We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Avigail Cohen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Avigail, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

When I first started to practice I rented a room, then I moved into a clinic that I shared with another practitioner, then as we grew I took over the whole clinic space and eventually moved into a bigger clinic with more treatment rooms. During the early days of renting a room or even sharing a clinic space, it allowed me time to set up systems and protocols. Having things in place with an EHR system, tracking stats of my patients for example how many patients I saw, who rescheduled or didn’t, what services collected how much money etc. was really helpful in staying organized and putting my energy into the right things to grow. My practice really started to take off when I hired a business coach and front desk support. I learned from an expert how to run my business and was able to put my time into seeing patients instead of timely paperwork that I could have someone else do for me. My advice would be to hire people when you are starting out even though it may seem counter intuitive. Make sure to have a good accountant, bookkeeper, business coach and front desk support and they will help your business grow faster. Most importantly have positive energy and believe in yourself!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Ballard Acupuncture Center is an award-winning Women’s Health acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine clinic. We give women the support and empowerment they need to be their best selves throughout every phase of their lives. Our clinic specializes in fertility, pregnancy, postpartum care, and peri/menopausal support.

We help women get pregnant when they are ready, either naturally or with the support of IVF. Through acupuncture treatments and Chinese herbs tailored to each woman’s needs, we support bodies and babies throughout the whole pregnancy.

During the postpartum period, we support women who feel overwhelmed, are experiencing depression or stress, or need help with milk production or mastitis. We also help women regulate their menstrual cycles during every stage of their lives to create and maintain balance, and to ensure a smooth transition into the menopause.

Avigail Cohen Licensed Acupuncturist, Chinese Herbalist and Clinic Director

I have always loved to travel. With 3 passports and family all over the world, I spent many summers as a child visiting my grandparents in England and Israel. I had the opportunity to live abroad for several months in high school and college but really took advantage of my travel bug after college when I lived abroad, worked, and traveled for 4 years. I was seeking to learn as much as I could about many different diverse cultures, but also about their unique and alternative healing practices. I was fascinated by how many of these healing practices looked at the root of the issue and not just a 1 size fix for everyone. I was a sponge taking in as much as I could. I studied massage therapy in Tel-Aviv Israel, participated in a Reiki course in Katmandu, Nepal, took a Thai massage course in Chang Mai, Thailand and lived at a yoga ashram meditating and doing yoga several times a day in Rishikesh, India. When I traveled to China, I wanted to experience acupuncture firsthand and to learn more about their culture and their medicine. At that time, I was already thinking about going to acupuncture school. In 2000, I moved back to the United States from Amsterdam, The Netherlands to begin my acupuncture studies at the Northwest Institute of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine here in Seattle.

I became interested in Women’s Health, pregnancy, and postpartum care when I was pregnant with my first child in my final year of acupuncture school. I was living and breathing acupuncture at the time, but I was also immensely enjoying my pregnancy. I was amazed that my body knew what to do and how much acupuncture and Chinese herbs helped me during this time. Acupuncture helped me sleep, deal with stress, manage my changing body’s aches & pains and helped my body prepare for labor.

These days, I’m experiencing a new phase in my life. My children are transitioning from teens to young adults, and I’m moving through perimenopause. Now I can relate to a new phase of a woman’s life, and I’m continuing to devote my personal  and professional experience to supporting, empowering, and serving as a resource for them. I want to create community for women as they are going through the different transitions of their lives.

I am most proud of supporting different generations of women during various transitions of their lives. There are many women that I worked with through several of their pregnancies and into peri-menopause and continue to work with for over 10 years. The trust they put in me when they are their most vulnerable, makes me feel very proud.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

As an acupuncturist, my business really needed to cater to the local population. Patients need to come weekly or very regularly for treatment. If they have to travel too far, then it is harder logistically to come for treatment. I would network in person or via Zoom since the pandemic. Once people met me in person and got to know me, it made it easier for them to refer to me. I also connected with providers of different modalities but were treating the same population of people. I talked to them about how I was treating patients and how it worked so well in conjunction with what they were doing. I also offered a different service (in my case custom Chinese herbal formulas) that many acupuncturists didn’t offer. This put me in the forefront of their minds when they were trying to offer something to their patients.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

Changing the mind frame that you have to do everything yourself. Learning how to run a business as well as being a practitioner. To succeed as an acupuncturist or a practitioner of any modality, you have to take off the practitioner cap and put on a CEO cap. To grow your business past a certain point, you need to hire other associates and front desk support/ office manager. You need to manage and support your staff in order to grow and be successful.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.BallardAcuCenter.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/BallardAcupunctureCenter/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BallardAcupunctureCenter/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avigail-cohen-41426a16
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ballardacupuncturecenter2839
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/ballard-acupuncture-center-seattle

Image Credits
Cat Chiappa