Time is Money
Posted on November 20, 2006 - Filed Under General |
Recently, my office and I attended a health fair. The table itself cost $30. As there were four of us, we split the cost.
The healthfair took place in a small community not far from where our office is located. It began at 8 AM on a Saturday morning and ended at 2. This meant I was putting in 6 hours at the fair and then approximately 45 minutes in travel time and loading, making this nearly a full day’s work. I also paid out my share of the $30, which came to about $7.50. Generous person that I am, I left our naturopath with a .50 cent tip because I didn’t have exact change. Her time to help us get registered was worth that, wasn’t it?
I met about half a dozen interesting providers. Some were really too far from our clinic to be good sources of referals. The others have potential and now they know where I am. That was worthwhile. I talked to another 10 or so people who walked through the healthfair, mostly between the hours of 10 and 1. A few were really interested and had lots of questions. There’s a good chance that if they continue their research they’ll be giving me a call.
As time passed and the four of us were getting to know each other better, the naturopath who had been contacted about the fair apologized for the fact that it really wasn’t worthwhile. I said, well it was only $7.50 and it was worth checking out. She said she used to think like that but her father always reminds her that her time is valuable.
While it is valuable to make all the contacts we can, we need to remember that when health fairs like this one don’t have the expected turnout that we may not want to repeat them the following year. Yes, it was good to meet 10 more people, but I spent most of my Saturday doing that. There have to be more cost effective ways to market.
When we aren’t seeing patients we tend to think our time is worth nothing. It is often easier to disregard our time when we are trying to market ourselves to anyone, any where. As we start to get patients, we need to think of marketing smarter, rather than harder. We don’t have the unlimited time we used to have, but we still need to reach new people. The sooner we can learn the lessons of placing a value on our time and marketing smarter rather than harder, the better off we’ll be.
I don’t have answers to what’s smarter. Every community works a little differently and each practitioner has their own style. We each need to find out how to reach the maximum number of people with the minimal amount of effort. We all need to remember that our time is valuable.
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