Unsolicited business advice

I don't go around giving a lot of unsolicited business advice for new practitioners but I've been chatting with a few people who just got licensed and here's something I wish I knew when I first started my practice:

Back then, I was so consumed with just trying to make it work, find a clientele and a CPA, and soothe my imposter syndrome that I didn't yet recognize what my practice actually was supposed to be: the vehicle for communicating what I needed to say about health.  

More than a small business, the "Poke Project" has been a means for me to narrate and educate my perspective on acupuncture, the gifts and limitations of having a body, and most of all, what I think it means to be well in the world, now.

For those of you starting out, a much more dynamic way to approach your business is to consider it like a doctoral thesis. Your practice is your own original, concentrated research arguing for the validity of our medicine; a dissertation defending your distinct perspective on that medicine, and how it functions in your community and the world, as it is today.

What is it that you are trying to say about about health in 2022 that can only be said with acupuncture and herbs?  

What do you see in this medicine that called you to dedicate years of your life to it? What do you think qi is? What do you think an acupuncture point is? 

Why do you think a person chooses acupuncture over the other forms of medicine, now? What does it mean to "treat pain" in the world today? And for that matter, what does health mean to you? 

Your business is the breathing aggregation of the answers you discover.

To regard your individual practice as simply a source of income you hope will be someday profitable honors none of the original wonder and curiosity that led you to our field, nor any of the beauty inherent in it.

I would ask instead that you also consider your "small business" a creative endeavor–like a novel or song–that you began writing when you got your license and will end when you feel like you have said all that you needed to say, and etched your distinct mark on the millennia-spanning lineage of practitioners who used needles as medicine. 

I hope that when the "Poke Project" is finished, it reads like a completed poem. I had a lot to say. 

When yours is over, what will you have said with your years of work? 

I promise you: more than any sexy website or SEO strategy, CEU or new tech, this inquiry will be the lifeblood and backbone of your career: it will keep your work evergreen and inspire your patients to regard their own lives with insatiable curiosity and compassion.