Mindset is the first step to growing your practice. Marketing your practice for growth. Customizing your programs and packages. Knowing your money. Engaging and maintaining your A-team. 

Do not miss these highlights:

01:11 How having the right mindset can keep you going for the long game. 

06:58 Letting people know who you are, what you do, why you do what you do, and having them connect with you before you get in the office is a tremendous benefit for you. 

 07:55 You’ll be getting more patients from the internet itself. If you want to build your practice quickly, if you want to move your practice along that growth path quickly, you need to market it.

09:17 Why you need both an Ala Carte service and a package service. 

10:15 Why understanding how to structure your payment options and understanding how you talk to clients about payment are important.

11:11 It's our responsibility to talk about the benefits and the risks. Offer your clients three options - a low, middle, and a high.

12:46 Your team all has to be willing and able to go after the same goal that you are.

Resources MentionedJoin Us in the FMBI Mastermind Group on Facebook.  You can find the Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/5461914567153276/

What is a sales funnel? How do you build a sales funnel? Why is this important for medical practices to have one? We'll be answering all those questions and more in today's video. Watch now for a rundown of sales funnels for beginners and how to develop a sales funnel strategy.

Do not miss these highlights:

01:02 What is a sales funnel? How it can help grow your business, get you noticed,  and make you an authority in the functional or integrative medicine space

2:39 How to put in place the first step which is awareness, which is sharing your information/content with consumers using writing, short videos, podcasts

06:18 Using the internet as the next piece of your sales funnel

07:06 Whenever you deliver the content, you need to capture something

10:08 Consideration in sales funnel will have you thinking about what are you going to provide them once you have captured their contact information

10:51 3 free informational emails and then 1 ask

13:36 Constantly tweaking that sales funnel so that you can get it so that it's producing without you

14:46 Sales funnel - Intent and Content marketing funnel - what are the difference

16:59 Importance of walking your client through their journey, and what that look through their eyes is huge in how you actually get clients and keep them in your ecosystem so that you don't lose them

Resources Mentioned

Join Us in the FMBI Mastermind Group on Facebook.  You can find the Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/5461914567153276/

Setting boundaries is the key to a successful business. It is necessary to maintain your sanity, personal life, and growing your business. Don't get caught up in shiny object syndrome.

Do not miss these highlights:

01:02 Why we struggle in setting boundaries and why we should set those boundaries

03:28 Sometimes God derails us because we're going in the wrong path

04:22 It's very easy to get pulled away by every little opportunity that comes your way, and if you don't have good boundaries, it's very easy to get pulled everywhere

05:38 Part of being not in the right direction is our own doing and our own fault, because we're not staying true to what we had set up originally

07:23 Make sure you set enough boundaries - Know what your boundaries are - Stick to those boundaries

08:18 If you struggle with boundaries, start with something small

10:11 Your business will surely grow 10 times faster if you stick to that boundary

Resources Mentioned

Join Us in the FMBI Mastermind Group on Facebook.  You can find the Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/5461914567153276/

Have you created a pricing strategy for your business? Spending time planning for pricing structure is key to the success of your business. Don't give up your business if you are changing your strategy think about selling it. 

Do not miss these highlights:

02:00 It's important for you to identify what bucket (ticket) you're going to be in because this is how you attract your ideal client. 

03:56 Nailing your pricing strategy is important - Product pricing strategy determines many different things.

06:25 In our practices we're charging for time. 

08:03 Package prices ideas.

10:19 If you have a team, especially when you start doing higher ticket items, it's best for you to have a ‘Closer’ - somebody else in your team who can talk money and can explain programs to the patients.

13:30 Start thinking about pricing, you need to make sure that you're looking at the pricing structure of what you're selling.

15:45 Just because there are hard times doesn't mean that your practice still can't grow.

16:39 The red flags in pricing that will create problems for you. 

Resources Mentioned

Join Us in the FMBI Mastermind Group on Facebook.  You can find the Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/5461914567153276/

How do you get and stay motivated after being in practice a while? How do you connect with people? How do you learn and grow? Dr. Deb shares key ideas on how to keep yourself motivated. 

Do not miss these highlights:

01:28  It's a challenge for all of us to keep learning, keep expanding our knowledge and get fresh ideas into our practice. 

04:34 Regardless of the size of the business, regardless of how many people you have…we all suffer from the same concerns and problems in our business.

05:53 Recognize that how something presents on the outside is not exactly what's happening on the inside of that practice. 

06:49 If you've been in practice for a while, and you're getting bored, you're getting burnt out, it's time to start finding something that will reignite you, something that will excite you.

09:16 Find a way to connect and learn with other people. 

Resources MentionedJoin Us in the FMBI Mastermind Group on Facebook.  You can find the Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/5461914567153276/

What is accountability? Accountability means being responsible and being able to follow through with what one is supposed to do? In business, accountability is important to grow your practice. But the type of accountability is determined by the leader. What type of leader are you? Ignore and hope, the heavy-handed leader or are you genuine and you share goals and ideas with your team so everyone wins? 

Do not miss these highlights:

Resources Mentioned

Join Us in the FMBI Mastermind Group on Facebook.  You can find the Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/5461914567153276/

Transcript of Episode #36:

0:01
You're listening to the Functional Medicine Business podcast featuring Dr. Deb, one of the most creative functional medicine business practitioners in her industry. She shares the wisdom and knowledge that she has gained over 25 years of functional medicine, a pioneer in functional medicine, scheduling, leadership and Practice Management. Dr. Devin has a wealth of knowledge and he's eager to share to help functional medicine become more productive, and for the practitioners and patients to live better lives. Our podcast shares the good and the bad of our industry. Because Dr. Deb knows the pain you live every day building a functional medicine practice with practical tools of how to manage money, taxes and patient care. She will discuss it all with you.

0:54
Hello, welcome back to Functional MBI podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Deb, and I'm really excited to be with you here today. I hope everyone has done their halftime homework from last week. And I would love to hear where you're at with planning your second half of 2022. So if you haven't shared this in our social media, please do that. I'm excited to see what everyone's working on and would love to help in any way that you may need it. Today's show is about accountability. Everyone's favorite topic, right? What is accountability? Anyway, I think there's a lack of clarity around what accountability is, and what it looks like in business. You know, the word accountability is thrown around a lot. And it's used in different ways. And there's lots of emotions that come up with that word accountability, you might feel really excited or nervous about this word, because of what it means for you. And if you have had accountability in your business, or your team before, will completely determine how the word accountability makes you feel. You see from a personal experience, I have felt a little conflict around this word at various times in my life. I need to be accountable to my team, my patients, my family and my business partners. And I also want my team members to be responsible for their duties and accountable in business accountability relates to how we express ourselves how we communicate with our team and successfully get things done in practice.

2:40
There's several different approaches to how to create accountability with your team. One of the approaches is called a heavy-handed approach. And some people say in order to be a good boss, you have to be kind of a jerk. You can't engage with your team, you can't make friends with them, you can't be compassionate for them, or they'll walk all over you. And how you choose to address your team creates your corporate culture. I really think it's important to consciously decide what kind of corporate culture you want. Do you want crazy all the time and chaos? Do you want things to run smoothly? Or do you want your team to solve problems on their own, and the possibility of you not having to control every single decision that's made in your business, when things aren't going the way they're supposed to, you have to address them, how you address them determines how they respond. Now you can be a jerk and you can just call them out and point a finger at them and accuse them of not doing things on purpose and not caring. This is kind of that heavy-handed model of not caring and creating a shaming culture. It creates a unsafe place to work. And if we're not safe, it leaves the team wondering when they're next to be on the chopping block and is their job safe. Psychologically, safety is the number one need for a person in life, not just for work. So it's important to create a model that works to level up you as a leader as well as your business. Now, another way of being a leader is to choose to ignore the situation. Some leaders just pretend they don't see the problems or the issues going around going on around them. Or they're just too busy and they don't want to see them. This is more of a hands off model. They ignore and hope everything will improve and run smoothly without conflict. There's no follow up. There's no deadlines and there's no one supporting the team. When you have a leader that is genuine and their intention is to be kind, your team is not afraid to come to you. They take their responsibilities seriously, they support you. And they want to see the practice grow and be successful. In a team of healthy accountability, the team knows what they're supposed to do, when their deadlines are, in conversations with team members in this type of model leaves them experiencing a positive reaction instead of an abrasive reaction. So when you have to talk to a team member, about a situation that maybe isn't going so great, how I would handle it is to start the conversation by being encouraging and positive, and discussing what is going well with them, then you can discuss what needs to be improved upon. And then at the end of the conversation, you want to end that with something positive as well. This leaves your team member feeling good about themselves while wanting to improve and grow. You see, accountability actually starts with the leader sharing their vision for the company, explaining to the team what winning looks like over the next three, five or 10 years for everyone, not just for the business, but for everyone. And they address why this matters to the company, to the clients and to the employees themselves. They talk about the values that they want to portray in the business. And if you can get clarity on that and begin with that it's a huge starting place, then you can step into the goals and step into some metrics of what's important to the business.

6:54
So maybe it's important for the business to have 300 clients in a two-month period of time, you know, or maybe a metric is we want to grow by 10%, this quarter. When you're explaining those metrics, you always want to tie that back into your team. Why is it important for them? It can't just be important to the company, there has to be a win on the other side for them. Otherwise, why would they do it just to see your company grow, and there's no benefit to them, that doesn't engage them that doesn't make them want to work. So you have to give them that positivity of why it's important for them to help you grow the business, what their part is going to do in the business? How is it going to help the clients? How does it help them grow? How does it help the company grow? And this will engage them and keep them involved in wanting to help you grow your business. When I started out, I was the leader of ignoring and hoping that can only last so long, I was so busy seeing clients that I ignored what was going on around me until my patients started to complain to me about deadlines and things that weren't getting done and falling through the cracks. And then I was frustrated with my team because I didn't understand why why this wasn't happening. Why weren't they getting this done? Instead of going to them and having the conversation about what's happening. I accused them and blamed them. And I would have realized really fast that we were short staffed for the volume of work that we were doing. And that would have fixed the problem. But instead, I chose to ignore it hope my team would do better without teaching them without talking to them without sharing my ideas and thoughts with them. Because when I did do it, I got a little flack from it. Actually, I had team members who said, You told us the business was never going to change. And that's unrealistic from a team members part too, because businesses have to change practices have to grow, we have to stay with the times, we can't stay with a model of thinking in medicine that's 10 or 15 years old. It has to mature it has to evolve. So that model doesn't work at all. And so once I started sharing ideas with my team it became a struggle at first in all honesty, I mean, they weren't happy with me sharing my ideas. They didn't want to grow in the direction that I wanted to grow. And so that made me pull back even more at first.

9:39
And then I became the leader who was the jerk where I didn't care. This is what I wanted. This is how we were going to do if you didn't like it too bad was my attitude. And that type of leadership doesn't work either. The type of leadership that works is when you engage your team and you share with them Um, your thoughts, your goals, and you're, you're positive about it, but you're also holding them accountable. If you ask for something to be done, and it's not done, you deal with it, you have follow up, if you tell them this is what's going to happen, if something is not done, it's like children, you have to follow through with it. You can't say, hey, if this isn't done, you're not coming to work tomorrow. And then they don't do it, and you let them come to work and you ignore it. That doesn't work. And it sends a really bad message to the rest of your team. So you, you want to decide as a team, what is the best way for you to meet your goals? Who's going to be responsible for what? Sometimes I think that one person is the best person to carry out a task, when the rest of the team really feels like it's somebody else on the team, that would be good. And so by opening up this dialogue and conversation, your team can help identify who's the best person to do something, what's the best fit for things? How do we process this? How do we accomplish this? And that takes a lot more stress off of you, and you get more buy in from your team.

11:13
So I'm curious to know, what type of leader are you? Is your leadership successful for you? Or do you need to change how you're doing something? If your leadership style is not giving you the results that you're looking for, it's time to change, learn a new skill, and turn it around. So your practice is what you want it to be. So the last thing that you want from your practice, is to have a practice that makes you unhappy, and it's not fulfilling to you. And it's not giving you the nourishment that you need to grow. That's the place that I ended up because I was ignoring and hoping. And then I became a jerk, my practice became something that I no longer wanted to do. I wasn't happy with it, I wasn't fulfilled with it, I was too stressed out by it. And I just wanted to walk away from it all. And, and I'm here to tell you that your practice doesn't have to get to that place. If you identify early enough, where you're at in this process, and you get some help and support to help you turn around and change. It's very hard to do this by yourself. I couldn't do this by myself, I had to get people that could help me grow and learn and understand and create a better place of work for myself and my employees. And now my practice is thriving again. And I love it. I'm happy, I'm excited, I'm ready to take on new challenges and learn new skills, I'm ready to train my team. And we're ready to start providing services to our patients in a different capacity and everyone's happy. And everyone's thriving. And again, once it gets there, it doesn't stay there without hard work. If I went back to the ignoring and hoping type of leader that I was, this practice would fall apart again, it has to be a practice, where you're continuing to encourage and talk and identify the complications and the struggles that you're having in order for it to completely and fulfill a row and maintain the status of what you've created. Because if you can't maintain that status of what you've created, you cannot maintain your business.

13:35
And I know right now people are thinking that the best way to do medicine is virtually and not having a team and working by yourself, I'm going to tell you that that is a lot more work than you think it is when you have to be the receptionist, the collector, the practitioner, the nurse the triage person, and it all falls on you, it is very difficult to do that. It's a lot of work, it's very time-consuming. And you won't be able to see the clients that you want to see. Because of that there's a time constraint and there's a financial constraint that goes along with that type of model. Unless you're providing all high ticket care, that's a little different. But in today's economy, it's going to be hard to do high ticket continuously in order to make that type of model work over and over and over for you. So I really think you're gonna have to start thinking about building a team. If you want freedom so that you don't have to do every single task that's required of you in your practice. You're still going to need people as you grow, to help send things out to help check people in or make appointments or help you manage your business in some capacity because the reality is, you cannot do it all. It's not healthy for you to try to do it all. And it's not good for your patients either. So when you're thinking about building a team, if you haven't built a team already, I want you to think of what type of leader you want to be. And if you don't have the skills to be this leader that you want, find them now before you actually build your team. So you can start practicing them on a smaller scale. And that way, you'll be successful with them when you're ready to build that team. So thanks for listening again, you guys, I hope this has been really helpful for you. Share in the comments section with us what you're thinking. And again, like always, give us a like or share. It helps us grow our ratings. It helps us get to more people. And I appreciate you guys listening every week be well.

15:50
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others. post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest for me. You can follow me on Facebook at FMBI, join our free group where we support one another and share our struggles. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.

Where is your business at for 2022? Have you reached your goals? What changes are necessary to hit a grand slam for 2022? Dr. Deb inspires you to look at your goals, reset them or pivot to cross the finish line strong.

Do not miss these highlights:

01:02 We are halfway through 2022, this is a great time for you to be evaluating your success in your business. 

03:27 Figuring out how to reach your goals. 

07:50 Add additional services and have some team members that want to expand into a different market area. 

11:12Make sure that you’re implementing what you’re doing, and you’re training your entire team. So they're successful with what we're doing as well. 

11:50 Assess your practice, and figure out where you are and what you want to accomplish for 2022.

14:13 Think about creative ways that you can help your clients out during these difficult times.

Resources Mentioned

Join Us in the FMBI Mastermind Group on Facebook.  You can find the Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/5461914567153276/

Transcript of Episode #35:

0:01
You're listening to the Functional Medicine Business podcast featuring Dr. Deb, one of the most creative functional medicine business practitioners in her industry. She shares the wisdom and knowledge that she has gained over 25 years of functional medicine, a pioneer in functional medicine, scheduling, leadership and Practice Management. Dr. Devin has a wealth of knowledge, and he's eager to share to help functional medicine become more productive. And for the practitioners and patients to live better lives. Our podcast shares the good and the bad of our industry. Because Dr. Deb knows the pain you live every day building a functional medicine practice with practical tools of how to manage money, taxes and patient care. She will discuss it all with you.

0:54
Welcome back to the show. I'm Dr. Deb. Hey, everybody, It is halftime. And what do I mean by that? You know, it's been a tremendous year, but we are halfway through 2022. And this is a great time for you to be evaluating your success in your business. Are you at a place in your business that you thought you would be at by the middle of 2022? If not, let's assess what's happened, what's gotten in the way, what's preventing you from moving forward, or maybe you are killing it. And 2022 is your year, like this has been the best year your business is growing, it's busy, you're making connections with people, doors are opening clients are flooding to you. And if that's the case, you rock to you guys, you guys are awesome. But if you're struggling a little bit, and you're halfway through the year, and 2022 just isn't quite what you wanted it to be. This is a great time to reassess your business and say, Okay, this is where I had hoped I would be by the end of June 2022. But I'm not. So what have I done in the first half of 2022? That's been successful? What have I done that's gotten in the way of me not reaching my goals for 2022?

2:29
And then we want to sit back and we want to say, Okay, if something has gotten in the way, what is that? And how do I change it? This isn't a time where you just sit back and you say, Okay, I didn't meet the goal that I wanted to, you know, I thought I'd be billing or collecting a half a million dollars a year so far. And I'm only doing 250 or 175. So now I'm gonna adjust and I'm on track for a different figure by the time the end of 2022 comes. No, we're not in that game space anymore. We are looking at that goal and saying if our goal is to make half a million dollars a year, and you're only a quarter of the way there by the end of June, what do we need to put in place, so you're closer to reaching that half million dollar goal or whatever that dollar figure is for you. This isn't a time that we just sit back and we accept what we've got. This is the time that we forge forward, and we make a plan. And we figure out how we're going to reach that goal. So maybe you need to hire another person to help you reach that goal. Maybe we need to reassess our marketing plan. Maybe our marketing is just not working the way we wanted it to. Or maybe we're marketing to the wrong tribe, the people that we're we're getting our marketing in front of just really aren't our type of clients that we're looking for. Maybe we need to work more hours to reach that goal. Maybe we need to make ourselves more available. Or maybe there's some funding that's needed in order to add a new service. These are all things that I constantly look at in my practice. So in the beginning of the year, or I should really say the end because I always do this on December 30th. I don't know why, but that's just my thing. I assessed the end of the year and I make plans for the new year. I like to do it then. So I look at where where were my goals for the previous year. What was I hoping to achieve in my practice? And I write all of this down because if I don't, I'm gonna forget what my dream was the year before and things will get clouded and the euro go on and things will get in the way. And then at the end of the year, I'll think I met my goal, but I didn't. So I write my goals down. And this is what I want to accomplish in the practice, these are the services we want to add, these are the services we want to take away. And here's my game plan to reach that.

5:16
So for instance, we have spent very little on marketing, in my entire practice. So for the last 20 years that I've been practicing, I've had the luxury of not having to spend a lot of money on marketing, because we have a huge practice of word of mouth. And it's always kept my practice busier than what we could manage. But we have some big goals for ourselves in 2022. And in order to reach those goals, we needed to have more marketing done. And we needed very specific marketing, because of the type of services we were hoping to grow within serenity practice. So we decided, as a team to invest a very significant amount of money in marketing. And it was a huge leap for me, I mean, remember, the only thing I was spending marketing dollars on was a website, and some email campaigns, things like that, but not a lot of money at all. So I invested $100,000 this year in marketing, and that was a huge leap for me, I was like, Oh, my God, I cannot believe we're spending this kind of money. I've never spent this kind of money before I'd marketing that I have to make sure this pays off. Well, what we've done as a team, is we have a marketing meeting every single week with my team, and we go over, how are our ads doing? what's working, what's not working? Are we still looking to attract this? What are we seeing in the clinic as a result? Do we need to tweak things, and we set up marketing campaigns for every three months. So we run a marketing campaign for three months. And we are halfway through 2022. And I'm happy to say that money is really paying off because my clinic practice has grown 67% as a result of the marketing that we've done, no, I'm not saying that everyone's going to get that kind of return. But if your marketing is done, right, and if you're managing it, and you're watching it, and you're tweaking it, and your team is doing that for you, those are the kinds of results that you can have from marketing. But you have to have a really strategic plan in order to do that.

7:50
Now, the other thing that we've been looking at is adding additional services, I have some team members that want to expand into a different market area. And we have been looking at bringing in some different services since pre COVID, COVID hit and like everybody else, we kind of put on the brakes and said, okay, hold on, not so sure we can do this. Let's put it on the back burner. Well, finally, second quarter this year, we decided it was time to explore that option, again of bringing those services into the practice. And we found a magnificent company to work with who had great trainers. And I actually flew off with my team for a two day training. And we came back fully energized in the practice ready to add this amazing service, looking at our practice differently. Because here's the reality, guys, when you're in your practice all the time you get used to it. And the truth of the matter is sometimes we get stagnant in our own practices. And so if you can go to someone else's practice, and you can see how their practice is running, and what the cool things are that they're doing, it will reignite you and get your ideas back into your business and saying, Okay, if they can do this, I can do this. And if you have somebody that can show you how to do it, that's even more amazing because it pushes you to the finish line that much faster. If you have team members that are willing to share their knowledge and share how they do things with you. It's an amazing way to learn. And it's a great way to give you ideas on how to expand your own practice.

9:37
So here we are. We're at halftime, and we're implementing for new services for this last half of the year. Yep. I said for my team is not happy with me. They're stressed. They're trying to figure out how we're going to do all of this. But remember, you're not coming in one day and saying okay, all of a sudden we're adding weight loss and we're aesthetics and we're adding stem cells. And we're adding hormone therapy. And we're adding pellet therapy, and we're adding genetics. It's not like that, we're rolling out a plan. So you know, this first two months of this last year, we're going to do this, then the next two months, we're going to do this. And then we're going to end the year with this. And it doesn't mean that we're not going to offer these services to our inside clientele. But as far as like a marketing campaign and a big launch strategy, we're not doing that all at one time, we're easing our way into that we're training our team, we're giving them the tools that they need to be successful, we're bringing people in to train the entire team on things we don't know how to do. And that is where the success comes in. Because if you're anything like me, you're really excited about cool ideas, and you want to bring them in right away. But sometimes, as providers, we're really good at the idea part, we're not so great at the implementing part. And we have to make sure that we're implementing what we're doing, and we're training our entire team. So they're successful with what we're doing as well. Otherwise, you're just going to have a lot of frustration on your side, if you're not training your team to, to be able to support you, and then then you're gonna get mad at your team. And it's not your team's fault, it's actually your fault that you didn't train them properly. So there are lots of strategies on bringing things into your practice. But what I want you guys to do this week, because it's already, you know, the second week of July coming up, if you have not assessed your practice yet, and you haven't figured out where you are and what you wanted to accomplish for 2022. and evaluate whether or not you did accomplish that, I want you to sit down and just take a little bit of time, it doesn't take a lot of time, actually, you could do this in about a half an hour to 45 minutes.

12:11
But if you have not reached your goals of what you want, then you need a strategy on how you're going to do that. So either you brainstorm by yourself, you get your team together and brainstorm with them. Or you can join us on FM bi, and I'm happy to hop on a call with you guys, and help you strategize where you're at and where you're going. And how are we going to get you there. So you're successful in 2022. You know, people are talking about economy falling, they're talking about things getting really bad financially, here with inflation and gas prices, and everything else. And what is going to give when the finances get really tight for family members is ancillary things that they don't need. So if they don't feel that they need hormones, or health care, or you know, wellness options or supplements, and it's getting tight, those things are gonna go by the wayside. The problem I see with that, though, is when they do get the finances again, and they've been off their supplements, and they've been off their regiment for, you know, four or five, six months, they're going to be hurting. And it's going to be harder for them to get back on track with things like that. I seen this happen in the last crash. And it's a challenge, because it's a lot more work to get people back to where they were feeling really great than it is for them to be sustained.

13:45
So if your practice is struggling with that, because of the patient population that you have, there are some unique ideas that we can do to help those patients stay on their treatment plans. So that they stay healthy, you keep the finances, and they don't have to work so hard on the backside of this thing, three, four or five months from now. And it's not so much work for you to get them back to where they were before. So think about you know, creative ways that you can help your clients out during these difficult times. Because it's so important to be able to support your clients. You know, the other day one of my patients said to me, what they love most about my practice is that we treat our patients like family, and our patients feel like they're part of our family. And it was one of the best compliments I could have ever been given. Because that's the intent of my practice. I want every patient that comes in that door to feel like their family, and that they know that we care about them. And we're looking out for them. And we understand what's going on in the world and we're supporting them both emotionally, physically and financially.

14:59
And so So, when you're assessing your practice, you want to take these kinds of things into consideration. If your practice hasn't grown in 2022, why not? Is it because of the population that you work with? are they struggling? Is it a marketing piece? Is it a scheduling piece? Or is it that your practice has just gotten stagnant? Look at all of these things. And it will tell you a clearer picture of exactly what's going on in your practice. And it will give you a clear pathway to success at the end of the year. So you guys, I hope this was inspiring for you. I really want to know all about your goals and where you're at, and how how we can help. So if you want to put something in the chat, or hop over to our Facebook page, and we can have a conversation there. Or if you want to talk through what's going on with your business, just hop over to functional nba.com. There's a link in there where you can book a call with me happy to hop on and just have a conversation and get you sorted away for 2022. So enjoy the gorgeous day, it's July. Let's just love this weather up because you know what's coming, and it's going to be coming fast that the weather is going to change and we're going to have our winter time and wherever you are in the world, we have a winter time but for you, if you're someplace else winter may be exciting because it's not so hot. But if you're like me and you live in the north, winter is a little cold here. And so it can it can slow us down a little bit. But everybody, enjoy your beautiful day. And again, share your goals with us if you share them out loud with other people. Other people can help you make those goals a reality. So take care everyone. Thanks for listening.

16:54
If you enjoyed this episode, and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others hosts about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest for me. You can follow me on Facebook at FMBI, join our free group where we support one another and share our struggles. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.

How to retain employees? Setting up a wellness program and encouraging them to learn about health and wellness. Empowering your employees to take care of themselves will improve your business. 

Do not miss these highlights:

01:58 The three advantages of giving incentives to your employees.

02:48 The reasons to promote well-being in the workplace - Increase productivity and motivation - Bring teams together and build morale - Decrease work-related stress.

05:53 A great way to start a wellness strategy is by slowly rolling out your ideas so that your employees won't even realize that you're starting to initiate this wellness program.

07:19 Encourage work-life balance- Let them take downtime.

11:31 Encourage your employees to get up from their desks, move around and take breaks - Have them get up, walk around and talk to somebody.

12:45 The ideas of workplace initiatives - You could have an official wellness program, have healthy food be brought in, and allow them to take advantage of any of the things you have in the Office for free.

14:57 How to encourage your employees to exercise.

16:55 Offer them flexible hours - It helps to reduce burnout.

18:46 You could also pay for courses for them. Educate your staff, the more educated your staff is, the less work it actually is for you. 

19:16 Look at their nutrition and eating habits. 

21:32 Look at their emotional well-being and distress, so your employees can promote health, healthiness and happiness.

Resources Mentioned

Join Us in the FMBI Mastermind Group on Facebook.  You can find the Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/5461914567153276/

Transcript of Episode #34:

0:01
You're listening to the Functional Medicine Business Podcast featuring Dr. Deb, one of the most creative functional medicine business practitioners in her industry. She shares the wisdom and knowledge that she has gained over 25 years of functional medicine, a pioneer in functional medicine, scheduling, leadership and Practice Management. Dr. Devin has a wealth of knowledge and he's eager to share to help functional medicine become more productive. And for the practitioners and patients to live better lives. Our podcast shares the good and the bad of our industry. Because Dr. Deb knows the pain you live every day building a functional medicine practice with practical tools of how to manage money, taxes and patient care. She will discuss it all with you.

0:54
Welcome back to the FMBI podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Deb. And today I want to share with you wellbeing initiatives for your workplace for 2022. You know, I can't believe that we're halfway through the year already. There's so much time left, but yet there's not so much time left, right. I mean, it's it's crazy how quickly the year goes. And before you know it the years off and half the things we wanted to accomplish in the year for our business we haven't done. So what I want to talk about is investing in workplace wellness. You know, if you've been looking for a employee, and you have been hiring, you totally understand the problem that we're in right now with being able to hire quality employees, people that actually show up and want to work. And everybody wants way more money than what most of us can afford for the positions we're hiring these days. So it's getting harder and harder to find those quality people. So I want to talk a little bit today about incentives that we can do to one encourage people to join your practice to invest in your people so that you create an environment that they don't want to leave. And three, it helps to reduce reduce the stress within your office, which just makes it a really great environment for everybody if there's less stress, your research has shown that there are many reasons why workplace wellness pays back. And of course, we can actually put a number to that. But studies are very clear that there is a good ROI on investment into your team once they gain better performance and general well being. So the three reasons to promote wellbeing in the workplace is it increases productivity and motivation. healthy employees physically perform better, they have more energy, they have better focus and concentration. And they're just in general, healthier. So you know, they're not sick as often they're not staying home as often.

3:12
And when you have healthier employees in your office, there's certainly a lot less drama. It also number two is it brings teams together and builds morale. So when teams engage in wellness activities together, inside and outside the workplace, there's a shared purpose and it builds a network or a team of people that want to work together that work together well and has each other's back. And that's super important. In a small office, you want your team to work cohesively together, you don't want your team pitting one another against another person and creating drama for you. It also decreases work related stress, fitness and healthy eating can reduce the stress. And if your business can implement mindfulness and meditation, this totally helps to reduce the stress level. Healthcare is stressful these days. I've been in health care for 25 years, it's always been stressful. But it certainly feels more stressful now than it has in a while. And part of it is just what's going on in the world around us the changes in health care.

4:26
You know, COVID doesn't help. It's just got everybody on edge. So it is much more stressful. You have sick people out all the time you have sick people coming in all the time. So the stress is getting higher and higher. Not to mention that we're working with fewer people, and the workload is just that much higher. So if we can get our employees to relax a little bit more, this will really help elevate your practice and ensure that the team can be their best selves and can produce the best for you and your clients. So let's talk a little bit about how we encourage wellness goals into a practice. Well, we want more productive and healthier, happier employees, that's the key. So if we don't engage in a health program, then sometimes your money is wasted. But honestly, you could do this on such a limited budget. So I know there's some of you out there that are listening and are thinking I'm just starting out, there's no way I can invest in this program. But I think you can actually, and I'll talk about some ways that you can do this with minimal investment on your side, but with a ton of upside in getting your employees to be healthier, and have them be what you want.

5:52
So a great way to start a wellness strategy is by slowly rolling out your ideas so that your employees won't even realize that you're starting to initiate this wellness program. So you want to create a productive environment, create a space that allows for minimal distractions, it prevents fatigue, and headaches, good lighting is key. You know, most of the buildings have these fluorescent bulbs, which are really hard on the eyes, really hard on a person, we have them in our office too. But we swapped out the fluorescent bulbs for the natural lighting bulbs that you can purchase. And that just makes it so much easier for us to practice all day in the office. And if we need that brighter light, like in our laboratory, we have a little bit different lighting system there. But in the exam rooms where we don't need that really bright light and that harsh light, we just put natural bulbs in. And that has made a huge difference working on the computer every single day. The other thing is you want to have nice colors in your office, you know, have stimulating colors, but they're warm, and they're comforting, and they're inviting. And this really helps to calm not just your employees down, but it also calms your patients down. But in the same token it stimulates their cognitive function. So colors can be really important for you to look at.

7:18
The next thing is to encourage work life balance. Now, why do we want to do this? Well, it actually makes for a more productive day. And I am probably the worst one to talk about this because I work all the time. But it's because I love it. Like I get super excited about doing different tasks and doing different projects. And I'm always working. So if I take some downtime, my staff isn't really happy about that. Because when I take downtime, my mind is quiet and it becomes more creative. And it just kind of gets new ideas. And then I want to implement these things. And so they're cautious about me taking downtime. But honestly, you know, you still need downtime. So this week, I'm on a business retreat week. So once a quarter, I take the last week of every quarter off. And I spent it working on my business instead of in my business. And this is where I work with my office manager and some of my team members to implement new things into the practice, we look at what kinds of things need to be changed what things need to be upgraded. I meet with new vendors and new people to bring different things into the practice and vet those people. And so it's usually a pretty busy week for me, I'm usually tweaking protocols, and then trying to share that with my key members. So my husband came in this morning and said, What's on your agenda for today, and I only have two meetings today. But I have a ton of just task work to do right protocols to write and things to design. And I said, I'm so busy. And he said we need to go play and, and he's my play guy, he makes sure that I get my work life balance. So he said, Let's go we'll go for a motorcycle ride or we're gonna go fishing. Let's pick something. Let's get out for a couple of hours. And you know, I could sit here and work all day and all night and it wouldn't bother me at all. But I know that's not healthy for me.

9:23
So I start the morning with my walk. I do a mid day walk or an after dinner walk. And then I carve out a couple of hours throughout the day where I can go play, I'll go play for a couple hours, come back and work, go play for a couple of hours come back and work. And that works for me. But for some people, they can't do it that way. They need to have that break set up and structured like maybe it's an entire day that they go and play in and trust me I have those days to where I go and play for an entire day and I don't work. But this week for me. I have to get certain things done and there's always more things on my to do list than I can accomplish but I'm, but I sneak away and I get those things done. So try to create that balance and, and encourage that for your employees to, they need to have that balance. So you want to encourage encourage them to do single task not multitask.

10:17
Now, I'm really terrible at this too, because I'm always multitasking, I have things going off on my phone, I have things written on a piece of paper, I have things written in my remarkable I have 20 tabs open on my computer. And that's my way. So I don't forget what I'm doing. Because I'm always getting interrupted in the middle of things. So but when you're working with your employees, it's better to unless they're that type of person like I am, which is clearly add. You want to encourage them to do single task things so that they get things done there, there's no errors in it. And it doesn't stress them out quite so much. So work on creating a area that's easier. Like even at your front desk, if you have everybody answering the phone, everybody checking emails, everybody checking people in and out, it gets really challenging. Not everybody can do that. So sometimes it's better to have one person answering the phone, one person checking emails, one person checks in one person checks out. And that doesn't mean that those people can't cross over and help each other. But you got a dedicated person there. So they know what is their responsibility for the day. And that really helps.

11:29
The other thing is I would encourage your employees to get up from their desk and move around. You know, when smoking was really popular everybody took smoke breaks. So every hour, hour and a half people were out having a cigarette, right? Well, now that we don't have that, and most wellness places don't allow people to smoke, you still need to encourage your employees to take breaks. So at least every hour, have them get up walk around talk to somebody, we have a really nice area behind our building that has some beautiful trees and some flowers and birds. And when it's nice out, we encourage everybody to go sit for a few minutes or go take a little walk, you know, get out of the building get away from what's going on, just to clear your head for you know, even just 5-10 minutes. And it works really nicely to rejuvenate your staff and not burn them out. Because the key is that you don't want your staff to burn out. If they burn out. They're not helpful to you, they're not helpful to the patient. They get crabby, which means we get crabby, you get complaints, and then eventually that person is going to leave because they're so burnt out that they can't deal with what's going on anymore. So you want to protect your employees as best you can.

12:44
Next is the ideas of workplace initiatives. How do you do this? Well, you could have an official wellness program, where you send employees to health education meetings, you send them health education, emails, create corporate culture and company goals, things like that. But you could also have a softer launch, where maybe you just have healthy food be brought in, you know, once a month for meetings, instead of bringing cupcakes and donuts, you bring fruit plates, and you bring protein bars and things like that, or you bring in smoothies.

13:29
There are a lot of different ways that you can encourage your employees to be part of the healthy wellness group. We have a lot of ancillary services. So we have biofeedback and we have RF, and we have IBS. And we have shockwave therapy. And we have body sculpting. And we have detox foot baths and Let machines. I mean, we have all kinds of stuff. So we allow our employees to take advantage of any of the things that we have in the Office for free. Unless there's something that we're doing that there's a cost to the clinic. So like our IVs, there's a cost to that. And so all we ask is that they pay the office costs for the IV. But we let them do it on company time. Anything else that doesn't have a actual hard costs to it, like our biofeedback that doesn't cost us anything to do except somebody's time. We let them do for free. And I think that's important for you because your employees not only learn exactly what it is that these things do, and they can speak better to it to your patients. It also brings them in and encourages them to be healthier, and to take care of themselves a little bit more and why not let your employees experience everything that you have in the office. I mean that they should just be part of that that's a given. So the next thing is exercise and fitness is really important to encourage your employees to exercise. After all, there's a lot of hard work that happens at the desk, but we don't want them just sitting. We know the statistics of people sitting at a desk for eight hours a day. So encourage them to go take a walk, get up, talk to people, maybe you want to do a group walk or bike to work event. So you could do a competition for people to who walk or bike to work. And whoever does the most miles gets a prize, you could do that. You could do a walking meeting, where you just, instead of sitting around the boardroom table, or the kitchen table, you guys get out and you walk and you have your meeting outdoors, you could do on site yoga classes for stress relief, this is really a great idea. And you can also offer discounts to the local gym as part of a benefit package to your employees. And this could encourage people who normally wouldn't go to a gym to actually join and be part of it, if they had a discount, you could work with a local gym, to set up this discount, and to get your employees to socialize outside of work. And it really is nice when your employees can socialize outside of work, because it really builds a nice team. You know, all of this actually helps to increase your productivity. So you want to design your office with seating and tables that people can gather around. But then you want to make sure that they're not always talking business either. Because it's important that they actually get downtime, where they're not talking about patients or not talking about the business, where they can just talk about life and person, what's going on in their personal life and what's going on in the world around us.

16:55
Another great thing would be to offer flexible hours. Everybody has demands outside of work right now from Family Health to kids being moved to place to place and events and sick dogs and you know, elderly parents and things like that. And so it helps to reduce burnout, if you can help accommodate some of this time when it's happening. It shouldn't be happening always, you know, every employee should not be having a crisis in their life at the same time or forever. But if you have somebody who's maybe their parents are sickly, and they need to take them to doctor's appointments, and things like that, and they're a good employee, be flexible with that person, because you don't want to lose that person. And if they don't have the flexibility to take care of their family, you will lose them. So be kind, be understanding be flexible, give them different hours, you know, maybe they could split a shift. Instead of the typical eight to five, maybe they could work from home some days to you know, working remotely, is a big thing these days. And some offices have certain tasks that can be done remotely. I have a girl that works remotely for me actually have to my biller works remotely. And then I have one of my medical assistants who works remotely. And she does all our behind the scenes things. So she gets all of our labs loads them and does all our prior offs. She triage does a lot of our phones and answers all of our emails and things like that. Those kinds of things can be done from home, they don't necessarily have to be done in the office. And so when you have tasks like this, and you have people that want to work from home, or need flexible hours, think about that, and how you can accommodate that and still get those tasks done.

18:45
You could also pay for courses for them. You know, you want to educate your staff, the more educated your staff is, the less work it actually is for you. Because if your staff knows what you know, I mean, they're never going to know everything you know, but if they understand what you know better, they can speak to it better. They can help triage patients better, they can educate patients better. So they're not always asking you for an answer, because they already know the answer because you've trained them appropriately. The other thing is looking at nutrition and looking at eating habits. You know, many of us have had a lot of challenges with eating over our lifetime. And like I mentioned before, just simply bringing in healthy snacks for a business meeting. fruit baskets and getting rid of all the junk food in your business can be a huge turnaround for people. We used to do a lot of potlucks for birthdays and holidays and things like that. And those are really fun too. You could do monthly potlucks or just do birthday potlucks, and holiday potlucks, and everybody brings something healthy. And of course you're going to have desserts but because they're homemade, they're going to be healthier versions of them. You know a lot of people in the wellness world they they cook with Mung fruit are stevia instead of sugar. So there's no reason you still can't enjoy some of these things occasionally. But it also opens the door to people who don't know how to cook with these kinds of things and engages in conversations about how to cook this way. And it shows your team that you walk the walk, and it actually shows your patients that you walk the walk when when you're doing things like this.

20:25
Using nutritional technology is really great, too, we have a program that we use a software to create meal plans for our patients, and giving access to your team so that they can create their own meal meal plan is huge. It not only gets them bought into the idea that meal planning is important and healthy eating is important. But it also teaches them how to use this program. And they'll share the information that they've learned with your employees and with your patients. And so you can expand that out. And that software typically has an annual cost. So it's it's not a separate cost for every single person you use it with. But it gets your employees bought into the healthier lifestyle. You could also order lunch in and instead of ordering in your typical typical fast food, you order in healthy salad bars, soups, proteins, things like that. And it doesn't have to be all the time, it can just be on certain occasions.

21:32
The other thing you want to look at is emotional well being and destressing. So you could do an inspirational quote of the day this can set everybody up for the positive outlook on their working day. And you can also do group volunteering with community organizations where maybe you go pick up trash, or you do blood pressure clinics, or you do fundraising events as a team. And this can be really helpful as well. And very bonding for your team and your group. Also, you can do mindfulness training, which helps to reduce stress and promote positive emotions. This kind of training can be done as a group, it can be done as a digital program. There are lots of different ideas that you guys can implement, to create that wellness program within your office so that your employees can promote health, healthy ness and happiness. And it can be shared with your patients as well. And your patients will start to see that everybody is happy and excited and, and working together. And it just creates such a wonderful atmosphere of things. So I hope you guys implement this. And even if you just implement one or two things, you don't have to implement the entire thing. But one or two things can be a huge change in your practice, and building stability and camaraderie, and really engaging your team to keep them with you for as long as you possibly can.

23:09
So everybody have a safe and happy Fourth of July. And get out there and just experience the world view with your family and friends and be safe. And I hope that I hope that the second half of 2022 is really empowering for your business and you really just kill it and make your business grow. So be well everyone.

23:41
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others hosts about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest for me. You can follow me on Facebook at FM bi, join our free group where we support one another and share our struggles. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.

The experience that your client/patient goes through at your office can make a difference between attracting and maintaining a client. Does your client see a nice clean and polished office, nice staff or crabby staff? Do they hear gossip and rude conversation or is your staff wonderful and engaging about health and wellness?

Take a tour of your office through your client's eyes. Really pay attention to the details because we overlook them often.

What digital footprint are you leaving behind? Do you have social content in multiple forms; video, blogs, pictures, and social posts? Do you educate your clients or are you always looking to get paid for your knowledge?

Let people get to know you before they book an appointment with you by being on video. According to Google if you are trying to sell a high-ticket item people need to spend at least 7 hours with you.

Do not miss these highlights:

01:17 It was the outside that gave that first impression, so it’s important to pay attention to the look and the ambiance of the building.

04:27 It’s very important for us to plan the experience that we want our clients to have instead of just leaving it to chance.

07:04 Make sure there's a very clear call to action even on your social media.

10:18 So it's really important to make sure that you have content out there, that's helping you connect to people. You need to consistently be producing content. So people know you love you. And like you. And they trust you.

11:43 Have a dabbling of things on every platform, so if one goes down, the other one can stay active, and you can pivot quickly.

13:05 Make sure that your client's journey is fully on digital assets as well.

Resources MentionedJoin Us in the FMBI Mastermind Group on Facebook.  You can find the Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/5461914567153276/

Transcript of Episode #33:

Debra Muth 0:01
You're listening to The Functional Medicine Business podcast featuring Dr. Deb, one of the most creative functional medicine business practitioners in her industry. She shares the wisdom and knowledge that she has gained over 25 years of functional medicine, a pioneer in functional medicine, scheduling, leadership and Practice Management. Dr. Devin has a wealth of knowledge and he's eager to share to help functional medicine become more productive, and for the practitioners and patients to live better lives. Our podcast shares the good and the bad of our industry. Because Dr. Deb knows the pain you live every day building a functional medicine practice with practical tools of how to manage money, taxes and patient care. She will discuss it all with you.

Debra Muth 0:55
Welcome back to the Functional MBI podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Deb. And today I want to talk about what journey does your potential client go through? You know, I think it's important for us to consider the experience that our clients go through when they're spending time and money with us. So from time to time, what we'll actually do in my practice, is walk through the journey of the client, literally from driving into the parking lot. Looking around our parking lot, what do they see? How does our parking lot? Look? Is it inviting? Is it dirty? Is their garbage sitting around? Do we have dead plants in our area around the building? Is there paint coming off of the building? Do we have Miss painted areas? What is our signage look like? Is it visible? Is it faded? Is there a tree branch hanging in front of it? So I think it's always important to look at every little one of these aspects. Now for many of us, we think this doesn't make a big deal for patients or clients. But I will tell you, it makes a huge first impression. So when you have that first impression of your business, and it's shabby and dirty, and there's no place to park, patients notice that.

Debra Muth 2:19
When I started out, I was in a building that was very old. And when you walked into the lower level, it smelled musty and it was very dark and there was paneling on the walls. And there was a carport over the front door which made it nice when it was raining. But a lot of people thought the building was created as a funeral parlor originally because of this carport drive that we had. And it really wasn't it never was that it was just how the building was made. But that's how they thought. And it wasn't until several years after I was in that space that clients started telling me that they almost didn't come in to see me because when they pulled up outside of the building, and they saw it in old and shabbiness, not disrepair, but it was just shabby. And it was in an older neighborhood. And nothing spoke to them as healthy or alive or creative or anything like that it was just kind of dingy and dreary, that they didn't want to come in, they were afraid to come in. And then when they walked in the lower level, and they had this musty smell in the building that turns them off even more. And so I had the potential and I'm sure I did lose many clients simply because of the look and the feel of the building. And then once we have the opportunity to remodel the building, and we made it look fresh and exciting and inviting inside, we didn't pay attention to the outside and it was the outside that really gave that first impression.

Debra Muth 4:03
So pay attention to those kinds of things. It's super important, you know, then walk into your office and look around, see what's in your waiting area. See how your waiting area is laid out. Watch where your eye goes to and see what your clients see see your office through your clients eyes, not through your eyes. You know, it's we have the opportunity to leave things to chance or to plan them out. And I think it's super important for us to plan the experience that we want our clients to have instead of just leaving it to chance. What's the experience that your clients get once you're receptionists invite them in and engage them. Is it positive? Is it negative? Is it with a smile? Is it with an irritation? They're being addressed. All of those things really matter how long they wait in your waiting room, and what they listened to in your waiting room. So if they're sitting in your waiting room for five or 10 minutes, and they're hearing every conversation of your employee, and your employees are talking about what they did on the weekend, versus talking about something health and wellness related, makes a big difference and makes a big impact on that patient experience. I'm a big proponent of moving my people out of my waiting room, and into the exam room, where they're not open to hearing that conversation from your team. They're not open to hearing conversations with other clients on the phone. And in my waiting room, I have different magazines, we run soft, relaxing music, so that they can rest if they want to. We give them access to Wi Fi in case they want to work on emails for work, or they want to make private phone calls. We have some marketing materials in our waiting room, we have a large poster on the wall that is kind of like a menu of services. That explains a little bit about what it is we do. So as people are sitting there, they can look at this menu of services and see if there's anything that we offer that a they didn't know we offered, or be that maybe we offer a service that could help someone that they know. And I can tell you at least six times a week at minimum, that I have clients waiting for me, someone will say, Hey, I know a person that has this condition. Can you do that? I see that you guys do that on here. Or I didn't realize that you offered IV services. I didn't realize you guys did this? Or that? How can that affect me? How does that have service that could benefit from me? So it's really important to put yourself out there and put your information out there so people know what it is that you do. You know, I think it's really important to when you're looking at social media, that I guess you could use this for social media and in your office with marketing, you want to make sure there's a very clear call to action. So for instance, my menu Service Board in my office, what purpose am I doing with that? What am I asking my clients to do? Well, my call to action for them is to look at that board of services, and see if there are services that we could be of assistance to them for so that they don't have to go someplace else, because they didn't know we offered it. And how can these services help them. So we want to engage them in that conversation. Now, if you were on social media, your call to action for a menu of services like that may be that you want them to call your office to ask or schedule an appointment about these surfaces. That is a very clear call to action. You know, Google discovered that for very high value purchases like $3,000 or more, that people on average needed to spend at least seven hours with your brand to get comfortable enough to make that commitment. So if you have a program or a service that is worth $3,000 or more, or even around that $2,500 mark, until people are willing to spend time and money with you. They need to see you frequently. They need to hear you frequently. They need to know about you, they need to build a connection with you. That's really no different in your office, or whether it's social media, you need to make sure that they can trust you. I've had, I've had content out for over 20 years. And some of that content is still circulating today. And I'll have clients that will come in to see me for the first time. And they will tell me, I've consumed every video that you've put out on the internet. Now, that's a lot of content. I've got 20 years of content. I've got a lot of videos, a lot of podcasts. And so that means they've listened to oh my gosh, I'm gonna take a stab here, but well over 200 hours of my content if they've listened to everything that I've put out there over the years. Most of them haven't done that. But they'll say I've watched all your hormone videos and I have probably seven or eight. Each of those videos is a minimum of 40 minutes long. So It took them five or six hours of consuming content for me to get them in my door. Or at least it took them one or two of those to get them in the door. And then they've watched the others so that they prepared for when they came to see me.

Debra Muth 10:17
So it's really important to make sure that you have content out there, that's helping you connect to people. I'll see companies that will say, just do what I tell you to do. And you'll sell product or you'll sell courses, or you'll sell your services, just like that $3 million. I'm going to tell you people, that's not reality. I've spent well over $300,000 in training, to learn how to market myself learn how to get myself out there, learn how to build my practice. And it is not what people say it is not as easy as people say it takes time, it takes energy, it takes commitment, just like it takes to build your brick and mortar. It takes that time to build social content as well. You need to consistently be producing content. So people know you love you. And like you. And they trust you. So whether it's video or audio, or you're on podcasts, or blogs, whatever that social connection is that you're making people, whatever that content is that you're creating, needs to be put out there consistently. So I'm really a fan of doing all of the social media platforms. I know people say learn one get really good at it. But here's the problem that I see with that social media changes. So rapidly, we've seen a huge change in social media in the last year or two with censorship, whether you're being censored on YouTube, because you're talking about a health topic they don't like or they're you're being kicked off of Facebook, because you're having an opinion that somebody doesn't like their algorithms have changed the platforms that you're trying to get into community wise, they're stricter, they're kicking you out, you're getting blocked at a lot of different places. And that's why I think it's really important to have a dabbling of things on every platform. So if one goes down, the other one can stay active, and you can pivot quickly. I'm a huge fan these days of rumble. So I post to both YouTube and rumble, because there's different clientele, there's different restrictions, there are some things I no longer post to YouTube, because I know they're gonna censor me, and they're gonna kick me off a YouTube for a week, and I'm going to lose that traction. So those things I'll choose to post someplace else, I'll post them on rumble, and then from rumble, I'll post them to social media. So you've got to become savvy in the social media marketing in today's venue, you've got to stay ahead of things.

Debra Muth 13:04
The last thing I want to talk to you guys about is making sure that your clients journey is fully on digital assets as well. So you'll need to do the job of building and trusting them. But when they get to your office, and you've converted them to a sales, what kind of digital assets do you have for them? Like back in the day, we all use paper notes, right? We'd hand them a folder, which I still do I have them folder with beautiful graphic postcard type things in there that talk about what it is we do. I give them discount cards in there for different services. We provide them with a document that explains how do they navigate our office. But then you also have to have digital things available for them things that they can consume when they're away. For instance, we have something called serenity you that we've created. It's a university for our patients where we have created over 100 videos, talking about various health topics, and how to navigate our office, how to get through with things. How do you how do you address things with us? How do you get your lab results, all of that information is available digitally for my clients. I also sell serenity you outside of my clients to teach other people how to navigate health and wellness. How do you talk to your doctor about health and wellness? How do you interpret your vitamin D level? How do you request a vitamin D level be drawn from your doctor? What does it mean to have a variety of supplements and how do you use them and how do you take them together and what's thyroid just basic information that I can attract clients to? I continue to update it quarterly and provide new information for people, and I make a little bit of revenue on the backside of it. But what does it do for me from a marketing standpoint, it makes me an expert. And as long as I'm an expert in an area that will draw clients to me and to my practice, and by drawing clients to my practice, I can keep my revenue stream going, I can keep it growing. And on top of it, I don't have to spend as much money on marketing dollars to attract clients to me, because I am already seen as an expert, and people want to see experts.

Debra Muth 15:34
So these are just a couple of things that I do in my practice to build that digital presence and provide digital assets to my clients. I'd love to hear some of the ideas that you guys have and some of the things that you guys are doing to do the same. And if you don't have any of these things put together yet, then these are great ideas for you to start providing for your clients. We actually white label our serenity you product so people can utilize it as their own and not have to reinvent the wheel and you can add to it as well. But there are all kinds of easy ways that you can create content and create that content repository that you guys so desperately need to make yourself the expert as well. So share this with people that you think could really benefit and share with me what are you doing? What are you creating for your clients so that you can grow your expertise in your niche. And I hope this was super helpful for you guys, and connect with me on social. Let's start having a conversation about how you build and grow your practice.

Debra Muth 16:44
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others hosts about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest for me. You can follow me on Facebook at FMBI, join our free group where we support one another and share our struggles. Thanks again and I'll see you next time!

What do you need to know before starting a private practice?
Know your numbers, and talk to experts that understand the business better than you.

Does it matter if I am an NP, DO, MD, DC can I start a private functional medicine practice?
Anyone with a license can start a private practice.

How do I prevent embezzlement in my practice?
Manage your money carefully and be on top of where your money is going. 

Do not miss these highlights:

01:26 How Dr. Deb started her own private integrative medicine practice 12 years ago.

02:44  It takes a huge leap of faith to be able to go into private practice for yourself. Have faith in yourself and trust that you can learn absolutely anything you put your mind to. 

04:49 Private practices are up 6% since COVID, just in the first quarter of 2022 patients want to see per providers in private practice. 

05:30 Don't be afraid to ask people that are experts - Ask people around you for their guidance, ask questions so you understand what you're doing and what you're liable for.

09:43 You can get more people in faster and have more money in your practice by not having that long waiting list.

11:04 If you build a good reputation, spend time with your clients and get them results, more people will come because word travels. 

11:43 Don't niche down your market so narrowly that your patient population is limited.

12:12 Find your ideal client. 

13:40 Know your numbers - You have to know the financial health of your practice, your numbers tell the health of your practice.

Resources Mentioned

Join Us in the FMBI Mastermind Group on Facebook.  You can find the Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/5461914567153276/

Transcript of Episode #32:

0:01
You're listening to the Functional Medicine Business Podcast featuring Dr. Deb, one of the most creative functional medicine business practitioners in her industry. She shares the wisdom and knowledge that she has gained over 25 years of functional medicine, a pioneer in functional medicine, scheduling, leadership and Practice Management. Dr. Deb has a wealth of knowledge and he's eager to share to help functional medicine become more productive, and for the practitioners and patients to live better lives. Our podcast shares the good and the bad of our industry because Dr. Deb knows the pain you live every day building a functional medicine practice with practical tools of how to manage money, taxes and patient care. She will discuss it all with you.

0:54
Welcome to the Functional Medicine Business Podcast, FMBI. I'm your host, Dr. Deb and today's episode is the three keys to my success as a private practice nurse practitioner, we're going to talk about those exact three key steps to building a private integrative medical practitioner. So if you're a nurse practitioner, naturopath, physician, chiropractor, or do who is interested in starting their own medical practice, these tips are for you. Keep watching. I started my own private integrative medicine practice about 12 years ago, after I left another practice, I was an owner in this other practice by wanted to create a practice that shared like minded practitioners under the same roof. The goal was to share knowledge patients and provide a practice that could eventually run without me. When I tell you I was scared, that's an understatement. I remember telling my husband that we may not be able to survive, I didn't know how long it would take for me to collect a salary from this business. And it kept me up at night. I'm just going to throw it out there. Because we're all practitioners, whatever field you're in, we like to have a lot of data at our disposal. For our patients. We like to evaluate numbers, look at the evidence and make guided decisions. When you graduate from school, you don't get any business training, nothing, not how to hire staff, evaluate health insurance, sign up for accounts with vendors, how to set up a QuickBooks file. The only thing we're competent in is taking care of patients. So yes, we're unprepared to open a private practice.

2:43
So honestly, it takes a huge leap of faith to be able to go into private practice for yourself. Because we like to have all that information at our fingertips. And we weren't taught any of this. You're not taught how to write a business plan, how to ask the bank for money, how to create a pro forma, how to get on insurance plans? Do you need malpractice or disability life insurance? And how do I use that life insurance to build my business? How do you get the best staff when you get patients to your practice? How do you start a business when you have no idea what being a business owner is all about? I spent five years in another practice before I started my own business. So I was a little more prepared than most people when they decided to go into private practice. But honestly, I was still so unprepared. Let me tell you that anyone can learn this if you want to. You just need to have faith in yourself. Trust that you can learn absolutely anything you put your mind to. Everything is available to you online. But sometimes that information online is so overwhelming, that it can make you more confused and leave you frozen. In order to get your business off the ground.

4:07
You're going to have to do a lot of extra work on nights and during the weekend. Learning how to be a business owner means you need to learn how to use QuickBooks. You need to understand reimbursements. What's a 3060 or 90 Day AR? These are all the topics I'm going to keep addressing in our podcast. And I will also hold you hold your hand in all of this in my functional accelerator training program. The key to your success is to enter this with an open mind that you can learn this information. You're smart this may seem foreign at first, but it will become second nature.

4:48
Did you know that private practices are up 6% since COVID, just in the first quarter of 2022. Patients want to see per providers in a private practice. They're tired of the big box, big brother health care system. They want to know they can have a relationship with their practitioner and they're not limited to have services provided simply because the big brother says they can. All right. All right, I'll get off that soapbox. You're all smart. You've all finished graduate school, finished your residency, you can handle this. Don't be afraid to ask people that are the experts. So you can pick their brains about things you don't know as much about. So for instance, my first year in practice back in 2010, which sounds very crazy and overwhelming right now. I had a great accountant who taught me how to read a p&l, a profit and loss statement. They showed me how to reconcile credit card statements each month, how to make journal entries. And when I started, there wasn't much YouTube. So learning things wasn't as easy as it is today. But I figured it out, I figured out how to use QuickBooks, how to create a balance sheet, what a balance sheet really was and what it meant. And what a p&l statement was. I learned that when I purchased equipment that went in a different category, from a tax perspective than just a tax write off, it was a depreciation. I learned all the things that could be tax deductible. And then I learned from another experts that many things I didn't think were tax deductible actually were.

6:39
Ask people around you for their guidance, ask questions, so you understand what you're doing and what you're liable for. Trust me, it's the worst feeling in the world. If you get hit with a big financial surprise, at the end of the year. Don't always assume your accountant knows more than you. They might at first, but as you learn more, you'll know just as much of them, if not more. I've had multiple accountants over the last 10 years. And I can tell you, there are things I know that they don't know. And the things that I do know, save me a ton of money. Now, did I learn that just by myself? Absolutely not. I learned from experts. And they taught me ways to save money, grow my practice, and teach my accountant a thing or two. I asked my lawyer and my bankers questions, I hired mentors to teach me to be a better business person. I searched the internet to make sure that what my accountants told me was accurate. And guess what, that wasn't always the right advice that I got. I actually taught them more things. This last year, I had a huge loss, I was part of a Ponzi scheme. And my accountant said, you can only write off $3,000 a year up until the max. Well, let me tell you, I would be paying that off for decades. But I found that he was wrong. Because it was a true Ponzi scheme. And it wasn't just investment loss, I got to write off the entire thing in the year that it happened. That's how we learn new things. "Trust, but verify" is my model.

8:32
Being a business owner is a different way to thinking about things. You're so capable of learning. You just need to set your mind to it, you will be able to handle it. Honestly, you're not just concentrating on diagnoses now. Now you're really trying to run at the health of your practice. You're trying to run a business that can eventually run without you. You're trying to create a legacy for you, your family, and you're trying to create something that will be in existence long beyond your ability or your desire to practice. People ask me all the time, how did you build such a successful practice with a six month waiting list? How do you become so successful in your community? I develop this waiting list early on. And then as we grew, I brought on other providers so our waiting list reduced. Now I will say it's great for your ego to have a six month waiting list, but it's not good for your bottom line. It's not good for your reputation, and it's not good for your patients. You can get more people in faster and help them have more money in your practice by not having that long waiting list. In today's market, there are many health care practitioners that can help people. I lost patients because I had a a six month waiting list. Ultimately, those patients came back around to see me. But by that time, they had already seen five or six other practitioners spent $50 to $100,000, in their health care, didn't have any money left, didn't have any time and didn't have any belief in themselves or anybody else that they could get better. So although that waiting list is wonderful for our egos, like I said, it's not good for the patient. And it's not good for the bottom line. So as your practice begins to grow, and you have that longer waiting list, that's when it's time to start looking at bringing in another practitioner, training them, and getting them to be helpful in your practice to get patients through the door and get the services that they need to heal.

10:51
I remember being terrified when I started out that my patients from my previous practice wouldn't follow me. But that fear was nothing they followed and brought their friends. If you build a good reputation, spend time with your clients and get them results, more people will come because word travels. Now there's lots of different aspects to patient care, getting the correct diagnosis, just one that really works is truly caring for your patient. This sounds old fashion, but it makes all the difference in the world, your reputation will build and I promise you, your practice will build very naturally, very organically, even if you've done nothing else, but care.

11:42
I tell people don't niche down your market so narrowly, that your patient population is limited. If you want to find your ideal client and take care of them, not just one or two diagnoses, take care of the patient in front of you. You can be an expert in one or two areas. But make sure you take good care of your patient. If you don't truly know something, refer them to someone you trust that can help them. But find your ideal client. And I'll do a podcast on this so you know exactly what I'm talking about when I say your ideal client. When I started out, I had a tiny website, I wrote a bunch of blogs, I lectured at compounding pharmacies to attract clients. I didn't have an advertising budget until I was in business for seven years. I never paid for TV or commercials, I didn't pay for ads until I got to the point that my business was making $2 million a year in revenue. I didn't do YouTube videos, I didn't do Facebook Lives. I didn't have access to any of those things when I started out growing my business. But when I had some cash to grow an ad, I did, I added new providers. And that's when I started marketing. That's when I began to double down because I needed not to just fill my patient load. But I needed to fill the patient load of multiple other providers. And in order to do that, I either needed to get them out in front of people, or I needed to be able to find a way to attract clients to them. Now just have faith in yourself, that you can take good care of people, and they will return to your practice, they will spread the word of mouth about the care that you personally have given them, or given a friend or a family member, and that will allow your business to grow.

13:39
The third key to my success is to know your numbers. Now, I've mentioned this so many times in podcast episodes, but it's critical. You have to know the financial health of your practice. Just like you check a blood pressure or temperature on every patient that walks through the door. If you're an internist, you listen to their heart tones. If you're a cardiologist, you listen to their heart. There are several key metrics that are important to your practice. It's so essential to get a handle on the practice numbers, so that you know exactly what is going on in your practice. Your numbers tells the health of your practice, just like the metrics we use to tell the health of our patients. And I've heard so many providers who have people paying their bills and taking their money to the bank, and they don't realize they're actually being stolen from. I've heard of providers that have had people pay their taxes, and years go by and they find out that they owe five or six years of back taxes, five to six figures of back taxes. Don't farm out paying your bills or taking your money to the bank. So if you're just starting out that's the perfect time to really dive deep and figure out what's exact be going on, and learn from the ground up. Now I know this sounds tedious and it sounds like you're never going to have time to see patients. But trust me, I see patients four days a week, eight hours a day, and I still have time to run the business. And I still have time to pay the bills and do my numbers. And I keep track of my numbers every single week, every single month, every single quarter. When I first purchased my very first practice from my retiring mentor, he got embezzled over $50,000. Some of that wasn't even traceable. We don't know exactly how much she had stolen over the five years that she was working for us. I found it by accident. Because I was digging into the practice numbers. I wanted to see what we had going on. I couldn't understand how we were billing a million and a half a year between the three of us. And there was only 68 cents in the checkbook at the end of each month. And to pay the bills, we had to go ask our biller for money. And instantly she would come up with $30,000 or $15,000, whatever we needed that month to pay the bills. And I became very suspicious. It took me over a year and a half to prove that she was embezzling. Embezzlement happens all the time in small practices. He got embezzled, simply because he wasn't interested in managing the books. He wasn't interested in asking the hard questions from the accountant. The accountant knew there was a problem. And when I questioned him, the answer I got was he had brought it up to the providers many times they didn't want to talk about it. I tried to bring it up many times, they didn't want to talk about it. He is a wonderful doctor, and he is still my dearest friend 18 years later. But there was a lot of loss there. Don't let this happen to you. It doesn't have to be that way. I still talk to him, and I love him.

17:19
These are the key things that you need to get started in creating your practice. So deep dive into all of these topics, check out our podcasts as we go on about each one of these topics individually. If you want to know about a different topic, just share it, send us a message on Facebook or in YouTube or Instagram. Follow me on LinkedIn and I'm happy to produce different content that you need information on. Now again, it doesn't matter if you're a nurse practitioner, if you're a PA, if you're a DO, if you're an MD, If you're a chiropractor if you're a naturopath, starting your own independent practice can happen. It is not as hard as you think it is. It just takes some time to learn. And I would love to hold your hand along the way. So check out my accelerator business program at functionalmbi.com. And let's chat about your dreams of creating your business today.

18:29
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others. post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest for me. You can follow me on Facebook at FMBI, join our free group where we support one another and share our struggles. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.

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