Tips For Student Practitioners Who Want To Succeed
Student practitioners are full of big dreams and ambitions. But in my experience, many are also worried about life after graduation. Will they find work? Can they run a business? What if they fail?
If you're a student practitioner who wants to find success after graduation, you've come to the right place. I've brought together some of the tips I share with student pracs regularly to inspire you and prepare you for life after uni.
My Top Tips For Student Practitioners
Student practitioners can start taking baby steps straight away!
You don't have to be qualified to start building foundations for a business.
Let me repeat:
You do not have to be qualified to start building foundations for a business.
The only thing student practitioners cannot do is work as a health practitioner in your modality outside of your college/student clinic (assuming you don't have a prior qualification, such as an Advanced Diploma)
There is nothing to stop you from taking steps such as:
Getting an ABN
Registering a business name
Setting up social media channels
Getting yourself a website (if you have the spare cash or you're naturally tech-savvy)
Scoping out potential clinic spaces if you want to work in a physical clinic
Putting together content for your website or social media for when you launch
Planning out a course, e-book, package or some other offer to sell when you graduate
Networking with other practitioners
Figuring out your niche
Researching what booking system, associations, suppliers etc you want to use upon graduation
If you have the enthusiasm for building your business/career, make the most of it!
You can bootstrap a business - as long as you have plenty of time to invest
Unless you've got a nest egg set aside, you're probably not going to have thousands to invest in your business. Good news - you don't need to spend big to start with!
As long as you have some time to invest into your business, you can bootstrap your way through the first year or so of biz.
The biggest cost you can cut is the cost of a physical clinic room (assuming you're not in a physical modality, of course!) Seeing clients online is more commonplace than ever, and it doesn't have to cost you a cent.
Looking for more bootstrapping tips? I've got them right here for you.
Social media, ads and collaborations won't bring you thousands of clients overnight
I'm sorry, but it's true.
You're probably not going to go viral overnight.
If you throw thousands into Facebook ads early on, you're unlikely to see a return on investment.
The people who see instant success after graduation are usually people who already have a huge following or already run a successful business in health. This is because offering health practitioner services is an upgrade to their offers, not a new ball game.
But can you succeed in the first 12 months of graduating?
Absolutely.
To do this, you need to:
Pick a niche
Connect with the people in that audience
Show up regularly and give value freely
Make offers that your followers can't resist
It's that simple.
If that seems impossible, make sure you check out my new offer at the end of this blog!
There's no point in further education if you can't reach clients to help!
Already got a list of further education courses and post-graduate qualifications to complete? Slow down, tiger. Let's look at this another way.
Learning more about your area of interest is great for your own knowledge. But as a practitioner, you want to be able to apply what you learn. That means you need to see clients.
A huge mistake I see practitioners making is throwing all of their spare cash into learning more clinical skills and going to seminars. But they what they aren't investing in is their business - and often, those people are not seeing enough clients to pay the bills! More often than not, these pracs end up frustrated and quitting their business.
That's why I like to take a balanced approach to how you invest your money (and your CPE points!)
For every investment you make into your further education as a prac, make one into your education as a business owner. That way, you'll be able to actually make a difference in the real world instead of in theory!
How do you choose what to do? Follow this process
Sometimes, you have all of the ideas as a student prac. So how on earth do you figure out which things to do, and which ones to store away for a later date?
To be honest, there's no way to predict what is going to work for you. But when you're faced with a whole lot of options, here's a process to work through and narrow it down:
Brainstorm out all of your ideas onto paper
Pick a maximum of 10 ideas, based on which excite you the most
Are there any ideas that utilise skills that you already have? If so, circle those ideas
Do any of them overlap in terms of who they would serve? Circle those as well
Once you have a handful of ideas, find practitioners who already do that thing and follow them on social media - this gives you an idea of what to expect
If you really vibe with one or two of those pracs, reach out and ask if you can chat to them about what they do!
When it's time to action it, you might need a bit more guidance about which steps to take. In that case, working with a business coach can be a great idea.
My own process was a lot less refined - I went out, started doing things, made mistakes, and stumbled into my current work. Learn from my mistakes - but also don't be afraid to fail early and often. You only truly fail at business if you give up!
My Practitioner Marketing 101 course might be just what you need. This 4-week course dives into the essentials of marketing yourself as a new prac, including:
Uncovering your niche & understanding your audience
Choosing & using your key marketing tools (social media, blogs, videos, newsletters and more!)
Staying consistent through planning, batching and scheduling
Booking your first clients & selling offers