Three things I wish someone had told me before graduating from acupuncture school. Podcast episode #21.

Do you have anything you wish someone had told you before graduating acupuncture school? I bet you do!

Today I’m sharing three big marketing concepts I wish I’d known before being dumped into the real world and starting my own business.

Before we dive in, an exciting announcement!

The scholarship competition for Acupuncture Marketing School is open!

This week we’ll be awarding three free seats inside Acupuncture Marketing School.

Typically at this time of year we offer two seats – one to an acupuncturist and one to an acupuncture student. But this year, Unified Practice (the acupuncture EHR) is sponsoring an extra seat. So your chances to win are better than ever!

What is Acupuncture Marketing School? AKA, what could you win?

I know there’s a little confusion because the podcast is called Acupuncture Marketing School… so what are we talking about winning, exactly?

My foundations of marketing course is also called Acupuncture Marketing School. (Are we sensing a theme here?) 

Acupuncture Marketing School is a pre-recorded, video-based training that focuses on effective marketing strategies for acupuncturists who want more patients and more impact in their communities.

It’s your step-by-step marketing strategy to grow a meaningful, thriving practice.

Let’s build your dream business – one that serves you and your community, and allows you to connect to your higher purpose.

Learn more about Acupuncture Marketing School here.

It’s free to apply for a scholarship, and open to everyone regardless of location. Acupuncture students are also welcome to apply.

Click here to learn how to apply!

Alright, let’s dive in and talk about three things I wish someone had told me about marketing and building a business before graduating acupuncture school!

🎙️ Listen to Episode #21: Three Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before Graduating Acupuncture School

Show Notes:

Transcript:

Hello there, welcome! Before we dive into our episode today, I have one announcement for you.

This week is my favorite week here at Acupuncture Marketing School. It is scholarship week.

We’ll be awarding three free seats inside Acupuncture Marketing School. Typically we give away two seats, one to an acupuncturist and one to an acupuncture student, but this year Unified Practice (the acupuncture HER) has generously offered to sponsor a third seat. So exciting, YAY. 

So your chances to when are better than ever. I hope that if you’ve considering applying in the past, or you’re on the fence about it this week, that you’ll take the plunge and submit your application. 

It’s free to apply and the scholarship competition is open to everyone regardless of location. And as I mentioned, we always give at least one seat to an acupuncture student, so of course, acupuncture students are encouraged to apply. 

To apply, click the link in the show notes to fill in the application form with your basic information like your name and email so we can contact you in case you win. 

And then record a video, two minutes or less, introducing yourself, explaining why you need this marketing education, how will it impact your practice your community, your clinic. Share your story and help me get to know you. 

And then submit your video through the application form. The last question of the form will allow you to submit a file. If you have trouble submitting the file because the file size is too large, then you’re in good company, this is fairly common. In that case you can email your video to me at scholarship@michellegrasek.com. 

Or you can share your video with me via Google Drive or Dropbox. Pretty much whatever works to share that video with me, please do. And then that is it. 

So you’re just filling out the form, and then recording and submitting your application video. 

If you can’t submit a video, that’s no problem. You can also submit an audio file, two minutes or less, or you can write your application as text, two paragraphs or less, and then email it to me at scholarship@michellegrasek.com. 

As I mentioned, this is one of my favorite times of year. I really enjoy the opportunity to get to meet and learn about acupuncturists all over the world. It is so uplifting and humbling to have the opportunity to listen to people talk about their passion for this medicine and for healing their communities.

I want to add, I know recording a video can be tough. A lot of applicants tell me that this is first time they have ever recorded themselves on camera. That’s okay, you just come as you are, you can record your video in your pajamas, that is totally fine with me. I just want the opportunity to hear your story. I watch every application video that we receive. And I really appreciate the time and efforts that it takes to make a video or to put anything together for your application. 

Again, the link is in the show notes so you can fill out the form and then submit your video. If you have questions, of course, feel free to send me an email, scholarship@Michellegrasek.com 

Okay, today I want to share three things I wish someone had told me about marketing while I was still an acupuncture student. I feel like one of the most important things that I can teach people about marketing is that it’s okay to be a beginner, to always be learning, and that you will get better, you will become more expert with practice.

This is really important perspective for anyone who signs up for Acupuncture Marketing School, and of course for our upcoming scholarship winners  – this willingness to be a lifelong learner. 

I think that most acupuncturists are committed to being lifelong learners of this medicine, and for many acupuncturists that I know, myself included, it’s one of my favorite things about practicing acupuncture. There is always more to learn. That’s such a deeply good feeling. However, we usually only apply this to acupuncture, herbs, and the medicine itself, and not necessarily to marketing or the business side of our practices. 

So today, in honor of the scholarship competition and embracing being lifelong learners, I wanted to share these concepts. 

So the three things. Here we go. The first thing I wish someone had told me about marketing a business in acupuncture school is that you really learn best and improve through practice. 

Of course, it’s important to have strong foundations in any topic, but after a certain point, you really just have to put yourself out there and take that risk, start marketing and see what happens. 

This is a tough one, I think because, at least for many of my students, we’re perfectionists. Hello, recovering perfectionist here, hi, I see you, I feel you. We want to feel like we know exactly what we’re doing, before we publish anything online, before we release any marketing into the world. It can feel scary to get visible in our communities with our marketing. 

We might be worried that if we launch something, it could be a flop. Or it could take time and energy to prepare a new marketing strategy and then not get the response we hoped for. Or once we’re visible, we’re more open to the potential for criticism. Or we could spend money for an ad and not get it back. Now, I always advocate for free marketing because then you can be experimental with it without worrying about losing money. But my point here is that, ultimately, at some point, you have to let go of your fears about what could do wrong with your marketing, and have faith in what could go right.

And the only way to get really good at marketing, after you’ve learned as much theory as you can absorb, is to actually start putting it into practice. It’s just like acupuncture in this way, right? There’s only so much that you can learn from a textbook before you need to get your hands on a patient. And over time, the more patients you see, the more experience you get, then the better you get at diagnosis and treatment and helping people feel better. 

So I want to emphasize that no matter where you are in your marketing skill level, even if you are not really marketing right now, or you’ve never had to in the past – all you have to do to start getting better at marketing is to dive in. 

Let’s take a quick example. If you’re interested in getting more patients from Instagram, you can do a lot of research on Instagram hacks and strategies, but ultimately the only thing that’s going to allow you to figure out what your audience needs is to start showing up regularly, trying out different kinds or posts and stories. See what they respond to.

Which leads me into the second thing I wish someone had told me before graduating acupuncture school (and this is really wrapped up with our first point about getting out there and practicing marketing) – In your marketing you do have to be willing to fail. 

Now that doesn’t mean that you are going to fail, or that you have to fail to be successful. A certain amount of failure is natural and to be expected. But really you just need the willingness to fail and that will carry you really far. A willingness to fail means you’re letting go of the outcome. And you’re also not taking the outcome personally, whatever happens. The response you get from your marketing, or don’t get, is simply data. Data that allows you to course correct and approach your marketing differently and more effectively the next time. So letting go of the outcome and being willing to produce marketing that might be a flop removes the pressure and gives you permission to release A LOT more marketing into your community. To get WAY more visible. Because you know this is not the one and only time you can do marketing, and that the outcome of something you publish doesn’t mean you’re a good or bad business owner or a good or bad person. And that liberates A LOT of my students to produce marketing that they would have held back on in the past – marketing that is authentic and effective, but that they were afraid to post in the past, because that fear of failure was so huge.

I’d also remind you that your audience, whether it’s your IG followers or a group of business owners at Chamber of Commerce meeting, don’t expect perfection. They know you’re human. 

A little reminder that you have so much to offer the people in your community, and they’re waiting for you to be visible, so that they can learn what you have to teach them, decide if they trust you, and make an appointment. And a lot of that getting visible starts with this willingness to be imperfect, our first point, and the willingness to fail. 

Again I want to emphasize that being willing to fail just means putting yourself out there, being open to the outcome, but it doesn’t actually mean that you’re going to fail. Probably whatever marketing you put together or created for social media or your blog or your email newsletter is going to go over just fine, but you just have to let go of the outcome, and let the outcome reveal itself in time. 

And then the last thing I really wish someone had told me as an acupuncture student is that visibility in your community can be accomplished in a million different ways. Visibility is one of our main goals of marketing, right? So people learn to trust you and so they can learn from you. And there’s no one right way to get visible.  So you just have to figure out what is the visibility avenue that works the best for you and your personality, for the amount of time that you have each week, and that fits in with the other parts of your life.

Just because someone says that you have to do this marketing hack on Instagram because it’s so trendy and you’re wasting your time if you don’t do it – that doesn’t actually mean you have to do it, if it’s a bad fit for you. Or that you need to feel guilty for not trying it. If a marketing approach happens to be a bad fit for you, or something you hate, then I’d say try something else, even if all the influencers in the world keep insisting this is the only way to go. You know I never recommend doing marketing that you hate, because it’s not sustainable in the long term, and a lot of marketing works the best when it is repeated consistently.

You also don’t have to do marketing just because somebody else, even a person you might know in real life, so that they did it and had success with it. It may have worked for that person, at that time, in a specific situation, but you get to decide if it’s something that will work for you. 

Here’s an example of this. I graduated 11 years ago and at that time, social media for business and as a marketing avenue for new patients was really in its infancy. And so nobody was teaching Social Media Marketing for Small Business, or at least not that I knew of in my little world. And so, in-person and print marketing, like the yellowpages and newspaper ads, were still a common marketing strategy. I’m dating myself here, guys. But in my marketing classes, one thing that people talked about a ton was going to networking meetings. 

I hate networking meetings so much. Sometimes I still go, because I want to help a fellow small business celebrate their grand opening, or I want to support the Chamber of Commerce. But I don’t really like networking. And I pushed against this dislike for a long time because it’s people told me to do. It’s what people did at the time – lots of in-person introducing yourself and chatting with people. And it is an effective marketing strategy, for sure. But it didn’t work for me because I hated doing it. And I get a lot of feedback from my marketing students that there are many other marketing avenues they would rather pursue aside from networking. 

So the point here is to take marketing suggestions that people tell you, “you must do” as suggestions. It might have worked for someone else, and their particular personality or their style of marketing in a certain timeframe, it doesn’t mean that you have to do the same thing. 

Instead I invite you to try different marketing approaches and see what’s a good fit for you. What can you see yourself doing consistently over the long term. 

How can you get visible in a way that resonates with you and makes you comfortable? Do more of that. 

Okay, food for thought this week. Three things I wish someone had told me before graduating acupuncture school, one that at the end of the day, you become good at marketing through practice, two, have a willingness to fail, and three, figure out what kinds of marketing visibility work for you. What’s a good fit for your personality, your strengths, the amount of free time you have, etc. 

I would love to know, feel free to shoot me a DM on Instagram: What do you wish someone had told you before graduating acupuncture school? I’ll include a link to my Instagram in the show notes so you can message me, my IG handle is @michellegrasek. I would absolutely love to know. 

And one last reminder, please don’t forget to submit your scholarship application before Thursday October 14 at midnight Pacific Time, the link is in my bio to access the application form.

And if you have questions, feel free to send them to me michelle@michellegrasek.com or scholarships at scholarship scholarship@michellegrasek.com.

Bye for now, and I will be back next week with a bonus episode for you all about designing a marketing strategy.