Episode #88 on the Acupuncture Marketing School Podcast: Last-Minute Holiday Marketing Ideas with Ildi Arlette and a headshot of Ildi wearing large dark cat-eye glasses and dangling earrings.

Today I’m talking with award-winning business consultant Ildi Arlette.

Idli has helped hundreds of clinic owners focus on profitability, growth, and building a positive company culture in the past 23 years. 

She’s also a former clinic owner, a combined medical aesthetics and surgery clinic in a 7000-foot space, which she sold in 2019. 

With her industry experience, she has a unique perspective on the inner workings of different types of clinics, and the buying habits of consumers across North America. 

Today she shares her advice for bringing in more revenue with a Black Friday or holiday event at your practice – whether that “event” is in person at your practice, or a sale on gift certificates that you promote solely through email. 

In this episode, we talk about:

  • How events are a signal for our patients, and how to use them
  • Why you should focus your efforts on your existing patients, as opposed to spending a ton of time and money on acquiring new patients
  • Why it’s important to keep sales or special offers very SIMPLE
  • What is a universal offer, and why it’s the best choice if your goal is revenue
  • Whether December or January is a better month for promotions at our acupuncture practices
  • And much more

Show Notes:

🎙️ Listen to Episode #88: Last-Minute Holiday Marketing Ideas with Ildi Arlette

🩵 Today’s episode is sponsored by Jane — a clinic management software and EMR. 🩵

We all know that choosing the right EMR can feel a bit overwhelming, especially when you’re just starting out. You’re trying to juggle both your practice needs and your budget, and that’s not always the easiest combination.

That’s why Jane came up with the new Balance Plan. It includes the essential features you need to keep things running smoothly in your clinic, without the extra stuff you don’t. 1:1 telehealth, unlimited support, email reminders, and more are included, no matter which plan you choose.

So if you’re looking for an EMR that helps you focus on your patients, not your costs, Jane is here for you — just like a part-time assistant.

Plans start as low as $39 a month in the US. Visit jane.app to learn more — and if you’re ready to get started, use the code ACUSCHOOL1MO at sign-up for a 1-month grace period on your new account.

And you’re more than welcome to email me with questions about Jane at michelle@michellegrasek.com.

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

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Transcript:

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (00:00):

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.

[MICHELLE] (00:34):

Welcome. Today I’m talking with business consultant, Ildi Arlette. Ildi has helped hundreds of clinic owners focus on profitability, growth, and building a positive company culture in the past 23 years. She’s also a former clinic owner of a combined medical aesthetics and surgery clinic in a 7,000 square foot space, which she sold in 2019. So she has a unique perspective on the inner workings of different types of clinics, as well as the buying habits of consumers across North America. And today, she shares her advice for bringing in more revenue with a Black Friday or holiday event at your practice, whether that event is in person at your office, or whether it’s a sale, for example, on gift certificates that you promote solely through email. She has a lot of great ideas to share with us. In this episode, we talk about how events are a signal for our patients and how to use them, why you should focus your efforts on your existing patients, why it’s important to keep sales or special offers very simple if you decide to use them, what is a universal offer and why is it the best choice if your goal is increased revenue, whether December or January is a better month for promotions at our acupuncture practices, and much more. I hope you enjoy this episode with Ildi.

[JANE.APP] (02:01):

Today’s episode is sponsored by Jane, a clinic management software and EMR. We all know that choosing the right EMR can feel a bit overwhelming, especially when you’re just starting out. You are trying to juggle both your practice needs and your budget, and that’s not always the easiest combination. That’s why Jane came up with the New Balance Plan. It includes the essential features you need to keep things running smoothly in your clinic without the extra stuff you don’t. One-on-one telehealth unlimited support, email reminders and more are included no matter what plan you choose. So if you’re looking for an EMR that helps you focus on your patients, not your costs, Jane is here for you, just like a part-time assistant. Plans start as low as $39 a month in the US. Visit Jane.app/pricing to learn more. And if you’re ready to get started, use the code [ACUSCHOOL1MO] at signup for a one-month grace period on your new account. And as always, I will put the links and the code in the show notes to make it easy for you. I also wanted to invite you to send me an email if you have questions about Jane. If you’re new here. I have been using Jane for over a year and I really love it. So I am more than happy to chat with you and you can pick my brain about different features, whatever you like. My email is michelle@michellegrasek.com.

[MICHELLE] (03:26):

All right, let’s dive into this episode with Ildi. Hi Ildi, how are you today?

[ILDI ARLETTE] (03:35):

Fantastic, thanks Michelle. How are you?

[MICHELLE] (03:38):

I’m doing well. Thank you so much for joining me. I’ll give you a chance to introduce yourself to the audience and then we can dive in with today’s topic.

[ILDI] (03:47):

Fantastic. Well, I’m Ildi. I live in Canada and I own a business called Results Continuum Incorporated. We say RCI for short. And for 23 years I’ve been working with clinics and clinic owners to help them run their business.

[MICHELLE] (04:04):

And I recently decided to join you inside your program called Clinic Transformations. I am really very excited. I think people underestimate how much coaches need coaching too. And I, as everyone who listens to this podcast, knows I love marketing. I am obsessed with marketing, but I feel like it will be amazing to have a better handle on systems and to have your perspectives on what is happening in the industry, what are other clinic owners experiencing? And you work with a lot of medical aesthetics, right?

[ILDI] (04:47):

I work with a lot of medical aesthetic clinics. In fact, that’s the primary group I serve. And then over the years, not because we were strategic and sought out acupuncturists and so on, but because they came to us and said, no one’s ever taught me how to run a business, including marketing, including like any of it. I’m making it up as I go. They’re probably a practitioner. And so I work, I actually started working with a lot of dermatologists and plastic surgeons and then that grew out to other types of clinic owners because business is business and like while your specialties are that specialties, running a business has foundational pieces that all of us need to know. But unfortunately, very few of us have taken the time to learn.

[MICHELLE] (05:33):

I’m so excited that you have been working with acupuncturists. So you also have an idea of how are consumers spending money? I mean, you’ve been inside hundreds and hundreds of clinics over the past 23 years and I just am so looking forward to your fresh perspectives and honestly to have someone help me make decisions and plan things. So why don’t I give you an opportunity to explain what Clinic Transformations is, and then my big question for you today is what are some ideas you have for holiday events and promotions, that sort of thing, but great Clinic Transformations first.

[ILDI] (06:13):

Okay, sure. So Clinic Transformations or CT, because it’s quicker to say it is a 12-month program that includes private one-to-one coaching, live delivered content or replays because we’re busy, Q&A sessions and content on how to become a profitable in-demand clinic with a positive everyone sells culture that is driven by systems to keep your clinic growing. And I always like to say, whether you’re a solo practitioner or you’ve got a small team or large team, all of those profiles are inside this program. It runs for 12 months, which fun fact, it used to run for five months. And I am finding Michelle now in 2024, like life is moving very, very quickly. And I think our programs are worthless if we are not supporting our participants in implementation. We are on the learning hamster wheel and we say the only thing that’s rewarded is action.

(07:15):

So we really focus on not only the teaching and accessing the good content or ideas, whether it comes from me as an expert, a peer, the vantage point I certainly do have for clinics across North America, but also to then implement it. And by implement we don’t mean like a perfect polished, miraculous full-on marketing plan or even an event or even trying to improve your systems. We really want people to run their businesses in a sustainable way, which means doing it using business foundations and on their own terms. So we get in trouble when we are influenced by models outside of us that we’re trying to be like, and we somewhere somehow lose everything from time, money, and sometimes even our passion to do the very thing that we love because this business thing is like killing our soul.

(08:11):

So basically we have a number of sessions each month that are pretty flexible. They fall on different days and we are focusing on, again, what are the foundations in the business? And if people have them in place, fantastic. We may just be improving them. And those foundations are represented by systems, which I want to stress, has almost nothing to do with technology, A bit to do with technology. But just the way or process in which things are done in your clinic that allow you to grow and scale, which you and I have talked about the difference between those two things and that term, and essentially we are together all year. it’s very, honestly, people tell me the content is amazing, it’s practical. I’m a former clinic owner myself, a medical aesthetic clinic, dermatology clinic, and a surgical clinic all under one roof in 7,000 square feet. We had 22 team members and we sold that business in 2019, four months before the pandemic.

[MICHELLE] (09:15):

Whew.

[ILDI] (09:15):

Yep. Exactly. So I have a lot of experience and I was able to produce some accelerated results in that clinic because I had hundreds of people before to learn from. So it’s a community, it’s a course, it’s basically me walking beside you with my eyes on your business and your peers there as well, if you need them, to help you get through the next year in a way that feels like you and your business can be more of what you are, rather than trying to turn ourselves into a pretzel and be like something else that we’re seeing or being shown.

[MICHELLE] (09:52):

Yeah. I feel like my business has some decent systems that I have sort of hacked together based on other things I’ve learned on the internet over the years or seeing how people run their business on Instagram and as you said, trying to sort of pretzel what we are doing into that model. And I think it will just be really helpful and refreshing to have your eyes on my business and have your team there. And yeah, I think it’s going to be really good.

[ILDI] (10:24):

And one thing I want to say just for your audience, and you Michelle too, is sometimes people make the mistake of, well, oh, there’s medical aesthetic clinics there. What does that have to do with us? Or there’s acupuncturists, there are chiropractors or IV clinics, like what does that have to do with us? And the moment I love is that the first session when people talk about themselves, their business, what’s going well, challenges they’re facing and how it’s impacting them. And literally Michelle, what you learn is that your business challenges are the same as most other people.

[MICHELLE] (10:59):

I would say one of the things that I learn over and over again from being a podcast host is that in every industry we seem to think we’re the only one with this specific problem in business. I will always tell people acupuncturists hate marketing and maybe they’re a therapist or a nutritionist or a chiropractor, and they’re like, oh, well therapists hate marketing too. Nutrition, we all, and the realization is while running a business is just hard across the board and people really are facing those same challenges regardless of their industry. So I think hopefully that is encouraging. It’s not just us. And our lack of marketing education in school, it’s Really a pretty common experience.

[ILDI] (11:45):

Yeah, I agree. And I think sometimes it doesn’t read well on a webpage, but I think the problem that we’re solving and offering a solution for inside clinic transformation is the problem of isolation.

[MICHELLE] (11:58):

Hmm, yeah.

[ILDI] (11:59):

You feel isolated as a business owner, you might feel isolated as a practitioner and you feel like there’s all these people and resources around you. So why isn’t this easier? And what I will say is that sometimes when we talk about systems and you said you had some, which is amazing, everybody has them. It’s about getting them in order. Everybody has a kitchen pantry or a garage or a junk room. It’s really about getting it in order. And when we actually do that, where we focus, we literally start with one process and we show people, it’s almost like this anticlimactic, you can see it on their faces, anticlimactic, and then, oh my gosh, I see the light of, they go like, is that it? They almost don’t believe it. It is so simple and…

[MICHELLE] (12:42):

Thank God.

[ILDI] (12:42):

And I feel like a very godmother going, see, you do have the ruby slippers. You’re doing well, but you have no outside perspective. And like you too, Michelle, I really admire that you’re in the program and want other people to speak into your business with perspective. I think I have two or three coaches that I do that with, and I do the same thing for the same reasons.

[MICHELLE] (13:03):

Yeah. It is very easy to become isolated as a small business owner and I think especially as a practitioner of any kind, so. Well, one of the things that you’ve been talking about in some of the Clinic Transformation’s sessions that I’ve been sitting in on so far is the idea of the holidays are coming, people are mentally prepared to spend money, and that’s a great opportunity if people want to take it. You’ve just been discussing some ideas for how people could approach the holidays to bring in more revenue, to get the attention of more people in their community. So I would love to chat about that and share some of those ideas with people today.

[ILDI] (13:48):

Sure. And Michelle, I’m happy, like if you have specific questions that you think your audience would have from their perspective, ask away as I’ll give you the general overview and then any questions would be awesome because you were at that session. And then afterward there’s, you know everyone’s clinic is somewhat unique and I’m always happy to hear from anyone who might be listening to this any time of the year, because there could be Christmas in July. So you can make up anything. That’s the interesting part about the business world. So there’s no question that events are a great revenue boost for our businesses, full stop. What we all want though is we all want the return on investment of our time and sometimes money that we put toward that event. We are recording this in November, 2024, and we, so I am giving like a time vantage point view of what I think for this year, which I don’t normally actually do. However, outside our community, I think that your clients like events. So even if you don’t like events

Speaker 4 (15:02):

As the host, you mean.

[ILDI] (15:05):

Even if you don’t like events and you’re like, I would never go to anything, I mean, I go, I work hard, I go home, it’s getting dark at like 4:30, going to stay home with the cats and watch some TV, pretend to check my email, invite me, but don’t expect me to go. So absolutely there, everyone’s like that to some extent. What we use events for is to signal something and that something could be what our social calendar says is a holiday like Christmas or Thanksgiving, it could be Black Friday, it could be your 4th of July or our July 1st. So it’s signals something. And in business, one of the challenges, as I’m sure everybody knows, is how do you keep things interesting? How do you, it’s like a relationship, how do we keep things sort of interesting? You do get to the point where business is humming along and it’s going well, but in general, we’re still trying to work to get the intention of new people and of the people we have.

(16:10):

So for the record, my bet for 23 years, which has been producing a lot of wins for everyone, is to focus on your existing clients. And I’m literally talking like if you have 20, 200 or 2000. That 80% or more of your revenue next year will come from your existing clients. Whether it’s a direct spend or whether it’s a referral, that is what’s going to happen. I do see people sometimes taking huge efforts to try and acquire new clients, but that tends to happen in little peaks and phases because it takes an enormous amount of energy and it also takes some money. So focusing on existing patients, patients love to have something new and interesting happening from their service providers. It doesn’t need to be an event, but imagine having to put on a, introduce a new service three times a year. That’s, like we cannot.

(17:04):

So an event is a nice way to create a peak or a milestone in your business. What can you have an event for? Like you said holidays, but Michelle, some people are so tired at the moment, meaning people are clinic owners and practitioners, they’re like, “I don’t have it in me to do an event and organize this thing and so on.” So what I’d love to do is push out the boundaries of what is an event. It’s a milestone and it could be your clinic anniversary, which no, it does not mean that if you moved in like September 20th, you can’t have it in December. It could be a year. It could be when you introduced a particular service or modality. It could be celebrating like a regular calendar holiday. And right now what’s coming up is Black Friday, which we all decided to make very late this year on November 29th.

[MICHELLE] (17:52):

Yes.

[ILDI] (17:52):

And Black Friday somehow turned into Black Friday all the way to Cyber Monday. So what I’d love your audience to know is whether you have a Black Friday event or not, it’s okay. You do not have to have one. And you heard me say in our workshop that I really am recommending that people do Black Friday early this year. There’s nothing wrong if you’re listening to this and you’re looking at the calendar going, oh my gosh, it’s two days away. But if you’re going to have it this year, one consideration for you, maybe don’t wait, have it early. You can have it on the day. And good news, there can be Black Friday in July. Your clients love it. They absolutely love it. So events do well when we communicate them and invite our existing patients and that there is true value in it for them.

(18:47):

So if I could talk about one common mistake is people get caught up in an event means drinks. And that doesn’t necessarily mean alcohol, but beverages and food and balloons and party. And I can’t stress that while making your clinic look visually somehow interesting or special, that day is important. It’s one of the biggest mistakes of spending too much time and energy there. Your clients really will come in if there’s something that they feel is worth it, if they want to support you. However, you have to give them a reason to get out of the house in November or July to come and see you. Or do you, do they even have to leave the house? Can you do something virtually? Can you do something through email? And right away people say, “Well, I don’t have an online store and I just want to tell them, tell everyone that despite what you see on Instagram, some of the slickest clinics have the most manual processes for people calling in to purchase a gift card or to purchase packages.

(19:52):

Is it the most convenient to have your clients call in? No. The most convenient would be to have options like call in or click this button. So if you had both, we call that a low effort experience for your client, if you have one. For some people needing to remember to dial the phone number or even having to look it up is a lot. So whether you do or don’t is fine. Then think about, all right, I love to have a client appreciation. You could have an open house, which that name always makes me a little prickly because in real estate agents have open houses. However, if you’ve got open house mentality, I really want to let you know that while people might drive by your clinic or know about you, very few people are going to come in and explore other than your business neighbors and some of your friends and family. And that’s not an evening for friends and family unless, or afternoon, unless they are helping in some way.

(20:51):

So the point is, could you create something to show your appreciation for your client? And I’ll just say what most people do is they offer a pretty decent financial incentive for people to show their appreciation through a buying event where they can. Buying event means accessing something you’re offering. So let’s say you offer an acupuncture service for $100. What type of appreciation are you willing to show someone around that that would make it worth for them to say, oh, well I’m going to come and see Michelle next year anyway. I’d love to purchase that $100. And if I could, Michelle, I want to just give like some of the best tips that have worked for my clients around that $100 model, which could be $50, it could be $500. Right now, I don’t know why, who decided in our culture and society it’s buying time. Everybody’s buying triggers are going.

(21:49):

I’m not a big shopper myself. I don’t shop online a lot. I don’t physically shop a lot. I’m not a normal person in my desire to shop. I’m like underneath, I don’t know about you. I don’t go out every weekend and buy things or probably even once a month. However, there are businesses and products and services that I use just like your listener services and products that if they’re relevant in my life, this is the time that even me, I’m going, wow, well Jacqueline and I and John need to get our haircut. So I’d love to buy a family, like we’re going to get our haircut in 2025. I may as well buy the gift card, save 10% and off we go. Because people buy when they already are for things they know they’re going to do. Other people’s buying triggers, which is why they wait for Black Friday, which for many people came early is something to splurge on, try something new, but in general, if you took all my clients over 23 years in every clinic and said what offer works the best? It was gift card sales or gift certificate sales, which PS does not need to be a physical thing. You don’t have to make up a paper, you don’t have to make up a card, but you do have to keep track.

(23:03):

And I was sharing with a client the other day that she mentioned, often mentions this one large clinic that she really admires and thinks she wants to be like. And I said you know one secret about their event, which we didn’t name names, is they keep a lot of, they have a spiral notebook at the front desk that they keep sales of a certain gift card that they just couldn’t figure out how to put into their software so they didn’t. As long as like you don’t have thousands of clients, you’re hopefully looking at people’s charts anyway before you see them, at least blanking to say, okay, last time I saw Michelle, what was happening. And so you can literally put a post-it note as long as you’re tracking. So how do we make this a great experience when a financial incentive usually helps? So if you are not a person who does sales or promotions or specials, that’s actually a good thing because this time of year, let’s say in December you can say this is the one time a year that something is 10% off. And there’s two ways to give someone 10% savings or value, you can take that $100 and say you pay $90 and you get $100. Or you can say you pay $100 and you get $110. Both work fine, the first one works better and this year and next year, I’m definitely recommending the first way.

(24:28):

You pay $90 and you get $100. And then you think, what else do we have around to sweeten the deal if necessary? Because for $100 that’s great. But what if someone wants to spend $500? And my recommendation is against doing what we call an escalated discount that is universal, meaning spend $100, get 10% off spend $200, get 20% off, spend $300 get 30% off. You’re just literally stealing from your bank account, you’re leaking all that of your bank account and it doesn’t, it’s not a good profit model. But what you can do is you can say these are the offers that work best, Michelle, a universal offer. What if you did 10% off everything, except that you want to honor that $100 worth of everything and $500 of everything is different. So what we do is we try and add value, no more discount on the $500. 10% is they save $50. So they pay $450 and get $500.

(25:30):

And the question is to the clinic owners, what do you have around the clinic that’s a service? It could be a physical product like a blanket, an essential oil, or literally what would you go out and bring in by that you could add on, is what we call a bonus gift, a thank you gift or a gift with purchase, whatever language you’re most comfortable with. So the reason that Universal offers work best is because they’re easy to calculate and it’s low cognitive load for the purchaser. And the mistake I see is buy this package of 10 massages and concludes these three acupuncture, buy this facial acupuncture and you get, it’s all the sudden clinic math. It’s a lot of effort for you to figure out. It’s a lot of effort for you to figure out and it’s a huge amount of effort for the people who want to buy it. And when the person has to consider too many decisions, too much comparison, too much, even like basic math, they get a confused mind. And we have a saying that says a confused mind says no.

[MICHELLE] (26:43):

Absolutely.

[ILDI] (26:43):

So how can we make it easy, easy and almost a no brainer to say, I came to see you before, which is how I’m learning about this. You can call it an event, you can call it an offer and say, I’m going to show my appreciation by giving you access to this and make it good enough where you’re honoring for the fact that they’re going to come back and see you in the future and they can use it toward that. The one caution I have, and it’s really just something to be aware of in business math, of course, is some of our clients are winning because they are able to sell $5,000 or $10,000, three, five, $10,000 worth of gift cards now. It’s a huge win. And other clients are selling $300,000, $200,000.

(27:32):

And I’m talking in an evening or the course, 48 hours. And when you haven’t done it, you go crazy. But once you do it once, even like a $1,000 win or $3,000 win, you’re like, I completely get this. What you actually do is you’re more motivated on it from a marketing perspective to now find new people because it really is a mathematical formula, that when you introduce a new service or you put something on sale, not a lot of your patients often come forward, but there’s something about event energy any time of year. Like if April is your second year clinic anniversary or your seventh anniversary in that location, there’s something about that energy that feels appropriate and non-gross to say, “Hey, we want to thank you for your business and this is how we’re going to show it.”

(28:26):

What I’d like people to know is if you take in an extra $5,000 through gift cards and you’re like, wow, Ildi, thank you so much for these tips, I now have $5,000 in my bank account, my advice is don’t spend it. Put it in what’s called an operating fund, which Michelle and I can tell you about inside Clinic Transformations, take 30% of it and put it to an operating fund. But if you have that $5,000 what it means and true story, it happens, that I had a very busy clinic where last February, sorry, last November, they sold a lot of gift cards, like just upward of $80,000. And remember, gift cards don’t expire. One week in February of this year, she had 20 clients in the clinic and only four people paid. The rest used gift cards. So there’s no cash in the till, from 16 people, Michelle, ouch. That doesn’t happen often to that extent and we really can’t figure out why that happened. All I want you to know is most people spend their gift cards a lot more broadly. It’s not, but it can happen. You’re taking the cash now and you will not take it later and if you’re really into this then you make sure that you follow up and encourage your community to spend those. They have it. Come in and spend it.

(29:50):

Don’t save it like me. Spend it, spend the spending dollar. And I love the term spending dollars where a holiday event could, you could be someone in your community saying, I don’t have it in me to do drinks and snacks. I don’t have it in me to do balloons. But what I will do is every person who comes into my clinic in December, I’m going to tell them, I might even print up something small on Canva or, and people can reach out to us, we can give them samples of how to do this and just, because sometimes it’s more comfortable to give someone something and say for the month of December we’re having an appreciation and you can purchase a gift card that you can use for next year or you can purchase a package of these three and you can use them anytime next year they don’t expire. We hope you’re going to come back and see us anyway. So it’s a way for you to save 10% and people appreciate it, especially now where it gets wonky is if you go get this package of three or you could do this package of five or you could do this other service, just low cognitive load.

[MICHELLE] (31:00):

So I know that everyone listening, their number one question is going to be why would I give a discount to someone who I know would come back next year and pay full price? And before you dive in, I want to say I was wondering this during the class because, I mean I’m totally comfortable with discounts, some people really are not and that’s okay. But I loved one of your answers. I don’t even know if you realized you were answering this question that was in my head. But you mentioned that you have guaranteed that that person is going to choose you. So especially if there’s competition in your area and you want to make sure that this person is going to spend their money with you, this locks them into that.

[ILDI] (31:45):

It does.

[MICHELLE] (31:46):

I think that is really powerful incentive.

[ILDI] (31:49):

And it was on purpose, Michelle. It’s because that is a tangible client retention strategy, period.\.

[MICHELLE] (31:56):

Yeah.

[ILDI] (31:57):

So I just said that I am on a recorded call over and over again letting everyone know that from my view of thousands of clinics over all the years, but especially now, 80% of your revenue in this next year for 95% of you, maybe even 98% of you, 80% of your revenue will be from people who already come to see you. And Michelle, I am glad you raised it, I am not a huge fan of discounts. You all call them deals and specials and promos. I like to call it an offer. It feels less gross to me for some reason. I always think a special is in a diner and you have the greatest diners. I need a show, I think Guy FII already has it traveling around the US

[MICHELLE] (32:42):

Yes, diners, drives and dives, something like that.

[ILDI] (32:46):

Yeah, that’s pretty, if I’m not here like in my 25th year it’s because I’ve like made up my own [crosstalk] and I’m going to diners

[MICHELLE] (32:53):

I love it.

[ILDI] (32:54):

It’s like really great homemade food and really comfortable environments. I always felt very at home. But when I think of a special, I think of a blue plate special, I think of a diner. And that is the point, is that use what language, special is fine, deal is fine, savings is fine.

[MICHELLE] (33:11):

Client appreciation or patient appreciation offer, I think that is, that’s so nice. Like that’s pretty genuine.

[ILDI] (33:18):

Yeah. I love client appreciation or some people call it client loyalty, or some people call it a client thank you. The word offer to me is an invitation. And I do love to host, I love to host at my home. I love to host our group online. And so for me that fits. And I’m glad we’re doing this back and forth because people have to choose words they like and feel comfortable with. And the rush you will get when someone says, oh that’s fantastic. And even Michelle, if they say what I want to think about it, you’re going to say that’s fine. If you want to take advantage just call us before we close for the holidays or whatever you’re, maybe you want to give them till January 10th, it’s your business and you get to do whatever you want. But if someone doesn’t have a physical doing of an event online, if you don’t currently do email marketing and you simply have people coming into the clinic, you can even post something and your only job is to mention it, is to say we are offering this to everyone who comes in this month because we want to, it’s our way of saying thank you. And that’s it.

(34:21):

And so you don’t have to offer it if they’re going to come in and see you. I want to know then what else are you doing around client retention, because I am making bets online, in public , recorded calls saying that 80% plus of your revenue will be from that person. And I think all of us as business owners, we want to be mindful of drinking our own Kool-Aid to say well I’m solving a physical problem or I’m reducing their stress. You are. But have you all noticed that your clients and patients have a longer list of criteria to be happy and satisfied? Yes. And that means we want to provide a tangible service. Like I said, I was going to help relieve your pain and I did a service that helped you relieve pain or solve some other problem. And there people are looking for more. So if somebody is shopping literally for a hoodie at Costco, they are going to look for more criteria of features. Are the drawstrings longer short the way I like them? Do they have pockets? How bulky is the hood? Where does it, like does it go sort of down below my waist or is it this cropped business that’s happening now? They have a lot, like is the logo something I like or matter or is it logoless? And they have a longer list of criteria. And I’m positive that your community is seeing people cancel lots of appointments, shift appointments like never before.

[MICHELLE] (35:50):

Lots and lots of people moving appointments around. It’s pretty nerve wracking to be honest because every time someone leaves a message that says, “I need to cancel for Friday, this crisis came up or something,” my first thought is we have to get them back on the schedule for the following week. Because if you let it slide, if you’re just like, “Oh yeah, I canceled your appointment, let me know when you’re, when you can come back,” and you don’t secure it, then you may never see them again. So, yes, lots and lots of people are moving around the schedule

[ILDI] (36:22):

And it’s not like your clinic or other, it is happening everywhere across all my clinics.

[MICHELLE] (36:27):

That’s fascinating.

[ILDI] (36:27):

In every specialty. And so there we have to center the client and patient saying what is happening with her or him in their life. I wonder what crisis came up on Friday? And legitimate might feel like a crisis to them. And no wonder, I don’t think we need to do a deep consumer behavior or psychological dive to know maybe cognitively like we’re tired. And so a regular thing that is just slightly above regular but not quite a crisis, somehow got elevated to feel like a crisis in the crush of like everyday life and responsibility. And the example you raised, I mean there are some clinics who offer what we call a rolling forward incentive for people to make an appointment and keep an appointment.

(37:14):

And some of your listeners are like, I have never heard of this. Well, I can tell you it happens in medical aesthetics, it happens in chiropractic and it happens in a lot of private pay clinics. So what the premise Michelle is, and the numbers vary, I’ll tell you the most common ones are 5%. The second most common, which is a very distant second is 10%. And then some people do a flat rate, $25 or $50. So what happens is when I come to see you once you give me $25, let’s say my service is $100 and you give me 25, but you move it forward to my next appointment. So I’m already credited with my own money for the next appointment.

[MICHELLE] (37:59):

Interesting.

[ILDI] (38:00):

Now the incentive is to say for services that don’t need to happen once a week or once every two weeks, for services that where people come back this month and you’d like them to come back two months from now or three months from now, the likelihood of them canceling is high. The level of service and the experience that your clinic needs to fulfill so many things on the checklist for them to come back, especially nowadays, it’s incredible. And it’s a client retention strategy that says it matters to us so much that you know you make, so we say Michelle, when you make your appointment and keep your appointment for next time you get to use that banked credit toward whatever service, because you already have the money, you’re moving it forward. And so we do have wiggle room in there. They’re like literally do I have, because I don’t know what I’m doing in on February 21st, which is a legitimate thing.

(38:55):

And we say you’ve got two weeks wiggle room, but as long as you have it’s fine. And some people take it as a prepayment, other people assume the cost, but that $25 or that 5% that moves with them, it is so much cheaper than the effort and time that we all put into trying to find new clients. It’s way higher return. So how we got here was talking about, alright, have an offer for your client and if you don’t want to put it on social media, which I don’t suggest you do because those are people on the internet and client appreciation is supposed to be just that client appreciation. It’s supposed to be saying, “I value you so much, this is something special for you in December.” And again, if you’re not into consumerism and December doesn’t excite you can do it any time of the year to celebrate any milestone. I think it’s a really valid question, what if you are saying, yeah, why would I give a discount for someone who’s going to come to see me anyway? What evidence do you have that they will come back to see you? I’d like to know more about your confidence and assurance in that category.

[MICHELLE] (40:08):

Yeah. It’s, what do they say seven or eight times easier to reactivate a former client or patient than it is to get a new one. And so making a big effort to sort of guarantee the regulars are going to stay regular or the people who’ve seen us in the past are going to come back, it really is lower hanging fruit than finding new people.

[ILDI] (40:33):

It is. And I’m going to say I know the statistic from years ago that it’s six to seven times. I’m going to say it’s 10 times plus or expensive. Now the effort is that is probably, I don’t know, 50X, I think the money and time and the, I think the cost is much higher even though people say we have social media and there’s people winning on social media. It’s a tiny percentage where people are winning in terms of return, because we learn social media and what are our skills put toward. It’s trying to get this thing to make the text box look like perfect and this and that. And, I mean, I’m amazed how humans can learn and we get it at the same time. I am just not seeing sales and return. So we justify this by saying it takes time. There is nothing wrong if you enjoy it. You want to learn that skill.

(41:29):

Someone joined Clinic Transformations enrolled last night because, she is a young mom and she said, she’s a practitioner and she said, “Ildi, I am doing social media the way I think I’m supposed to and I see everybody else and all of a sudden literally I look up and it’s hours of my time, my pulse racing. I’m so frustrated.” She’s like, “Sometimes I’m sweating because I’m so stressed.” And she said, “Every time I look up from that,” and she called it an episode, she said, “I regret it. I regret it because I’m so busy in my business, I’m so busy.” She’s got a 18 month old and, “I’ve lost that time even to like rest and relax,” because she’s usually doing this in the evening. And I said, “It does it feel like keeping up energy?” And she’s like, “Yes.” And we don’t have a lot of that.

(42:18):

So if someone says, why would I do it when they’re already going to come back, I’m going to say it’s an assumption that because they’ve come to see us even for two years for their services, that they’re going to continue to come back. However, you may have other elements that secure the business, meaning you’re an amazing practitioner, the overall experience is excellent, it’s a low effort, high return experience for them. And they might literally, when you’ve never given a discount, say, you know what, the only person I trust is Michelle and that’s the only person I’m ever going to. And that can remain true for two years, four years, eight years. In my case I have some clients for 22 years. However, the majority of clients don’t stay that long. They don’t stay with you two years.

(43:08):

So the one thing I will say again is if it feels somehow wrong, if like even the word, try the word discount, special offer, promotion, invitation, offers is the most spacious invitational. Google it, ask your GPT, tell your GPT, I hate the word this and that. What other words could find a word that’s right for you? And even when you sit with that word, which for me is Michelle, for December we have a client appreciation offer or we have a thank you offer, those words fit right for me in my brain, heart and soul. If it still doesn’t sit right, don’t do it. Don’t give the discount. And a discount or a savings could be 5%. It does not need to be this 20% that you’re seeing because I’m like, how are you all putting money in your bank? And I am, we’re huge focused on profitability saying, are these activities producing sales? I think social media is a great tool. I just think it’s missing the skill of social selling.

(44:11):

And I just see a ton of effort and time poured into something that doesn’t bring great, great returns. So an event could be anything that you’re celebrating at any time that you decide I want to make sure people don’t feel holiday pressure. I will say that if you’re trying to capitalize and you want and would like a revenue boost, yes please. December is a better time to do it rather than new you January energy. New you January, yes, I’m going to eat more flax seed and I’m going to start back on my oats and chia seeds, Michelle in January. But it is not, it doesn’t have the same motivations around spending and buying for ourselves and others as this time of the year. The place we always start when we’re inside Clinic Transformations is to say, if you were going to offer your client something, what would you like to offer? So universal offers work best, so it’s low cognitive load. And then the other tip I’d love to leave everyone with is your best seller sell best. The mistake we say, oh, I want to do an event, but let’s put the things that aren’t moving the inventory, whether it’s services, treatments, on sale, and then you wonder why they don’t sell. It’s because if you actually want like to produce cash money, best sellers sell best.

(45:39):

So we had that discussion about our event by centering the patient or client to say what’s happening, what conditions are happening in their life where they have access to budget, time, maybe things feel more spacious that connect with what’s available in my business? So no, people are not going to book more acupuncture because June is a graduation month or Mother’s Day. I don’t know. Those may work. But I just like I caution the people who say, well, people will come back anyway, why should I do anything for them? I also caution the people who are constantly feeling the pressure to create or use social events to do a Mother’s Day sale and a Christmas sale and a Valentine’s sale and this sale, a very hard hamster wheel to get off of. And in real life, if you say, well, what do you see, is that the people who do that a lot, they don’t stop. And I’m not sure they should, but they need to cut it down by 75 to 80%. So what’s interesting is when people look at the sales or promotions they have, they say to me, “Ildi, we only do two or three a year.”

(46:47):

When we do inside Clinic Transformation something called your continuum, because we’re called Results Continuum, and we work on your clinic calendar, past, present, future, just very briefly. Like it’s a 10-minute exercise. Turns out you don’t only have two or three, turns out you probably have, like, unbeknownst to you, it’s shocking. You’re like, oh my gosh, I think I actually have six or eight. And then sometimes, to be honest, I somehow cave and give people a pressure, a discount at the till. So you’re just unaware. And so you don’t need to stop. But there are some really easy strategic ways to be more strategic. So you do better offers less often that produce more revenue and your brain and body have time to enjoy other parts of life rather than feeling like you’re chasing your own clients.

[MICHELLE] (47:42):

Yeah. Oh, I appreciate all of this so much. I know that you are, you’re sharing so much information with us that would normally be inside Clinic Transformation, so thank you for that.

[ILDI] (47:53):

My pleasure.

[MICHELLE] (47:54):

I do have one last question for you before we close out, and that is, what is your definition of success?

[ILDI] (48:01):

My definition of success is living life and running your business on your terms.

[MICHELLE] (48:07):

Wonderful. Well thank you so much. I really appreciate it. How can everyone get in touch with you? Where can they find you online?

[ILDI] (48:15):

Yes, you can email me at ildi@resultscontinuum.com. You can find me on Instagram. It’s Ildi_Arlette. You can text me if you want. I’m available. I’m here. I have two team members and I do respond to every single inquiry or comment that you send.

[MICHELLE] (48:44):

She does.

[ILDI] (48:45):

Yeah, I do. And if people are wondering what services they can access, my biggest recommendation is to go to a website. There’ll be a booking link for a call and let’s sit together for a bit and figure out where you are and what might be right for you. And I’ll help guide you. And it’s one of the reasons I love connecting with people like you, Michelle, because it really just, it does take a village to help a client nowadays. And so I would love to hear what’s happening in people’s clinics, not only to help and also just to learn more about the field and what others are experiencing.

[MICHELLE] (49:21):

Yeah. Well, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. Oh, I had a question for you. Did you want to share the number they can text or do you want me to just put it in the show notes?

[ILDI] (49:31):

Yes, people can text me at 403-312-7510. And you could put it in the show notes too. It’s okay. But I love hearing from people who listened to your podcast. It’s awesome.

[MICHELLE] (49:47):

Unfortunately, my internet dropped just as Ildi and I were signing off and saying goodbye. So I wanted to take a moment to say thank you Ildi, very much for spending time with us today.

(50:02):

Before you go, I’d love to invite you to the Acupuncture Business Planathon for 2025. This is the fifth year in a row that I have hosted the planathon, and I really hope you can join me. Now that 2024 is coming to an end, could you use some dedicated space to get clear on your 2025 goals and a plan to achieve those goals? If that’s a big yes, please, then this event is for you. We’ll be going through the 90-day planning method and workbook to help you reach your goals next year. And very few things light me up, like strategic planning. I’m a big planning nerd and this is one of my favorite classes to teach every year. So if you are also a fellow planning nerd, I would love for you to join me. In this two-hour workshop, we will review your 2024, release anything that didn’t happen the way you hoped this year. We will spend some time celebrating your amazing accomplishments.

(50:58):

We’ll take a look at what worked well to grow your practice this year and what didn’t work that well. In other words, what do you want to carry forward into 2025 and what would you like to leave behind? We’ll also do some exercises to define how you want your work and life to look next year, as well as to get clarity and help you prioritize your most impactful goals for 2025. And then of course, we will use the 90-day planner to outline your next steps so that you can get started on your plans immediately after the workshop. And of course, if you can’t attend live, that is no problem. A recording will be available to watch afterwards. And as a bonus, it is worth two NCCAOMPDA credits. I genuinely hope to see you there. Again, the link is in the show notes. Have a great day.