“It” plays a crucial role in your practice success—so critical in fact, that the loss of it will kill your practice faster than a knife to the heart.

“It” is so absolutely necessary, you simply can’t practice without it.

No, I’m NOT talking about a product, or even a result like positive outcomes for your patients. And it’s not something you learned in school. In fact it has nothing to do with you at all. Yet it determines nearly all your practice success.

The best part is, it’s something you can easily obtain, and once you’ve got it, it’s easy to hold on to.

Now, rather than just coming right out and telling you what it is, let me illustrate with a story that will speak many more volumes than I could ever write.

 

This story is about two acupuncturists.
 

They don’t know each other, but these are real people just like you and me, and both are friends of mine. I’ve changed their names to protect their privacy, because the story has a happy ending—but only for one of them.

Michelle was a new acupuncture practitioner—fresh out of school and opening her first practice. She had a pleasant personality, an excellent education, good clinical experience, and great confidence in her ability to help her patients. She opened in a good area with a small, but nice clinic. The area where she opened tended toward the upper end of middle class, with a strong emphasis on natural health. She should do well, right?

Michelle equipped her clinic, stocked her dispensary, and placed her first ad in the local paper. The ad wasn’t cheap, but she hoped it would get her phone ringing and get her off to a good start. She knew she could make a real difference in peoples’ lives, and she relished the opportunity. All she needed was patients.

Trouble was, her phone didn’t start ringing.
 

And even though she threw more money away on more expensive ads, business was deathly slow. She tried doing a booth at some health fairs, and she gave out lots of free massages, with precious few patients in return. What’s worse, the patients she did have never seemed to stay very long—certainly not long enough to complete the course of treatment Michelle prescribed. Have you been there?

As the weeks passed and debt mounted, she tried fad offerings. Facial rejuvenation, weight loss, pain control, but despite spending literally thousands of dollars on new equipment and more advertising, she still didn’t have enough steady patients to even cover her overhead.
 

Steve, on the other hand, enjoyed a large and successful acupuncture practice in a city where he had been for many years. Business was good, patients were plentiful, and Steve was well regarded by his patients and colleagues. Many of his patients had been with him for years.

But Steve needed a change of scene, so he decided to sell his practice and move across the country. He started over as a complete stranger in a city and state where he had never lived. He knew almost nobody, and rather than taking over an existing practice, he simply started from scratch.

Steve, like Michelle, got a booth at a health fair, but his results were different.

 

Very different.
 

Even though he was a stranger, the new practitioner on the block with no practice and no reputation, he still booked 30 new patients in a single weekend at that health fair.

What’s even more amazing? He only talked to 54 people that weekend. Of those 54 people, 30 were so convinced Steve could help them, they set up appointments on the spot to begin treatment under Steve’s expert care.

That’s a 56% conversion rate.
 

Can you imagine what would happen in your practice if 56 out of every 100 people you talked to became your patients? How would that impact your practice? Your finances? Your life?

I think you already know the ending of this story. I’ll bet you can guess which acupuncturist is still running a thriving practice today, and which is no longer practicing at all.

 

But that’s not the point.

The irony is that your patients already know the secret, and understand it so deeply that it literally controls their behavior without any conscious thought on their part at all.

 

The secret, in a word, is confidence.
 

Not your confidence. Not self-confidence, not confidence in your education, training, or clinical skills. Remember, this isn’t about you at all.

What really matters—the secret that will make or break your practice—is your patients’ confidence in you.

Let that sink in for just a moment.

It really is just that simple. If your patients—and prospective patients—believe in you; if they know that you truly can get to the root of their problems; if they’re convinced you can help, even when nobody else can, wild horses won’t prevent them from seeking your care. They’ll insist on seeing you; they’ll beg for an opening in your schedule, they’ll refer their friends and family—and you’ll enjoy the rewards, mental, emotional and financial, of a successful acupuncture practice.

That’s the happy situation of our friend Steve.

Michelle, on the other hand, never quite made it there. Despite all her education, her preparation, her skill and her pleasant personality, she never quite won her patients’ confidence. A few tried her out just to see what would happen, but ultimately she couldn’t keep a practice alive and she had to call it quits. She now has a job in an unrelated profession, and she’s doing just fine. But she could have done so much more.

The tragedy of the story is that she’ll never do all the good she could have done.  Years from now, she’ll look back and still face the emptiness of knowing her gifts and talents, not to mention her training and student loans, ultimately were largely wasted. She’ll always carry that sadness.

But it didn’t have to end up this way for Michelle, and it doesn’t have to end this way for the nearly 50% of acupuncture practitioners who will fail in practice.

 

It doesn’t have to end this way for you.
 

You see, there’s an incredibly simple, 2-minute process that’s PROVEN to immediately win and keep patient confidence. It’s fast because it leverages the latest technology for your advantage, and it’s easy because it connects directly to your patient’s “confidence” circuit.

Nearly all your patients will automatically trust you simply because you use this process. You’ll win their confidence because they’ve been trained to give it to you—if you “ask” for it in the right way.

 

So how do I “ask?”
 

Have you ever taken a close look at all the advertisements you see for health-related products? Whether in a magazine ad, a billboard, or junk mail, nearly every health-related product will feature a picture of a doctor in a white coat with a stethoscope. And there’s a good reason for this.

The Western medical model has carefully trained and conditioned consumers to view the white-coat doctor as the authority figure.

And where does the doctor get his authority?

From evidence.

Whether it’s the diploma on the wall, or the lab test results in the doctor’s hand, the entire Western medical model is built on the need for evidence. The doctor won’t render a diagnosis without the lab work, the pharmacist won’t provide the drug without the prescription, and the FDA won’t approve the drug without double-blind tests. They call this evidence-based model the “Gold Standard.”

And it’s what patients expect.

In fact, it’s so deeply engrained in the typical patient’s mind that she will automatically mistrust anything that’s not based on some sort of evidence and automatically place confidence in that which is. Is your practice based on the foundation of objective evidence? If not...well, you know how that story likely ends.

Let me show you the fast, easy way to incorporate evidence-based acupuncture into your practice. It’s called AcuGraph.

The AcuGraph system uses a simple, 2-minute computerized exam to instantly analyze the energetic condition of the patient’s acupuncture meridians and provide an engaging and accurate patient report.

Patients immediately understand what’s wrong and how you are going to help. They immediately trust your expertise because it fits their expectations. In short, you’ve effortlessly won your patient’s confidence and you can now move ahead with the care they want and need.

In the final analysis, AcuGraph isn’t about a machine telling you how to practice; it’s not about charts and exams, or patient progress. It isn’t even about a €2,000 investment with a money-back guarantee. No, that’s not AcuGraph at all. AcuGraph is about giving you the same tool Steve had at that first health fair—the tool that catapulted his practice from puny to packed in a single weekend.

Like it or not, despite 5,000 years of history, art and tradition, despite all your acupuncture training and expertise, and despite your clinical experience, your patients will still have greater confidence in you if you can show them objective evidence. Let’s face it: “Chi” is a difficult concept to explain, and an even more difficult concept for patients to grasp. In the modern medical mindset, it just doesn’t make sense that a tiny needle in the foot somehow helps the head.

Evidence-based acupuncture is the future of acupuncture. It’s a bright future for you, with a prosperous and thriving practice. It’s you making a difference in thousands of lives. It’s you experiencing the satisfaction of reaching your goals and achieving the dreams you’ve always wanted most. It’s AcuGraph, and it’s waiting for you now.

I’ll close with just one statement from an AcuGraph user, who summarizes my message far better than I can: