You may have heard of the book the 4 hour Workweek by now. It seems that everyone is talking about this book and its radical overview of how to outsource all activities that don’t interest you, automate your business, and liberate yourself from what the author so aptly calls, ‘the deferred life plan’. (Get the book if you haven’t already!!)
Now, as an alternative healthcare practitioner I have no doubt that you love what you do for a living. So you’re probably not interested in a 4 hour workweek, as you are in one of the few industries that most professionals tend to truly enjoy working in.
No matter how much you enjoy your work, it’s still a really good idea to try and automate your business as much as possible. If you look at the most successful practitioners in professions such as acupuncture, chiropractic, and massage, most of them are not JUST running a practice and treating clients. They are authors, seminar leaders, teachers, and entrepreneurs as much as they are healers or clinicians.
Of course, their engagement with these other business ventures is a primary reason why their practices are so successful. When you productize your knowledge in this way, you will:

1)Create diversified and residual streams of income
2)Be perceived as the ‘go to’ person in your niche
3)Enjoy your practice more when you see income rolling in from other sources

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? So, if you want to be more successful in your practice, figure out a way to create products. For instance, if you go to http://www.mindfulnesscd.net you will see a meditation CD that I created. I have sold a few hundred of these just in my practice and it has been a very successful product.
There are all kinds of books that still need to be written for all of the CAM professions. If you are not a writer, hire someone to help you at http://www.elance.com .
This is a great way to fully leverage your talents and knowledge, make more money, AND more easily grow a thriving practice.

Now, get out there and write that book!!

P.S. My meditation CD is a great product to stock in your practice, as it gives the beginner a very good overview of meditation and has a 35 minute guided track that can be listened to again and again. My patients have loved it! If you buy them in quantities of 10, I sell them for $75.00 ($7.50 each) and the retail price is $15.00 per CD. http://www.mindfulnesscd.net

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.