Meet Ric. Hopefully he can make for a good Role Model for some of you some day...

• Ric can see approximately 40 patients a week in 2 full days and 2 half days of patient facing work. He uses recliners and Dr. Tan's Balance System for Acupuncture. Ric comfortable sees two Acupuncture patients at a time and can scale up from there if needed. Ric uses Frank Springob's MFT for Clinical Nutrition Assessment. He can weave Nutrition Patients in while an Acupuncture Patient is in the chair or he can focus on them exclusively.

• Ric charges a modest $65 to $75 per acupuncture treatment and $35 for nutrition appointments.

• About 25% of Ric's Acupuncture Patients buy Nutrition, and there are some nutrition patients that don't do Acupuncture.

• Ric's gross sales on a week where he is 80% productive are around $3500/week. His net sales before overhead and expenses for such a week are around $3000/week (meaning he did about $2500 in acupuncture and $1000 in nutritional sales)

  • • One need not charge crazy rates or gouge customers to be financially successful in this business.

    • One also need not employ any "fancy sales pitches" or "overly complex buy-ins" to be financially successful in this business.

    • Ask a new acupuncture client for a 3 to 5 visit experience over a fairly short time frame to explore acupuncture for a need you feel you can address.

    • Ask a new nutrition client for a 2 month informal commitment that may cost them $500 to $1200.

    • Allow them to experience it and decide for themselves. If their needs are going to require a lot more than that, coach them on other low cost solutions they might want to do first to help themselves, such as a 21 Day Cleanse.

    • Be Real, Be Realistic and Be Authentic with them and watch your business bloom and grow.

• Ric works out his primary office and he rents space in Wellness Space one day a week in another town.

• Ric uses Google Calendar for his appointments, a hand written system for SOAP notes, a home grown Point of Sale System that is Google Sheets based, a manual Day End Packet System for compiling all Patient Documents, a Tower System for managing documents for a given week, a "folder-less" digital filing system that is populated with scanned documents 1x a week, and ZAP's Bookkeeping Module for his Tax and Financial Accounting needs. And all of this facilitates work from any number of offices with ease.

• Ric books all his own appointments via email and a mobile phone dedicated to his business. Scheduling his own appointments as opposed to allowing his patients to schedule online allows him to maximize and optimize his own schedule.

• Ric has no full time or part time support staff. This is one key to maintaining personal freedom in a Small Business.

• Ric spends 6 hours a week on an "admin day" without patients. He does admin and office care during this time. He could shorten that significantly if he filled in his time around his appointments better and he is constantly trying to get better at that.

• Ric outsources 4 to 6 hours of high end office support a week to a technology centric, well rounded business person at a rate of $50-75/hour. That is his only paid support person. That person acts as a part time CFO, CTO and COO for Ric as well as his Chief Admin Clerk (CAC).

• Ric consumes an additional 2 hours of personal coaching a week related to Communication, Sales, Process Management and whatever he needs help with to stay balanced and growing each week. Sometimes all that's provided is a mirror.

For many of you, your first needs may be:

1. Hypnotherapy or other Counseling - Most Acupuncturists we've met are suffering from technology related trauma and stress along with the trauma and stress of living in a Quantum world that the majority of others could not see, feel or touch. And for some of you, it's just too late to get you up on the organizational plane, so just enjoy the rest of the ride!
   

2. Communication and Sales Training - Most Acupuncturists we've met struggle to "connect" with those who can benefit from your services most. Understanding how to talk "magic" in a way that all can understand while only trying to "address needs" which you are confident you can make good progress on quickly with patients new to TCM is critical to your future success. Learning to "refer out" quickly and learning to "say no" quickly are key tenants most new in business struggle with. An inability to do these up front with new patients can slow down the rise of your own business as well as your industry as a whole. The quicker you learn these skills, the better you will be.

Here’s what most of you need for starters. If you don't see where your Bookkeeping Education falls in context of the total turns you need to make to slalom better you'll under estimate the omitted information in your worldly education so far.

1. Simpler Marketing and Web Presence - You need a simple website you can edit yourself, just like a word document or power point presentation. It needs to convey the basics of who you are, what you offer and what you charge. A single web page is all that is needed for some. A digital business card. If you can't provide the information described here for your website with ease and clarity, as some can not to the surprise of others, you will need far more help than most can imagine right now.

2. Simpler and More Stable Computer Hardware for Office Use - You need an understanding of how Chromebooks can reduce your technology costs and stress for life while enabling a more technologically friendly office with only cloud based tools in play. NOTE: Until the stand alone scanners are perfectly scan to cloud ready or Chromebook compatible, there still will be a need for at least one PC or Mac for the time being.

3. A Simple Scheduling System - Most of you first need to engage with a simple calendar system that can meet your needs. Most do NOT need to grant clients the ability to book directly and most should not be doing that for numerous reasons

4. A Simple Customer Database / Data Table - Most of you need a simple customer database system in a google sheet and you need secondary entries in your contact system of choice (google contacts suggested for alignment with our initial offerings)

5. A Product and Services Database / Data Table - Most of you need a simple customer database system in a google sheet

6. A System for SOAP Notes ( paper or digital ) - SOAP notes are individualized. There are many ways to do them. We suggest coming up with your own manual system as opposed to using some of the automated systems, but either can work for now.

7. A NON-PHYSICAL patient folder system - Most of you need to see the "folder-less" office setup used at Ric Valentine Acupuncture. You all need this badly as does everyone else in the wellness field.

8. A Simple, Private Point of Sale System not connected to Payment Processing - You can use carbon copy receipt books and log transactions in a spreadsheet. Or you can use a powerful spreadsheet based Point of Sale System we have developed that links to your customer database and your Product/Services Database

9. A simple way to process cash, check and credit card payments - Checks and cash need to be handled in an expedient manner and with care. Square for most is a great place to start for Credit Cards. Other accounts can be established to lower rates if doing more than $10k a month in credit card sales.

10. Dedicated Checking and Credit Card Accounts for your business -This is the first key to being in business and keeping your bookkeeping simpler than pie baking. Don't inter-mingle your funds. Even if it costs you $15 or $30/month for separate accounts from your personal accounts, it pays off in spades. You can also use "personal accounts" for this as long as they are dedicated to your business to get going.

11. ZAP Bookkeeping Module for your Bookkeeping (for your Tax/Financial Accounting) - Bookkeeping is a simple and straight forward task as long as you have dedicated bank accounts. Without doing your own, you have no connection to the pulse of your business. By doing your own, you'll realize you need many other reports than those generated by Tax and Financial Accounting to navigate in business. The reason this is where everyone needs to start is because Tax Accounting is REQUIRED for everyone in business, and this helps you identify all the holes you will need to fill to create a complete and holistic business system for your own small business and house hold management. Put another way, this functionality (and lack there of) provides the insight which drives most other procedural choices!!

12. Advanced reporting for Business Management and Tax filing - You will need "production reporting" more than sales and tax reporting to navigate properly and you will need reporting that defines Tax Collections to pay sales tax if that's relevant. You will need more but this will get you going...

Those engaged in taking Health Insurance and/or Worker's Compensation need a few more processes and software modules, along with thick skin and very clear glasses with not hint of rose. But we'll chat about those somewhere else...