If you have yet to get your website up, or if you’re finding that traffic to your site is slow, I have a simple strategy for choosing a domain name for a wellness practice: Try to grab a domain that combines your city/town or county and your modality. If you live in or very near (less than a 30 minute drive) a city or large town, use that name: brooklynrolfing.com, austinmassagetherapy.com, columbusacupuncture.com, etc. If you’re in a smaller town, try using your county’s name, or any other name that people use to signify your local area: buckscountyshiatsu.com, fingerlakeshomeopathy.com, etc. These are likely to be the words people will be typing in to the search engines to find you. Scoring this domain will get your practice higher in the search results, and will also establish your business as an authority in your area.

If you already have a different domain name, or you want to use a more creative business name, no problem. You can still buy the location based name (provided it’s available) and route traffic directly to your current website. This way, if someone types in oaklandnaturopathy.com, they’ll still be sent to your website. I know the phone support at Go Daddy can help you to set this up on your own if you buy your domain from them. Domains In Seconds is another one to try.

One last parting word of domain advice: stick to the .com. If you’re desperate and have to go the .net route, so be it. However, always try to come up with a .com that’s available. Somehow the .com is still sticking as a signifier that a business is credible.

Now go get those domains before someone else does!

By Honora Wolfe of Blue Poppy Enterprises

If we want to do well in business even in times of a poor economy, we must first understand that it does absolutely no good to complain to people about tough times. When we complain about how bad business is, people may sympathize but cannot do anything to help us and, more disastrously, our brain and the universe gets the message we just sent and responds accordingly. So, instead of complaining to colleagues, clients, or even to yourself, get busy! Chances are the untapped profit in your existing customer relationships is much bigger than any economic downturn. You just have to work creatively to find better ways to tap into those relationships. Below are several ideas to help us all get through difficult financial times. Not every idea will resonate with every practitioner who reads this. Some won’t pertain to you. However, if you implement one, two, or three of the ideas that are relevant to your practice, I can almost guarantee that business will improve.

1. Call your patients, especially those that have not been in for a while. This may sound ridiculously simple, but I find that few practitioners do it, usually because it feels scary. However, I say, would you rather have butterflies in your stomach, or would you prefer to go out of business? So write yourself a script to use so that you don’t become tongue-tied. Ask how they are since they last came in. Ask if they are having any stress-related symptoms because of the economic situation. Tell them that you know times are tough and you have several treatment plans to save them money if they want to come in to see you (package deals, family discounts, a free birthday treatment, ½ price treatments for anyone who has lost their job, deferred payment plans, etc.) If you don’t have any clients for an afternoon, you can sit and bite your fingernails, or try to make one or two more appointments.

2. Ask for referrals. For those patients who are coming in, create incentives for them to send a friend or family member. An incentive could be one free treatment, two tickets to a movie, or a nice chocolate bar. Whatever you do to show your gratitude (depending upon the legal limitations that you may have) you will get more referrals from patients if you ask for them than if you don’t. Put up a sign that says “My business thrives from your referrals. They are the highest compliment you can give me.”

3. Do a real budget if you don’t already have one. What expenses are fixed and which ones are discretionary? What supplier contracts could be renegotiated? This includes credit card interest rates, phone rates and plans, possibly your rent, and every other vendor from whom you purchase anything. What other ways could you cut expenses without sacrificing good service? One practitioner I know changed her schedule to three 12-hour days and rented out her space two days per week to someone else. She saves on commuting expenses as well as rent, and her patient population responded well to the night hours.

4. Collect on old accounts. If anyone owes you money, try to get it. Negotiate a payment plan with them even if they can only pay 5 quid per week.

5. Develop new relationships. If you have time on your hands, look for a useful volunteer opportunity that will connect you to as many people as possible in your community. This could be coaching a girls football team, the local hospital auxiliary fundraising committee, a community food-share organization, a 10K race to raise funds for breast cancer. The possibilities are endless, but should be related to the type of patient that you want to attract. If the work is event-specific, when it is over send out a thank you card to everyone you worked with that includes your business card and tells them that you don’t know if they might ever need your services, but you’d be happy to speak to them if they are ever in need of healthcare.

6. Create a new service. What portion of the possible market are you not serving? Could you take a class, read a book, or somehow get up to speed in a new market? For example, if you treat women, remember that a mother will go to almost any lengths to help a sick child. Pediatrics might be a good way to expand. Or, if you want to go for a more upscale market, aesthetic acupuncture (facelifts) can be a great direction to go. You can even market this service as being far less than going under the knife!

7. Sharpen you skills. Take a survey of your treatments over the last year to determine how many of your patient interactions were as successful as you would want. Look at this as honestly as you can stand. Could you do better? Then think about when was the last time your really studied the medicine? When was the last time you read a book on Chinese medicine. We must never assume we know everything we need to know. Decide to get better at one thing…just one thing, and find the resources to do that. You’ll be surprised at how the universe will respond.

8. Rededicate yourself to concentrating on giving incomparable service. People recognize excellence when they see it. I know one successful acupuncturist whose business has grown in the last few months. Her secret to success is that every patient she sees absolutely knows, every time, that she is completely and totally there for them every minute. No distractions, no self-centeredness, no excuses. She dedicates every minute when there is no patient to studying the medicine. She is an extremely competent practitioner and her focus is always on her patients and the medicine, period.

9. Rethink your marketing plan. Do you even have a marketing plan? If not, or if you have not thought about this in some time, find ways to do outreach that cost you little or nothing. For example, look in the local paper’s community news section to find every organization that is having a meeting in the coming week. Contact them and offer to give a free lecture at an upcoming meeting. Find a hook that relates to their interests. For example, a cycling club could be interested in improving recovery times from races or other events; a book club could be interested in improved eyesight. Fibromyalgia, diabetes, heart disease, or other-disease support groups are also obvious choices. You might also volunteer as a local radio health-talk-show host.

10. If you don’t like to do public speaking, for whom can you write articles? Local group newsletters and monthly publications, company intra-net newsletters, and newsletters for any of your patients clubs, groups, and associations are obvious places to start. (Do your patients know you’d be happy to write articles about Chinese medicine for their organization, club, or company’s newsletters?) Of course an email newsletter to all your own patients is cheap, fast, and easy to do. It only needs to be a few hundred words on a seasonal or “in-the-news” topic and at the same time you can announce special offers, classes, up-dates on recent classes that you took or new services you are offering. And, it’s a way to keep you in your patient’s mind.

11. Recreate a fantastic intake procedure that builds your credibility. Use charts to locate pain and discuss how acupuncture can treat it. Show new patients how pain in one area is connected to other parts of the body. A picture is worth a thousand words and, used well, they can make you look really smart and skilled.

12. On calls from prospective patients tell the patient something like, “Why don’t you come in for a free consult and we’ll discuss your problem. Then I’ll let you know if I can help you. If I don’t think I can be of help, I’ll try to make some suggestions for you. If I can, we’ll talk about what the treatment would be like and you can decide if this the type of care you wish to pursue.”

These few sentences do a lot:
• Convince the person to come in without hard selling.
• Establish a basis of trust - tell them the truth, even if it’s that acupuncture isn’t for them.
• Avoid the “When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail” syndrome.
• Establish yourself as an authority in their minds.

13. To elaborate on this, go through every aspect of how your office operates.
• Does your phone get answered promptly and intelligently with each and every call? Have a friend call and ask a few questions of your front desk staff and give you feedback on their experience.
• Is your paperwork clean and easy to understand?
• Is your first appointment with each patient well planned?
• Is your front desk staff well trained?
• Are your directions to the office easy to follow?
• Is your history taking and physical exam competent and lovingly approached without taking all day?
• Are your explanations of acupuncture and Chinese medicine clear, understandable and well rehearsed?
• Do you have good information to send home with new patients that help you “close the deal” on becoming your patient?

14. Don’t panic. Remember that a recession is a slow down, not a stop sign. If you are anxiety-ridden, you cannot give the best quality care and you will make yourself sick as well! Remember the wise words of the Dalai Lama, which go something like this: “Worry does not help anything. If you can do something about a problem, then do it and don’t worry. If you cannot do anything about a problem, then there is no point in worrying.” In our case, there are, absolutely, things we can do about our problem. So make a list of the things you can do and, to quote the Nike advertisements, “just do it.” No excuses, no delays, no whining.

15. Also, please know that the suggestions I have listed here are not exhaustive. Go to websites like Entrepreneur.com; sign up for marketing e-newsletters; talk to other practitioners about how you all might help each other and what marketing you could do as a group, since several heads are always better than one.

My main point here is that, while you cannot control the economy or your competition, you can control both your internal and external response to the economy. Start with your attitude by consciously making the decision to refuse to participate in a recession. Then work at developing your networking skills, reviewing your office systems and operations, revising your marketing plan, and updating your skills to keep your business as strong as possible. You don’t have to allow a bad economy be your excuse for failure. Instead, make it your opportunity to succeed. While others are looking at the problems, looking for opportunities will not only get through a bad economy but may allow you to prosper.

I wish everyone who reads this article many blessings for success. If you have come up with an idea that helps you survive and thrive in this difficult time, please share it with me to pass along to other practitioners and students. Thanks for reading.

Honora Lee Wolfe, Dipl.Ac, has owned or operated four different businesses since 1976 and has been practicing acupuncture since 1988. She is the author of Points for Profit: The Essential Guide to Practice Success for Acupuncturists. She teaches classes throughout the US and Europe. You can email her at honora@bluepoppy.com.

I walked by a flyer advertising a class today that read, “How To Be  A Business Success- Without Even Trying!”

Nein. It ain’t going to happen. This flyer was made by a bottom-feeder who’s hoping to profit from the broke, desperate, and lazy. He or she won’t succeed. People are too smart to keep coming back for a class that doesn’t deliver on its promise- that being the aforementioned effortless success.

In order to succeed, you must try. Effort is the key ingredient. So put your whole heart into your practice and really, truly, try. If you can lean into it and embrace the effort involved, you will succeed. And that’s the truth.

If you’re reading this blog, my guess is that your practice is a bit quieter than you would like. Want to know the only way to build your practice? Action. What do you need in order for action to occur? The will to do it, and the time to do it. That’s all. If you’re passionate about what you do, then you can summon the will to partake in practice building activities. If you can’t summon the will to do this, you may want to save yourself the angst and rethink your career sooner rather than later.

 The time issue can be a bit more slippery. We’re all time poor these days, so how do we find the time to grow the practice we see in our mind’s eye? First, I recommend you spend a week keeping a diligent time log. Keep a small notebook with you- or even just a piece of paper (or an iphone for the tech inclined)- and jot down how you spend every hour of your day. Be unflinchingly honest. How many hours did you really spend watching TV? How many hours went by surfing the web? I can assure you, after a week of doing this honestly, you will be shocked by the amount of time that slips by while unconsciously engaged in unproductive habits. It’s not that I’m not a fan of the occasional unproductive habit (if I don’t see 30 Rock and Flight of the Conchords every week I get a bit disgruntled), but the issue is bringing consciousness to the equation. When you know you’re making the choice between the practice of your dreams and watching the same Simpsons rerun for the 15th time, it’s easier to turn off the TV and commit to your goals.

The second thing I recommend is to get yourself a copy of Leo Babuta’s book The Power of Less (and check out his blog Zen Habits). So many books on organization make the act of organizing your life an uber-complicated mess full of color coding and elaborate filing practices. It’s counterproductive. Babuta takes an excellent approach of clearing time clutter without replacing it with new, pointless minutiae. By doing this, his process truly works to move you closer to your goals without it feeling like an uphill slog. I first read this book about 6 weeks ago, and it’s already had a dramatic impact.

I’ve been talking with a lot of practitioners lately who are asking that most essential of questions- how do I get started? I’m hearing this both from newbies just out of school, and from those of you who already have a practice going, but need more exposure due to the lagging economy. I’m a big believer that there is no formulaic way to grow a practice- it is truly something that should fit with your strengths and personality. That said, there are also a couple of insta-visibility tactics anyone can benefit from. If I was to start from scratch again (and I may be, stay tuned…) this is how I would kick things off.

Website: First things first, if you don’t have a site for your practice, hop to it and get yourself one. You can read about how to do it for free here and here. Other quick, cheap, and successful ways to go can be found at The Holistic Alliance, Technology Therapy (they built my site and they’re a lovely team), and there’s always someone talented who is willing to do your bidding at Elance.

PPC ads (or Pay-Per-Click): Now that you have a website, you’ve gotta get some eyeballs on it. Unless you know you’re in the minority in your location, you’re not likely to hop right to the top of the search results when someone does a Google search for your area of expertise. For example, I happened to be the only Rolfer in Brooklyn, NY for a good long while, so when someone typed in “Rolfing Brooklyn” I popped right up. On the other hand, if you’re one of a thousand massage therapists in Boulder, CO, you might not be so lucky and could wind up on page 8 of the search engine results. When was the last time you even checked page 2 of the results? To get your practice to show up first, you have to pay to play. However, it can be very cost effective, especially with a practice tied to a local area. Learn all about how to get started here.

Yelp: One last item of online practice building. Head straight to Yelp and set up a business profile. Yelp is an online review site, and many people search for all their local services via this site. You can learn how to set up your business profile on Yelp here. Once you’ve got it up and running, tend to it carefully by asking your happy clients to post a review about you. Remember to make it easy for them by sending them a link to your Yelp profile via email with a friendly reminder to post. If they have to hunt and search, it’ll never happen.

Community outreach: So you’ve got a pretty good jumpstart in cyberspace. The tangible world is still one of the best places to grow a local practice, and I highly recommend getting cozy with your local community. Brainstorm about all the businesses in your area with whom you could collaborate with. Think of places where you can both benefit from the exchange. Always approach reaching out to people with the question, “what can I do for them?” on the top of your mind. Can you cross-refer with someone? Cross promote with a ‘buy my service, get a discount on theirs’ offer or vice versa? Set up an event in which you both get more exposure? Even the straightforward act of gathering a group of other local wellness business owners for a practice-building buddies support group (otherwise known as a networking group) can reap huge rewards. Reach out and see if you can’t all thrive from the connection! You can gather more ideas here.

If you give these a shot, let me know how it goes, I want to hear how you’re all doing!

These are tough times for those of us in private practice. It’s been months of the doomsday bells ringing non-stop about the recession, and everyone’s a little scared. People who are scared don’t spend money, and I think we’re all seeing the well dry up at least a little bit.

Tough times exist in order to call us to raise our games. If you have empty spots in your appointment book, fill those slots with practice building, not moping. I know watching our economy unravel can be unnerving, to say the least. I recommend you foster a feeling of growth and potential by tending carefully and lovingly to your own personal economy. We can only work on what we have ownership of, so let’s take this time to sow the seeds of success. You may start to work on getting your practice out there and be rewarded immediately with a new influx of clients, or you may spend a long time planting those seeds and waiting for people to show up. Don’t get ahead of yourself waiting for the result of your efforts, just get to work tending that garden. If you’re passionate about your practice, you’ll succeed as long as you’re willing to put in the work. In Sakyong Mipham’s book, Ruling Your World,  he talks about the value of exertion by saying, “We can make almost any hill flat with exertion, because we’re excited to run up it. By contrast, without exertion, even walking down a flat road is difficult. There are differences in elevation, of course, but the real difference lies not in the road but in our mind. Subconciously we know we’re on the wrong path. Lack of exertion- and lack of joy- is laziness. Laziness reduces the possiblity of bringing about happiness. Exertion liberates us from laziness, and takes us toward joy.”  It’s make it or break it time, so start exerting yourself and increase your potential for joy and success!