This post is part of a series of posts chronicling my experiences starting my practice from scratch (again) in a brand new city. To catch up on the earlier posts, you can find them here:
Starting from Scratch (again)
How to Become a (Local) Rockstar
Office Space and Dr. Evil
Good Design. Get Some.
I Am Not a Robot
Practicing Radical Generosity
Whew. What is it with me and the long posts lately? If you want to skim, you can just browse among the headers you have a question about: Website, Business Cards, Office Space, Legal, and Practice Building Know-How.
This whole starting a new practice thing costs money. Between licensure, office space, a website, business cards, and the rest of the whole deal the end result is that you’re spending a bundle of money for a while. You’re launching a business (even if we holistic health types shudder at calling it a business) so it’s natural that there will be some up front expenses, but as with launching any business (ha! I used the B word again!) it’s best to keep the upfront costs and overhead lean. Not so lean that the important things are scrapped, but certainly not overdone so that you’re starting out with a bundle of debt.
I happen to be on a spectacularly tight budget these days (I’m setting aside money for big upgrades to The Well Practice, raising my sweet boy, and paying off an old business loan- hence my warning about not starting off with debt). And so with that, I present to you my list of stellar cheapies that will help you save money and have all the important pieces ready to go and looking lovely.
* Evenif you’re not kicking off a brand new practice, this list will help you cut costs as you grow, and also just happens to be a list some of my favorite services out there for small business owners.
Website
Hold on to your seats. Lecture mode is bubbling up within me. I’ll keep it brief: don’t be that person who decides to save money by launching a practice without a website. Build the website first. Without a website in this world, you have no credibility. Without credibility you have a veeeeeeeerrrrrry difficult time building a practice. I’ve seen lots of folks trapped in the “I’ll get a website when my practice is busy enough to pay for one” spiral of doom many times. You won’t have a practice that can pay for anything- rent, groceries, heat, let alone a website- until you have a website. Fortunately, the days of laying out a thousand dollars to get a site up (and this would be considered cheap) are gone. There are a couple of stellar platforms you can use to do it yourself. Lecture rant over and out.
*One side note: I love my web designers and am more than happy to pay them for their services as they provide a ton of insight and expertise to a more complex site build. However, if what you need is a brochure site to let people know you exist, you can definitely go the DIY route with these tools:
- Squarespace: This may be my new favorite find of the year. This is a genius platform for building websites yourself. There are so many businesses out there that promise a platform where you can “build a website in 5 minutes!” and they’re all crap (at least all the ones I’ve investigated). But Squarespace is like this beacon of hope in the DIY website world. It’s easy and highly intuitive to use, requires zero knowledge of code, has a lot of beautiful templates to choose from, and a nice variety of features. I built my New Haven Rolfing site on Squarespace in a couple of hours and it costs me… drumroll please… $14 a month. This is what you’d normally pay in hosting fees alone- and this fee covers it all. I’m in love. Seriously. I’m strongly considering shifting The Well Practice onto their platform and testing out their more robust features- of which they appear to have many. To check out other Squarespace sites, head on over here.
- Wordpress: My second favorite option is Wordpress. It’s primarily what this site runs on. While it’s a blog platform, it’s also very flexible and you can easily create your whole site with it. In other words, static pages like “About my practice” can happen too. If you go the Wordpress route you’ll need to choose a theme. Word on the street is the Thesis theme is the way to go- but feel free to browse around. Thesis will cost you $87, and running on Wordpress with your own domain name, and ad free (if you don’t pay to be ad free, they’ll run ads on your blog, which I’m not a fan of), will cost you $44.94 per year. Still not too shabby for a righteous web platform.
- Domain name: While both Squarespace and Wordpress offer cheap (Squarespace) or free (Wordpress) options to run your site without owning the domain, I recommend against using them. It’s a longer conversation than I’ll have in this post, but the short version is that it doesn’t look very professional, and you’re going to want to own your domain name (the name of your website) anyway. Domains are still cheap, usually $15 or less per year. You can buy them at Network Solutions or Go Daddy (though Go Daddy’s been annoying the hell out of me lately with both the minefield of pointless “extra features” you have to walk through on your way to checkout and Bob Parson’s lame “womanizing is a great marketing model” mindset- just sayin). I recommend trying to get a .com. It may seem silly, but it’s still a signifier to all of us of quality- .net, .biz, or any other incarnation of the .whatever comes off a bit shabby (unless you’re a non-profit or educational association in which case .org and .edu are the expected norm).
Business Cards
Business cards still give us a lot of mileage since most of us work with clients one on one in the tangible world (Shout out to the life coaches! Keep rockin it in cyberspace!). Clients will pass them along to others, and it’s handy to leave stacks of them in related businesses with permission.
When getting the cards together, there are two issues that are going to cost some dough- design and printing.
*For more information on navigating design check out my eariler post Good Design: Get Some.
Design
- Crowdspring: While I haven’t used Crowdspring myself, it does seem like a very nifty idea for getting custom branding done cheaply and easily- and with input from a lot of creative voices, rather than just one.
- Elance: I also didn’t use Elance for my New Haven Rolfing design work, but I have used them for other projects with good results. This is a huge site filled with people who can create a brand for you. The best way to go is to post your project and see who bids on it- otherwise it’s a pretty big sea of portfolios to sift through.
- Friends and colleagues: So if I didn’t use Crowdspring or Elance, who did I get to do my design work? My dear friend Nette Gaastra who was kind enough to help a girl out- and who also happens to be a crazily talented designer. Don’t forget to look in your circle of friends and colleagues- and if you want to keep it super cheap, remember the power of barter. Exchanging one service for another can be fantastic in the early days of your practice when the appointment book isn’t exactly bursting at the seams. Just keep in mind that the designer you approach about barter may be very busy and/or not interested in what you offer. I ended up paying Nette, and since she gave me a very gracious discount because of my friend status, I won’t post it here because the truth is she’ll charge you more than she charged me. What can I say- being together through all the ups and downs of pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing has its perks.
* If you do decide to hire someone to create a custom logo/brand for you remember that you’ll need the logo, a business card design, and a web header to use on your Squarespace or Wordpress site.
Printing
- Overnight Prints: I’ve always used Overnight Prints and have always been happy with their work. It looks professional, the cardstock is heavy, and they have quick turnaround and great customer service. You can also order in small quantities if it helps for cash flow. I decided to do a small order to start and for 100 double-sided, round corner, full color cards I paid $39.96- and that includes shipping. I did run out of those cards mighty quick though- so in retrospect 100 was too conservative an order.
The all in one Solution
- Zazzle: If you don’t want to bother with getting a custom logo and do the whole branding thing, you can always use Zazzle’s templates. Overnight Prints and Vista Print also have templates you can use, but I find Zazzle’s to be the nicest by a wide margin. They have lots of beautiful templates that you can just plug your information into, plus they do all the printing and ship them out to you. I have friends who have been very happy with their Zazzle business cards and they do look gorgeous. The reason why I skipped it was because I wanted my web header and my business card to match- so I got the custom logo.
Office space
If you don’t have any clients yet, and don’t want to fork out some cash for an office rental, there is a good alternative. First, look to share a space with someone else. A practitioner rarely works 7 days a week (and if you do- stop it!), and wellness centers usually have shared rooms in which practitioners alternate days. My office colleagues were gracious enough to accept a temporary pay by the session situation, which will turn into a monthly rental. The bonus of this is that, for now, I only pay when I use the space. In future, I’ll pay a monthly rent like everyone else. Since this is a situation that has to work for everyone involved, here are a couple of pitfalls to avoid for you and for whoever is renting to you:
Pitfalls for them:
- It can be perceived as lose-lose: Depending on their mindset, your paying only per session, and then switching to a monthly rent once it’s cheaper for you can seem like they’re getting the short end of the deal. The main thing that will make the difference is how you utilize the deal. If you dawdle along, safe in your pay-per-session cocoon and don’t really work it to build your practice, then they’re losing money on that space indefinitely. To resolve this, I propose first that you get out there and totally kick ass at practice building so that they see the dollars stacking up quickly. You can also set a time boundary- that they only rent to you per session for three months (or whatever), and then you have to pay the rent on days you use the room. This way they know you’re motivated and that they’re not wasting their generosity on you. Also be sure to clarify that it will be either one or the other. You begin at a per session rate and then transition to a monthly rate. You can’t flip flop between them or resentment will build. There can be no “I’m having a slow month, can I pay you by the session until it picks up?” happening.
Pitfalls for you:
- You can wind up paying out tons of money: Pay-per-session sounds great until your practice takes off and you’re stuck paying 10 times the average office rent. In my last practice in Brooklyn, NY we settled on an indefinite pay-per-session rental. Within 3 months I had a full practice and was paying $2800 a month for the space- which I only used 3 to 4 days per week- dang! Fortunately the owner of the wellness center was gracious enough to realize that that wasn’t sustainable for me and we settled on a much more realistic monthly rent from then on. Also note that it’s almost never workable- or reasonable- for someone to ask for 50% of your sessions. A per session rate of $15 to $35 seems to be the norm.
Legal
Oh there is always more I dotting and T crossing than we anticipate. C’est la vie. Getting the legal stuff set up can feel really intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Here’s my super simple option- and remember, by no stretch of the imagination am I an attorney- so please, take this with a grain of salt, do your own research, and find out what works for you. For me, the easiest thing one can do to protect themselves legally (besides the liability insurance- which you should get- but which varies so much by modality that I won’t get into it here) is to set yourself up as a Limited Liability Corporation. To do this cheaply and easily, head over to Legal Zoom. It will save you a ton of money by bypassing the need for an attorney to draft it. I’ve used them for several things and have always had a great experience.
Practice Building Know-How
Unless you were blessed with a very concientious school, you studied somewhere that- for all their good intentions- totally botched teaching you anything about practice building. I feel your pain (and I’m on a mission to change it). That means you’ll also have the job of figuring out how to get the word out. Fortunately, there are loads of free ways to learn what you need to know.
- Practice Building 101: Shameless plug for my own ebook? Perhaps. But the fact of the matter is it’s free, and I wrote it specifically to help get us all up to speed on spreading the good word.
- Seth’s Blog: Anyone, of any business, anywhere on planet Earth, should read Seth Godin’s blog (and books). He’s my hero. He posts every day, and every day I read it and come away with a new shiny nugget of wisdom. There is much to be learned here.
- The Fluent Self: Havi Brooks’ blog is full of so much goodness. I’m a bit addicted. She talks about all sorts of things, some that are not specifically about growing your thing, but I learn so much from reading her work and following along with her that I think she’s a great resource.
- Chris Guillebeau: Chris is just one of the loveliest people imaginable. And there is so much to learn about getting the word out from reading his work.
- Itty Biz: Naomi Dunford writes this rockin’ blog specifically for businesses with 5 or fewer employees. Since most of us are flying solo, we’re totally her people. I always find myself both crying with laughter and learning boatloads when reading her blog.
Don’t let the list intimidate you- remember, small bites people! Now get out there and spread your healing goodness!
What did I leave out? Please let me know what else you’re grappling with, and share any tips and tricks you have.
In his excellent book, 
