Episode 4: Diversifying your practice is key to success

When your practice is diversified, it can withstand any storm. Everyone wants you to niche down, but if you niche down too much and the economy changes or a pandemic happens, you might lose too many of your clients and will not be able to pivot or keep your doors open. Don't let this happen to you!

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You're listening to the Functional Medicine Business Podcast featuring Dr. Deb, one of the most creative functional medicine business practitioners in her industry. She shares the wisdom and knowledge that she has gained over 25 years of functional medicine, a pioneer in functional medicine, scheduling, leadership and practice Management. Dr. Deb has a wealth of knowledge and is eager to share to help functional medicine become more productive, and for the practitioners and patients to live better lives. Our podcast shares the good and the bad of our industry, because Dr. Deb knows the pain you live every day building a functional medicine practice with practical tools on how to manage money, taxes and patient care. She will discuss it all with you. I want to talk to you about whether or not you need to diversify your practice. And I think in today's age of marketing and goal setting, everyone talks about niching down in your practice. And because it makes it easier to market if you niche down, you know your ideal client, you speak to your ideal client and you only have one person in mind. But I'm going to tell you being in practice for 20 years, if I had only niched down to one thing and had one client, I would have never survived the rock the rough times the rocky storms of financial imbalances and crashes and COVID and economic downturn. Because what I love to do, people could go without, you know, I love to work with menopausal women, could they go without hormones? Yes, they can do they want to know. But if money becomes an issue, it's one of the first things that comes off the table for them are things that they don't absolutely need to have. And so I think it's really important to not totally niche down your practice into one thing. Now, I'm probably the only person you're hearing talk about this right now, because everyone's talking about the opposite. But I think it's really important for you if your practice is going to sustain the ups and the downs of the financial changes that we're all going to go through for, you know, the next 50 years, it's never going to be a time where we're not going to have some financial downturns. Your practice has to be in a place where it can still survive, where patients still need you. During COVID, our practice actually grew. And we were giving a 20% off to all of our existing patients, because we knew they were hurting. But we still grew almost $250,000 at the end of the year by doing that, that never happens. But I will tell you, I started my practice in 2011, when we were in the heart of the Depression, and my practice grew, and it continued to grow and grow. And why is that? Well, part of it is, I work with people who have complex, chronic illnesses. And there's not a lot of practitioners that will work with them. There's not a lot of practitioners that will listen to them. And so they need somebody in that niche, they need somebody that's going to listen to them, I created a practice where my patients need me as much as I need them. Now, that doesn't mean that there's a disadvantage, and you're taking advantage of them in any way, shape, or form. But they need you and they want to get better. And it's important for them to see you even when things are hard, and they figure out a way to do that. And being in that kind of position, you have the luxury of being able to help them when times are hard. And you can give them discounts because your practice is flourishing. It's not in a starvation mode. It's in a growth mode. And you always want your practice to be in a growth mode. You want to be looking at where can you have ancillary services being done in your office by someone else that doesn't include your time, energy and expertise, where they can be the expertise of a particular service. That way there's always different revenue streams coming in. Despite just seeing patients, you've constantly got multiple avenues of revenue coming in. I'm a huge believer in having a practice with multiple revenue streams. We have our supplements sales, we do LET  (Lymphocyte Enhancement Therapy). We do thermography we have a biofeedback machine. I have a health coach. I have three other practitioners in my office. For a while we had acupuncture and massage and nutritional coaching. We have all kinds of things in our practice. Some we still have some we don't but that way If not everything depends on you. You need to oversee this or you need to have somebody help you oversee this. But your practice doesn't totally 100% depend on you seeing a client every single day, in order to make money. diversification of your practice can be huge. Just like having hourly services, programs, packages, having concierge services where they pay you an annual fee. Being diversified can really help you structure your practice so you know how much income you have coming in, all throughout the year from all your different practices. Now, you can certainly niche down every one of those individual things and market accordingly to them. Is it going to be a little more expensive on your marketing budget? Maybe, but you decide what do you market at what time of year? When do you want to market weight loss programs, you want to market those in November, December, January, February. Don't market them in June, it's too late. Those people already wanted to lose that weight. But maybe in June, if you're doing allergy services, maybe you want to market that or maybe you have a back to school program that you're marketing in July, August and September before the kids go back to school. Think about where your programs are at where they need meet the most. And then mark it three months before that. That way your marketing budget isn't growing because you're not marketing everything at one time. You're marketing the services that are necessary at a specific time. We have four quarters in the year, pick four different programs market one for each quarter, and your marketing budget will stay exactly the same. You're just marketing to that specific niche for that quarter. It is not as complicated as people think. It is the thing that has kept my business growing through dark times. And it will continue to keep everyone's business going if we can diversify. 

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So I hope this helps you. If you guys are unsure on how to diversify your practice, hop over to our Facebook page, join the 15k a day doc ( now known as Functional MBI) private Facebook page. Let's have a conversation in there with other people that are doing this same thing. And let's help each other out and grow our practices. 

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Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others. post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest for me. You can follow me on Facebook at FM bi, join our free group where we support one another and share our struggles. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.