3 Powerful Habits of Thriving Practitioners
Running your own alternative healthcare practice comes with a mix of emotions.
For clinicians just starting out, you’ve finally finished your education and have the excitement and fresh enthusiasm of wanting to serve. For the seasoned practitioner, you’ve established your roots and have grit from making it through a number of ups and downs.
Whether you’ve just opened your practice or have been working in it for decades – the reality is that having a practice can sometimes feel lonely.
The weight of growing your practice rests entirely on your shoulders, and it’s up to you to make sure you serve well, market your services, and somehow find time to keep your clinical skills sharp.
As a clinician who’s practiced for 15 years, I know what that’s like. I’ve gone through the highs and lows and have come out the other side. I’ve learned a ton. And below are three things I wish I’d known or done that would have made a huge difference in my practice growth and accelerated my success dramatically.
1. Connect With Other Local Practitioners
When you study and prepare to become an alternative healthcare practitioner, there’s so much to learn. And it’s exciting!
You want to share this enthusiasm, so you turn to those who are close to you. You tell your friend all about the latest development in your practice, or you bring up this new, breakthrough holistic treatment to your mom on the phone. But what you might find is that others aren’t as thrilled as you are. It may not even be that they’re uninterested – it could be that they simply can’t relate.
Besides wanting to share your excitement with people who actually get it, you may also want to bounce ideas off of like-minds. This is helpful not just for the clinical side of your practice, but also the business side. It could include questions on marketing, how to use social media to boost your practice, tips on how to stay organized, etc.
This is where getting plugged into a group of local practitioners can be a life-saver.
Collectively, we learn so much more when we’re in a community. Even though you’ve completed your formal education, as a practicing clinician, you’re always learning. Having a group of colleagues to run ideas by, ask questions, and help others is key to your success. Community strengthens you as a practitioner and helps you serve your patients better.
2. Find Focused Training
Think of the different products and services you offer. It could be a supplement line or an herb you want to try out. You may not know fully how they work or what part of the body they affect. You remember back to what you learned in school or in your certification, but you don’t have any real-time, real-life experience with these products yet.
You might have a sales rep who drops in and helps educate you. But what about that nagging question you have after they leave? Or what if you live in a remote location, and they’re unable to come to you?
Having access to information and training about your products makes a huge difference in how you serve.
And having this high-quality content within your reach accelerates your progress and gives you the confidence you need to serve well. Ultimately, the more you know, the more efficient you become. And the more efficient you are, the more patients you can serve. Win-win!
3. Carve Out Time to Learn – And Fiercely Protect That Time
Think of a book you recently bought that’s still sitting on your bookshelf or tucked away in your e-reader. You were excited to learn about the topic, so you enthusiastically bought or downloaded a copy. But shortly after your purchase, it started collecting dust. Maybe you flip through it from time to time – but you haven’t sat down and dedicated time to reading, absorbing, and retaining its content.
Having access to focused training is a game-changer, but it won’t make a bit of difference if you don’t schedule time to dive into it. The only way to actually learn is to make a plan to learn – and then stick to that plan.
The great news is that this doesn’t require a marathon day of learning. It can be done in bite-sized chunks.
Take that dusty book on your shelf as an example. Let’s say it’s a 300-page book on the endocrine system. If you commit to reading only 10 pages a day, you’ll have that 300-page book read within a month. Imagine how much you’ll learn in a quarter or even a full year?
But to make that progress, you have to take a step. And then another. And another. As Jeff Olson once wrote, “The journey starts with a single step – not with thinking about taking a step.”
The One-Stop-Shop Solution
Having a network of like-minded practitioners, access to quality training, and dedicated time to learn can transform you and your practice. But it can take some time to build each of these up.
And this is why I created Clinical Academy – to help practitioners like you get the support they need and the confidence they deserve. It’s an online membership that combines all three of these important success factors – training, community, and information – to accelerate your learning. It’s full of resources, diagrams, lessons, lectures, interviews, and a built-in network – entirely for you.
One of the best parts of Clinical Academy is its community. Hundreds of practitioners have found the resources and support to help them thrive.In Clinical Academy, we have your back and will help you keep moving forward.
Are you an alternative healthcare practitioner who is:
- Frustrated with not having the answers?
- Tired of having that same patient tell you they’re still bloated but you’re not exactly sure how to help?
- Looking for support and a listening ear after a hard day of back-to-back patients?
If this sounds like you, then I highly encourage you to check out Clinical Academy. It’s a thriving community of other practitioners who have access to the answers they need quickly and whenever they need them.
I would love to have you join me!