Do Over

What would you do differently if you could start all over again?

Ah! The ol' shoulda woulda coulda! 

A) I would look at demographics much more carefully. I would pick a large city further away from Boulder with media outlets targeted to that city. Great examples of this type of city: Albuquerque and Colorado Springs to name two. Much easier to market your practice. You will get to profitability quicker. Any of you thinking of going back to Nome Alaska or Botkins Ohio to start up a thriving practice, think again!

B) I would have chosen as close to a free-standing office as I could have. To my way of thinking the more control you have over your space the happier you are. 

C) On that same vein, I would have looked a little longer for the right space. When you go to the lease signing and water is dripping through the ceiling in great quantities, don’t assume that the landlord is going to hop right on that problem. Our first office had leaks in the ceiling, wasp nests in the walls, little scurrying creatures in the attic, insulation material that fell down from the ceiling, air conditioning that made our part of the office freezing cold, and a lack of acoustical insulation so that we could hear way too much of our neighbors’ noise. That being said, it was dirt cheap and certainly helped us to pay the bills (and ourselves!) the first 1.5 years we were in business.  

D) I would have started off with more screened off tables. Nothing like having patients fighting over the tables. Unless, of course, you count or stripping down to their bra and laying on a table in front of another patient. 

E) I would have paid to have an enclosed office space from the git go. Yes, we were so stupid and thrifty at the beginning that we did not have an office that was separate from our treatment space. Yeah, uh, this makes it impossible to answer your phone while someone is being treated. That's just plain dumb!

F) Make sure you hire the right person, even if it means going through several people. My business partner and I hired a lawyer who was a member of a local networking group. She talked, we listened and took notes, we got back to the office and compared notes. We still did not understand what she was talking about. We called her back and talked some more. We still didn't understand what she was talking about. This is a bad sign. Get an lawyer/accountant/marketing coach that can explain things in a way that you understand them. We later learned that this person gave detrimental advice other members of the group and yet no one would openly acknowledge this. Very frustrating... Then, we hired a lawyer (a friend of a friend) who wanted to draw up our business operating documents in exchange for lots of free acupuncture. Great, right? It turns out that his speciality was estate law, not business law. Later we learned that he was trying to draw up an operating agreement, yet I think he knew he wasn’t up to the task. Eventually, HE fired US. Probably the best thing for us!

G) Back up your computer! When we started our business, my partner and I used her old laptop from school as our work computer. We installed Quickbooks on it and saved all our financial data on it. We were smart enough to purchase an online back up system for it, but alas, did not pay enough attention to whether or not we were backing up the right data. The hard drive went kablooey one day, taking all our Quickbooks files with it. It took a long time to reconstruct all our financial data. I shudder to think what would have happened had we been several years into business. It would have been catastrophic! Back up your computer in two places. 

H) One of our mentor clinics has used the technique of offering free treatments to anyone who donates to the local a local charity to bring in new patients. We made the mistake of 1) offering this deal to all patients, not just new patients 2) doing this for the entire month C) incidentally doing this the same month that our computer died and we had to buy a new one. We gave nearly $1K to a local charity and did not pay ourselves. If you want to do this, I suggest donating the profits on one day to a charity. Be generous, just not that generous!