I’ve been thinking about my experience with the osteopath and my amazing neck recovery.
Yes, that’s still holding up, no neck pain no matter what I subject my body to. As unreal as it is, I’m already starting to take it for granted. We’re pretty quick to forget pain and discomfort once is gone, right?
Before the treatment I would have given the whole process at most a single digit percentage chance of success. During the treatment, same, perhaps a few points less. There just wasn’t any reassurance, commentary, nothing. She just went about this painful massage and when it was done, it was done. My feelings about it probably went to about zero chance after the treatment.
But it was about sixty bucks. I was feeling generous towards some experimenting. The Internet said good things about it.
And if you read that whole story, you already know the outcome. Total surprise, unexpected overwhelming success.
I look at that whole process and my attitude about how health shouldn’t be for profit. But perhaps I’m wrong about that, too. I’ve been back to the osteopath place since, for no good reason other than to have another painful massage, and support them a bit more. In chatting with the woman I find out that it took them over five years to start breaking even. Stressful times. And even know she says she doesn’t know how effective her treatment is, since if it works people just don’t need to come back.
A little shocking of a statement to make, isn’t it?
Think about it. Not just the fact alone, or something obvious like having some kind of feedback system, or encouraging Facebook reviews, or just … something. But also the fact that she says this to me, some random client she’s seen just once before. And even just for her own benefit, she’s ok with doing something and just not really knowing what happens?
They’re definitely not business people.
How many potential clients do they not get, because they are doing absolutely zero to encourage clients to share their experiences? How much of a turn-off is it to first time visitors when there just isn’t any kind of soft, fluffy, reassuring little bit of sales? You know, just a small bit of “you chose well, you’ll love this”.
And, sixty bucks.
I’m a frugal guy, but if you’d guarantee my full recovery of my neck, I’d have paid a thousand. And yes you say, Jake you can easily afford it. But truly, even if it meant eating noodles for the month and not having cell service, it would obviously be worth that, no debilitating headaches and neck pain.
Which made me think … why is there nobody who charges a more relatively appropriate amount for a significant outcome, while guaranteeing success? I’d have been much more open to paying a lot for success or nothing for failure, than paying a flat fee sixty dollars. Sixty dollars felt too expensive for what I considered to be most likely to be worthless, but a thousand seems completely appropriate for my neck not hurting right now.
Making the customer assume the financial risk for a rather fringe sort of treatment, offering no reassurance, and then also having no feedback or review system, altogether the antithesis of business minded operating.
Which brings me back to my criticism of health for money. I always say health shouldn‘t be about profit. But how many more people would go to a treatment that had hundreds, if not thousands of success stories they could read, where they only paid for a promised outcome? How not-encouraging is it how this osteopath place operates right now?
The woman tells me the sad stories of offering back pain treatment to traditional doctors and their patients. Trying to get these guys who prescribe pain meds and surgeries to try something new. She says, they had exactly zero success getting even just one doctor to try.
She’s just one very honest, very no-nonsense, very zero-fluff type of person.
If I took over that place, you’d quickly see exactly what you’re already familiar with from here. Lots and lots of talk of what happens with osteopathy, why it works, science background, and most importantly, participant experiences. You’d be seeing a guarantee, a way to reassure you that you’re only paying if you’re getting what you had hoped for. You’d see a lot of free things, and some appropriately priced services where therapist time is required. Taking on less patients, spending a lot more time getting the word out. Collaborating with fancy high end clinics and health spas and accumulating celebrity clientele. That place would be mobbed in no time at all and those guys would start have to run their schedules months out in advance. You’d never be able to get an appointment for sixty bucks there, ever again (nevermind one for tomorrow, like you can today).
And you’d know about it. And you’d want to get an appointment, even though it’d be notably expensive. You’d happily wait months and months, and you’d be telling your friends about it. You’d be far more likely to hear about a non pain meds, no surgery option to deal with your neck pain.
So maybe health actually can benefit from involving profit-minded thinking. Maybe profit is fine, as long as it’s about health. Maybe competing with prescription pain meds (for profit) and surgery (for profit), without thinking of human fears and desires, without using marketing tools, without leveraging the power of money, is like bringing a tooth pick to a gun fight. Maybe the problem isn’t about the profit at all, maybe the problem is that most of what we’re being sold today, is claiming to be about health, but is actually only about profit.
What do I know. If you’ve got any funky pains and make it to Bangkok, go visit the Osteopath Centre.
Cheers,
-Jake
