Leading By Example

Long time readers of this blog know that when it comes to private advocacy, I preach the gospel of learning to run a business. I know – it seems counter-intuitive sometimes. But it’s true; that being a successful business owner is often less about being good at the core business, products and services one offers, and more about practicing good business tenets. So, I have spent the last week leading by example. And today, I am so very ready to get back to working with advocates instead! APHA Members may remember the announcement a few months ago:

Why It Takes So Long to Acquire a New Client

We live in an instant gratification world, don’t we? I suppose we could harken back to BF Skinner’s hungry rats, then combine that with the expectation of instant answers we get from the Internet to understand why we, as human beings, want and expect everything to happen the MOMENT we want it to happen! Think it… will it… snap your fingers – there it is. This concept came to mind after a conversation with my husband. He recently retired from his field engineering career. He loves to golf and fish and this time of the year, doesn’t lack for anything …

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Don’t Let These Headlines Be About You

It happened again this week. And as I first suggested last Fall, Ripped from the Headlines… a Warning for Health Advocates, Too we advocates need to pay attention. This isn’t one of those “Oh, that won’t happen to me” moments. It’s easily preventable, and only very wise to do so. I’m referring to attacks on real estate agents, this time in St. Petersburg, Florida. Two agents showing homes just a few miles apart were attacked at gunpoint, tied up, and robbed – and traumatized. I don’t think any of us can imagine the horror. The perpetrator has not been caught …

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Non-Payer? Or Scammer? A New Step for Client Acquisition

We hear about scams and frauds every day in the news. An elderly person is convinced to donate money to a scam charity, or doctors defraud Medicare, or someone’s identity is stolen, or the IRS’s website is hacked…. Thing is – like car accidents – we never think a scam can happen to us. So we simply, and naively, go about our days and our business thinking we are somehow immune. We are such nice people, so very giving, and can’t imagine anyone would ever try to take advantage of us…Right? No. Wrong. Wrong, and expensive. One of our APHA …

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Surprising Wisdom from Chipotle Will Make Your Day

About once every five or six weeks I splurge on Chipotle for lunch. Love it – guacamole and all (Have you tried their corn salsa? Yum.) On my most recent visit, I did something I had never taken the time to do. I read the take-out bag. That’s right. If you have never purchased take-out at Chipotle, you may not know that there is a great deal of what looks like plain old text on the bag. I had never paused to read it, assuming (uh-huh) that all that text was just promotional in nature – and who has time …

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Twisted Words Put Me Off

Recently, I had one phone conversation and one email, with two different people who are hoping to, and working to become advocates, both exchanges which resulted in very negative takeaways on my part. And then I wondered – how many of us leave the same impression, even if we never intend to come across the way we do? And if we do so, no matter how unintentionally, does it give patient advocacy a bad name, or a black eye? Those twisted words are actually responses most of us run into every day. All that is required to fix them is …

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Misleading Headline Provides an Opportunity

This week the Chicago Tribune featured patient advocacy as a growing trend – a marvelous exposure to private advocacy for the uninitiated (uninitiated = most of the known universe). Several of our APHA members were mentioned in the article and for the most part, it was an excellent representation of the status of private advocacy. Except for the headline: Now, most of us are intelligent enough to know that headlines are created to suck in readers, and too often, intentionally focus on some point that doesn’t really represent the story – just draws those readers. And so it was with …

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