The grand experiment continues...

I'm continuing to play with business hours, but only on Thursdays. I originally pushed my start and end times by a couple of hours to make them 12-8 so I could garden, putz around the house, and visit with my 92 year old mother...

Well, noon seems to be rolling around just a little quickly. Also, people tend to be taking advantage of the later hours. So, for now anyway, Thursday hours are 2pm to 8pm.

Doing Community Acupuncture in Austin, Texas

It's Wednesday and today the clinic is open from 10am - 6pm. It's about 3pm, and my third patient of the day is asleep in one of the nine recliners in our treatment room. The other eight are unoccupied. It looks like I'll see oh, maybe six people today.

As a micro-business owner there's always stuff to do, and I'm not complaining or concerned about the continued existence of South Austin Community Acupuncture - not by a long shot. Some days are just slower than others. I am, none the less, seeing in an eight hour day today the number of people I could see in one hour. Makes for a long day, and prompts me to do things like blog. Today's topic: Doing Community Acupuncture in Austin, Texas.

Austin is a funny town. In other cities around the country, community acupuncture clinics are getting mainstream press and news coverage, and in one instance at least - a very nicely produced program on the local PBS station (Tucson). It seems in other places community acupuncture is viewed as a community resource, and something worth writing about. Go figure.

In our 3+ years of existence we have gotten exactly one mention in the press, and frankly the writer kind of missed the point. It was a piece about the newly formed South Lamar IBIZ district, and she managed to mention that you could get a mohawk at Bird's for $15 - but that you could get an acupuncture treatment for that amount was lost on the writer. 

The Community Impact newsletter did a spread on the Ben White corridor a few months back. We were not included. The only business mentioned in our complex: Bender Bar and Grill. No Shree Jee Grocery; no Fitness Unleashed; no passport pace, etc., They listed every business in the Southwood Center, west of us, including the wound and rehab clinic, the dialysis clinic, etc., and even went so far as to list every single business in Westgate Village - which is not even on Ben White!!! I emailed the editor about this. Her reply: Obviously, not everyone could be included, and they were trying to feature businesses people may not know about but that they could use. I was truly amazed. Sounds like we fit that profile, given that we offer a service that could truly benefit just about anyone at rates ordinary people can actually afford, and that we occupy a stretch of Ben White where Ben White is underground. If you need dialysis, I think you're going to know where the dialysis clinic is. Seriously, thanks for the information.

Oh well...Look for us in the upcoming Beauty issue of another local rag. No, I'm not kidding. I'll take my press where I can get it.

Next up, I'll be writing about - you guessed it - acupuncture! My observations some 10,000+ treatments into practice, what I think might be some misconceptions about acupuncture, and how acupuncture might be better utilized...oh, and happiness!

Goodnight Austin, Texas - wherever you are....

We'll do it again sometime....

Well folks, we're going to give First Free Fridays a rest for now....

With our move in July 2009 to our present Ben White location we figured we ought to do something to get new folks in the door, since we're slightly more off the beaten path - and thus began First Free Fridays. We did them for about 6 months or so, and I would say they were a  success overall. About 1/4 of folks that came have become regulars (so far). That's a pretty good rate of return for essentially free advertising.

The flip side of this is the acupuncture tourist. They're just passing through 'cause it's free...

Or the folks that bring a family member and gawk and giggle as their loved one gets poked full of pins. Anyone who ever studied acupuncture has likely gone through this with their own family. It's fun, but not that fun!

To all who participated in making First Free Fridays a  success - thank you!

We'll do it again sometime.

I'm just sayin'...

I was recently contacted by an insurance company regarding a claim a patient had submitted in an effort to get reimbursed  for one $15 treatment. One treatment. In this case, I believe the patient was in a moving vehicle accident and was trying to get the other driver to pay for their expenses.

Seriously people.
The time and effort on everyone's part: mine, the patient's, the insurers - quickly defeats the purpose of getting an acupuncture treatment for as little as $15. Please, consider what South Austin Community Acupuncture is about, and why you come here in the first place....

We don't bill insurance because we believe it is a hugely inefficient system that has little, if anything, to do with patient care. That's a big part of why we do what we do here at SACA. We'd rather put our energies into actually helping people, instead of dealing with insurance companies. Any insurance co-pay  is going to be somewhere between $20-$40 anyway, so we simply cut out the middleman and just charge the patient directly what is essentially the amount of a co-pay.

I'm just sayin'....

Studies Confirm that Acupuncture is Not Safe in the Hands of Non-licensed Acupuncturists

Duh. You can read about the study here

New Thursday hours starting in June

In part based on the ups and downs in patient volume throughout the week (Some days I'm real busy, some days I'm real not busy),

in part to better accommodate getting more stuff done in my personal life (Gardening, home projects, getting time in with my 92 year old mother),

and in part to have some after work hours for those of you who can't get away during the day...

We're going to try something different:

Beginning in June, our Thursday hours will be 12 - 8, starting late and ending late.

Montgomery Burns by any other name...

We just paid our old landlord several thousands of dollars to go back into whatever dark hole he crawled out of and leave us the hell alone. So it goes... This, the culmination of three plus years of absolutely the most ridiculous crap one could ever imagine from a landlord. Suffice it to say, he ain't from around here...


This is a huge hit to a micro business such as ours, but we'll survive. We survived being this jerks tenants for three years. We'll survive this.

We had a dispute over a two months difference in interpretation of our lease and went to small claims court trying to get back our $2400 security deposit. For all my efforts, I can't say I did a very good job at conveying my arguments. I was simply too emotionally invested, and I should have called witnesses. We lost.

While our landlord got to keep our deposit, he was not awarded any other monetary damages because he failed to file a counter claim. I thought this represented a fairly perfect symmetry of justice.

Of course, he would not stop there, and further threats of legal action ensued. To the end he was up to his old tricks, trying to get us to pay for things that were not ours to pay for, such as the replacement of a set of exterior double doors, which were upgraded for his new tenant.

That we put about ten grand into refurbishing his building, and left him an immaculate, beautiful space meant nothing to him.

Ultimately, it came down to paying more in attorneys fees to keep going and still have the hassle of this mess in our lives - and still possibly lose, or stop it all now and buy peace.

We chose the latter.
I would rather lose and have my integrity, than to win at any price.

Ironically, we missed out on a property across the street from where we wound up on South Lamar. The owner of that property is one of the sweetest old guys you could ever hope to meet. His name is Ben, and he is a real deal, old school South Austin landlord. It is heart warming that he became a friend and patient. He brought his wife who was undergoing treatment for cancer to us for acupuncture. 


The day I got word we lost in small claims court, I also got the sweetest note from Ben letting me know his wife had passed away and how much she enjoyed her time at the clinic. The duality was striking: The love and humanity of this sweet old guy who could have been our landlord contrasted against the unbridled greed and arrogance of the landlord we wound up with.