Hello & Congrats New grads!
Sarah Penney sent me a quick facebook message and I felt so inspired to share some my experiences especially “what I wish I knew from the start and learned in my first 6 months. I’m not a business expert this is just a few words from my short experience from one colleague to another. Please do your due diligence. Here are my top two costly mistakes despite my best effort at avoiding them …
Background: My setup
I started practice out here in Vancouver as of January 2011. I suppose 6 months in now. I’m working in a very independent setting. I rent a room by the day at a clinic, no admin staff. The group (chiro, RMT, acupuncturist) I work with is fun and we all just pitch in and answer the phone. respond to messages when we can and work together as a team. We have a very unified look (clinic name, logo, business cards) despite each having very individual charge of our marketing, admin and accounting. In case you are curious my rent is $70 a day (entire day) in Vancouver.
What I wish I knew … Website
iWeb
I started with iweb. Although super easy to use as well as design. It has some serious limitations.
1-Since the templates are graphic heavy the download was super slow.
2-Website not getting picked up by search engines
3-Blog platform does not compare to blogging websites.
I spend some money purchasing iWeb programs to create a google site map, to compress images to increase speed etc. Despite these efforts after a few months of being online I was nowhere to be found on google. I moved on. For personal fun it might be a great tool but not for business.
WordPress
WordPress.com: Hosted on wordpress, free and for a nominal fee you can even have your own domain. Limited themes and layouts, no ability to add plugins (plugins are added tools you can add to your website ie. Calendar of events, facebook fan page, share options, recipes, newsletter sign ups and other neat stuff). If you aren’t sure if you will want your own website it could be a good place to start until you are ready for some type of investment and increased options. The great thing is that it is easily exported to wordpress.org when you want to take the next step.
WordPress.org: You must buy your hosting although very affordable (bluehost.com, there are others). There is a one-click installation process. Very easy and I am not website savy. There are a bunch of free template or you can purchase some premium ones. I purchased one at studiopress ..mine is prose with Genesis. It was one that is easier to design and do some search engine optimization. Check it out. I am not expert so do your research but I have been pleased. I used the template for almost 6months just as it came from the download. I’ve just recently met a designer and she personalized it with a header and some background. So really easy and it does the trick for cheap, easy and professional.
Bottom-line: Don’t waste your money buying stuff for iweb … or other free website makers (I tried using a godaddy one… disaster). WordPress you can start simple using a professional tempate and if you have any website talent make your own header. It is search engine friendly and when you have the dough to invest there are a ton of wordpress designers. The bonus is that it is really easy to use so you will have control of the content and you can add pages and blogs quickly. You can change the wording as you learn about different strategies to engage your website viewer. My website has been a work in progress.
What I wish I knew: Electronic Medical Files
I felt really strongly about using EMR from the get go. This was one of my largest investments starting. I use OSCAR and it cost about $3000 to get two servers and the software downloaded with mini tutorial. So much options for customization I love it. As I am just starting I find I have NO time to customize it (or if I spent time customizing I would be sacrificing marketing which is most important now), although it would be nice. It is too expensive to get someone else to do it. So I am using it in a very basic matter.
I recently found out about practice fusion! A free EMR that is hosted by them for FREE! Do you due diligence. It looks pretty sweet and many MDs, NDs and other in the US are using it. I’m not sure if the Prescription module can be Canadian or if it goes by generic names that would be an aspect worth investigating.
Had I known I would have started here. Saved the $3000. And if ever down the road I really wanted OSCAR transferring a digital file from one EMR to another EMR is simpler than paper to EMR.
Please please note I do not use patientfusion. So do your homework I just really wish I had known about it. 🙂
What I wish I knew: Other tidbit
- For newsletters: Mailchimp is FREE (basically-for the number of subscribers we will have for the first few years anyway). RSS-to-newsletter feature automatically sends a newsletter of your wordpress posts. Very convenient. If you have signed up and you have feedback constructive criticism I would love to hear it. I am always looking to improve.
- Ohh and use facebook page for business not a personal account. They can shut down a personal account. Your goal is to get “likes” you shouldn’t be adding friends to you business account.
- Okk…. maybe one last things. Check out the free stuff you can get from labs before ordering your medical supplies. I ended up paying $50 for basically lifetime supply of urinalysis sterile cups and noticed my local lab would have provided some. Same with gynecological swaps.
The top two are the two most costly mistakes I have made so far that I wanted to pass on.
My website is here if you want to check it out for ideas. Feel free to sign-up to my newsletter so you can get newsletter topic ideas for yourself.
If this info help you the best way to make me smile is with a facebook like 😉
If anything …. I hope this info excites you a little. Life post NPlex is busy but a hell of alot of fun … we do great things and working is a joy!
Go get ‘um CCNMer’s I will be thinking about you on those NPlex days. You can do it!
xox
Mel
Feel free to share
PS: Please forgive me. I haven’t proof read this…. take it as is! And please please this is just colleague to colleague… I’m not an expert just a couple months a head of you that is all. This info may be old news for many of you but if I can help just a couple of you then great! It would have helped me… obviously haha.
PPS:
Some resources
www.copyblogger.com
www.studiopress.com
www.mailchimp.com
www.hootsuite.com => Socialmedia
www.problogger.com
bigbrandsystem
marketing blogs
seth godin
chris guillebeau
practitioner’s journey (Tara Gignac and partner)