StoryTime with Jo | Competition is Bullshit

When I was a student in Chinese Medicine school, I had one class that was geared towards “Practice Management”. One of the topics we discussed was competition. I was instructed that it was good practice to “check out my competition” and get a feel for what other practitioners were charging in my area. When I first starting out as an Acupuncturist, I was lucky enough to get a job in an established practice. Besides the owners, I was the only other Acupuncturist so I didn’t really feel that there was any competition between us. I also didn’t really have to worry about what other competing practices were doing; however, I do recall my bosses being concerned with this. 

Eventually I left that practice and I joined a different practice. It was a group practice and there were 3 Acupuncturists including myself. The practice was quickly growing and there were plenty of patients to go around so there wasn’t really a feeling of competition amongst my co-workers. Totally the contrary, it was very much a group practice. We shared information about each other’s patients and sometimes worked on the same patients together. We learned from each other and often helped one another. The owner of this practice though, was extremely concerned with competing practices. They would spend a considerable amount of time looking at what other Acupuncture clinics where doing (what services they offered, what they charged for each service, etc.) on a regular basis. 

Over the years, it was sort of engrained in me that other practitioners in the area could be considered a threat to my livelihood. Though I never fully subscribed to this idea, I did see a lot of wellness practitioners worrying about their “competition” (including amongst the massage therapists that I worked with). It was always my understanding that no one steals clients from anyone; people go where they choose. Clients do not belong to us or to a practice, they can’t be traded or stolen like playing cards. I felt validated in this truth when I came across Simon Sinek and his concept of “Infinite Game”. To him, if you are constantly comparing yourself to another person or business, you are playing a “finite game”. You can eventually level up your services or offerings to match, or compete, with the other person but there is only so much you can grow. When you focus on leveling up your services and offerings, there is no comparison to a previous set standard. Therefore, the opportunities for growth are infinite. 

When I went on my own, there was no other Acupuncture practice in the area that focused on Women’s Reproductive Health, the way that I do. So I couldn’t really look around at other practitioner’s prices because it was irrelevant to my niche. I did take into consideration what other practitioners in this specialty were charging around the country and how many years of experience they had. I also took into consideration the amount of clients they were seeing in an hour. A practice that saw 3-4 patients an hour typically charged less for follow up appointments than those that only saw 1-2. Most of the ones that were limited to one 1 person per hour had a strict cut off of 60min per session. 

If you know me, you can see how this situation created quite a bit of a pickle for me. Since I became a solo practitioner, I only see one patient at a time and I typically spend 60-90min with them. I found that a strict cut off of 60 minutes didn’t always allow for my patients to ask me all the questions that they had or to get clarification on questions they had regarding fertility treatments they were considering, or a number of other things. We both needed time to really discuss all the ins and outs and for me to explain how they could properly advocate for themselves. Sometimes, patients are dealing with really heavy things (the loss of a loved one/pet, the loss of a pregnancy, changing job circumstances, difficulties in their relationships, etc.) and they need time to unravel and verbally get things off their chest. I want to hold space for them. You can’t really do that when you have to keep an ear out for the next patient who is supposed to be coming in soon. 

I don’t know of any other Acupuncture practitioner that allows this much time for their sessions. Furthermore, while there is a decent amount of Acupuncturists in my area, not many of us focus on this specialty. Even if they did, because it is a specialty, a lot of the training for this field happens at a post-graduate level. That means that my mentors may not be the same as someone else’s mentors in this field. In addition, there are several schools of thought within the scope of Chinese Medicine. For example, I was trained in Traditional Chinese Medicine but there is also the school of Classical Chinese Medicine and 5 Element Chinese Medicine. Within all of these schools, there are also different theories/methods such as 8 Extra Meridian theory and Master Tung Acupuncture, just to name a few. So the odds of 2 practitioners being trained in the same style, by the same mentors, is actually quite rare. Even if there happen to be 2 practitioners that had the same training and have the same mentors, each practitioner also develops their own style. We each have our own needling technique, our own assessment process, etc. We each may have a different interpretation of the patient’s presentation. You can see how the idea of competition actually seems quite ridiculous in this context.

Early in 2023, I found myself having to move out of the office I was working out of, in a jiffy. I wasn’t prepared to leave and didn’t have a back up location to consider. It was then that I plopped in MY Acupuncturist’s chair and cried about the stress and frustration of this process and not having a place to go. My Acupuncturist just so happened to have a room that was recently left vacant by a massage therapist that was renting it previously. She very generously offered to rent the room out to me and she was willing to have it ready for me to move in within a matter of days. My tears of frustration and stress quickly turned into tears of gratitude and relief. I went in for treatment and I walked out with so much more. 

I could just hear the voices of my previous bosses in my head…”Are you crazy? You can’t move into the office of another practitioner! That’s direct competition!”. The truth is that I specialize in Reproductive Health and she specializes in Allergies. I have a waitlist for new patients and so does she. We each stick to our own lane. We refer to each other’s practice when it becomes appropriate. Yes, I can work on allergies but I am not specialized in that field; the same way that she can work on reproductive health but it isn’t her specialty. Furthermore, I don’t practice the methods that she does, and vice versa. It has actually been a very harmonious and healing relationship sharing space with another practitioner who has a completely separate practice. We learn from each other and we co-exist peacefully. I have no words to express how grateful I am for her and how she has helped to validate my feelings on competition being absurd. 

Long story short, no one is like you and no one will practice exactly like you (regardless of what you do). If a good opportunity presents itself for you to share your talents/gifts with the world, don’t let the idea of “competition” cause you to shy away from it. There are over 390,000 species of flowers in the world and I doubt anyone has said “that’s too many”.