5 Tips To Find Your Workplace Balance

The business of building a successful naturopathic practice can be tough.  Providing services to your patients, building new relationships, marketing your practice, managing staff, it’s all demanding of your time. Many of  the practice building activities must happen outside of your standard practice hours.

As naturopathic doctors you are attracted to practice natural medicine because you are intrinsically motivated to make the world a healthier place. In light of this larger goal, it is easy to let your personal needs get lost in the demanding lifestyle of a growing medical practice.

As leaders in the naturopathic world, you owe it to yourself, your family and your staff to build cultures that allow for the appropriate work-life balance. Sadly, many of you learn this the hard way with a life experience that forces you to learn the prioritization of a home life outside of your practice. Unfortunately, for some, a lifetime of precious personal memories with family and friend are lost when this happens.

Establishing a work-life balance requires thoughtful attention on two fronts: Increasing your productivity during your practice hours and protecting personal time away from the office.

TIP  #1 SCHEDULE A NO MEETING DAY

Time spent in scheduled or  unscheduled meetings in the office can kill productivity during a workday. To-do lists tend to grow and the time to complete them shrinks. Give yourself and your staff additional time to complete the duties assigned during the work-day by blocking out a day of the week where no meetings can take place. If you are using a time scheduling program in the office send out recurring n0-meeting request on your calendar so that your staff don’t inadvertently interrupt patient time for something that can wait.

TIP #2 LEARN TO SAY “NO” … OR “NOT RIGHT NOW”

The world is full a great ideas. When a staff member, or even a patient, suggest a new task or way to get something done, evaluate the idea against the priorities you have already set for yourself. If this new “great” idea is going to take time away from patient care, or delay the way you work, the saying “no” might be the most important way you can protect you or your staff’s time. As a leader, the additional work that a new idea that you approve may fall on the shoulders of staff. Keep in mind the workload of your staff when you agree to trying something new in the office.

TIP #3 DEFINE A CONSISTENT TIME THAT YOU WILL LEAVE THE OFFICE

Sometimes this lifestyle change may be mandated by family considerations, or the commute from your office to home. By establishing a consistent time to head home, you are giving yourself time in the evening to live your life. You are also communicating to your staff that you respect their time and it’s OK for them to head home in the evenings as well.

TIP #4 TAKE YOUR VACATION TIME

Although this seems like a no-brainer, in a study completed in 2014, 40% of Americans forfeited vacation time. As a private-practice doctor working in natural medicine where your income is solely based on patient visits, sometimes this seems impossible.  Stop thinking about how much money you will lose while on vacation and create a strategy to improve your patient hours throughout the year to make up for your perceived loss of income while you are out of the office. Once this is implemented, when you take a vacation, you can do it with the confidence that you have covered the perceived lost revenue.

TIP #5 GUARD YOUR TIME AT HOME

One way to accomplish this tip is to establish ground rules for how and when work may be allowed at home. For some it is as easy as committing that from the minute you get home until a set hour, say you arrive home at 6:00 p.m. then until 8:00 p.m. nothing from the practice that you may want to work on at home is done. This basically translates to a two hour work-free zone in your home where you can focus on dinner and family, spending quality time together.

Creating a work-life balance is important. Once you commit to the practice of personal and family time, you can get involved in non-work related hobbies or activities, or even go on a date. Clearly, it is easier said than done, and as many of us are workaholics, it’s hard to stay away from even simple work tasks like checking emails, but make the commitment and you will find your practice will grow and your commitment to a home life will be recognized by family and friends.

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Naturopathic Economics New Website

Naturopathic Economics is building a new website packed full of trending topics, information and how-to articles to assist naturopaths to achieve financial success in their field of practice.  The new integrated business resource site for naturopaths will be live in mid November and is currently linked to more the 4,300 naturopaths nationwide and in Canada.  Until then watch our progress on our Facebook, Twitter or Linked In social media sites.

Edward Phillips
Founder/Chief Executive Officer
Naturopathic Economics

HOW TO BUILD YOUR PATIENT EMAIL LIST

Email has rapidly become one of most effective ways to attract potential new patients and to communicate to existing patients.  Whether using email as tool to provide patients with up to date information about your naturopathic practice, or to deliver more focused medical information it offers rapid delivery at a low cost.  But how do you go about expanding your email list?  And what makes a list effective?

 

The more people you can reach who are genuinely interested in naturopathic medicine the better.   With that said, many naturopaths are routinely disappointed when they try to acquire an email lists expecting big results, and they get little or no new patients from the list.  The reason – these people really don’t have a relationship with your you or your practice, regardless of your practice focus.

 Here are some ways to build your email list with names and addresses that have some relationship with your practice already.

·       Anyone who receives your mailings or printed materials has shown interest in your practice, but you might not have their email address.  Offer them a chance to get up to date information, or your newsletter by email if they will share their email address.  Stress how this provides them low cost information not having to print and pay postage.

·       Are you or your practice on Facebook and Twitter?  Chances are a good number of people who follow you are not on your email list.  Provide them with a link to sign up for your eNewsletter, and program updates, and you will acquire follower email addresses that may lead to new patients.

·       Don’t forget your website.  Anyone who visits your site should find it simple to locate and join your email list.  Sign up forms should be simple and easy to find.

·       If you hold an event, or participate in an event, create a give-away that lets people know that they will be informed by email if they are a winner.  You can get addresses of people coming to your event for as little as the cost of an inexpensive give-away, which could translate into new patients. 

·       Whenever you are attending a meeting, such as Rotary, Kiwanis, etc., get as many business cards from attendees as possible.  This is a simple way to grow your email list with people who have met you. 

With a little effort you can expand your naturopathic practice’s reach to a broader audience of people who are interested in your practice focus and who want to return to you for continued care, or become a new patient.  Growing an email list requires a little strategy, but the rewards can far outweigh the effort. 

If you would like low-cost assistance with your email or social media marketing email naturoeconomics@gmail.com or call Edward Phillips at 480-335-7180.

2012 Economic Survey

Naturopathic Economics is preparing to distribute the 2012 Naturopathic Economic Survey in July 2012. The survey is an objective evaluation of what is working for naturopathic physicians across the nation to build successful medical practices.  The results of the survey will be available on the new Naturopathic Economics website in August 2012.  For more information or to suggest a question for the upcoming survey visit our new website by clicking here.

Marketing in 2012

For the Naturopathic physician, having a business plan is integral to success, however over the past few months I have had numerous requests regarding marketing the professional practice to attract and retain patients.  In response to these inquiries, I will be alternating between business plan development and marketing strategy over the next three months.  The marketing strategy will focus on an integrated approach to reach out to prospective patients, and retain current patients using emails, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter posts all to increase your exposure.  The first marketing post will be January 12.

Essential Elements in the Naturopathic Business Plan

The opening, body and attachments of your Naturopathic business plan need not be seen as daunting challenges, but opportunities to fine tune your vision and mission as a healthcare provider.

The most common business plan structure is developed from short general statements or summaries to more detailed explanations.  With this in mind, the executive summary and the business descriptions are both brief overviews of your professional practice.  The body of your business plan will be comprised of more detailed and in-depth descriptions of the fundamental elements of your private practice - the who, how, what and where of your Naturopathic practice. 

At this point I take a departure from the standard format and urge you to focus also on the why you are developing a naturopathic practice.  People, or more specifically your investors, or future patients are more interested in "why" you chose to practice in the field of naturopathic medicine than any other reason.  It is your passion for your chosen profession that will enfluence more people than where or how you practice.

The attachements at the end will include the most detailed information - financial projections and data, professional resumes, licensure verifications, and professional organization memberships.

Here is the typical structure for your professional practice business plan:

• Cover page
• Executive summary
• Professional practice description
• Practice environment analysis
• Naturopathic profession background
• Competition analysis
• Demographic/market analysis
• Practice marketing plan
• Practice operations plan
• Management summary
• Financial plan
• Attachments, licenses, organization affiliations

Not all professional business plans will follow the model exactly.  Your plan may combine elements, add new sections, and eliminate others, but the critical information for the audience you will be sharing the plan with must be included.

NEXT POST:  The Cover Page, Table of Contents, and Executive Summary

How to Insure Your Naturopathic Practice Success

Naturopaths completing their education launch into the world of private practice armed with extraordinary medical skills.  Yet, year after year we hear of friends and colleagues struggling to succeed or leaving practice entirely.  What is the single leading factor to naturopaths not achieving their vision of success - lack of a clearly defined business plan - and monitoring it year after year.

Ugh - business you say!  Let's be frank, as a naturopathic physician you are engaged in the business enterprise of medicine as a health care provider - period.  Unless you have found the fountain of youth and your patients are crying from the mountain tops about your discovery, success is going to be built on clearly defining goals, strategies to reach those goals, and monitoring successes and failure in your business to make adjustments.

Every naturopathic practice, or major project in your practice needs a business plan.  Just like you would not begin treating a patient without a treatment plan, why are you trying to run a business without a business plan. Your business plan is your practice road map to success.  It helps you navigate through your unique competitive environment.

Over the course of the next six posts we will explore how to create a workable business plan - not a volume of scholarly work to be put on the shelf and admired, but a usable tool to insure your future as a competent and successful naturopathic doctor.

NEXT POST - General Format and Presentation

If you would like to discuss how your practice is performing, or have a question to develop your plan, please email to naturoeconomics@gmail.com

Eight Areas of Business You Must Understand to Run a Practice

Since launching Naturopathic Economics I have had numerous inquiries about what are the key areas a naturopath must understand to build a solid practice.  Over the next couple of months I will go into these areas in some depth to help the new naturopathic physician as well as the seasoned veteran.  So what are the eight areas we will learn about?  Here they are in order:

1.  Applying an easy system of measurable goals
2.  How to solve problems by developing your decision making process
3.  Building an office staff you can lean on and other personnel issues
4.  Establishing harmony in your practice allowing it to grow and prosper
5.  Five proven concepts to create your personalized advertising program
6.  How to write your own advertising copy using eight proven rules
7.  How to utilize office statistics to make sound management decisons by following simple guidelines
8.  Developing simple charts to give you advance notice of problems affecting the future of your practice

As we go through this mini-course in practice development and management, feel free to contact me with any questions you might have.  Just email to naturoeconomics@gmail.com .  You can also follow helpfull hints at my Twitter http://twitter.com/naturoecon/

"Dreams are the seeds of reality"

What's All The Twitter About

Micro-blogging, Twitter, is more popular every day and consequently it has become one of the biggest platforms on the web. This means there is a whole new emerging market of potential patients just waiting to be networked. A great opportunity indeed to build a naturopathic practice!

For those a bit unfamiliar with micro blogging and more importantly Twitter, let me explain a bit about how it works. Twitter is basically a service that allows you to update your status with short messages, of up to 140 characters. What makes it so special is that it allows users to befriend each other; in Twitter this is called “following.” Whenever you’re following somebody on Twitter you’ll be able to instantly receive their updates and keep up to date with their status. You can follow Naturopathic Economics on Twitter with our Naturoecon username.  Twitter also provides mobility allowing you to update your status via your web page, IM, mobile phone, blackberry or various other third party applications.

It’s been widely proven that Twitter can be easily used as a promotional tool, to pitch your content, services and products. This is done by broadcasting your message, although short, to your followers. Here are a few reasons why Twitter can become an essential tool to deliver your professional practice message to your patients and friends.

1. Practice Traffic. Although at first glance it might seem like twitter isn’t capable of directing any respectable amount of traffic, truth is, if used properly, it can provide your blog or webpage with quite a “few” new visitors. You can send traffic by entering your blog’s url in your Twitter profile or by twitting one of your post’s url.
2. Practice Branding. Just like any other social network, twitter can be used as a powerful tool to build your naturopathic brand and raise awareness. The thing about twitter branding is that it’s a lot more personal, probably thanks to it’s IM like environment, helping you to thin the line between you and your readers.
3. Promote  Your content. A lot of doctors realizing the huge potential Twitter possess leveraging their content, have begun to publicize and promote their blog posts or web pages on Twitter. This means they post their post url, along with a short description so that their followers can vote them. A nifty little twitter tool available is TwitterFeed, a great twitter application that automatically posts your latest blog titles, along with the respective url of course, without any interference from your behalf.
4. Latest News in Naturopathic Medicine. Because Twitter is so instant and spontaneous you can now find out about the latest naturopathic news in any particular field of activity you’re following, within minutes of the actual event. If you thought RSS feeds are a good way of keeping up with news and new content, wait till you try twitter.
5. Correct Misinformation About Naturopathic Medicine.   Your patients are keenly aware of changing trends and the never ending studies which purport to debunk naturopathic medicine.  Through Twitter you can head off misinformation directly to your patients and followers quickly and professionally referencing correct information you have posted on you blog or website.
6. Networking. Twitter is a great way to get to know new patients and like minded individuals, that share your same passions and area of expertise. Following them truly is a pleasure. This way you can see what your fellow peers are up to, open up to mutual promotional work and build future business relationships.
7. Practice Marketing. As it’s the case with most social media services, you can use Twitter to market and pitch your practice, services and products. However Twitter won’t directly help you market your content, but rather indirectly by helping build your brand name and authority. After you’ve established yourself as an authority to your audience, sales will follow as well.
8. It’s Viral. Anything that spreads quickly and easily across a community is a great social service.  Twitter works in a word of mouth kind of way. You as user may twit about something important, your followers will then take the story to their followers and so on.
9. New Video Feature. Twitter has now launched a new feature allowing you to post videos with your Twitter.  This is very exciting allowing you to provide a video message directly to your patients with your Twitter. You can highlight new treatments you are offering, special discounts on products, or general information in a much more personal manner.  All it takes is a Flip camera and a Twitter account.

There’s something special about Twitter that makes it fun. It’s that kind of fun you find in great social networking and Twitter has plenty of it.  If you are new to Twitter I recommend "Sams Teach Yourself Twitter in 10 Minutes."  It's a simple read and walks you through all of the steps to get started.

Domain Names - How to Get Them Inexpensively

As a naturopath beginning a new practice or wanting to expand your practice awareness, how do you jump on the internet highway.  Domains are where it all starts on the World Wide Web.  A unique name paired with domain name extensions like .COM, .NET., .ORG,.BIZ, and most recently .CO, is the first step to carving out a unique space in the virtual world.  These domains are a strong element in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and brand awareness strategy for your practice.

How you choose your domain name extension and the concept for a unique yet identifiable domain name must be taken seriously.  Domain extensions offer alternatives for creating and protecting domain names.  For example the new extension .CO can represent; company, community, or collaboration.  Think carefully before launching your domain name or names.  That's right I said names.  I recommend acquiring more than one name extension when you purchase a domain name thus protecting your unique identity in several of the extension communities.  But how do you afford acquiring one inexpensive name or names.  I personally recommend 1&1 Domain Names .  Domains purchased from 1&1 are as inexpensive as 99 cents.  That's right 99 cents!

So if you are looking to for a new domain name, or want to expand your domain names I recommend clicking on this link 1&1 Domain Names to check out their rates.  They also offer very inexpensive web hosting should you want to transfer your domain name and save even more.

NEXT WEEK:  What's All The Twitter About

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Have a question send it to naturoeconomics@gmail.com we answer your question as quickly as we can, however due to the number of questions we ask you have patience as we answer all questions in the order they are received.

7 Tips to Merge Into the Social Networking Highway

Social networking is all the buzz. If you don't have a Blog and an account on  Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, or the latest social networking fad you're considered out of date.  For the naturopath launching a new practice, or the seasoned naturopath wanting to grow their practice, the prudent use of these tools can help build a practice.  Social networking tools help to share information with your patients about yourself, your practice, or general health care tips that can become viral on the internet spreading the good word about what you do.  One of the most powerfull tools a naturopath can use is the Blog.  That't right the Blog, not the web page.  Here are some simple tips from one of my favorite books "Crush It."  to help you get started blogging.

1.  What is your passion - what do you want to tell the world about on your blog?
2.  Make sure you have several ideas for posting ready to go - why you are writing the blog, tips on health care, new treatments, your personal philosophy, etc.
3.  Buy a user name .com, .net, .biz. (More on inexpensive - Cheaper than Go-Daddy domain purchase in the next blog)
4.  Begin blogging.  That's right.  You can begin blogging within 10 minutes of setting up your site.
4. Sign up for Twitter or Facebook if you haven't already.
5. Sign up for Ping.fm and select all of the platforms to which you want to distribute your message.
6. Be consistent in your blog posts, but don't overdo it. Posting every other week when you first start is fine, then once a week after you have built a following.
7. Ask patients for their email addresses so you can notify them when you post.  This is critical to growing your following.

These simple tips should get you started.  I recommend "Crush It". for a simple read on how these things interact to grow any business successfully. 

Previous Tips and Tricks
Save money and increase profits by purchasing ink and toner at up to 70% off of the shelf price http://www.econtonerandink.com/

1 comments:

Bill Bond said...

IMO, the number one indicator of how successful and ND will be is the return rate after an initial consultation, that is, the percentage of patients that return for a follow up visit after the initial consultation. Very successful NDs have a return rate of @75%-80% and those who cannot sustain a practice tend to have return rates of about 20%-30%. Most NDs fall somewhere in between. Factors such as bedside manner and you skill as a physician are obvious major factors, but the three overlooked factors I see are: 1. Always scheduling follow up visits after an initial consultation. Some NDs think patients will just magically know when they need a follow up. More often, they will just move on to trying something else, especially if what you prescribe is not working as recommended. 2. Have an office that looks like a medical office, not a chiropractors, an acupuncturists, a homeopaths or a massage therapists. 3. Wear a lab coat during initial consultations. I know this is not popular in the ND world but the reality is that people will judge your capabilities and skill level by your attire, especially during an initial consultation, when they are first getting to know you. A labcoat conveys physician while nice attire conveys non-physician and patients will treat you, trust you and pay you accordingly.

Maximizing Profits - Tip 1

Many Naturopaths have asked "How can I make more money in my practice?"  Aside from growing your practice patient base, one way is to reduce overhead.  In coming posts to this site I will share tips and tricks to reduce your overhead resulting in increased profits.

Here is one way to reduce your costs.  If you are like me the cost of toner is always troubling, but a vital part of doing business.  Now you can save up to 70% on the cost of toner and ink replacements for your laser or ink jet printers.  Just think about it.  Many toner cartridges cost as much as $100 or more, but you can get yours for as low as $30 and these are not the cheap "drill and fill" cartridges we see advertised.

We have all seen the ads or received emails offering "toner deals".  Naturopathic Economics researched this aspect of cost savings and found http://www.econtonerandink.com/  .  This online site offers virtually every toner or ink cartridge ever made.  Each cartridge comes with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. The company provides more the 80,000 cartridges each year to large businesses such as health insurance providers, and other major corporations.  You can now take advantage of these savings by simply going to http://www.econtonerandink.com/ selecting your toner cartridge and placing your order.

Let the savings begin and your profit margin increase.