Acupuncture Marketing School Episode #76: Curiosity and Acts of Service as Marketing with Kenton Sefcik

Today I’m speaking with Kenton Sefcik, an acupuncturist in Nova Scotia and the creator of TCM Graduate TV.

TCM Graduate TV is a YouTube channel focused on helping newer acupuncturists gain confidence in their clinical and diagnostic, communication with patients, building a practice, and more. 

In this episode, we talk about why he considers himself anti-marketing, what that means, how he approaches marketing at his practice.

This includes considering acts of service as marketing, generosity as marketing, relationship building as marketing, curiosity as marketing, and much more. 

I think you’ll enjoy this conversation with Kenton!

Don’t forget, Acupuncture Marketing School, the online class, is on sale now for $200 off. Bonus: Anyone who signs up this week gets a FREE 1:1 Marketing Strategy Session with me!

This special sale ends on May 27th at midnight Pacific Time.

>> Click here to learn more and use code NEWPATIENTS to save $200!

Show Notes:

🎙️ Listen to Episode #76: Anti-Marketing with Kenton Sefcik:

💙 Today’s episode is sponsored by Jane, your all-in-one, HIPAA-compliant patient management software. 

The team at Jane recognizes how hard you work to support your patients and they aim to do the same for you. 

That’s why Jane offers unlimited phone, email, and live chat support with every subscription.

I recommend booking a personalized 1-on-1 demo with a member of their team. It’s a great way to make sure Jane will be the right fit for you and your practice and to see Jane’s features in action.

And Jane even offers a free data import, an Account Setup Consultation, and online training tools to help set you up for success. This is one of the things that sold me on Jane – that I would not have import all that data myself.

To get started, head over to jane.app/start. Their team would love to connect with you to see how Jane could help you and your practice. You can also use the code ACUSCHOOL1MO at the time of sign-up for a 1-month grace period applied to your new account.

Subscribe to the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

 💖 Love the podcast? Help other acupuncturists find the podcast by leaving a review here.

Transcript:

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (00:05):

Welcome to the Acupuncture Marketing School Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Grasek, and I’m here to help you get visible in your community, take marketing action with confidence and get more patients in your practice and more money in your pocket every week. We both know you’re a talented, passionate acupuncturist and that acupuncture has the power to change lives. So let’s dive right into this episode and talk about how you can reach more patients.

 (00:33):

Welcome back. Today I’m speaking with Kenton Sefcik in acupuncturist based in Canada and the creator of TCM Graduate TV. TCM Graduate TV is a YouTube channel focused on helping acupuncturists gain confidence in their clinical and diagnostic skills, their bedside manner, and communication with patients, building their practices, and much more. And in this episode, we talk about why Kenton considers himself anti-marketing, what this means and how he approaches marketing at his practice, including considering acts of service as marketing, generosity as marketing, relationship building as marketing, curiosity as marketing, and much more. I think you’ll really enjoy this conversation with Kenton.

[JANE.APP] (01:19):

Today’s episode is sponsored by Jane. The team at Jane recognizes how hard you work to support your patients, and they aim to do the same for you. That’s why Jane offers unlimited phone, email, and live chat support with every subscription. I recommend booking a personalized one-on-one demo with a member of their team. It’s a great way to make sure Jane will be the right fit for you and your practice and to see Jane’s features in action. And Jane even offers a free data import, an account setup consult and online training tools to help you get set up for success. And this is one of the things that really sold me on Jane, that I would not have to import all that data by myself that they would be doing it for me. So I knew that I wasn’t going to mess it up. To get started, head over to Jane.app/start. Their team would love to connect with you to see how Jane could help you in your practice. And you can also use the code [ACUSCHOOL1MO] at the time of signup for a one-month grace period applied to your new account. I will put links in the show notes for Jane.app/start as well as the code.

[MICHELLE] (02:33):

One last note before we dive into today’s episode, acupuncture Marketing School, the online class is on sale this week for $200 off. Yes, it is that time of year. The discount code is [NEWPATIENTS] and the sale ends on Monday, May 27th at midnight Pacific Time. Acupuncture Marketing School is a prerecorded video-based training that walks you through creating a really strong marketing strategy for your unique practice and your unique patients. The goal is to help you get visible in your community, to reach more people and grow your practice in ways that feel comfortable and authentic to you. This training is detailed and step-by-step with workbooks and checklists to help you understand how to apply core marketing concepts to your business in ways that are effective. And the way that I teach the class is very linear step-by-step. So if that’s how your brain works and that’s how you like to learn, then I think you’ll enjoy it.

 (03:30):

I’m adding a special bonus for anyone who signs up this week, a free one-on-one one-hour marketing strategy session with me. So you can have the accountability if you want it, and we can work through any specific questions you have about the class or about marketing in general as well as fine tune your marketing strategy together. The class is worth 15 N-C-C-A-O-M-P-D-A credits, so lots of bang for your buck. If you are a marketing beginner and you need help, this class was built for you and I’d absolutely love to help you. If you have questions, please feel free to email me at michelle@michellegrasek.com. I am more than happy to chat with you before you sign up to answer all of your questions. Again, the discount code is [NEWPATIENTS] and it expires on May 27th at midnight. I’ll put a link in the show notes so you can take a look.

[MICHELLE] (04:22):

All right, let’s dive into this episode with Kenton. Hi, Kenton, Welcome.

[KENTON SEFCIK] (04:29):

Thank you for having me.

[MICHELLE] (04:31):

Very nice to see you. Do you want to give our listeners a quick intro before we dive in?

[KENTON] (04:37):

My name is Kenton Sefcik. I’m a registered acupuncturist living and practicing in Nova Scotia, Canada. And maybe I can say that I got into Chinese medicine through the way of Chinese Kung Fu and that was a thing. So back in like 1994, I started training Chinese Kung Fu and became very interested in Chinese culture and eventually the medicine.

[MICHELLE] (05:03):

Very nice. So you were interested in Chinese medicine quite a long time before it started to become mainstream in North America, it sounds like?

[KENTON] (05:12):

I guess so. And in the nineties, it was quite interesting because, and I would say mid to late nineties, there were a lot of Kung Fu films that were getting dubbed or transcribed into English and because of that you had certain elements of the Chinese culture in the films themselves. So for example, you might have somebody who was hit in a fictitious way, and the only way to get them better was to go see an acupuncturist or to go get some herbs or something like that. And sometimes even the protagonist himself was a master acupuncturist or master herbalist. So unknowingly getting that exposure to East Asian medicine when I wasn’t really maybe even interested in it at the time, but it was definitely part of the Kung Fu culture, if you will.

[MICHELLE] (06:03):

That’s so interesting. I really had no idea. Now I feel like I’ve missed out on a, like a pretty important genre, like a huge genre on television films. So you have been teaching East Asian Medicine online for many, many years. You have a podcast, you have a YouTube channel, do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

[KENTON] (06:26):

Sure. So I did have a podcast called The Strength of TCM podcast, and I did that for a few years, had lots of great, great guests such as yourself, and I just actually recently deleted it. You might ask, why the heck would you do something like that? And to be honest with you, over the years, I’ve got lots of feedback and I figured out that I could do it better. The other thing that I realized too is that I just have more information just as a human, as a practitioner talking with all these people and students and that sort of thing over the years, so I just thought I could just do a better job. That being said, wonderful new podcast just started called The First Years of Acupuncture. Not only am I going to delve into, into all that nuts and bolts teaching that I like to do with heavy hitting acupuncture points and all that stuff, but I want to talk about boundaries and ethics. I want to talk about, we often moonlight as counselors, so I want to be able to give people those skills, how to communicate better with patients throughout their treatment protocol and all that stuff as well as the nuts and bolts of LA 11, Spleen 9, Stomach 40 for damp heat.

 (07:40):

So yeah, The First Years of Acupuncture podcast, I also have TCM Graduate TV. This is a YouTube channel that I’ve got lessons on and got pretty good feedback over the years on that. And one other thing that I have is the strength of TCM membership. So if anybody’s saying, oh my gosh, this is a mouthful and I can’t remember all this stuff, just go to kentonsefcik.com, everything’s there. We were just talking before we started recording, you end up spending hours building content, you end up spending hours prepping to speak in front of a naturopathic doctor conference or something like this and where does it go? And I think about this in an online world, where does it go? So I have a 10-hour foundation, foundations of Chinese medicine course where I take people right from the beginning to the end, how to diagnose patients, how to build treatments, how to interview patients properly and then how to create a cohesive treatment. So I’ve got that courses up there on the membership and other stuff like really making sure that people stay away from burnout, all these types of things. So I’ve got all sorts of, I’ve got hours and hours of content on the strength of TTCM membership, and it’s only $8 a month.

[MICHELLE] (08:57):

Amazing.

[KENTON] (08:58):

And the big thing is, of course, with me, The First Years of Acupuncture podcast, and I’m just always thinking about those people that have just graduated, they’re just about to graduate. They don’t have a lot of money. They’re starting their business they need support, and so that’s why it’s eight bucks.

[MICHELLE] (09:18):

So you are basically like the mentor that we all wish we had, the new, all the new grads. I mean, you wouldn’t believe how many people I speak to who said I felt spit out of acupuncture school and I had so many questions and I really wasn’t sure who could I speak to get into the nitty gritty. It’s, we become very isolated sometimes in our practices and so I think it’s always nice to hear the perspective of someone who’s been practicing for a while. And it’s very calming as well, especially if you hear that person recommend something that you’re doing or you were thinking of doing, and you’re like, wow, okay, everything’s going to be fine. I am going to figure this out. But I think it helps a lot to have the perspective of someone who’s been there before.

[KENTON] (10:10):

I appreciate that. And anybody who wants to call me their mentor, I would be most humbled and gracious about it. I got a little bit of an unfair advantage, which is an interesting thing. So when I went to Chinese Medicine College, a couple other schools opened up at the exact same time, and so I only had five other people in my class.

[MICHELLE] (10:32):

Wow.

[KENTON] (10:33):

And two of them were part-time, so after we went to second year, they were gone and one person actually quit, so I got a lot of one-on-one attention in the classroom, as you can imagine. But the other thing that happened is when it was time to do the 700-hour practicum, we had all these patients waiting to be treated and only Kenton.

[MICHELLE] (10:54):

My goodness

[KENTON] (10:54):

In the clinic, essentially. So I got to run two rooms. I mean, who gets to run like two rooms in student clinic? Not all the time where I run two rooms, but at times would run two rooms, and I gave over 600 patient treatments in my 700-hour practicum. And most of the time people have to like, share patients and they have to you treat this week, I’ll treat the next week, I’ll observe and that sort of thing. I didn’t have to do any of that. I had two clinical supervisors in with me at the same time at my disposal. So when I came out of college, I actually felt ready, like, and no fault to any I’m probably going to, I’m poking fun here, but I didn’t go to China on a trip and get like super cheap between massages and eat all the good food. I didn’t do this, I didn’t do that. I actually treated 600 patients in 700 hours.

 (11:51):

So I had a little bit of an unfair advantage there and then I was mentored for about a year and a half outside of school by one of my teachers, Colton Oswald. I mean, I moved 5,000 kilometers away from my home to a new province, opened up a practice, started a clinic. Man, like he screwed my head on straight probably like once every couple of weeks and then about a year and a half he said, “Okay, you’ve got to fly on your own now.” But that was super helpful too. And what I found, Michelle was like, I was talking to people and I realized that they didn’t get the same thing. They weren’t heavily mentored. They didn’t have the opportunities that I had. And it didn’t matter if they went to what you would call like a good school or a bad school, they came out and they were confused. How do I build a treatment? I know how to do musculoskeletal real good, but I don’t know if somebody comes in with depression or fertility concerns or vice versa.

 (12:47):

There’s lots of people that are really good at some of the more psychosomatic stuff and they’re not good with physical ailments. And then as you totally pointed out, we get spat out of Chinese medicine college, and there’s a little bit of that push pull with it. There’s a little bit of that, well, I wish I would’ve learned pulse diagnosis better. I wish I would’ve learned marketing. I wish I would’ve learned how to run a business. And I can see that, I wish I would’ve learned how to, counseling skills. But the problem is that that’s not what the school is designed for. If the school is designed to make you a practitioner where you can stick pins in people and give them herbs to drink. And so yeah, so that being said, that’s why you do what you do and I do what I do is because I think we can fill in the gaps.

[MICHELLE] (13:47):

Yes, and it’s so funny that you said you had a pretty intensive mentor situation, and then you realized afterwards, very few people get this, and you turned around and said, okay, well now I’m going to share that experience and what I gained from it with other people through what you learned. I had something very similar. So I had a marketing mentor for the first three years of my practice, and we did a trade for cosmetic acupuncture and her marketing, like help, advice, guidance, brainstorming. Once a month we would sit at a little local cafe for like four hours and we would just talk about everything that worked for the marketing in the past month and then make up strategy for the upcoming month. And at the time, I was very new to marketing, I was not very good at it, so we would spend some time arguing about like, what things was I actually comfortable enough to do?

 (14:46):

She’s very extroverted and she wanted me to talk to all the strangers and I was like, okay, well that’s, we could put it on the list, but I’m probably not going to do it. What else can we do? But after that three years, I moved away, and so we didn’t have that trade anymore and then I realized how few people in our industry get any sort of mentorship, let alone a marketing specific one-on-one mentorship that lasts for years. And that really is what inspired me to start Acupuncture Marketing School. So I think that it’s really nice that you are willing to give back in that way and you’re so passionate about it. And I think that’s what a mentor needs. You really have to care. You’ve got to be so invested in the outcome of the people you’re mentoring because it isn’t, it’s an intensive process.

[KENTON] (15:39):

That’s, I agree with everything you said there. I definitely am passionate. I want people to succeed. There’s a feedback system probably very similar to marketing. You know, if you try a marketing thing, you throw something on the wall and it doesn’t stick. When you initially start throwing stuff at the wall and it doesn’t stick it feels bad, but when you do this for years and years and years, and some stuff starts sticking, you become fearless. You say, I can throw anything at the wall now, and I don’t care if it sticks because I’ve had lots of stuff not stick, and I’ve just been able to roll with the punches. So yeah, for me, if I can help somebody build a point prescription and or come up with an herbal prescription and they get results in a clinic.

 (16:33):

My patient came back this week and they are 50% better, 20% better, 80%, it doesn’t matter. My patient got better then. I mean, they get that, they not only get the knowledge that starts to become part of them, they not only get the knowledge that those acupoints and those herbs and these modalities actually work. They get a confidence boost too. And so that, and it just keeps building and building and building. So one of the taglines I always say is, I helping you gain confidence in the skills you went to school for, and I feel that’s my passion for sure.

[MICHELLE] (17:12):

I love that because I definitely agree that that willingness to have some trial and error to throw spaghetti at the wall and say, and know inside your heart, like, okay, some of this is not going to work, but some of it is, and I’m willing to let go of the stuff that didn’t work and I’m not going to look at it with judgment towards myself. I’m not going to use it to say, oh, marketing doesn’t work, I can never learn this. But I think it really builds confidence, as you were saying, and that resilience to know that you can get up and try again. And also from a marketing perspective, I think it helps people not take the concept of marketing so seriously and not have to make everything perfect before they launch it, like an ad or an Instagram post or whatever it is, a blog post, because they know that there’s always going to be another chance. They’ll always be another marketing opportunity if they decide to make it and they’ll always be another patient where you can sort of rally and be like, okay, but this time I know what I’ll do differently. So I think that’s so important for longevity in practice and not burning out.

[KENTON] (18:23):

Yeah, definitely. Just got to keep, keep reinventing.

[MICHELLE] (18:28):

So I would love to chat with you about the ideas of building relationships in a community as a marketing strategy. Because even as an introvert, I feel that meeting people, like just the interacting with the real-life people in my tiny community of 7,000 people, that really moves the needle. And I think sometimes I will recommend something like if you don’t want to go to networking meetings, you could pick a volunteer organization and just show up regularly, like twice a month, once a month, and people will get to know you and those conversations about acupuncture are going to evolve, like they’re going to come up. But people don’t take me very seriously when I suggest that as a marketing avenue, but I think it is one of the most powerful and long-term marketing strategies they can choose. So how do you feel about all that?

[KENTON] (19:32):

So I call myself the anti-marketing guy, just because, early on in my practice when I didn’t have a lot of money, I spent a lot of money and I spent it on advertising, and I spent it on the scream and shout, get on the top of the mountain, look at me, look at me look what I have, look what I have. I just found that that fell flat and got me nowhere. What was really funny was that where I was originally living in Nova Scotia, there was a pay for paper. I call it a pay for paper, because you actually had to pay for an advertisement to have like a business card, and then you could write an article. So it was like one of these article, these papers, but it was distributed like all through that entire community. So what was interesting about it though, is that I would write these articles and I thought to myself, how can I write an article that doesn’t sell? Because even in my, like first couple years of practice, I started to realize I would go to these wellness shows and get some practitioner up there on a stage, and they would really be pushing hard to, for the sale. And that just made me feel icky.

 (20:43):

So I ended up writing these articles, and some of them would do, okay, like maybe I’ll get one patient here, one patient there from like hot flashes and night sweating, but the one that really was funny to me was when I was writing about stool, I was writing about bowel movements, and I end up getting like a bunch of patients from it, and mostly men, which is hilarious. But yeah, like that was one bit of feedback that I got from that grassroots marketing and then a hundred percent, I really agree that getting out there in the community was probably, is probably my still my number one strategy, because especially today, like, I mean, I’ve been in practice for whatever, 16, 17 years or whatever, so back 16, 17 years ago, the internet wasn’t as noisy. Now it’s incredibly noisy and so what I’m finding is that it’s going to take extra effort. It’s going to take extra dollars to break through on the ads, but it takes zero extra effort and $0 to actually get out in my community and build real connections with people.

 (22:00):

So I think it’s important that we build connections with humans, and you can do this in groups. You can do this by putting on a talk at a library, it doesn’t matter, whatever, but once you cut through that noise and there’s like a eye to eye connection with somebody that talk ends and somebody comes up to you and says, “Hey, have you ever treated severe lower back pain? Have you ever treated hot flashes?” And you get to have those conversations. The other thing that I recommend in terms of building connections is B2B. So for example, after I’ve been in a community for a while I actually look out for the hairdressers, I look out for the firewood delivery guy, I look out for like the people that are actually been in the community longer than me, and they’re well connected and I take care of them and I build connections with them.

 (22:55):

For example, in that first place that I was living where I was writing that paper, I made a connection with a hairstylist and some way, somehow, I got connected through a friend group or something like that and I found out that she, her hands were killing her. I mean, she’d been at it, she’d been at it for years, and her hands were just killing her. So I said to her, I said, “Could we do a trade?” And she says, “Well, what does that look like?” I said, “Well, all that looks like is I’m going to treat you once a week, every two weeks, and you are going to have a stack of my business cards on your stylist desk.”

[MICHELLE] (23:30):

I love it.

[KENTON] (23:30):

Because who’s hearing about everybody’s problems, more so than psychologists and acupuncturists, the hairdresser? Or like even the barber. A hundred percent. So you get the idea. So I’m a hundred percent in agreement with you. I’m definitely the anti-marketing guy because I like getting out in the community and making those connections. I just find them to be actually genuine. There’s nothing sleazy about it, and I’m not pushing anything, and I always approach it from the position of giving. I don’t actually want anything. I actually, Clara Cohen of AcuPro Academy, that amazing woman, her and I have discussed this at length. So the idea that, that you actually go in to a relationship to give rather than to get, and you still end up getting.

[MICHELLE] (24:22):

Yes, I have so many thoughts. I’ll try not to lose them.

[KENTON] (24:27):

I was talking so much.

[MICHELLE] (24:28):

No, no, that’s super. I feel like one of the things that people ask me the most is, how can I get more patients on my schedule ASAP? Like, what is the marketing that I can do that’s going to build me the fastest? And most people are not interested in ads, which is fine, because I also prefer the free marketing. It requires your time and energy, so it’s not free in that way, but no dollars. So I always teach them that marketing is about building trust, and there’s like a spectrum of activities you can do and the amount of trust that it builds. And in-person conversations is one of the fastest trust building marketing activities you can ever do because we are such social creatures. As you said, we want to get our eyeballs on somebody else’s eyeballs and in that moment, we are deciding, do I trust this person enough to let them put needles in me to share my personal health information? Do I want to talk about my bowel movements with this person now that I know that that’s on the table because I read this article?

 (25:36):

And if you are meeting them through volunteering, or you always see them at the coffee shop, or you’re at a networking event, whatever it is, like giving a talk at the library, like you said, they have the opportunity to develop that trust with you so fast. And then they can decide like, yes, I want to get on your schedule compared to, and my audience knows how much I love digital marketing as well, but there’s a bit of distance. And so, it can, it just takes more touch points typically with digital marketing compared to being on the ground and having these conversations with people. And if someone walks up to you and asks you questions about acupuncture, think about how interested they already are, their interest level is so much higher compared to someone who sees your Instagram posts like flash by them on the internet. Their level of engagement is high. They’re like prepared. They’re on the cusp of becoming a patient. So whenever people ask me that question, how can I get more patients as quickly as possible, one of the things I recommend is trying to get out in their community. I just think that’s so helpful. I did want to ask you, do you participate more in your community in like networking events? Are you doing volunteering or is it the one-on-one, like with the hairdresser, the individual outreach?

[KENTON] (27:04):

I think there’s a balance between all of it, to be honest with you. I think about yin and yang. I think about when my business is yin, because I’m only one human, so when my business is yin, it gives me an opportunity for my market to be young, because there’s, might be a little bit of a dip. So if you have a patient that calls in sick, and you have like an hour, you have an hour and a half, maybe even in your schedule, there’s certain business operations that are, that should be running in the back of someone’s head. So I always think about this stuff. So it doesn’t have to be like a complete slowdown like, oh my gosh, it’s I haven’t seen, I’m not seeing hardly any patients and now I’ve got a panic, but it’s just this idea that when there’s like a hole, when there’s a hole in a day, or maybe there’s a couple holes in the week what can I be doing constructively with that time, and then to balance it between it all something.

 (28:05):

I went on Canva and I grabbed a sheet and it has sloths all over it. I put little, it has little sloths all over it and I basically wrote, my name is Kenton, I’m an acupuncturist, I have 17 years’ experience, and I treat X, Y, Z conditions and I would love to help you, and that sort of thing. And it just had like my phone number on the bottom. I actually printed out like 10 of them and I gave them to patients and I gave them to patients that I knew worked in office buildings where they could like stick it up on the court board. And those weren’t patients that just saw me for the first time. Those are patients that have been seeing me for a long time and I’ve got rapport built with them. So I’m always thinking about ways of, like, even with your, with my email list, like my email list is like, how do you grow an email list? It’s like, well if you find this content useful, can you send it to a friend, please? I mean, like, I don’t know, I think that’s an okay thing to ask, so yeah, so I try to balance all of it and I try to think about, so probably a few different things.

 (29:06):

For example, I love teaching Qigong and Tai Chi. I think this is a wonderful opportunity. I go to a library, I put on a free thing, eight to 10 people show up from the community, I teach Qigong and Tai Chi. I work in maybe some Chinese self-massage and then maybe one or two people come and chat with me. I think about that. That’s not me getting more patience. That’s me giving back to the community. And then I think about these B2B businesses, you know where’s the hairdresser, where’s the, where are the people that are like well connected? I’m very careful so I caution when giving free treatments. That’s why if I’m going to give some free treatments it’s important to lay some ground rules ahead of time. So it’s not like, oh yeah, let’s just come once a week for the rest of your life. It’s like, no, no, like, let’s come like once every two weeks and then once you start feeling better, let’s get you in once a month and as long as we have this relationship, everything will be all fine or something like that. Or maybe somebody’s got an acute condition and they’re a well-connected community member and maybe they don’t have coverage or something like this. And so then I don’t mind, but I’ll, again, I’m laying it out for them, this is what I’m going to do for you. I’m also going to tell them, this is what I charge so they can get some sort of idea in their mind, okay, this person is actually going to give me like $900 worth of treatment for free thing. So that piece, there’s the sloths. That’s a good thing to do.

[MICHELLE] (30:30):

Why the sloths? What made you pick sloths, just because they’re cute?

[KENTON] (30:34):

They’re so cute. Actually, I should be clear. They were meditating sloths in Canva.

[MICHELLE] (30:39):

Makes a difference.

[KENTON] (30:40):

Sorry, not just some random sloths. They were meditating sloths and they were super cute. And so I think I got one. I found the one, and then I just copied and pasted and I put them all over the page.

[MICHELLE] (30:51):

Ah, I gotcha.

[KENTON] (30:52):

Faded them out and then I put, yeah, but again, just looking for opportunities. Where are people congregating? Where are people talking? When somebody’s in the lunchroom, when somebody’s by the cooler. Because that’s at the very base level of how you build a practice. You said something that piqued my interest. You said people say, I want to build a practice, ASAP. And if you want to build a practice, ASAP, what you do is you go work in somebody else’s office who’s got a really big booming practice who doesn’t yet have an acupuncturist and they can just feed you patients because, and these things happen. I’ve met lots of people that, where this happens to them, but if you don’t have that, you don’t get to build a practice ASAP.

[MICHELLE] (31:36):

It takes time.

[KENTON] (31:37):

It takes years. It took me about five to six years to actually get the base.

[MICHELLE] (31:42):

I think that’s average.

[KENTON] (31:43):

Where I didn’t have to worry about really chasing after that new patient, new patient, new patient. But yeah, so I don’t think there is ASAP. I think at the very ground base level, you’re building a connection. You help a human. That human has lower back pain. They will only see you as the acupuncturist who fixes back pain. When they run into their cousin or their friend six months later who has back pain, they’ll say, “There’s this really amazing practitioner and they fixed my back pain.”

[MICHELLE] (32:14):

I really always appreciate the idea that you can come from your marketing from a very generous perspective and it’s about what can you give, what can you share? What can you teach? As opposed to like this hunt for referrals, especially in a business-to-business marketing space. And one of the things that I teach my, like new grads, especially if they are in a new town, like they graduated acupuncture school and they may be moved away from their home and so they really have no connections in this place, I always recommend that they make a spreadsheet pop on Google Maps and make a spreadsheet of all the other small business owners within a certain radius of where their office is going to be and get down their contact info. If you’re an introvert, you can email them your introduction. If you are comfortable with it, you can visit in person, you can ask to meet them and introduce yourself.

 (33:15):

But the angle that people come from in that introduction is very important, especially if it’s another healthcare provider. So I always remind people to focus the content of their email or their introduction on what they can provide for the other person in their community. Generally, I’ll say introduce yourself and your specialty, tell them where you’re located, let them know that you’re new, you’re just looking to connect and then say something to the effect of, let me know how I can support you and your clients or support you and this community that we share. And sometimes people will answer and say like, “Hey, great to meet you. I don’t know how we could work together right now.” Like if you email a coffee shop owner, maybe they’re going to be like, you seem really nice, but you are an acupuncturist and I run a coffee shop and I can’t think of anything.

 (34:11):

And that’s also fine right now. They know that you exist and you led with generosity and you can respond and say like, “Hey, no problem. I’ll keep thinking about it.” And maybe in the future you could teach a gua sha class in their space after hours. Or maybe they’re the, you’re the first person that they think of when they develop knee pain. But you are never going into it with I am here, I’m new, I need patients. I think that people know this intuitively, but thinking about how to structure it as an offer in their introduction and really focus on that generosity makes a big difference. And people can feel that you are making an effort to be a participant in the community and that matters to them a lot. Especially as small business owners, they’ve been in your shoes, they want to help you and much more so when they feel like you are being generous.

[KENTON] (35:08):

Yeah, definitely. I think about getting to know that person. I’m not going in there wanting to tell them everything about myself. I actually want to get to know them. I want to get to know their business. I want to get to know their values so then I can if somebody says, oh, I’ve got to kill a couple hours because I got to drop my kids off at drama. It’s like, oh man, there’s this killer coffee shop. I met this guy, he owns this. You got to go to this coffee shops at that. Then I can actually actively have an interest in what people are doing and I genuinely do. And so I, me being a little bit more extroverted, I do love the idea of going to meet people like face-to-face and that sort of thing. So that’s where I would love to meet. I’d love to meet like business owners face to face. And I have sent emails and stuff like that, but yeah, a hundred percent what can I bring? What is it about you that makes you tick?

[MICHELLE] (36:06):

Yeah, I like that. I think for that outreach with other healthcare providers, it’s also nice to ask them, what patients can I send you without ever asking them for a referral in this introduction because, it is, I never thought about it like this, but it’s like you said, you’re trying to get to know this person. You are approaching this interaction with curiosity. Maybe all you know is this person’s a chiropractor, but if you say like, ”Hey, what’s your favorite patient? Like, who can I send you? What do you love to treat?” And then they’re like, “h, I love pediatric. I love adjusting pregnant women. I have all these certifications.” You’re like, “Wow, okay. That’s really, really helpful to know.” And then you can actually be in service to the community by sending them specific patients that they specialize in. So yeah, that’s a really good approach.

[KENTON] (37:00):

I’m a big believer in building a team. If you don’t work in a multidisciplinary clinic, it’s still good to build a team. People have asked me how you build a team and I actually just talked to the patients. So patients will come in and they’ll say, “Yeah, I just came from massage. I’m going to massage next week,” and I’ll say to them, “Who do you go see?” They’ll tell me and I’ll say, “How long have you been seeing them? And do you get great results from them?” I actually asked that last question because it’s funny. So there’s lots of people that’ll say, “I see so and so physio and I’ve seen this so and so massage therapist or whatever for a few months.” And, “Oh, do you find you’re getting any better?” And they’re like, “Not really.” I’m like, “Okay, well, then I’m going to, probably not going to recommend a patient to that.”

[MICHELLE] (37:42):

Noted.

[KENTON] (37:42):

Noted. However —

[MICHELLE] (37:43):

People are very loyal though. It’s hard for them to leave like their hairdresser. Because My mom was with the same hairdresser for 30 years who kept giving her the same haircut and I’m like, “You can go somewhere else.” She’s like, “She’s my friend, I can’t.” I’m like, “That’s right. Okay, that’s up to you.”

[KENTON] (37:59):

We are married now. So at the same time, you can get information and you can build a team and then what’s really, I mean, I know I’ve had it happen to me like where somebody, like we share a patient and maybe I didn’t even know we share a patient and then somebody referred somebody to me and that actually piques me and I’m going to go, huh, maybe I should be referring back to them. And so then I start referring back to them and then all of a sudden we’re like working together, but we’re not in the same building.

[MICHELLE] (38:29):

I remember you sent an email newsletter, gosh, it was probably quite a few months ago at this point, but you were talking about the idea of relationship building in the community as marketing and just the concept that it’s hard to expect your community to invest in you as a small business owner if you are not also spending time and energy investing in the community itself. I think that is the perfect way to think about it. I think it’s very motivating for a lot of acupuncturists because we really care. We want to support the people in our community with this medicine and so it matters to us very much whether or not we are contributing and participating. But the realization that once you are consciously and purposefully doing that, it becomes this beautiful cycle where your business will grow, the community will grow and succeed, people will feel better. It’s like an upward spiral. I’ve always loved that idea that rising tide lifts all boats and I just thought that was a really beautiful way to summarize how important that participation is.

[KENTON] (39:40):

Thank you. It’s a different spin on the cliché, but it’s not a cliché, but it’s a saying people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. And so this idea that, I mean, how do you show you care, there’s different acts of service that we can provide for people and in the community. And so once, once that we start stepping into that, then we actually see the rewards. I mean, the most valuable reward is the building of the relationship. Yes, I need patience and I need to put food on the table and I need to keep my lights on, but I actually think that there’s no way to do that without the relationship.

[MICHELLE] (40:22):

Agree. So, yeah. Well, I have one more question for you today, and that is, what is your definition of success?

[KENTON] (40:33):

Well, I actually parse out the word success from the word wealth. And that’s just a personal thing I do. So my personal definition of success would be a well-rounded human that is happy and enjoying their life most of the time. And I parse it out from wealth because I think that wealth is something that is different. I think wealth is the like amassing money, but also investments and security from a financial point of view, and even something that you would hope that would create intergenerational wealth down the line. So I think that we can all be successful. We can all work towards success and we can all work towards wealth hand in hand.

[MICHELLE] (41:35):

Very nice. Well, thank you so much for being here today. You mentioned your YouTube channel and your new upcoming podcast. So we will definitely put the links in the show notes, but is there anywhere else that people can connect with you, like on social media? And will you share your website again?

[KENTON] (41:53):

Yeah, so my website is kentonsefcik.com. As well as, I mean if you go to my website, you can actually just fill out a form there if you want to chat about something. My email address is kenton@kentonsefcik.com. You can email me there if you’ve got a question for the podcast. That’s what I really want to do. I want to start each episode, I love starting each episode with, I’m a little bit older, so I think about reaching down deep into a mailbag and put it, pulling out a letter

[MICHELLE] (42:20):

Like Santa? Love it

[KENTON] (42:21):

Like Santa but yeah, so if you want a question answered on the podcast, you can reach me there too. So website, email, it’s probably the best to check those frequently.

[MICHELLE] (42:32):

Perfect. Well, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

[KENTON] (42:35):

Yeah, thanks for the opportunity and we’re going to have you on The First Years of Acupuncture podcast as well. We’ve got to do it up.

[MICHELLE] (42:42):

I cannot wait.

 (42:43):

Thank you for tuning in today. Don’t forget to check out Acupuncture Marketing School. The link is in the show notes and the discount code is [NEWPATIENTS] to save $200. The discount code expires on Monday, May 27th at midnight Pacific. As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to send me an email. I know that Acupuncture Marketing School is an investment and I want you to be really, really happy with your decision to join me. So feel free to send me a message michelle@michellegrasek.com. I am happy to chat with you. Enjoy your week.