Planning for the Next Year

In the last couple of years I’ve been working on really promoting the acupuncture art business.  I have retooled this blog a few times so that now it focuses on acupuncturists.  I’ve found that I really love writing up the interviews of people.   I’ve also been looking around for great products and people that I can recommend as well as writing about ideas that come to me about health and acupuncture.

I’ve been doing a lot of listening in on the free calls from Mark Silver over at Heart of Business.  I was very close to taking his six month course last summer but something held me back.  The weekend after the first tele-class my husband decided he wanted to move.  That has taken up most of the last six months in random ways.  Some weeks, I could wish to have a course to keep myself occupied.  Other weeks I’m swamped trying to figure something out.  Of course there was the inevitable changes from one cable company to another and not having a land line for the first time.   In about two weeks we’ll be settled in the new house (we’ve rented an apartment while waiting for the house we purchased to close) and I can focus on the business.

One thing that moved to finally sign up with the class is that I want to move this business forward.   That’s scary but it’s also exciting.  I realized that I see my business through two lenses. When I think about the ordering process I see it as very busy, making me think I need a third-party like Zazzle to keep up.  When I see profit, I see minimal profits even through Zazzle.  Mark asked some very good questions during our application phone call that gave me some clarity that if I’m doing such a small volume of business, why don’t I keep the cards in-house so to speak and work with a local printer?  I make more money. I lower prices for other practitioners.   Given the amount of orders I expect, I should still have time to create  while still doing the mailings.  I can keep Zazzle and Greeting Card Universe for everything else.

As I drove home after talking to someone about the decision, I was listening to the radio about how people aren’t using the mail as much any more.  I’m working on a way to send e-cards.  At first they’ll be free e-cards but I’m thinking about a way to open that up to a membership or else a pay per card or even per mailing.  I’ll see how that works out.   I’m also going to focus more on the artwork side of things.

I’ve been working on putting together a stock photography site.  I’ve finally found something that seems to work.  It will also allow for people to order prints as well as let them send e-cards.

My husband had this idea that I could offer services to schedule and send cards electronically for people.  He thinks the service shouldn’t just be that you can add in your addresses and send electronically. I could plan and send out the regular cards or newsletters for you.   It’d be rather like farming out the insurance billing and the cost would probably be in that range.  I am hesitant about the marketability of such a service but it couldn’t hurt to find a way to offer it.

Are there other aspects of staying in touch with your clients that you’d love to have someone do for you?

Like so many other computer users, this week I was saddened to hear of the loss of Steve Jobs.  I got to play on one of the first Macs in the mid 1980s.  Hanging out with the techie geeks, we opened the back and saw all the signatures of everyone who had worked on it. While everyone loved the interface I was frustrated that I had to use icons instead of talking more directly to the OS like you did in DOS (PC DOS as well as MS DOS as not everyone had MS DOS although everyone wanted it!).  As time went on, I started to get the hang of the icon thing and now I can’t imagine computers with out them.  I’ve had a Mac Classic, a Performa 600 (which had that new thing called a CD ROM drive and I could even play music on my system!). I’ve had Mac Laptops and desktops and I am typing this on an iMac.   My husband works for Microsoft so I’m using the Windows side of BootCamp.

I want an iPad, will probably have a new iPod coming up and while the iPhone is cool, I’m not a real phone person and the carriers don’t work well in the cell phone hole in which I currently live. What would Steve Jobs have come up with next?

I think of all the things that Steve did and I think of a bonfire burning too brightly to be sustained.  He made a choice to live his life to the fullest, choosing quality over quantity.  As a healthcare provider I can talk about balance but we must all find our own balance.  We make choices.   There is no perfect balance.  We, as a community of people, balance each other with some using strength and endurance and others using speed and still others using their ability to turn and change quickly.  We must understand our needs and listen to our intuition to live each of our lives the best way we can.  As one Steve Jobs quote that is going around says, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.”  Find your own balance.  Look at what one man created when finding his own path and his own balance.

The problem with using our intuition is that sometimes we don’t know it was used.  Now and again I’ll have a hit that I need to do a point  on a patient only to learn later on, either through new information from the patient or reading about the point, that it really was a good one for them.  In life, there are fewer times for direct feedback.  I had one instance where the feedback came over two years later.

My father died in 1998 shortly before I graduated from acupuncture school.   He left several retirement funds and I was able to take disbursements from them over five years.  This sounded great to me, as it offered an income for me while I was building my business.   The smallest account I asked to be disbursed on 5/15.  I figured that way I’d have a little extra for the summer in case things slowed down.   I set the date on another one for 11/15, figuring this would give me money for the holidays and into spring.   Finally, I put the date on the final one on 9/15.  For some reason, my thought process on this one was that I’d think about it on 9/15 and then be worried about it until the check came.  So to make sure I didn’t cause myself undo worry, I set the date for 9/10.

I never thought about that as using my intuition.  I thought I was protecting my spleen by giving me one less reason to worry.   However, ten years ago on September 11, I realized that I had just sold a bunch of stocks and bonds the day before the Twin Towers fell and Wall Street was closed.   This meant I didn’t have to worry about money that year,which would not have been true had I taken money out just AFTER the attack.

It didn’t seem like intuition, but maybe it was.   How often do we make choices thinking we did it for some reason only to realize that there was an even better reason for that choice? Many times we probably go along not even getting that positive feedback.  It’s important to trust our instincts (like mine about the fact that waiting until the 15th of September would bother me in a way it wouldn’t in June or December) and let the universe unfold as it may.

I have been blogging for years now and made many friends,especially in the community where I blog about my cat.   We have shared many ups and downs.  There are always hugs and someone to talk when a cat dies.     Or just someone to talk to when you’re worried.  They were a group that raised money when someone needed something–whether for a pet or for themselves.  When people were out of work and worried about rent, auctions were done so they would not have to make a choice between cheaper housing or losing their pet.

We found out last night that one of the long time bloggers died.  She had an infection.  She wrote she was doing better and then last night her sister posted on her Facebook wall that she had died last week.   It was such a shock.   There are dozens of people who never met this woman who are talking about how she moved through their lives and they will miss her.

I have to wonder if she knows just how much those chats and emails and posts meant to those who read her regularly.  Did she ever realize that the things people remember most were not the great posts she may have made but those small kindnesses that came naturally?

Do any of us know just how many lives we really touch and the small ways that can make such a difference?

Today a friend of mine turns 50.  She wrote about it on her blog.  In a few weeks she’ll be walking the Susan G. Komen 3 Day walk for the second year in a row.   This is awesome for her and for the women who will benefit from the money she raises.   What is so awesome for her is that before this walk she never imagined seeing 51.  Fifty, that big 5 and 0 was going to be her last year.   There were many reasons for her belief but it was one.  She expected that if she did live past 51, she’d be in a wheel chair or a walker.   But now she’s walking.  She’s walking past the point she thought she could.  Now she can envision a life where she has better health and a quality of life past fifty.

Good for her.  Good for those women who will  benefit by the money that goes to Susan G. Komen.  This walk saved her life, though she has not had breast cancer.   In saving her life, it has the potential to save even more.  That strikes me as very profound.   My friend is not a scientist.  She is not out slaving away to find a cure for cancer.  She doesn’t live a life of perfect health.  In short, she’s ordinary, living an ordinary but the fact is that her new lease on life means more women may have a chance at a longer life.   The fact that this woman lives, means others might.   Now isn’t that sort of an It’s a Wonderful Life kind of story?   Doesn’t that remind all of us that our lives too can have this level of meaning?

Today I wasn’t sure what to write.  I have a great interview that I’m working on for the end of the month and a few people to contact about other interviews but I’ve been doing some coverage.   I did a search on ‘acupuncture studies’ to see if anything really intrigued me and made me want to write about it.

What I found were a lot of skeptics discussing how acupuncture is really a sham.   Some pointed out flaws in studies, but given that every study is flawed that’s easy.   If you don’t like results you notice the things the people did that could skew the results.   The skeptics pick apart words and phrases and use them to support their own close minded interpretation.   The thing that made me want to write about this was the anger that many of the writers display towards acupuncture.  If people are finding relief and they feel better, then why are these other people so angry?  Why do they pick apart studies and insist that even the National Institutes of Health are wrong when they say that acupuncture can bring relief for certain conditions?

When people get this angry they are threatened by something.  What could be threatening about acupuncture?  Perhaps they have to realize that you can’t just take a pill and feel better.  Maybe you need to do things that might seem unpleasant. Maybe they don’t understand and with their lack of understanding they have made acupuncture into this magical creation that requires they have a different world view.  Maybe they are afraid of anything Eastern.  Who knows?  The question becomes not how did they get to where they are but how do we address it.

Anger will only create more anger.  While as practitioners, it may feel like we are being attacked, in reality it is only the medicine.  Knowing that this is an issue around that person and their own issues is more appropriate.   Educating those who are interested and marketing about how you can help them and then getting results is far more effective than trying to argue about whether certain studies have any validity.   Use energy to heal those who want to be healed.   When there is enough healing perhaps the anger that exists will be focused on those things that as human beings we should be angry about–injustice, hunger, poverty and war.  Perhaps then even those issues can be resolved.