Why Am I Not Building As Fast As I Want To?

Why am I not building as fast as I want to?

Are you frustrated with trying everything to build your dream practice? Are you constantly complaining things aren’t moving fast enough for you? Do you want to snap your fingers and have your every wish appear instantly?

Me too!!! I would love to have a magic wand and have all my dreams instantly appear. Unfortunately, that isn’t how things work, and if you figure out instant manifestation, please send me the secret. Why isn’t your practice taking off as quickly as you expect it to?

There are many reasons. For starters you have unrealistic expectations. Building based of instant gratification is a recipe for disaster.

It takes time to build a practice. Have you built one before? What knowledge of running a business do you have? Marketing? Contracts, target population and ideal location. Contractor versus being an associate? Split or rent based? Do I get a dispensary? How do you make money while you are not seeing patients/clients?

These are a small components of what goes through your head when you are starting up. In the expert field, it is called unconscious incompetence. You don’t even know what you don’t know yet. You have no idea which questions to ask, or where to start building. And that is OK!!! Avoid stressing out about this. This is the natural order of things. You must do the doing before you can gain the knowledge. Books do not teach you how to run your business. Books give you a framework and then you have to action it.

You get valuable information and feedback while you are actioning it. Nowhere is it expected that you be perfect or magically create a 6- 7 figure practice right out of school. That is your unrealistic expectation.

In general, just following the wellness model it takes a good 3 years to build up a solid clientele and you are working on ALL DIFFERENT TYPES OF SKILLS, not just seeing patients. You are working on systems, marketing, getting out to trade shows, doing corporate talks, seminars, webinars, social media posting, other forms of advertising, and the list goes on.

When you add in the expert model to the wellness model you will accelerate how quickly you build a 6- 7 figure practice. You are playing by different rules and the expert model relies heavily on mentoring and modelling other people in the field who achieved the level of success that you want to achieve.

The expert model gets paid for results, not based on hours. A concept that is foreign to most practitioners. Get paid for how amazing you are at guiding people to health, vs the time that you spent with them. The expert model doesn’t cater to the people who only want to spend their insurance money, and not a dime more. In the wise words of Caroline Myss “When you put limits on your healing journey, all you get is limited healing”.

When I shifted into to blending the expert and wellness model I started to build my practice a lot faster. I had a lot more free time with my son, and was able to stop the overwhelm-burnout cycle. I am able to handle running a practice, an international institute in 4 different designations, live in Nunavut with limited internet, raise three rescue puppies and have to watch my son full time.

I couldn’t have done that with the wellness model alone. I wouldn’t be working, or my practice would be my hobby. If you want to build faster you need to break open the limited box of wellness. You need to start incorporating other skills and be part of an industry that trains you to do it faster.

This is where your expectations need to meet your industry. If you want to build faster than average, then bridge into an industry that caters for that, OR be aware that it takes 3 years to build the solid foundation. Both paths are valid, and better for different people. The take home here, is to be gentle on yourself and set realistic expectations.

The other reason people don’t build as fast as they would like to is because they expect instant gratification. This goes hand in hand with unrealistic expectations. I must admit, I deal with this one. I constantly remind myself that it takes the amount of time put into it task multiplied by three for it to manifest into this world. If it took me 3 weeks to complete the task then I am looking at 9 weeks for the return. A universal law that is not taught in the wellness model.

My mentor, Dr. Kim Redman, will be the first to tell you that I relied heavily on my talent and moment I decided I wanted my goal, is the moment I expected to have it magically show up in my life. She constantly reminds me, that in this lifetime and in this reality, magic doesn’t happen like that anymore.

Here is an example: Social Media posting and Facebook Lives. When I was doing them for 3 weeks I was fed up. I gave social media a three-week trial period. The amount of time and energy I was investing in posting I felt that I wasn’t seeing the results. When it comes to investing time now a days it has to be worth it to me.

You are a magical and powerful being, and if you’re reading this most likely an overachieving high functioning A type like myself. The take home of this blog is to be kind to yourself and evaluate which path you want to take. The path of Wellness model only; which will have you building slower with a lot more time and energy and less return on the money. Or the amazing blend of the expert model with the wellness model; less energy, different allotment of time, and a boat load more money while serving more people and hitting the actual root cause of disease.

Questions???? Send me an email at drliz@bolenhealthinstite.com. We can set up a zoom tea and talk about which options are right for you. I act like a sorting hat listening to what you really want out of your practice. I will send you resources and give you awareness of your next steps. I honour the path that is right for you.

Patients Get to Be Right!

Patients Get to Be Right!

Are you thinking about that one patient that you couldn’t help, and wondering why nothing worked? Are you fed up with arguing with patients about why they aren’t getting better? Do you wonder why some patients get better so quickly, while others stay stuck?

The secret is…. They get to be right. It is that simple. The power of the mind can produce miracles. There are plenty of studies on a patient’s mood affecting treatment. Think of the person who tells themselves they are going to conquer cancer, and they do. There are case studies on a perfectly healthy individual receiving the wrong lab tests at the doctor’s office and mysteriously start exhibiting symptoms of that imaginary disease.

In my personal practice I had quite a few patients seek me out for treatment because they knew something was wrong with them. One case in particular stands out, I will call him Fred. Fred has seen every different type of western doctor there was. Their last specialist appointment was with an internist, who ran some specialized tests I had to research what they meant. Every doctor, every lab test concluded that she was perfectly healthy and it was all in his mind. With every doctor his symptoms kept getting worse.

So, he pulled a hail Mary, and booked a Naturopathic appointment with me. He brought in every single lab test he has received for the last year. Marked every minute change in lab tests to prove to me something was wrong. I looked through the thick stacks of lab tests, and flat out told him that I am not going to go about this in terms of modern medicine. You have seen the best of the best and I believe what they concluded. He was shaking uncontrollably, reported sudden loss consciousness, and numbness in his legs.

I gently told him, “I will look through these more in depth later, right now I want to put some acupuncture needles in and have you tell me what is going through your mind.” After pouring his soul out on the treatment table for an hour, he concluded that if something doesn’t change that they feel like they are going to die. And I believed him.

This is a patient that will die to be right. Fortunately, his case was an easy diagnosis in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Once he was given a diagnosis, he got better very quickly. Quicker than I would have suspected one to get better, with that diagnosis. Reflecting back on this case now, I know that this patient was a prime example of how far people will go to be right.

The very fact that this patient believed with every single cell in their body that something was wrong, meant they started declining in health. That is how powerful the mind is.

The placebo effect is a wonderful example of the power of the mind. You take a sugar pill and the body heals itself. You think you are taking the medication and yet the body healed itself. Most clinicians write off the placebo effect rather than hear the calling of the ability of the body to heal itself through the mind.

Let that resonate. The mind that powerful. Your thoughts effect your physiology, mood, hormones, and neurotransmitters. Positive thoughts foster healing, happiness and health. Negative thoughts over time lead to anger, resentment, cancer, and disease.

Knowing this consciously and communicating this with your patients doesn’t mean that they are going to miraculously heal. What I need you to hear is that they get to be right. If they want to get better they will, and you will have wonderous results with your healing modalities.

If they have decided that it is impossible or don’t truly want to get better, they won’t. Patients will fight you tooth and nail and tell you why they can’t follow your treatment plan. I invite you to tell them they get to be right. Dr. Tad James said it best, “If people started to fight for their magnificence half as much as they fought for their limitations, then miracles would be an everyday occurrence”.

Look back at your resistant cases through this lens. I bet you will find that they are fighting for their limitations, and that they are right.

What changed after reading this blog? Are you looking at your “difficult” cases in a new way? Do you have any questions for me? Book a discovery call with me. We can have a tea and talk about how everyone gets to be right, period.