncture and advice about what we do during pregnancy. I could ask her if we can use her this, um, email, um, for our testimony, if it’s allowed in your, in your state or province to put it on the website. Here’s another example. I willing to respond it from her. Check-in you’re Lauren, your ears have been burning.

Your ears must have been burning because I was just talking about you and how incredibly skilled, supportive and genuinely caring you are. My hubby really enjoyed meeting you as well. And I know you really impressed him as well. So it’s showing you that we care based on their emails back. They’re showing you that little touch point, so simple to do, but again, what’s easy to do is also easy not to do. And you want to create this a habit, a lot of clinics. Um, I would recommend you doing this after the initial, if they have not rebooked. And even if they have within that week, just send in a check in email or any special milestone. It’s good to check in. And if you haven’t seen your patients for so many weeks or after two months, and you think there should be more care based on what you’re treating them for, then send in a, an email. Hi, just want to check in to see how you’re doing. Please send me an update at your convenience. So the next thing for referrals and for good medical care is, um, communicating with other health professionals. And I’m going to give examples of what we send to medical doctors. And you get a busy practice by getting referrals for word of mouth, through patients and also referrals from healthcare providers.

So the key here in anything in life to be successful, any enterprise, whether you’re a clinic, whether you’re selling widgets, whatever you’re doing is creating value for the person that’s buying your services or your products. And, um, in this case, think of, remember, we talked about patient centered care, think of the doctor as a customer of yours as well. You’re wanting them to refer to you, right? Um, so, um, think of them that way and want to create value for them because when you create value for other people, they tend to like you and want to work with you. So it’s important to find out their needs and how your relationship can benefit them. I know most of us are going to them saying, I want you to refer to me and that’s needy and that’s not creating value for them. That’s creating value for you.

And I would imagine those relationships don’t flourish or go anywhere because you started off with what can you do for me versus what can I do for you? So find out what you can do for them. I know in the Canada social system, doctors are quite busy. Um, medical doctors, um, tend not to like to treat the patients that have pharma allergy or list of symptoms. And so, you know, you can ask the doctors, what are the patients that you don’t like to see or take up a lot of your time. And so just start developing a relationship with them and finding out what kind of patients, um, you can help them with. Right? And when I say help them with in this case, um, you know, patients that, um, again, in Canada being social medicine, they don’t want to spend an hour with a patient.

They want to spend 10 minutes, maximum 15 minutes. So if a patient has a laundry list of, of, um, issues, they don’t like those. And so they would love to refer those off to people like me, where we spend an hour with them so they can see more patients. Um, I remember one doctor said, um, he doesn’t like patients that have a whole list of symptoms. And I said, well, I’m a holistic doctor. So I likes it. Patients, the whole list of symptoms. Sometimes a little humor will help as well. You want to create trust, um, and allow time to build this long-term relationship. So it is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. You don’t meet the practitioner or the medical doctor that day and then expect them to be a great referral source. It’s a relationship and over years, um, I’ve been in practice since 2000 over years, you start to develop relationships where these physicians become your champion, where they send a lot of patients to you. Um, and that could take time. But if you’re in practice today, think of yourself three years from now, what do you want? What kind of referrals do you want? And think of in three years, I want that relationship with that MD. So today start that relationship knowing that you’re going to date, you’re going to develop a relationship and over time it’s going to become a healthy relationship.

So I’m sending him a letter to the doctor. I find very beneficial and it’s good medical, um, um, medical care on your part as well. So, um, when you see a patient, send them a thank you letter for that referral. Now here’s a trick for you. Um, send them the thank you letter, even if they didn’t refer the patient to you. So when you do your initial, um, if you don’t collect it on the document, ask the patient who their primary care physician is. And so when you send a letter, um, say thank you for referring such a patient, you’re almost programming them like, oh yeah, I refer them. You know, but even if they haven’t and just let them know, you have this patient and mutual care, and I’ll share a letter that we sent to a doctor here in a moment. So I will give you a little template here that we use that you can now use.

So send them a, you know, what, they’ve come in for what your plan is, and that you’ll send them some progress report. So it’s good to send them kind of your initial findings and your treatment plan, send a revaluation, let them know, definitely refer back to the MD as well for their followup and confidently communicate with them. When you have questions or suggestions, don’t put them on a pedestal, but don’t have counterwill or make them your enemy and fight with them. Either your colleagues working mutually for this patient’s benefit. So own what you know, um, but also read the room and know who you’re talking to as well. And it’s really good medicine to have this integration. So here’s an example of a letter. I apologize, the presentation, put the bullet points there. You don’t need the bullet points, but I took out some names and some information just to preserve confidentiality, but here’s a letter to whom it may concern.

Um, Mr. X presented to our clinic AquaBounty wellness center on Wednesday, August 23rd for pain in his left knee, which he shared with related to osteoarthritis. I’m using a technique. Our clinic calls, laser acupuncture, which utilizes a class three B medical grade, low-level laser therapy in combination with electrical acupuncture. And skeeted, don’t inundate them with too much information, keep her letter short. And also it’s a good thing to remind you, at least in Canada, that when a medical doctor receives a correspondence regarding a patient, um, they’re technically supposed to put it in the file as well. So again, reminds them when they look at their file, who you are in your involvement. I give a brief education of what laser is. So education here, low-level laser therapy has been shown to relieve pain associated with main diseases and syndromes and cleaning, osteoarthritis. It implements red and infrared light to decrease pro-inflammatory cytokines promotes blood circulation and promotes tissue regeneration by increasing mitochondria ATP production through fighter, by my white fire till biomodulation.

And then I give them a two links to go to my website. If they’re really want to learn more, some doctors are going to want to know about this, and they’re going to look it up. I’ve had doctors call me after to go for lunch. Cause he wanted to know more about what we were doing. Cause they had a lot of patients that they have been trying to help with drugs, drugs, or surgery, and they still have not found relief. So they they’re looking for anything to help these patients. Um, my Mr. Patient, uh, so put your patient’s name, your Mr. Patient’s name. So whoever their name is, has received a treatment. So in this letter, just so you know, I was slow. I didn’t send it when they first came in, patient came in and I did not send the letter, but I sent it, you know, I said to the progress reports.

So sometimes you get behind. So I sent them this letter anyhow, um, after they’d been seen with seen by me for a couple of weeks, they received eight treatments, um, since August 23rd and has experienced noticeable improvement in pain reduction by his third session. So I’m showing the progress and how good this was after three treatments, they already have no pain. His current pain level is not existent. Even with strenuous activity. We have not noticed any significant reduction in swelling. So he was quite swollen, but we hadn’t seen much change in that over the past three weeks. And then I let him know. My plan is to continue to offer one or two weekly treatments until he has results from his schedule. X-ray October 2nd. Do you have any questions about our mutual care of this patient? Or if you want to communicate with me about any aspect of his care, please feel free to contact me in health. And then you give your email and name. If you’re sending it by mail, which I recommend, um, I’d say both mail and email, but put your business card in if you send it by mail.

So just remembering being successful as not doing extraordinary things, the, um, thinking about the patient centered care, sending them a check in email, writing a letter to your doctor at best, not extraordinary, right? But being successful is simply doing ordinary things extraordinary. Well, and so you want to make it as a habit and just think for the next three years, if every patient you saw, you sent in a check, an email and you sent a letter to their primary care physician, I’m just curious how many extra referrals you’ll get because the patients now know you care. And the doctors now know you exist.

Do keep in mind. It takes 20 years to become an overnight success. Really the point here is to manage your expectations and that this is a marathon, not a sprint I’m when I’ve coached my colleagues often, they’ll say I did what you said and it didn’t work. And just so you know, this response, I did what you said, didn’t work is one week after I told them what they could do. So if you’re telling me did work after a week, you’ve missed the message on building a relationship and it takes 20 years to be an overnight success. It’s a marathon, not a sprint and just create this habit and do this over time. And then after six months rafter, you’re telling me how it’s going, but definitely not after a week.

So keep this in mind. There’s two types of human suffering. This is by Jim Rowan, a nice quote. Um, look at the image on the left. You can see the fit gentleman inside this obese body drinking soda, water, it’s the pain of regret or the pain of discipline. So either way, there’s going to be some type of pain or effort. So the pain of regret or the pain of discipline. So I’m inviting you to go for the pain of discipline and write these emails. Um, I talk about what we just shared in my book as many other and many other, um, what I consider a key points in mindset and activities to help you build a successful practice. Remember as a practitioner acupuncture, you’re a business, whether you like it or not. Um, small businesses, acupuncturist are always at risk of failing because we’re small.

Just the nature of us being small businesses, lacking resources and money or people to do everything that needs to be done, puts us at risk of not succeeding and then add to it that many of us are in denial that we’re in business or don’t want to learn about business puts us even at greater risk. And so to be an effective healer, you need to have the union balance. You need to know your medicine. So constantly work on your clinical. And we do this well. We’re always putting our continued education forward and a priority. I know this from healthy seminars, seeing how many people are constantly learning. And then you have to also the other side, the young, you have to also give attention to the business side of it. And if you didn’t young or out of balance, you have disease or they separate and there’s death.

You go out of business. And so you can’t ignore the business out of your practice. And if you’re not in practice because your business is failing, unfortunately, then you’re not able to heal your community. And it’s important more than now than ever to have practitioners like you available to heal your community. So continue your healthy seminar studying on the medicine side. And I want to remind you just also study the business side so you can stay in business, have a busy practice, feel fulfilled, um, healing your communities. And if you’re interested in my book, um, there’s free shipping this month go to missing the point. book.com, make sure books in the URL. Otherwise it will go to a different website missing the point book.com. You can order a copy and have free shipping this month. And if you want to contact me, um, you can either go to healthy seminars.com.

That’s where we offer online continuing education. And I get a copy of those emails on my own, a little website called Lorne brown.com, where I interview people on conscious talks and I share, but conferences I may be involved in. So you can check me out there. There’s the website for my book, missing the missing the point book.com. And my clinic is AQI balanced.ca um, stay tuned to future AAC webinars with me. I’ll be interviewing more, um, colleagues over the, over the months and years. And I want to let you know that next week our colleague and our friend Jeffrey Grossman is going to be on to the point for this AAC webinar series. Thank you very much.

Building a Chinese Medicine Kit

Click here to download the transcript. Click here to download the PPT.

Hello, welcome. My name is Tsao-Lin Moy, and I will be hosting today’s Facebook live, and I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for providing these Facebook lives. And, uh, hopefully they’re going to be very interesting for you. Um, I’m very excited about today’s episode and I really want to, uh, send a shout out to, uh, a friend of mine, Josh coropol and another one Neil Gordon, because it was having a conversation with them over last week. That then prompted me to talk about, uh, Chinese medicine in a way that, uh, we can teach our, our patients and also for us to be much more creative in the way we think about what it is that we do. So, so, um, let’s go to the first slide.

All right. So the topic today is building a Chinese medicine kit and how to use something like a fast food restaurant to make medicines when you’re out on the road. Uh, and it’s something, uh, I call them MacGyvering, uh, if you’re, depending on your, uh, what generation you are, um, MacGyver was a TV show and, uh, he would find himself in these predicaments and have to be very creative about getting out of his predicaments or using whatever resources were there. Uh, so what I’m going to cover a few of those formulas, uh, and, uh, yeah. Tell us, uh, where you guys are watching from I’m from I’m in New York city, union square. Uh, so feel free to type in the chat, uh, you know, where you’re from. Uh, so the first one I’m going to talk about are some formulas, basic formulas that all of you probably know them, and, uh, you can also teach your patients.

I’m a very big advocate of, you know, giving this information so your patients can actually learn how to take care of themselves, especially early stage and acute right early stage prevention. Hello, Brooke from Hawaii, Hawaii. Oh, I love it. Yeah. And Sharon from long island. Thank you. Thank you. Um, so another part will be kind of building your kids, uh, another topic, uh, I love instant soup, which is an ancient Chinese formula, big, like, what is that? And then also some, uh, you know, what to do, you know, with fast food restaurants and how you can actually make Chinese medicine. Uh, and then, uh, you being a MacGyver, like creating your own, uh, creative hacks. Okay.

So here we are, when you wish you had your Chinese medicine cabinet and really what you have is, you know, you’re, you’re on the road, whatever you’ve packed. Okay. So this list, uh, will be available on the replay, uh, the formulas and some miscellaneous supplies. Um, I love the, you ping pong sand, the Jade windscreen, uh, that is, uh, just in case anybody kind of forgot their, um, oops. I just dropped my forgot their, uh, their verbal basics, really the very initial stages of when you think you’re getting sick, um, kind of like when you’re having a premonition and that’s what you would want to, to take right away. Uh, the BN PN for that kind of stuffy nose, uh, the arch and Tom, I love that also for congestion, uh, very famous the yin child song, which I’m going to, I mean, uh, yes, the child song, which I’m going to kind of go over a few other things with it.

Uh, the [inaudible], which is the cinnamon decoction Boothbay, Tom tonifying the lungs that’s when you have the chronic cough, uh, the peep or the bay move swallow center, which is a syrup, right. That has the Loquat in it. Uh, if you’re on the road and you’re overeating, you may need something for digestion, the bowel ho wan, you know, for the over consumption of food, you know, when you’re not home to cook those organic meals, uh, then we have also the Shandling by do, do Tom, you know, for that, he gets sick with diarrhea. Um, you really need to, especially if you’re traveling overseas, you know, something other than Immodium, the classic Yunan buy-out for internal, uh, bleeding or bruising. I mean, this is like arnica on steroids, uh, a D Dodge owl, or even like a white flour for like a bruising, topical bruising pain patches emergency, which is great for replenishing electrolytes, definitely a probiotic.

Uh, this is gonna help with your, your digestion again, when you’re traveling or you really need to make sure that you have a very healthy immune system. Uh, I love to bring Kinesio tape to have that, uh, because it can double up as a great, uh, ACE bandage, uh, magnets, the little, uh, the Korean hand magnets and, you know, a little Mylar blanket for, for heat. That’s always great. So these are like, kind of, this is like a, a basic kind of a thing I like you can pick and choose, which are gonna work for you. Um, and really like, think about like how you would be able to use them in an everyday setting. Okay. So here’s this thing, instant miso soup with the tofu and scallions. Um, and this is where I was having this conversation. Uh, and I had it with somebody else too, who was traveling to south America.

They were going to be doing acupuncture, acupuncturists without borders. And I would hear that every time someone would go on these trips, they were like getting some kind of parasite, some kind of dysentery situation, um, not a lot of available. And so I would say like, bring some instant miso soup, right? It’s got the miso in it, which is, has the probiotic a fermentation, it’s got a little bit of the tofu. Tofu is considered a complete, like a full, uh, vegetarian type of a protein, right. And then the scallion is also great for the nose and the broth a little bit of salt, because you could be losing, um, some, uh, salt and you need to retain, uh, the fluids. So this, interestingly enough, I look and I said, oh yeah, this is part of this, the, the song church, Tom, which is the scallion number, Baird, soybean decoction.

So instead, like, where would you get it? Okay. Go to the supermarket. Most supermarkets actually have, you know, this instant miso soup. Um, and some of them also will have the, uh, seaweed and seaweed is really good for detox, right. And also it has a little bit of iodine, nothing wrong with that. Um, and, and what it treats. So this is in the materia Medica. It’s the very first stage of that external wind invasion that mild fever and chills will stuffy nose or the headache, um, the thin white tongue coat, the floating poles. All right. But if you’re out, you just need to know that, Hey, if you don’t have the, uh, you pink Fung sand, this is what you would take right now. The interesting thing about this particular miso soup is the formula comes from a book it’s called the emergency formulas to keep up on sleep. This is from the Jin dynasty. And, uh, by the practitioner was the home, uh, a natural scientist, a Taoist expert, uh, and really, uh, a pharmacologist. And so when we think about Taoism, I’m going to go off on a tangent here is where they say, oh, you know, it’s like religion, but that was, we’re always also looking for how to extend life. You know, we’re always looking for immortality. So what’s gonna show up is really like things to continue to, um, help your health. Right.

Okay. Foods, we could do an entire, uh, segment or on foods. But what I would say easy is T bring with you teas, you can bring dried mushrooms again, the Meese, so soup, some ginger candy preserved plums. I was in a supermarket in Chinatown, and I’m looking at these, a traditional kind of candies, which are actually, uh, like orange drawings with a salt, sugar, a little ginger. Um, so they’re sour, they’re like sour plums, and those are great for digestion dry in my office here. Okay. So what can we find at something like a Walgreens, Chinese medicine at Walgreens? Well, the formula [inaudible], which again, combined with [inaudible], now this, we know as practitioners was part of some of the strategy for treating COVID right. If you’ve been following some of the formulas and the classic, really what we’re looking at is the two herbs, which are actually flowers are the honeysuckle and the forsythia. Now, if you, and I’ve said this to my patients, if they don’t have the in-house on, the closest thing to get is airborne and the ingredients, which I it’s very tiny on, there has a lot of the ingredients that are in [inaudible] and in particular, the honeysuckle and the forsythia, right? So this is something where you can go to a Walgreens. They’re going to have it in a supermarket now, so you can just read the label. There’s also the, [inaudible] the chasteberry I think there’s licorice in there as well.

Okay. So creative hacks and resourcefulness. So one of the things that I want to impress upon is, you know, we, in our modern society become like really complacent with our idea of what medicine is, right. What’s what’s really happened is, is a lot of pharmaceuticals. Um, but the world itself has not really changed. Right. We still get sick and we were still very much, uh, vulnerable to serious viruses and pandemics. Right. And, um, what’s happened is unless it comes from a particular place, we don’t even recognize what it is. So a lot of the things that are used in Chinese formulas, like ginger, cinnamon, um, clove, hot peppers, garlic, those things have now, uh, you can find them in the baking section, right. So if you need to like, make something like, oh, what am I going to get? Ginger? I can’t find it. There’s no sewer.

You can find it’s like freeze dried. It’s just like the package has changed. Right. And the thing about going back to gung ho, he was an expert in natural science, right. Plant medicine. And he actually intact attach more importance to experimentation. He’s the one that wrote a hundred volume tome, the Jaida case formulas. So anything that’s in a Jade case means it’s very important, right? You got a golden cabinet or a Jade Jade, uh, case. Um, but he was doing this based on his own understanding of Chinese formulas and folk medicine that he would really collect. So here we have, you know, someone who has access to all like volumes and volumes of medicine, just like us. We’ve got the internet, we’ve got Dr. Google. We’ve got a lot of it. And, but also he was looking at, Hey, what’s actually really working out in the world.

And so from there he wrote 101 formulas to keep up one sleep. I remember they had these long sleeves. Right. Then they could put stuff in. So these, that means these were important, right. In, in the ancient times, anybody that would get sick, it could be really like death. Right. If they didn’t recover. Now, one of the things that’s very interesting, the more I started, like looking into like, who is this person? I mean, Hey, we’re thinking alike. I’m telling my friend, okay, if you’re in an emergency, this is what you do. Get out your instance soup. Right. And suddenly I’m reading like, wait a second. The same formula. It comes from a book called emergency formulas to keep up on sleep or in your glove compartment, or, you know, wherever you’re going to be in your suitcase and you in your little makeup bag or right.

Um, but one thing that he noted, and this is a very interesting thing. We’re talking about Jin dynasty two hundred sixty six, three hundred and eighty, right. We’re looking at, he noted that the earth Ching, how, which is the urban Artemisia known as wormwood using that juice to treat malaria in the 1970s, Artemisia in was actually extracted from the wormwood by Chinese scientists, scientists, and this in 2015, uh, this scientist got the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine. It says it was awarded to professor you U2 for her key contribution to the discovery of artemisinin. Now this is where we’re looking at this stuff is everywhere, right? And, and we, as practitioners, we have access and understanding to what there is the thing is, is that we’re not recognizing it, that it’s still around us. The world is not changed that much in terms of the natural world. Things get packaged differently. We look so much too. If it comes in a little container in a pill or a backed by let’s say science or pharmacy, that it’s gotta be powerful. The thing is, is that we have these things that we can still do. Even if there isn’t a, a, an apothecary that’s near us, we have to be creative. And, and hopefully at the end, you’re going to like this and you’re going to see it.

Okay. So necessity leads to invention. This is really applying what, you know, by observation and resourcefulness and in case anybody was born, I know in the nineties, uh, and didn’t get to see this, uh, guy MacGyver. Uh, if you go back and you’ll see like wild stuff that he would do, uh, to get out of these, uh, situations, he’d find himself in. Um, and I look at, you know, that’s the same kind of energy and creativity that we need to be thinking about when, like, what could we, you know, what could we use? Uh, one thing, uh, that I would say the pen during the pandemic, people got really creative. They were making a grilled cheese sandwiches on using an iron, right. And, and, uh, poaching eggs, you know, like in a water kettle, right? So this was, you know, something that we need to continue to use that energy, because otherwise we’re going to get very stuck and complacent in how we’re treating people and really like recognizing and observing what is in front of us and, and, and simple solutions.

Now on the list, one of the things, uh, that was on there was the, the cinnamon decoction, right. That’s the wager. And that formula is a fantastic formula, right? Cause it’s for, you know, muscle pain, neck and shoulder, you know, when the you’re cold, you’re getting sick and you feel it like in your neck and your back, but it’s also a great formula for muscle cramping. And I’ve actually given this formula to some of my patients who do triathlons. One of their problems is as they get muscle cramping, the chief ingredient in there is the cinnamon and cinnamon is known as a vasodilator, especially to the capillaries. So how do you get, you know, blood circulation into your toes and your feet, um, sediment, that formula is also great. If you have cold in the stomach, cause cold in the stomach, it’s another formula, which is basically the wager tongue plus extra ginger and extra of the Maltese.

So here we are, the MacGyver hack making some fire cider. I know fire cider has been out all over the internet and it’s, it’s made with like horseradish, garlic, onion, uh, apple cider vinegar, um, hot peppers. So there are many different, uh, recipes for it. But if you’re out on the road and you need to make yourself like a quick little, let’s knock this thing out, you’ve got horseradish. And just so you know, I picked the most common, you know, it’s not organic horseradish, it’s not organic, honey. I just picked the ones that you most likely might see at like a Outback steak house or someplace. If you’re, you know, a, you know, a fast food place. And just as an aside, if you’re ever really looking for super clean bathrooms on the road, McDonald’s better than Starbucks, right? So a lot of these places, you’re going to find these condiments that are here.

There’s the vinegar, there’s the honey, there’s the hot sauce horseradish. If they don’t have it, you can probably find the wasabi. You find those little packets. If you want to make a little more little marmalade that has the little bits of the orange peel. Sometimes with some honey, that’s something too for settling your stomach, right? This is like the using the Chen P right. Or the chain P to help with digestion. And so this is like something, you get a bunch of these packets, you get a little hot water, you can, you know, make a little decoction yourself, drink it down, or spoon it down. And it’s going to help with like a sore throat. And then also, you know, the horseradish stuff is going to go up to the nose, right? So all of these things actually have many of these anti-microbial antiviral properties.

And the thing is, is that we, you know, there’s no, not necessarily a supermarket and you’re not going to start, you know, grading horseradish. You can just get one of these packets. And this is really, we’re talking about kind of emergency situations, but if you’ve got a patient there and there, you can just say, go to the, you know, go to the Outback steakhouse or, or go to the five guys, hamburger, joint, or someplace asked for, you know, the honey packets or the hot sauce or all of that stuff. Cause most of the time they give you too much, right. Anyway, home Depot and your backyard. So getting back to bat combination of the honeysuckle and the forsythia, right. Sometimes it’s in, it’s in your backyard. If you can’t find it home Depot or gardening center actually carries these plants. And so realistically, if you needed to stop by a home garden center and, you know, grab a, you know, grab a few branches, right.

Or the down the line down the line, there is weeds there, weeds they’re all over the place. Uh, and so these are things you might be hiking and you start having scratchy throat and just trying to figure out like, oh, where can I go? You’re like, it’s right there. Um, one thing that I have to say is dandelion is pretty distinct. So you’re not going to end up picking something that is, uh, uh, poisonous. You need to know what it looks like. Right. And honeysuckle is very, it’s, it’s obvious what it is now. Things like plants, as we know, like honeysuckle in particular and a lot of the flowers that are in our formulas that we use, you remember that there are bees that come around, right. And they pollinate now what makes a honey? So, uh, immune boosting, because they’re getting all of the properties from these plans and then it’s being, uh, combined into to make honey, right. So this is why honey is one of those substances, which is actually really good for the immune system we had. Remember where does it come from? Comes from flowers. Right?

Okay. So this is not Chinese medicine, but we’re looking at using things for multiple purposes and to keep in mind, right. We’re getting creative looking at, what can you use? What has a multiple purpose preparation H right. It’s got two key ingredients. One of them is the fenal, uh, fennel, LeBron, uh, which shrinks has a way of shrinking. So for bleeding, it’s used for, uh, hemorrhoids, right? It also has the pro McCain, which is a topical Anil analgesic, which is actually great for itching and rashes. Now there are different kinds. You’d have to look even there’s a preparation age that just has, uh, the, a little bit of hydrocortisone on it. So this is like, wow, what are you going to do? If you’ve got like, uh, a bug bite? What can you do? Well, you can also use a little bit of the preparation age, right?

It’s going to bring the swelling down. It’s going to be cooling. Um, the one that is the suppository is really just made of the, of cocoa butter, right. It’s pretty natural cocoa butter. And then the, um, the fenal Efrin which shrinks the, um, has, uh, uh, shrinking shouldn’t the blood vessels, right? So that’s something in the event of a bug bite. You could probably use it, you know, say for kids, but check, um, you can just take it. It’s like a little bit of a thing and you could just rub it on and it’s gonna like help. Um, the kids. Now, this is a multiple purpose thing. If you can, people have been using it for, you know, under their, their eyes. Um, you might, even if you have little varicoceles or spider navvies on, you know, on the, you know, swollen fee, you could probably use a little bit of that. Um, what else is it used? Yes. And bug bites. Right. So those are things just be creative. Right?

Okay. Well, this is something. And the reason I decided like preparation age, cause, uh, interesting. I remembered back in the early eighties, late eighties, that there were these headlines about preparation H being a target for cocaine addicts. So this has to do with like some of the things that are shoplifted from pharmacies and what they found was like cocaine and heroin, heroin addicts were stealing preparation age and using it for their inflamed node, their noses and the places where they were injecting, which was actually pretty interesting. But then later on, so there was like 87 later on. We started to look at, um, some, it became like the number nine in the most stolen things from retail shelves. Right. So that actually caught my attention, like preparation, H one of the number one things that shoplifted, right. And then by 2005, yeah. Ended up being on the number nine list of the most shoplifted items. And this is, you start to look at, these are people that are kind of desperate and they get creative, right. Need creative causes, you know, creativity. Right. You gotta be creative. Like what can I do to, you know, I’m in pain.

Okay. So what I would love to know are, what are your hacks? What are some of the things that you do, maybe you tell your patients to try something, do something, oftentimes a patient will come to you and say, Hey, I was doing this thing. And I was like, oh, really? Why? And, uh, find that very, very interesting, right? Like why would you do that? Uh, and, uh, so I tend to look into it. I want to know more, uh, there’s a lot of information. And another suggestion is go back into your, uh, into your books, start looking up. Some of these formulas, actually individual herbs are great. Um, I didn’t have time to talk about using things like magnets, uh, and, and stuff like that. Uh, the hand magnets, but that’s a, you know, something we can do another time, you know, as a way to, uh, treat, uh, certain conditions, especially, uh, they’re non needling, so you can teach your patients.

Right. Um, so, all right. Hopefully I want to hear your, your hacks, uh, inform, if you want any more information, you can definitely reach out to me. And, uh, let’s see, I know next week, join us next week. Uh, with Matt Callison and Brian Lau, they’re going to be your host. I have, uh, done their training with Matt twice. I did the whole sports medicine training. Uh, they do fantastic job. You’re going to learn all about anatomy and physiology. You really get a good understanding of what’s going on under the skin. Uh, you’ll be a much better practitioner treating sports injuries and really understanding needle depth and really what is there. Uh, and so I highly recommend taking their training. I highly recommend that you, um, also, uh, go and, uh, tap into next week’s, uh, uh, American Acupuncture Council broadcast. All right. Thank you.