Class #: / 1 / Instructor: / Anne Province
Kurt Hein, owner New Braunfels Acupuncture
Kurt graduated with very little business experience and all of the fears about making a living. The stats are poor: lots of people don’t end up in the acupuncture field after they graduate. There are a lot of great acupuncturists, but don’t make a living at it. They have to run 2-3 jobs to make ends meet and acupuncture becomes a hobby.
Preparation
Start thinking about opening the doors of your clinic now. Take your boards as soon as you can, get them done before you graduate. The boards are focused on the material you are swimming in right now. You will forget a ton of the details over time. Do it now.
The boards are the biggest expense and headache of the lot.
Observe your professors
Plan an observation or 12 with your professors. You have to be confident and sell yourself to your patients. Watch your professors for what they do. Dr. Ma uses the same 9-10 points on each patient. The variation is in the herbs. Dr. He does this too. Miriam Lee (Insights of a Senior Acupuncturist) did this as well.
Acupuncture isn’t that complex. If you want to succeed what you need are business skills and people skills. This is huge. The details matter, but these skills are paramount.
What do you do upon graduation?
Kurt recommends: Take time off if you can. Clear your mind. Set your priorities.
He did apply for jobs in acupuncture and did get some offers. He got hired but it was temporary and didn’t really work out. Working for yourself is golden, however. He also learned that you should get out of Austin.
Starting your business:
Kurt sent resumes out to several cities – to docs, chiropractors, acupuncture clinics, etc.
Ask people who are successful why they are successful. Look at their clinic and determine what you like, what you don’t. Talk to a lot of acupuncturists.
Get a dab, QuickBooks, a computer, checking account, your federal id number, acupuncture license, your federal provider number and all that rot to get going.
What helped me get going?
[ Get the boards and all that crap out of the way by the time you graduate. This is the biggest expense and headache of everything you have to do to make a living.
[ Build your confidence – watch your professors and see what points they use.
[ Advertise well – Bud Light doesn’t taste good, but people drink it because it is advertised well!
[ Write all of the articles you will need for your website NOW. When you have to write a paper for AOMA, spin it this way. Collect/create all of your documents now!
[ Be ready on day 1!
[ MOVE! Do the math: look at how many acupuncturists in your county of choice and divide it out with the number of people in the area. Is your area saturated? Austin is! Remember you can do demographics by zip code!
You might think the area isn’t open to acupuncture. You might be wrong. Media is national – we’ve been Oprah! It’s worked for 5000 years or more. If it works for them it will work for you – if it didn’t work they wouldn’t still be doing it!
[ Tuina or medical qigong? Kurt can do tuina, but it takes a lot of work. When you start doing this for a patient they start to expect it. Hmmm. Some things acupuncture doesn’t work all that well for – trigger finger for instance – but tuina works great.
[ Stick with the basics. They work. This takes the pressure off of you – you don’t need to know a million little points or fancy techniques to get results.
Kurt’s business:
[ Kurt rents a room from a chiropractor and is a sole proprietor.
[ Don’t buy unnecessary stuff until you can afford it. Start with needles, cups. The basics.
[ To set your fee, find out how much people charge in the area. Kurt sells packages: 5 and 10 treatment packs at a slight discount. Also charges less for seniors (65yo +) - $35. That’s an undercut but you get volume this way.
[ Schedules his own patients. You can get great long weekends this way where you can’t do this working for someone else.
[ There’s not a lot of cross-referencing from the chiropractor he works with. He normally sees the ones who aren’t getting better at the chiropractor or the ones he’s tired of. He did cross refer more at the beginning. Some however will add acupuncture to the modalities they offer (acupuncture, massage, etc.) This is a good link up though because you have instant access to imaging.
Kurt created a small pamphlet to add to the stuff in the lobby. Introduces himself to the patients and says hello, chats it up.
[ Get malpractice insurance. Get as much coverage as you can get.
[ Doesn’t currently take insurance, but is set up to go – uses all the codes in the books just in case.
[ Get a good patient management software.
[ Took the local pain mgmt doc and staff out to lunch. A bunch of docs go to his church.
Advertising
[ Advertise in the local paper if you’re in a small town. List what acupuncture is good for: headaches, back pain, neck pain. He gets most of his business from that ad.
[ Keep your cards on your person. Get a ton of them. Work acupuncture into every conversation and give them away
[ Website – He actually uses a BlogSpot website. Google owns it so it cross references well with Google search. !!!! You can also buy your own domain name (and get one associated with location) and use it with Google! This gives you high placement in the search engines.
Google ranks your page by how many links there are to it!
[ Use a lot of internet resources: linked in, msn, Google and Yahoo business section, have a Face book and MySpace page.
[ Join a business network – meet with other business professionals and cross refer. They will refer to you, you will refer to them. Helped him most at the beginning. Many of the people in the group came to see him when he gave his talk.
[ Herbs: Lots of overhead and space. He just uses Evergreen Herbs. Easy to sell because you can tell them he’s a pharmacist, checks all of his herbs, quality is pure, very consistent. They are based on classics, but modified for today. Kurt charges a flat $25 per bottle and no one blinks at paying that. Get Chen’s free book – it’s great and helps sell those herbs.
[ Get QuickBooks! Get a patient management software too.
[ Kurt offers a $19 consult only – ½ hour. It’s a good advertising trick. Once you get people talking, listen well. Then they will listen to you. Speak English, not Chinese speak! You totally have to meet them where they are.
[ If you give your cards out, you might want a way to track how well that’s working.
[ Pray. Be positive.
NPI – national provider ID can get same day
DBA – get same day you apply.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program
Linda Fontaine back on Wednesday – how to get $$ to start your business, how to negotiate a lease.
Courtney Connell – has a great spreadsheet for projections. He’s coming in Wednesday too.
Kathy Kerr is her on Monday when we meet next.
This class was restructured to help acupuncture graduates make a living. Something like 30-50% of all graduates make a living doing what they’ve been trained to do. This class is all about the business plan. There’s an outline in Points for Profit. PM 3 is about marketing, so we’re not doing that part in PM2.
Our big grade – 60% of the grade – is a Business Plan.
Why do you need a business plan?
A business plan was traditionally something you put together to get a business loan. Our grads have not had a lot of luck with this. AOMA is working with University Federal Credit to help with this. Nevertheless, a business plan will help every business – this sets goals, helps you stay on target. It has a vision, a mission statement (what you want to give your community), a strategy (specialty focus, who you want to connect with and how, your understanding of athletic needs, blah blah blah), capital budget (money you spend one time) and monthly budget.
For our project: do it like a first year workup with both capital and monthly plus estimated expenses. Project out a “proforma” income and expense statement.
Business plans also define where your practice is and why you are locating it there. Know the demographics, the competition and what the potential market is.
Refer heavily to Points for Profit.
Due date: Monday when we come back from the hiatus. Need to be an electronic copy. It would be good to have a print copy too: something you could hand to potential business partners, investors, banks, etc. We also need to work up a PowerPoint presentation to sell this business plan. This isn’t due on the return Monday but we will do this the last 2 classes.
Due Wednesday:
1st year – projections. Revenue and expenses. See syllabus.
Startup equipment list
Practice Management 2 – Summer 2009
www.CatsTCMNotes.com
Page 1 of 4