As graduation approaches, I get more and more focused on business planning. I keep looking at numbers and I can’t believe I’ve seen almost 300 patients these past 10 weeks– and in just a couple of weeks, in the blink of an eye–I will be graduating.

Having eight clinic shifts per week has been a blessing, because it revealed my real work capacity and exactly how many patients I will be able to handle when the time comes for my schedule to be completely booked. It was a bit difficult, but insightful, and in the end it just gave me more confidence and constantly reminded me about my skills, strengths–and also weaknesses.

I am also happy to say that I have applied for boards and I will start taking them as soon as I hear back from NCCAOM.

With so much focus on business planning, it was only normal to look into business and marketing training and attend a session. And yes, I know we all had at least one business class while in school, but there are so many things out there, especially now with all the social media, SEO, leads, funnels, and so much more, that I wanted to make sure I’m not starting my practice on the wrong foot.

I’ve had business training before, but this time I opted for one focused on health care practices–and for that, I hopped on a plane to Denver and spent an entire weekend brainstorming. I know some amazing marketers, but I always felt that most of them focused on “health coach/holistic coach” type of practices, and were not really targeting medical practices–at least not ones that will include Western medicine with Oriental medicine, so that’s the reason I researched and chose a company that works with medical practices.

I have also started looking for an office space and at all business things such as the name, logo, website, etc.— all these things are in the works!

If I remember one thing from the business class, it is that you should figure out everything before graduation and not delay things waiting to do boards, getting your license, etc.

If you already passed trimesters 5-6 my advice would be start planning. Even if it seems premature, trust me, it’s not. You’ll realize time goes very fast, and if you don’t start planning now, at the end it’s going to be overwhelming to deal with everything at once.