How many hours a week do you work?

Given your patient volume now (i.e. 75-100 treatments per week), how many hours a week do you work on average?  You also mention in your book that in doing 50-60 treatments per week, one would work 50+ hours per week.  Are the number of hours one works greater when one is building his/her practice?  Do hours worked taper off as one develops a solid client base?  Hours worked per week is an important attribute of a profession for me, because I want to ensure that I can maintain good work/life balance.

Thanks!

Matthew Bauer –

Another good question but I am afraid my answer will be a case of “do what I say, not what I do”. I tend to still work long hours with very little time off and then, on top of that, I do things like write books and articles and try to build a support network for acupuncturists to be successful in practice!

The main thing I wanted to encourage people entering this field to think about is that they are opening a business and having consistent business hours is very important when you are trying to establish yourself. If someone tries to connect with you and you are not “open for business”, they may never make that effort again. What I am trying to teach is how people can give themselves the very best chance of building a successful practice. I am not saying no one can do that unless they follow all my advice like being open for business during business hours, only that these sorts of things up your odds. Once you have a firm foundation and steady patient load, you will have the option of reducing your hours if other things in life are a priority. I had thought of calling my book “Survive Then Thrive” to emphasize how those first years are the most critical. You have a better chance of surviving if you keep your doors open longer.

Thank you Matthew for your response. 

I know I’d like to net at least $75,000 per year as an acupuncturist, but as I said work/life balance is always a consideration.  I intend to work full-time, but don’t want to be devoting 60-70 hours a week my entire life, as there are other activities–particularly spiritual practice–that are important to me as well.  I do understand that I will have to work harder in the begining to establish my patient base.   That makes sense.  But I would also love to dial it back once I can.  Maybe $75,000/yr is not feasible working under 50 hrs/wk though.  What do you think?

P.S. I chose $75,000/yr because I came across a national survey that indicated that individuals don’t derive any greater day-to-day happiness by salaries greater than this.

Matthew Bauer

Hey Jake  – You might have to work 45-50 hours a weeks to get things started but once you build a patient base, earning $75k even working a little less than 40 hours a week is not out of the question. I would tell you though that this work is perfectly compatible with the desire to develop oneself spiritually. I am a Taoist and the reason I don’t mind working longer hours is that I find my work IS my spiritual practice. That is what is such a great blessing. Helping others is the highest level of spiritual work, at least, that is what I was taught. On top of that, the qi system we work with is directly connected to spirituality. I wrote an article years ago that touched on that theme. Here is the link for that article:

http://www.matthewdbauer.com/matthewdbauer/articles/a01.html

I find that I have two passions in life: to grow spiritually and to help others heal and cultivate themselves.  Since I don’t have the capacity to be a spiritual teacher at this point, I felt acupuncture would be a good fit.  I have shadowed some acupuncturists and confirmed this.  I believe as you do that helping others is an important part of spiritual work. 

I read your article — thanks for passing it along.  One thing I like about Jung Tao is that its curriculum is focused on Classical Chinese medicine that retains its spiritual roots.  The texts they use are derived from Vietnamese texts that were originally shuttled out of China before the Cultural Revolution.  A lot of TCM schools turned me off because they mostly lack this element. 

Thanks again for all your feedback.  It’s really helpful. 

Jake   

Matthew Bauer

Happy to help, Jake. Let me know what happens to you moving forward. 

Hi Matt, just to clarify, when talking about hours worked (e.g. 40-50 hrs/week), are you meaning just the actual patient-treatment hours, or the treatment times plus other business-related tasks?  

I have a long history of a tendency to overwork and I’m finding that if I’m treating all day, then the emails, bookkeeping, soon-to-be insurance billing, etc happens in the evenings and weekends.  What I don’t know yet – is that just the nature of being in business for oneself?  Or just how it’s going to be until I’m able to afford hiring help?  Or a warning sign that I need to set better limits around my schedule?  I suspect that these are questions I will need to answer for myself as time goes on, but would love to hear your two cents.

Matthew Bauer