FON: THE BUSINESS OF INTEGRATIVE HEALTH & MEDICINE

Becoming an Integrative Health Thought Leader: Part 3—Unique Positioning

This is the third installment of a 7-part series.Read the entire series:Part 1: IntroductionPart 2: Personal Branding + PlatformPart 3: Unique PositioningPart 4: Content StrategyPart 5: MediaPart 6: Monitoring + Promoting Your BrandPart 7: Conclusion–Putting it all Together Now that we have identified and examined the core elements for creating your integrative health personal brand and platform, it’s time to take the next step to differentiate your unique position and

Becoming an Integrative Health Thought Leader: Part 2—Branding + Platform

This is the second installment of a 7-part series.Read the entire series:Part 1: IntroductionPart 2: Personal Branding + PlatformPart 3: Unique PositioningPart 4: Content StrategyPart 5: MediaPart 6: Monitoring + Promoting Your BrandPart 7: Conclusion–Putting it all Together When most people think about a brand, they think about a name and a logo. While these labels and graphics that establish your ‘look and feel’ are important, a personal brand—when thoughtfully

Becoming an Integrative Health Thought Leader: Part 1—Introduction

This is the first installment of a 7-part series.Read the entire series:Part 1: IntroductionPart 2: Personal Branding + PlatformPart 3: Unique PositioningPart 4: Content StrategyPart 5: MediaPart 6: Monitoring + Promoting Your BrandPart 7: Conclusion–Putting it all Together Many professionals within the vibrant integrative health space possess masterful clinical abilities, significant scientific subject-matter expertise, and entrepreneurial business savvy. However, too few have consistently leveraged their significant attributes in the effort

Integrative Health: Names, Nomenclature, Trends—Where We Are Headed

In 2012, I wrote a piece describing the integrative health community as being one camp comprising many tents. The article discussed the various sub-groups within the field, including: integrative medicine, functional medicine, holistic medicine, restorative medicine, and lifestyle medicine. I posited then, with numerous ‘tents’ falling under the integrative health camp, that newbie (integrative) health consumers often have difficulty clearly differentiating between numerous names and the nomenclature, thus creating a

Improving the Health of the Integrative Health Enterprise

My recent posts on why integrative and functional medicine practices often fail, and how to go about mastering a ‘sales funnel’ to build patient volume, elicited a lot of positive feedback—as much as any articles I’ve written over the last few years. Could this be because more folks within the integrative health community are recognizing that integrative clinical prowess that is not equally matched to persistent business acumen does not

Medicine Practice failure, image of a man holding an umbrella with name of blog on the image.

7 Reasons Integrative and Functional Medicine Practices Fail

During a recent call with a prospective client—a solo practitioner orthopedic surgeon looking to develop an integrative medicine center—I was asked why integrative health practices fail. I’d never before been asked this important question pointblank. My mind contemplated the myriad things that can conspire to bring a center to its knees, but in the silent seconds I sensed she might want a catch-all answer and I offered up ‘poor planning

7 Critical Steps to Mastering Your Integrative and Functional Medicine Sales Funnel

Yes, I know, the very notion of you, a clinician, reading about a ‘sales funnel’ in connection to the delivery of medicine makes you cringe. But I’m a marketing and business development guy who focuses on these things, and I’m convinced these seven steps will help your practice thrive. I think we can readily agree that any enterprise, including integrative, functional, and concierge medicine practices, requires a steady flow of

Integrative Medicine Services: When Less is More

If you’re operating a small integrative or functional medicine clinic offering a substantial menu of ‘services’, you may inadvertently be undermining your capacity for meaningful engagement with existing and prospective clients (aka patients). In my post Go Deep, Then Wide: Building Integrative Health Practices, I posited that maximizing (business) growth by laser-focusing attention and keeping distractions at bay is essential. This is specifically true for clinical services and patient engagement.

New Report Chronicles Cost-Effectiveness of Integrative Medicine

By Taylor Walsh In 2012 the most experienced researcher of the costs and benefits of complementary and integrative care stated: “I’m tired of this talk that there is no evidence for cost-effectiveness of complementary and integrative medicine. There is evidence. We need to move onto phase two and look at how transferable these findings are. We can take this evidence and run.” This was Dr. Patricia Herman, ND, PhD of the