Episode #31 of Acupuncture Marketing School: Setting a Single Priority for Your Business in 2022.

Today we’re talking about something that’s been coming up a lot lately for my marketing students, coaching clients, and in my own practice. It’s about setting one single priority for your acupuncture practice in 2022. 

I recently turned down a really good opportunity because it wasn’t in alignment with my number one priority for my practice, and that was tough. 

Of course this time of year, goal-setting and priority-setting is top of mind for a lot of people, so we’re going to dig in deep to discuss the importance of defining a single priority for your business and how it can serve you better in the long run than dividing your time between multiple goals and resolutions.

Over the holiday I listened to the book, Essential, by Greg McKeown, on Audible. This got me thinking pretty deeply about my priorities in my business and my life.

In the past, I have enjoyed saying yes to everything. However, last year in 2021, it hit me that I just don’t have the mental or physical energy to say yes to everything anymore, and that is actually okay. 

I’m finding that a lot of people feel the same way right now. How about you?

Let’s dive in and discuss the idea of prioritizing just one thing in your business in 2022, for greater clarity, creativity, efficiency AND effectiveness!

In 2022, less is more.

🎙️Episode #31: Setting a Single Priority for Your Business in 2022

Show Notes:

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Transcript:

Hello, welcome back! Happy New Year, Happy 2022. It’s great to be back. I hope you enjoyed the last couple of weeks listening to the best episodes of 2021. I’m so excited to help you build your practice and reach new levels of success in 2022.

Today we’re talking about something that’s been coming up a lot lately for my marketing students, coaching clients, and in my own practice. It’s about setting priorities in your business. I recently turned down a really good opportunity because it wasn’t in alignment with my number one priority for my practice, and that was tough. Of course this time of year, goal-setting and priority-setting is top of mind for a lot of people, so we’re going to dig in deep to discuss the importance of defining a single priority for your business and how it can serve you better in the long run.

Before we dive into today’s episode, I wanted to share the fan of the week which is Carrie. Thank you, Carrie, so much for leaving a review on Apple podcasts. She says, “I’m not even an acupuncturist, but Michelle has such a knack for breaking down marketing concepts that I get a ton of value from her podcast. She explains not only what you need to do to market your small business, but why you should be doing it. I definitely recommend.”

Thank you, Carrie. That really makes my day because I believe very strongly that good marketing advice is good marketing advice across the board. I know most of my listeners out there are acupuncturists, but there are also chiropractors, massage therapists, and many other types of wellness practitioners as well. Welcome, everyone, I’m very happy to have you all here.

If you’d like to be the fan of the week, feel free to leave a review of the podcast. It really does help new people decide if the podcast is a good fit for them, and I’d appreciate it so much.

All right, let’s dive in and start by discussing the idea of prioritizing just one thing in your business in 2022. Over the holiday I listened to the book, Essentialism, by Greg McKeown, on Audible. This got me thinking pretty deeply about my priorities in both of my businesses and my life in general.

And when I say both of my businesses, I just mean my marketing and coaching business online, which of course, is Acupuncture Marketing School, and my acupuncture practice in upstate New York.

In the past, I have built up these businesses by really saying yes to everything. However, last year in 2021, I was tired. It finally hit me that I just don’t have the mental or physical energy to say yes to everything anymore, and that is actually okay.

And I’m finding that a lot of people feel the same way right now. I know that many of my one-on-one marketing strategy clients have mentioned they’re feeling this way, and I’ve seen a lot of these discussions on social media right now as well.

We all require a little more selfcare and downtime, and yet that seems harder and harder to come by. I’m also hearing that people are having a harder time than usual getting back into their regular routine after the holidays. Just that everyone is moving a little slower than they expected in the month of January. I’m definitely experiencing that as well. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Thinking of those two things, that I’m getting a slow start this year, and recognizing that I don’t foresee having the energy to say yes to everything in 2022, was eye opening. I realized that I needed to start paring down what I’m committed to, and realizing at the same time, how very difficult that is.

That is why I started listening to the book Essentialism. It’s all about the power of deciding what is truly most important in your life and then committing to it in your actions, choices, and daily habits. And the idea that doing less actually allows us a level of focus and productivity that is more effective in achieving the goals that matter the most to us.

McKeown also talks about making this practical. Because it’s easy to make a statement about the single priority for your business, but how do you narrow down your commitments to what matters and shape your life around it? Making it real can be difficult.

In particular, what’s really tough is saying, “No,” to certain offers or opportunities in order to maintain that one thing as your priority. And I knew that I needed help with both pieces of this – deciding on a priority, and then acting on it in a meaningful way.

And I wanted to talk about it today because of course it’s the beginning of the new year and many people are planning and goal setting. The new year can bring a very refreshing energy right? But it’s also super easy to fall into the trap of setting 5 or 6 priorities or resolutions for the year, and that can get overwhelming quickly and lead to failure or just inaction.

This is why I hosted the Acu Biz Planathon last month, because I love strategizing, goal setting, and getting a plan on paper. And it’s also why, in the Planathon, I teach you to only choose ONE priority to be your focus in the 90-Day Planner. That’s the workbook that comes with the planner. That each quarter should have only ONE BIG PROJECT that gets your time and mental and physical energy.

Otherwise it’s way too easy to get spread too thin. And don’t get me wrong, having lots of goals and plans really excites and motivates me, too. I’m an irritating overachiever, and I know you might be as well. But the joy and energy of planning and setting a dozen goals is one thing, and then sustaining the energy, time and space in your life to actually achieve them all is another. That’s why prioritizing one thing is the emphasis.

I recognized in a big way last year that I had to stop saying yes to everything and that I needed one focus for my practice, that guiding star. But I felt kind of bombarded by all the possibilities and was having a hard time deciding on one thing. So I did my 90-Day Planner from the Planathon, with a couple different possibilities for my big priority, some flexibility… and then I just sat on it for three weeks.

Like I said, I’m slow to return to my normal energy and focus so far this month, like many people, but instead of pushing and making myself choose what direction to go in, I decided to just let it marinate for awhile and see what surfaced as I returned to clinic after the holidays. See what comes up.

I’m really leaning into the yin winter energy, that stillness, hibernation and introspection. And if you’re feeling that way, too, I hope you’ll also give yourself that space. Remove the arbitrary pressure we all put on ourselves to make goals and resolutions by January 1st, and begin to act on them whenever feels right to you. If you don’t start on your resolution until February 1st, nothing bad will happen.

And taking this space might make it clear that you’ve made so many resolutions for the upcoming year or the upcoming quarter that it is not actually possible to prioritize all of them.

In Essentialism, McKeown also digs into the history of the definition of the word priority. Originally the word priority was meant to be singular. This was the way it was used for hundreds of years, until sometime in the 1800s. You could only have one thing that was your priority. Singular.

And then eventually, in the English language we shifted, sometime in the 1800s, to using the word priority to represent for multiple things. So all of a sudden, people are saying, my priorities are, and they’re listing a dozen things. McKeown argues that you cannot possibly prioritize a dozen things. It isn’t really possible or reasonable. Eventually just a few of those will float to the top and be clearly the actual priorities. But in trying to pursue all of them, you’ll efforts will be watered down and you’ll be slower and less effective at achieving any of them. Whereas a priority, or perhaps one to three in your whole life, allows a totally new level of creativity, efficiency, and success.

And I mentioned earlier that I completed my 90-Day Planner, I went through the Planathon steps myself, and then I let it sit and percolate for a few weeks. And just this week I was feeling a single priority emerge for my acupuncture practice, out of everything else I had listed as possibilities or maybe “co-priorities.”

So I’ve decided to choose a priority for my life, and one priority for each business. And the purpose is that they are aligned with what I want my life to look like this year.

Really briefly, my priority for my life in 2022 is to enjoy myself more. For me this means working less even if it means less money, allowing myself to rest, and appreciating the joy and luxury in everyday things. Being present so I can pay attention to my life.

My priority for my practice is going to be cosmetic acupuncture. This caused a big shift and helped me realize that there was an opportunity I recently said “yes” to that I needed to change my mind about. And that was really hard. And I will share that in just a minute.

But what I mean by prioritizing cosmetic acupuncture is this. In the 90-Day Planner there’s an assessment of 2021 – what worked and what didn’t, what brought the most income, etc. And then nce we recognize what’s been working, we’re ready to set our goals for 2022. So I realized through that assessment that cosmetic acupuncture has the best capacity to increase my income in 2022, while not adding any extra hours.

Compared to general acupuncture, I charge 1.5 times as much for cosmetic acupuncture, per hour. So if I focus on getting even more cosmetic patients, then my income would go up in a big way. The idea here of course is just identifying what is most lucrative at your office? What service and/or products bring in the highest ROI? And lean into that, commit to it. That’s the money maker? Then do it as much as humanly possible.

So let’s talk about this specific opportunity that I had to turn down. This was a big moment, a turning point when I realized it. This opportunity was that a wonderful physician’s assistant in a city about an hour away from where I live, asked me if I wanted to do cosmetic acupuncture in her new office. As a PA, her focus is cosmetic treatments. And she already has a clientele that she’d be bringing with her to this new location. She felt like what I offer was a really good fit for her people.

Now, we met on Instagram initially, and she came to an in-person gua sha class that I taught just before the pandemic. So we’ve been Instagram friends for about two years. Never knock the power of Instagram to connect you to your people, by the way. And we’ve been talking about this for that entire time. That I would be in her office one day a month, doing only cosmetic acupuncture treatments, back to back. If it went well, I could do more days each month. But that was how we would start. And because her new office is opening in a large city, I could charge at least 1/3 more per treatment. So it was an outstanding opportunity. And she has quite an Instagram following of people who love skincare, so she would be doing a lot to help fill my schedule on the days I was in her office. It felt win-win. Except.

Except that even though this was a cosmetic acupuncture thing, it wasn’t really aligned with my big goal. It helped me realize that I want to build my cosmetic acupuncture practice in my own office. I was so tempted by the idea of growing my brand and brand reputation in a new city, making myself known for my expertise in this new place. But I realized that my priority is actually just doing that in my own hometown. As tempting as it was, I realized that if I’m going to expend that energy, I want it to be for the long-term benefit of my own practice, my own cosmetic practice, which is, by the way, only a 9-minute walk from my house. No commute.

It also occurred to me that commuting and building up a second location an hour away was not likely to help me with my personal priority for the year, enjoying myself. No matter how much I love this friend of mine and how much I love cosmetic acupuncture, I do need breaks, I do need downtime, and I do find commuting to city, especially downtown, super stressful. And I had specifically said that my personal priority was to enjoy myself and give myself space to do that even if it meant making less money. Like wow, okay, now it’s clear, this is unfortunately not an opportunity that’s aligned with my life.

Obviously the toughest part of this was letting her know that I had changed my mind. Which went fine, because she’s wonderful. And we’ll maintain our supportive relationship in other ways. But it was scary and initially it didn’t feel good to have to tell her I’d changed my mind.

But it’s already freeing me up to focus on my cosmetic practice here in my own practice. I decided the time is right to Finally buy a Celluma LED for wrinkles and acne. I’ll include a link in my bio if you’re not familiar with it but it’s getting more common for acupuncturists to use in conjunction with cosmetic acupuncture. Many thanks to Amrit, an incredible cosmetic acupuncturist in Toronto, for introducing me to the Celluma and answering my questions several years ago. If you’re not already following her on IG, she has well over 20k followers, I definitely recommend it. She’s inspiring and a great example of using IG to supercharge your practice. Her IG handle is @6babebeauty and I’ll include a link in the show notes.

But this purchase requires training, making changes and additions to my website, educating my patients and potential patients, and doing a pretty serious marketing campaign to introduce it in my area, all of which will take time and energy. And will build my cosmetic practice in a serious way. And now I feel I have time for it because the other project, the practice in another city, is off the table. Sometimes when you clear out space, your next steps become clear, AND that next step is not stressful because it feels right.

So if you’re also feeling like you’ve said yes to too many things in the past, it’s okay to scale back. Focus on filling your own cup first so you can give back to your patients.

Give yourself permission to ease slowly into the new year to take time to decide what your priority is. Allow yourself the space for those ideas to percolate to make sure it’s aligned with the business and life you want to build.

Before I sign off, in late December I released an audience survey so you can let me know how I can help you this year. What do you need? What information do you want to learn, and in what format? I’d love if you took 2 minutes, seriously, it’s super short, to fill out the survey and let me know. The answers are confidential and I read every single answer, because it really helps me decide what projects to focus on to help you grow your business. I’ll drop the link for that into the show notes, and thank you in advance for taking the time – I appreciate you!

I’ll also link to the replay of the Acu Biz Planathon, which comes with the 90-Day Planning Workbook, which we’ve been talking about it a lot in this episode. As I said, it’s something that I use very actively to help me make important decisions in my practice. If you are in that energized, goal setting mood, I definitely recommend it. Or even if you’re feeling kind of stuck and don’t really know how to prioritize your goals right now, it’s a great way to find clarity and direction in 2022.

Again, happy New Year, thank you for being here. I’m looking forward to talking about marketing and building your business this year. Have a great day.