Marketing Psychotherapy and Psychiatric Practices


I have heard other clinicians claim that they have "full" practices. That has never been my experience in 30 years of practice. Maybe it's due to my business model - relatively high fees and not participating in the insurance Read more

Innovating


As I wrote in my eBook, I had happily practiced psychiatry for 20 years, never entertaining doing anything but seeing patients in my office 5 or 6 days a week. But a vacation to South America several years ago Read more

Service Design


Taking time away from my busy clinical practice and other life routines allows me time and mental space for thinking and writing. Yesterday's poolside reading in Bloomberg Businessweek provided the seed for this post. Audi sells very popular, high quality Read more

Productivity in Your Practice


Long ago I believed everything I read. Really. Sort of. Now I do my best to fold a dose of skepticism into any thing I read, especially in works such as the one I am about to quote. But the Read more

The Tao of Growing Your Practice


Verse 63. Tao te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation Act without doing; work without effort. Think of the small as large and the few as many. Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series Read more

Your Limbic Systems Tells You to Play it Safe


We are ruled by subtle, unconscious currents. Does the thought of running your own business right out of residency terrify you? “In the 1890s Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of experimental psychology, formulated the doctrine of “affective primacy.”7 Affect Read more

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Marketing Psychotherapy and Psychiatric Practices

May 30, 2013 Bill Lynch Blog Leave a comment   ,

Get Better at Marketing Your Practice

I have heard other clinicians claim that they have “full” practices. That has never been my experience in 30 years of practice. Maybe it’s due to my business model – relatively high fees and not participating in the insurance game. But I also like to treat patients aggressively and am gratified when they leave my practice having gotten what they needed. Whatever the reason, looking ahead in my schedule and seeing open time has for years unnerved me enough to make marketing a top priority.

As I wrote in my book, I have been driven by fear of failure since the beginning of my career. Rather than collapsing in a heap of despair, I actively, aggressively pursued referrals. Back then it was relatively easy since I started practicing in Dallas where I had trained, both for psychiatry and psychoanalysis, thus being well-connected in the community. But even with that advantage I reached out to colleagues letting them know of my time availability and eagerness to work. With my move to Chicago eight years ago all that changed. I had to start over from scratch.

I have developed a habit of sending out mailings to colleagues two to four times per year. How I got started with this method is detailed in my Starting & Growing Concierge Psychotherapy & Psychiatry Practices, All You Need to Know. I have compiled a database of 400 (and growing) contacts. Within the next few weeks each will receive a mailing from me. It will include a cover letter, a print of a brief article relevant to psychiatry, and a top notch marketing “tear sheet” highlighting my practice focused on providing remarkable service. These marketing “shout-outs” routinely result in several referrals and several new connections with clinicians.

To learn more about marketing your practice, purchase my book then contact me for consultation/coaching. I’m eager to help.

Innovating

March 18, 2013 Bill Lynch Blog Leave a comment  

As I wrote in my eBook, I had happily practiced psychiatry for 20 years, never entertaining doing anything but seeing patients in my office 5 or 6 days a week. But a vacation to South America several years ago changed my mind. On that Chilean hillside innovation was the furthest thing from my mind. At least consciously. Looking back, that lovely experience inspired me to want to do something different, to shake things up a bit. Clinical work had been and continues to reward me but that “something else” began to bother me on that trip. Actually it began bothering both of us.

Laura Lee is about to release her eBook on Healthy Mirror Habits. She has taken some time away from her clinical work to devote to the fascinating topic of how we use and misuse the mirror. This video is just a hint of what is to come. I have participated in her Healthy Mirror Habits Workshop twice and my relationship with the mirror has changed. There is some fascinating stuff here.

I mention Laura Lee’s work for two reasons: to promote it and to promote the idea of innovation – do something new. By all means attend professional update conferences. I do and always am refreshed by the experience (especially Dr. Stahl’s NEI Congresses). But listen to that small voice asking for something else, something more. Give into it.

Service Design

March 5, 2013 Bill Lynch Blog Leave a comment  

Carefully Design Your Service Model

Taking time away from my busy clinical practice and other life routines allows me time and mental space for thinking and writing. Yesterday’s poolside reading in Bloomberg Businessweek provided the seed for this post.

Audi sells very popular, high quality cars but the Audi sales and service experience, according to the author, turns off potential repeat customers. Audi hired Continuum, a consulting firm specializing in improving businesses’ commercial spaces and services, what’s now called “service design”. As I read through the article I kept thinking of Clear Life Path, the psychiatric practice Laura Lee and I designed and continue to evolve. After practicing together for about a year and a half we were ready to graduate from our home-made website, business cards, and brochures to a professional operation. We found Keith, of Buckledown-Interactive, and embarked upon the exciting work of branding a new practice.

After considerable debate Laura Lee and I agreed to style our cash-only practice as “Concierge”. The rest is history. The word itself worked itself into the redesign of our office decor, the website, new business cards, and other promotional pieces. In an interesting way we became concierge psychiatrists.

We certainly didn’t think of our make-over in the terms so clearly spelled out in the Bloomberg Businessweek article. But it was exactly what Continuum is trying to help Audi achieve.

We did it. You can too. Want a little help doing it? Give me a ring, or read my book and do it all yourself. But make sure you have lots of fun at it.

Productivity in Your Practice

February 15, 2013 Bill Lynch Blog 2 Comments

One Thing at a Time

Long ago I believed everything I read. Really. Sort of.

Now I do my best to fold a dose of skepticism into any thing I read, especially in works such as the one I am about to quote. But the message is so simple, true, and apt for us clinician/businesspeople that I wanted to use it.

“Do, every day, ALL that can be done that day. There is, however, a limitation or qualification of the above that you must take into account. You are not to overwork, nor to rush blindly into your business in the effort to do the greatest possible number of things in the shortest possible time.”

“You are not to try to do tomorrow’s work today, nor to do a week’s work in a day.
It is really not the number of things you do, but the EFFICIENCY of each separate action that counts.”

Excerpt From: Wallace D. Wattles. “The Science of Getting Rich.” iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

Check out this book on the iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=382537612

Work hard, but not too hard. Make sure you are doing work that pleases you.

The Tao of Growing Your Practice

February 7, 2013 Bill Lynch Uncategorized 2 Comments

Verse 63. Tao te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation

Act without doing; work without effort. Think of the small as large and the few as many. Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.

The Master never reaches for the great; thus she achieves greatness. When she runs into a difficulty, she stops and gives herself to it. She doesn't cling to her own comfort; thus problems are no problem for her.

Or as my favorite psychoanalytic supervisor would advise, “Never settle for comfort.” Merlon had a way of delivering wisdom in small, whimsical packages. Doing anything unfamiliar requires most of us to overcome the resistance of the “gravitational pull” of the familiar, the “safe”. Starting your own business after spending 8 to 12 years confined to the institution can be overwhelmingly scary.

Be afraid. Be clear about what you want. Be certain of the next small step.

Take it. Let me know how it turns out.

Your Limbic Systems Tells You to Play it Safe

February 4, 2013 Bill Lynch Blog Leave a comment  

We are ruled by subtle, unconscious currents. Does the thought of running your own business right out of residency terrify you?

“In the 1890s Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of experimental psychology, formulated the doctrine of “affective primacy.”7 Affect refers to small flashes of positive or negative feeling that prepare us to approach or avoid something. Every emotion (such as happiness or disgust) includes an affective reaction, but most of our affective reactions are too fleeting to be called emotions (for example, the subtle feelings you get just from reading the words happiness and disgust).

Wundt said that affective reactions are so tightly integrated with perception that we find ourselves liking or disliking something the instant we notice it, sometimes even before we know what it is.8 These flashes occur so rapidly that they precede all other thoughts about the thing we’re looking at. You can feel affective primacy in action the next time you run into someone you haven’t seen in many years. You’ll usually know within a second or two whether you liked or disliked the person, but it can take much longer to remember who the person is or how you know each other.”

Excerpt From: Haidt, Jonathan. “The Righteous Mind.” Pantheon Books, 2012-03-13. iBooks.

But we can manage the effects of the subtle avoidances. Make sure you want to do this. Then lay out the few necessary steps and lean into the headwind of unease. Let me know if I can be of any help.

Why Should Psychotherapists Blog? 4 Good Reasons

January 30, 2013 Bill Lynch Blog 3 Comments , ,

Follow Me to Chicago's SBAC

The Small Business Advocacy Council here in Chicago is a treasure trove. Laura Lee and I recently joined under our Clear Life Path group of companies. If you are here in Chicago I urge you to join, or consider attending a networking event as my guest, if only to see how the pros network. We mental health workers (can we come up with a better label?) have so much to learn from the broader business community.

Another benefit of membership is access to online discussion groups. SBAC has an active LinkedIn forum that hosts useful threads. One I saw this morning inspired this post. It was a brief video by Brandon Lewin, a fellow SBAC member. In this brief piece Brandon tells you how blogging can help you grow your practice.

Do you have a LinkedIn account yet? Get one! Do you have a blog/website? Do you write regularly? After several years of blogging I am still working to establish a disciplined posting schedule. But at least I’m in the game.

Do you need help getting started growing your practice? Check out my eBook then call to discuss the option of one-on-one practice building coaching. But most of all – have fun!

 

Inspiring Early Career Psychiatrists

January 23, 2013 Bill Lynch Blog Leave a comment   ,

Getting Started in Psychiatry

Dear Dr.  Lynch,

I was online late last night researching marketing strategies for a private cash-based practice and stumbled upon your blog. From there I read the preview to your book and absolutely knew I had to buy it. I actually remember finding your concierge website last year as I was brainstorming ideas for my own website and had favorited it to my browser!

Let me introduce myself– I am a 4th year psychiatry resident at the University of Arizona and will be graduating this July. At the same time, my wife will be graduating from the child psych fellowship.

In our job search we have been almost completely deflated by job opportunities that demand from us that we grind through 15 min med checks with no opportunities to provide any type of psychotherapy. At times it has felt as if there is no other way than to conform to the substandard ways of practicing medicine out of fears of not making it happen on our own.

Reading your book has me very excited about the prospects of starting our own practice that will be sustainable and profitable so that we may deliver care in way that is meaningful. I am no longer ambivalent about what I need to do. I cannot tell you how thankful I am for the experiences you have shared.

Best,
J. S.

This tickled me pink! I am extremely grateful to J.S. for telling me how my book inspired him and his wife to launch their own businesses. As I wrote in my book – if I can do this, so can you. I believe this completely. With the pointers I share, his excitement, and persistence in the face of the ever present challenges, this young psychiatrist will build and grow the practice he dreams of. I wish him all the best.

Do you have any sage advice for him? Chime in by leaving a comment via the “Leave a Comment” link at the top of this post. Let’s especially keep the encouragement flowing. We all need it.

 

 

Patient Education is Good for Business

November 28, 2012 Bill Lynch Uncategorized Leave a comment  

This morning my 9am patient called requesting that we have a phone session. She had gone to her brother's home to help her nephew, a young man I had seen a few months ago. Unfortunately he is psychotic, or at least is in a prodromal stage of a psychotic illness. The biggest problem I have had with him is his and his family's reluctance to come to grips with the reality of his condition.

Fortunately his aunt, my first patient of the day, has been around the block a time or two. She and I have struggled through the process of coming to terms with her condition then the acute treatment phase and now we're into a maintenance phase and she is doing quite well. All along I have taught her as much as I can about my understanding of her illness and the field's intelligence about it. This came in handy yesterday in conversation with her nephew. He was asking how long he would need to take his medication. “Two years. Just get your head around it.” If we're lucky she just sold a patient on continuing treatment.

I couldn't've said it better myself. She had done her share of plowing through her own brand of disbelief in the reality of her illness. I do my best to be compassionately straightforward with my patients. I do my best to educate them about the field's current understanding of etiology, treatment options and prognosis. This brand of patient care sells itself. There were many factors at play in my patient's attitude toward her nephew but one easily over looked by us clinicians is word of mouth marketing. Doing good work, in the final analysis, is the best promotional campaign we have. All the rest is just spreading the good news.

 

Holiday Weekend Psychiatry

November 23, 2012 Bill Lynch Uncategorized Leave a comment  

Productive Use of Business Slowdown

For one thing I just learned – again – the importance of backing up my work. Part of my office work today is writing a piece for two of my blogs, this one and the one for our new coaching business. The default method has been to write the piece in Word or Pages then paste it into Word Press. In my new mania for going mobile I am trying Blogsy, a cool iPad app, as a mobile optimized posting service. This is fun except I must’ve pushed the wrong button losing the whole piece. Here we go again.

I elected to work today, the Friday after Thanksgiving, because my work load has fallen off a bit lately. This is due to an overall slowdown, a long weekend psychopharmacology congress, and a surgical procedure that took me out of commission for about a week. Christmas and New Years holidays are regularly accompanied by a slowdown, so much so that for years now I simply take a good chunk of time off at this time of year. What else can we do during the slow times?

Blogsy is a great example. I have time to try out new technologies. I plan on putting some time into a project my son and I are working on together. We’re building an app that will be very helpful for psychiatrists and psychotherapists interested in setting up a private practice. I’ll keep you posted as we work through it. I will also spend some time studying the neurophysiology of attentional disorders. And after work today Laura Lee and I are headed to Diversey River Bowl for an afternoon bowling marathon. We’ve found that this archaic activity is a way for us to be active, develop a skill, engage in a bit of lighthearted competition and enjoy each others’ company.

How do you handle slow times in your business? Let us know by leaving a comment. Can all benefit from each others’ experience.

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