Growing up in mid-central Maine, I was an extremely shy child. When I was in junior high and high school, I’d actually become physically sick when it came time for speech class or presentations. Thankfully, different life experiences eventually removed my fear of public speaking. However, as you can imagine, when I graduated from Chiropractic School the last thing I wanted to focus on was marketing.
In those early years of chiropractic school clinic and beyond, I watched myself and my colleagues flounder. While we had excellent training and education in healthcare, we had very little expertise in running a successful practice. It soon became apparent that I had to work on the marketing of my practice every bit as hard as I worked on caring for patients in my practice.
But how does a shy person market themselves and their practice? How does a new practitioner on a shoe-string budget develop a solid marketing strategy? What types of marketing activities are ethical and appropriate for healthcare providers? I didn’t have the answers to those questions. I turned to my local bookstore and spent hundreds of hours reading marketing books, but none of them addressed the field of healthcare.
Over the years, I tried different activities and events with varying levels of success, all the while adding to the mental list of marketing possibilities in my head. I learned from my mistakes and the mistakes I saw others make. As my mental list grew, friends and colleagues in a variety of healthcare fields turned to me for help in marketing their practices and I discovered I had a natural aptitude in this area. When my fiancé and I chose to relocate to be closer to his family, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to write the book that had been building in my head for the better part of a decade. By temporarily stepping away from practice and focusing on my books, I hope to help thousands of healthcare providers connect with their communities, create the practice of their dreams, and increase the health of our country.
