The doors are open for scholarship applications for Acupuncture Marketing School!

We’re accepting applications for four days only, today Monday, May 9 through Thursday, May 12th, at 11:59 pm Central Time.

In this bonus episode, we cover:

  • How to submit your application for Acupuncture Marketing School
  • Frequently asked questions
  • *Why I created Acupuncture Marketing School to begin with – a story that involves a patient not wanting to pay me 🧐

If you prefer read instead of listen, you can view the scholarship application instructions right here.

Every year I offer two full scholarships to Acupuncture Marketing School, one to a practicing acupuncturist and one to an acupuncture student.

Acupuncture Marketing School it is a step-by-step marketing program to help you grow a meaningful and thriving practice. Of course, meaningful is based on your own definition of success what that looks like to you. No matter what kind of practice you want to build or what kind of patients you’re trying to reach, it’s about building a business that matters to you.

My goal with this program is to help you set up a strong brand and marketing structure so that you can build your dream business – one that serves you and your community.

🎙️Listen to Episode #39: Now Accepting Scholarship Applications for Acupuncture Marketing School

Show Notes:

Subscribe to the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify

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

Transcript:

Hey there, welcome back to a special episode. Today I’m sharing this episode with you because the doors are open for scholarship applications for Acupuncture Marketing School. 

We’re accepting applications for four days only, today Monday, May 9th through Thursday, May 12th, at 11:59 pm Central Time. 

I want to share with you how to submit your application for Acupuncture Marketing School, answering from frequently asked questions, also share why I created Acupuncture Marketing School to begin with. It’s kind of an unexpected story that involves a patient not wanting to pay me. So I’ll share that at the end. First, the juicy details. 

Every year I offer two full scholarships to Acupuncture Marketing School, one to a practicing acupuncturist and one to an acupuncture student. 

Acupuncture Marketing School it is a step-by-step marketing program to help you grow a meaningful and thriving practice. Of course, meaningful is based on your own definition of success what that looks like to you. No matter what kind of practice you want to build or what kind of patients you’re trying to reach, this program can help you. 

It’s pre-recorded, video based training that focuses on effective strategies for acupuncturist who want more patients and more impact in their communities. So it is NOT live. You can complete the chapters whenever is convenient for you. 

My goal is to help you set up a really strong brand and marketing structure so that you can build your dream business. One that serves you and your community.  

How do you apply for this? 

The first step is to record a short video, two minutes or less, introducing yourself and explaining why you need this marketing scholarship. You can just tell me your story. Let me understand who you are and what you’re all about. Let me have the pleasure and privilege of meeting you on video. Tell me, how will this kind of marketing education impact your practice your community, your patients, share that story with me, help me get to know you and this and your passion for this medicine.

Again, the video should be two minutes or less. We receive a lot a lot of scholarship applications, usually from acupuncturists in a dozen different countries, if not more. So it’s really important that this video is two minutes or less just to help us be able to take the time to view everyone’s video. I watch every video and I take notes on every video. 

Then email the video to me at scholarship@michellegrasek.com. Now if you have trouble emailing the video or attaching it because it’s so large, you can try to compress it in free software called Handbrake – spelled H A N D B R A K E. I’ll include a link (https://handbrake.fr/) to it in the bio. 

Or if you find that you can send it to me via Google Drive or Dropbox, that’s fine, too. Whatever method you want to use to get this video to me is totally fine with me. 

And then in the body of your email, you must include your first and last name, the city, state and country where you practice and how many years you’ve been in practice or what year you are in acupuncture school. 

Then that’s it, then hit send.

If you’re not able to submit a video, that’s totally fine, no problem. You can submit your application as an audio file. Again, two minutes or less or as written text. 

You can also submit your application in writing and send it in the body of your email, two paragraphs or less. And if you do that, please don’t forget to include your first and last name, the city, state and country where you practice and either how long you’ve been in practice, or what year you are in in acupuncture school. 

Really briefly I’ll answer a few frequently asked questions.

When is the last day to submit an application?

For this scholarship cycle the last day is Thursday, May 12the, by 11:59pm Pacific time. Okay, so I’ll say it again Thursday, May 12 11:59pm. Pacific time. 

Will I get an email confirmation that you received my application? 

Yes! Once you submit your application, usually within 24 hours I’ll email you and let you know we received it, thank you.

When will the winners be notified? Winners will be notified via email on Saturday afternoon May 14. I like to notify the winners and ask for their permission to share their name and other info with my email subscribers, so that I can announce the winners on the following day. 

Which brings me to the next question, when will the winners be announced? 

We will be announcing the winners on Sunday, May 15. 

If you have any other questions, you are very much welcome to email me and my team at scholarship@michellegrasek.com. 

I’ll share a little bit more about Acupuncture Marketing School and how it got started and then I’ll sign off for this episode. 

Acupuncture Marketing School is worth 15 credits with the NCCAOM in the Professional Enhancement category. And, again, it’s a video based training. It is pre-recorded, so you can go through it at your own pace. The videos are concise, specific, and actionable. Most of the videos come with worksheets or  marketing checklists. And the big goal is to help you create a brand and a marketing strategy that reflects your unique goals, patients, and practice.

So why did I create Acupuncture Marketing School? 

One major reason was that when I first got into practice, I got very, very lucky and ended up with a marketing mentor, literally just dropped into my lap. This is the story about the patient not wanting to pay me that I mentioned earlier.

So I’ll take a quick second and explain that backstory. 

When I graduated from acupuncture school, I definitely struggled with marketing. This was about 12 years ago, and I knew that I didn’t have enough marketing education in acupuncture school to be confident in putting myself out there in the community. I also opened a practice about an hour away from where I lived. I was commuting there, and I knew no one in that community. It was like my practice was invisible. 

I decided to do a Groupon which I do not recommend because I think it worked out to me making $14 per patient treatment. I don’t even think you are technically supposed to do Groupon as an acupuncturist in New York State anymore. Like it’s, it’s not allowed or something. But at the time, it was kind of a gray area. 

And so I did this Groupon where I sold 100 patient appointments to new patients and made, as I said, $14 per patient visit, which was absurd. Yes, patients through the door, but it was exhausting.  And a lot of those patients were just deal seekers. Not all of them, but many of them. Not interested in becoming long term patients, not interested in investing in their health. So that’s why I don’t recommend it. 

One of those patients was a woman named Deb, who of course has given me permission to share her name over the years. Deb had purchased four acupuncture appointments with the Groupon and at end of her four appointments, she was like, “Look, I really like acupuncture, and I want to continue working with you, but I don’t want to pay for it.” Straight up, I don’t want to pay for it. 

And of course, I was like, “Oh, girlfriend, what? I don’t know how we’re gonna resolve this. Like you don’t want to pay for it, then I don’t want to treat you. What are you talking about?”

And she said, and at the time this was a totally new concept to me, she said, “I think that we should do a trade. I want to try cosmetic acupuncture. So the trade would be for cosmetic acupuncture and one on one marketing advice.” 

She was like, “I can tell that you have no marketing and you need marketing. I like you. Let me help you. Let’s give it a try.”

Now, Deb is an extremely upbeat, effervescent, positive person. So even in this initial conversation, she made me believe that she could teach me marketing and it wouldn’t be a drag. 

I said, “Okay, I’m all in with you.” 

We ended up doing a trade for cosmetic acupuncture and her marketing advice for three and a half years. And so Deb is the person who really taught me the foundations of marketing. Basically the rules. Here are good standards for marketing, how to go about it. Here’s how you create a campaign that is pretty likely to be successful and not be a flop. This was stuff I just didn’t know. And it hadn’t been taught in acupuncture school. 

Over time, Deb really gave me a love of marketing AND the confidence to go out there and try new things. She’s the person who helped me understand that marketing can be an experiment and the outcome isn’t personal. You use the information that you get from a marketing campaign as data to do better next time. 

So Deb was this incredible marketing mentor dropped into my lap who taught me almost everything I know about marketing. It didn’t take long before I realized I loved this. I love working with her. I loved the creativity involved in marketing. 

But after talking to some of my acupuncture friends, I understood that like nobody else I had ever known in our industry, had a mentor just show up and say, let me help you. Let’s do this thing and let’s make it fun. What a privilege. 

That is why I eventually put together Acupuncture Marketing School. To be that marketing mentor for you. To walk you through the marketing essentials, the rules, to help you understand, when you are online and you read a marketing article, and they tell you to do XYZ, this is the reasoning behind this common marketing advice. 

This is why they’re telling you to structure it a specific way and to speak to people in a specific way.

How do you get people to take action? How do you communicate your value with them authentically. How do you do that in a way that doesn’t feel pushy or gross to you? 

Because I know that you exist in your community where you practice and you need to be able to show up with confidence. To feel like your marketing message is aligned with your values and who you are and how you want to be seen and visible in your community. 

All these reasons are why I put together Acupuncture Marketing School five years ago, and I very much hope that you will apply for the scholarship. 

Clearly, teaching marketing is something I’m so passionate about. And every year when we do this scholarship competition, I send Deb a message of thanks for her inspiring me in this area and leading me to a love of marketing. 

I know that for many of my students, you may not ever love marketing. Fair. But at the very least I hope Acupuncture Marketing School allows you to you feel relief that you can learn marketing, and it doesn’t have to feel gross or stressful. Let’s get rid of your liver qi stagnation and your dread around marketing. It should just be a box that you tick off in your practice on a Monday morning. Where you say to yourself, patient momentum is good. What do we need to do to keep this momentum going? Here’s the marketing that we need to address this week. Check, check, check, it’s done and I feel good about it. 

Okay. I hope you will apply. Send your application to me at scholarship@michellegrasek.com before we close the doors on Thursday, May 12th at 11:59 pm Pacific Time. If you have questions, please send them to scholarship@michellegrasek.com. I watch every video. It is always an honor to watch your videos because I know how much time and energy goes into recording a video, putting it together and introducing yourself. So please know in advance that I am grateful for the time and energy that you spend. 

Don’t forget to get on my email newsletter list so you can hear the announcement of the winner on Sunday, May 15th. And follow along with me on Instagram @michellegrasek because all week I will be sharing the different countries that people have applied from. You can follow me @michellegrasek, I’ll link in the show notes. 

I’m always amazed and kind of floored by the reach of this scholarship program around the world, so I share lots of updates as we go along, how many people have applied from what country, etc. It’s just it’s a delightful week so please follow along on Instagram if you’d like.

I can’t wait to get your application. Have a great week.