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The Real Cost of Selling One’s Soul

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I heard from a friend that he recently sold his start-up business after years of building it to do just that. Wow! I was so impressed! “Take a break!” I replied. “I can only imagine how much work that was and how much money you must have made!” Yes, he told me. It was a LOT of work and he is exhausted. But, he confided, he really didn’t make much money in the sale. What? I was flabbergasted… Then I learned why. It seems that he and his partners, in order to raise the money they needed to make their […]

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Hidden Agendas and Being Used

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Years ago, in my salad days, I took a new marketing job after being interviewed by a gentleman who seemed as nice as anyone I had ever met in a workplace. It didn’t take me long to learn my new boss’s friendly smile, and the words that came out of his mouth, only masked a hidden agenda that he hoped naive-me would help him fulfill. The first clue that things were not as they seemed came when I was asked to sign off on some media invoices, in effect, giving Accounts Payable my approval to pay the agency that had

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Contractors, Kick Backs and Clarity – That’s Why We’re Here for Advocates

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(updated January 2017) We’ve seen fireworks in the APHA Forum before. And we’ve dealt with them. The beautiful thing about the Forum is that allows free conversations on every topic imaginable. But of course, as with any group of highly intelligent, motivated and capable people, we’re not always going to agree. We experienced that again this week. One of our very active and valued members had visited her attorney to work on her contracts. She raised the idea of working with independent contractors, and her attorney immediately advised her against it. As she reported in the Forum, “He advised me

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We Interrupt This Thread for News About a Potential Patient Advocacy Lawsuit

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Last week I shared with you the problems I had with my coffee pot which burned and melted its insides – and then, while shopping for a new one, it reminded me of a lesson in making sure we advocates take care of the little things. My point was that we get hired for the big, important things that our clients need, but that our relationship with them, and our further ability to market our practices, is often dependent on the little things we take care of during the relationship. If we drop the ball on the little things, then

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Doing What You Love Right Into a Hole

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Each week I’m contacted by a handful of people who have just begun thinking about becoming professional patient or health advocates. Often they share long stories – many paragraphs or several minutes long… describing years of advocacy for a loved one, or a resume full of nursing experience, as if they need to convince me that they would make a good advocate or they run the risk of not hearing back from me. These long, heartfelt messages are about the intersection of passion for advocacy – and the wish to use that passion to make a living. Advocacy fits them.

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Why Being Too Helpful Will Destroy Your Advocacy Practice

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As the director of an organization for private, independent patient advocates, this time of year is full of big excitement – and big disappointments, too. Today is January 12, 2014 and I’m excited to tell you that 32 new private advocate wannabes have joined Alliance of Professional Health Advocates just since the first of the year. For each one who eventually goes into business as an advocate, we can anticipate that they will help perhaps 100 client-patients in the next 5 years – potentially 3200 people (plus their families) who will enjoy better medical outcomes, or save plenty of money

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