You know I love marketing and I sing the praises of how marketing will bring your clients! and money! and free time you never knew you had! All true. There also seem to be about 100 other people out there also telling you how to market your practice. I know some of these folks personally and they know their stuff. But most of them won’t tell you the nitty gritty ,down and dirty insider secrets that I’m about to tell you now because they have filters and are appropriate in polite company and I just say stuff that comes to mind (because it’s my blog and I can do that).…
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Health Care Practice Success: It’s Not About the Marketing
You hear a lot about marketing a health care practice. You read this blog to get insights, tips and strategies about how to build a profitable practice. But, if we’re being honest, attracting and retaining clients who are invested in getting better and willing and able to pay you for your expertise is about much more than marketing. You can market well, understand all the formula’s, strategies and “secrets” to an effective marketing campaign and still come up short – way short – of your financial goals. The truth is there needs to be a solid vision, mission and reason for your practice to exist and a consistent message you…
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What to Do When You’re Scared Sh**less About Building Your Business
Fear is underrated. All the great business gurus tell us to blast through fear. Sure, we need to figure out how to manage it and keep going, but sometimes you’re just scared sh**less and you get stopped in your tracks. And I think that is perfectly OK. When I started my private practice I was scared. Scared I wouldn’t be able to find any clients. Scared I wouldn’t do a good job. Scared I’d make no money, go broke, have to sell my house. Really so scared I would FAIL. So for a long time I avoided the scared and worked for others. It was safe, I had a paycheck,…
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Breaking the Scarcity Mindset: How to Have All the Clients (and Money) You Want
Think of a time you wanted to purchase something that was important to you and instead of feeling good about buying it, you felt stressed and disappointed that you could not afford it financially. Maybe it was a vacation with your family, or possibly it was a product or course to help you grow you practice. Something you really wanted, but couldn’t have because you felt you didn’t have the money. Do you remember that feeling of disappointment and frustration that your dreams could not become reality because the “money’s just not there?” Let’s work on making that feeling go away. If you come from a scarcity mindset, you focus…
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The Cure for Health Care “Bad Attitude”
I just went over to the health care blog, KevinMD.com and am now in a bad mood. Why? Because when I read the comments over there I get slimed by negative comments and cynicism. Check out the comments on this post (written by yours truly). Quick summary, I wrote a piece about my bad experience with the administrative staff at my primary care doctor’s office. It was a frustrating experience and I wanted to share with other doctors the business lessons inherent in this customer service experience. However, some of the comments I received on the post were just weird (or “off topic” as we say in social skills group).…
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Social Media for Therapists:Webinar
A few weeks ago I did a webinar with Corey Quinn of MyTheraistMatch.com called, Ethical and Effective Social Media Marketing for Therapists Some of you asked for a link to the recording, so I’m sharing it here. Please let me know your thoughts on the webinar when you are done watching it.
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Four Steps to Your Next Generation Health Care Practice
Health care is changing at lighting speed. If you don’t know this, or worse, don’t accept it you’re doomed. No. Really. It’s change or close shop. Whether you like it or not, health care reform is going to change the way we practice from now on. Many physicians are choosing to work for large group practices to buffer themselves from directly dealing with change. Mental health providers could do the same, I suppose. But is that what you want for your career? Do you want to work for someone else for a Relative Value Unit (whatever those are)? How about your patients and clients? Do you think they would prefer…
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How to Do Good Work and Have a Life
This morning my son, AJ jumped out of bed at 6:00 AM: “It’s my first day on the school bus AND I’m 7 now!!” Two huge milestones all in one day! AJ walked up those school bus stairs with his backpack firmly on his shoulders, never looking back as he found a friend to sit with and chat on the long 40 minute ride to school. I worked from my home office all day, content with the quiet, but thinking of him often. By late afternoon I was ready for him to come bounding into the house, ready for his snack and all of our birthday plans of buying a…
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Health Care Social Media: Let’s DO IT Already!
Tomorrow I’m heading into Boston for Jeff Pulver’s 140Conf (stands for 140 Character Conference), an all day conference about using Twitter and the emerging real time internet to influence business. I’m particularly excited to hear about Real Time Education and a panel talk about Social Health. I have friends I’ve met on line and IRL (in real life) attending and it should be a fun and informative day. Let me just add that I’m able to attend because this conference is local and affordable (less than $150). The speakers are folks who do social media every day to work better, smarter and do good things for their communities. Contrast this…
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How Private Practice is NOTHING Like Graduate School
Many therapists and health care professionals lament that their graduate program didn’t teach them about the business side of practice. I often hear, “No one told me it would be this hard to start a practice/ find clients/deal with managed care!” Right. And no one is going to start telling the students of today those things either because: Most professors aren’t in private practice (or one that pays all their bills – they get a check from the university) so they have no idea about these issues. They are not a business school, and as such, don’t teach business strategies. They don’t want to spread the word on these difficulties…
