"As I write this, I am waiting on a realtor to send me a lease on a new location that has 9 treatment rooms. I had my first employee train my second employee today, and I just closed on 5k…. Oh, and I was home by 1:30pm."
14 months ago I went to Shift for the first time. One of my colleagues asked me to go when there was a random opening that happened the week of and I thought… why not. Turns out it was truly a serendipitous moment. At the time, I was seeing mostly people through the VA, and they had just reduced the overall rates significantly. I had never heard of team Renegade but knew it was only a matter of time before my business model would no longer work. Some kind of change would have to happen.
Shift was an amazing experience. For me, it was just a breath of fresh air all together to hear others talk about the profession so bluntly. Things I would never say in a room full of acupuncturists, they were saying completely off the cuff. The thing is, they are right and we all need to hear it. From the way they describe us treating our patients to the way we answer the phones (if we actually answer the phones) a huge portion of our profession are doing things to shoot ourselves in the foot from the get-go.
Even though everything they said resonated with me, I didn't completely trust them. I have been in the profession long enough to know that there are entirely too many practitioners that have an incompetent practice, and they do training to actually support themselves. In fact, frankly, I have only met a handful of instructors where this wasn't actually the case. At the end of #Shift, I said screw it, and asked to join AMP. After the interview process, I got cold feet and walked away. I thought I should go ahead and make the changes that I learned in Shift and save a buck. Looking back at that, I can't help but laugh.
Over the next 4 months, I made a lot of changes for me at the time. Redid my clinic with new floors and paint, redid my website by a professional and continued to basically do the same shit I had been doing before with the occasional attempt to get new clients on an actual treatment plan. Then, around October, it happened. There was a complete overhaul with the VA and they hired more acupuncturists and just weren't going to send people out anymore during the pandemic. I was screwed and I knew it.
I waited until December to text Tonya that I was ready to do AMP if they would have me. After the interview, they agreed that I was ready and we started at the beginning of 2021. Having been in AMP now for 9 months, I realize that you get what you put into it. I have been practicing for 10 years and I can say without a doubt that AMP is the best training, best use of funds, best of anything for anyone in our profession. Before AMP, I was working 45 hours a week at work and thinking about work another 40 hours a week and stressed about everything. Having an eye twitch was normal, having exhaustion similar to having newborns was normal, having a visceral response when the phone rang was normal, and even starting to get chest pains was becoming normal. I did this for years.
Before AMP, I was a slave to insurance. I really was. They accounted for 95% of my business and it worked… until it didn't. Medicare happened, reimbursements were reduced by an obscene amount, and I was screwed. To make matters worse, not only did the reimbursements drop, but the VA hired more practitioners and no longer sent the people out for treatment.
I started AMP with the goal of being able to survive and provide for my family. That's all I wanted. I asked the team at the beginning, “Who does the best with AMP?” The simple answer, “The people that do what we tell them to.” So we went to work. And did we go to work! And it was hard. It was uncomfortable. It was exhausting. It would have been easier if I was a new practitioner starting from scratch. But I pushed the “I believe button” and made changes.
Have you ever done anything for a decade and found out that you were doing everything…. Not necessarily wrong, but not optimal? Everything. Absolutely everything. Changes to the clinic, phones, logos, website, employees, needling, treating, software, point of sale, advertising, talking…. EVERYTHING. So for months, I made changes. For months I failed. For months I felt uncomfortable with every facet of my business. I did what they told me to and tried to get better every day. And there were plenty of embarrassing moments in front of new clients along the way.
In the 4th month, I finally started to have a win here and there. But it was definitely more losses by that point. It went like that for another 3 or 4 months. But during that time, I started to understand better why I was making the changes they wanted me to do. Then, at the end of a really bad July, something happened. I made 17k in a week. And we aren't talking the weeks like before AMP. We are talking a 25-hour week. The following month I brought in 29k. It was then that I realized I needed to think bigger than surviving and providing. It's time to thrive.
As I write this, I am waiting on a realtor to send me a lease on a new location that has 9 treatment rooms and a lounge, I had my first employee train my second employee today, and just today I closed on 5k…. Oh, and I was home by 1:30pm. My next goal is to have a 4 day work week until noon. I can't believe I even just wrote that. This week my wife and I literally had a conversation on what the hell are we going to do with having this much more time as we joke about having a semi-retired life all of a sudden. None of this would have been possible without Min and Tonya.
The Renegade team probably saved my life, they definitely helped secure my kids' futures, and they are fun to work with. I actually really enjoy how they will make fun of some of my past decisions. It's like how your best friends will give you hell for bad decisions. Sure, it can be humbling at times, but you know what…. They are right. They are right. They are right every time about everything. To those that would consider doing AMP. Let me leave you with this. I SAVED MORE MONEY OVERALL WITH AMP THEN I WOULD HAVE SPENT MAKING DUMBASS DECISIONS. Its not even close. I know this because I didn't do AMP immediately after shift and made expensive, short-sited, dumbass, decisions
