How Much Can I Make? - Career Insights For Your Job Search
Jobs & Career Insights with Mirav Ozeri
Your inside scoop on the job market. Whether you’re chasing your first job, switching careers, or dreaming of being an entrepreneur, this podcast gives you the career advice you actually need.
We go beyond the job titles—breaking down what careers are really like, how do you brake in, how much you can earn, and the skills it takes to succeed. From career insights to real-world job stories, you’ll hear from people who’ve navigated the in and out of the job market and came out on top.
If you’re exploring new career possibilities or just want practical, straight-up job advice, this is the podcast for you.
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How Much Can I Make? - Career Insights For Your Job Search
Acupuncturist's Career Insight
Acupuncturist Career Insight - Exploring Alternative Healthcare Job.
What do you do when your job turns into a calling? Victoria Balentine built a thriving career as a Manhattan acupuncturist, specializing in women’s reproductive health. With a mix of East-meets-West smarts and sharp networking with top fertility docs, she turned her passion into a bustling practice.
In this episode, Victoria drops career insight gold—from building a small business to knowing when (and how!) to walk away. Whether you're curious about alternative healthcare or just craving some honest talk about what it takes to run your own show, her story has something for everyone.
Thinking about a career pivot? Hit play—you just might find your next chapter.
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Music credit: Kate Pierson & Monica Nation
I was talking to a reproductive endocrinologist and he said I don't believe in acupuncture, I think it's just placebo. And I said okay, but let's think about that statement for a minute, right? So placebo effect means it works, right? So I'm down with that. So if you think it's just placebo, we're all cool.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to how Much Can I Make? I'm your host, miravu Zeri. So fun fact. Years ago I read that the horse racing industry started using acupuncture back in 1970s to treat horses for muscle and joint pains, back issues and all sorts of other conditions, and I remember thinking if it works for racehorses, it's got to be the real deal. So I turned into acupuncture whenever I needed it and it never let me down. I bring it up because today's guest is Victoria Ballantyne, who knows acupuncture in and out. She ran a thriving clinic in Manhattan for 20 years, specializing in women's reproductive health. She worked with fertility doctors. She taught other practitioners and built a business that was impactful and successful. If you ever considered acupuncture entrepreneurship, or just want to hear how passion meets profit, this episode is for you. So, victoria, thank you so much for doing it. My pleasure. First of all, tell me what drew you to acupuncture.
Speaker 1:Well, I've always been really interested in herbs, since I was a teenager, and I have medicinal herbs and alternative healing.
Speaker 1:And so I was trying to be an actor in Manhattan in my 20s and it wasn't happening for me and I kind of promised myself when I turned 30, I would do something else.
Speaker 1:But I couldn't think of what that would be, because I love the theater so much. And then I kind of had this revelation one day where I realized that in many cultures the storyteller was actually also the healer, right, so they might have called it a shaman or whatever it was, but the same person who was telling the stories was also the person that had the herbs and was doing the healing and that kind of thing. And I just thought, well, maybe it's the same thing. So instead of creating catharsis by doing a play that helps move people or increase their empathy and sort of healing through that, maybe I'll hear heal on a much more individual basis. And so then I looked to see what modality I wanted to use and I found out that acupuncture is a huge thing, but also herbs Chinese herbs are also a huge part of that medicine. And I thought, wow, I can be a licensed herbalist and an acupuncturist, I can be a healer. And so I started looking at schools and programs, did you?
Speaker 2:used to do acupuncture as a patient first.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did try it because I wanted to make sure that it was something that I wanted to be able to do and I liked it very much, but initially I was way more interested in the herb aspect of it. I fell in love with the acupuncture later, but it was important to me at that time to make sure that whatever it was that I did professionally, that I would be licensed, because back then it was really hard to get a license as an alternative healthcare practitioner and I wanted to make sure that I could be recognized and, in the future, even possibly take insurance.
Speaker 2:So how did you start your practice?
Speaker 1:Well, I went to a four-year program when Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in Manhattan. I actually looked all over the country for the best programs. There was a really good one in San Francisco, there was a really good one in Seattle, but by then I was already teaching yoga full time and I was living in New York and I just thought well, you know what? It's probably going to be pretty straightforward to parlay all those yoga students into patients. I mean, certainly not all of them, but that would be a really great foundation for the beginning of a practice, cause at that time I was teaching probably 300 students a week.
Speaker 1:Whoa, I had big classes yoga classes, yeah yeah, wow, a bunch of gyms and all that kind of stuff. So I just thought that it's it's going to be easier to start a business with that kind of integration into the world than moving to Seattle and trying to start it there where I don't know anyone, if that makes sense yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So what kind of things did you treat for at the beginning?
Speaker 1:Um, the usual stuff at first. So migraines, back pain, neck pain. I actually took a course at Memorial Sloan Kettering for palliative care with cancer care, so I had some cancer patients. I've always had a few cancer patients here and there. Acupuncture obviously doesn't treat cancer, but it can treat the side effects of the drugs that you take when you're going through cancer treatment. So it's really great for insomnia and nausea and anxiety and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:But then I had a patient who had recurrent miscarriage and she was a yoga student and she really wanted me to treat her. And I looked at her case and it was so complex. I just said, Lucy, I can't, you know, you need to find someone who's been practicing for years and years and years. And she said absolutely not. It's going to be you or it's going to be no one. And I thought, well, okay. So, being the type A personality that I am, I just started researching women's reproductive health and she carried to term, which was amazing. And her son Henry actually gosh, he's in college now. He's 21 years old, he's amazing, Wait a minute.
Speaker 2:How can acupuncture help?
Speaker 1:reproductive system. There's so much to say about that, right? So there are so many reasons why someone may struggle to get pregnant, right? They might have polycystic ovarian syndrome, they might have endometriosis, they might have poor ovarian reserve, they might have implantation failure, psychological barrier Sure. They might have recurrent early miscarriage, they might have recurrent late miscarriage. So part of what you do is you figure out the why, so what, what's really happening, and then you start treating from there and you treat both with the acupuncture and the herbs but wait a minute.
Speaker 2:You said something interesting. Sloan catering is a very established Western medicine. Yeah, was there any kind of conflict between Western and Eastern?
Speaker 1:So they really in early days and I don't know what they're up to now, but in early days they really tried to be open to alternative medicine. I think part of it because their patients were really interested in it and part of it because they were open-minded about it. So I didn't really find any conflict. I thought that the program that they had to certify me was thorough and interesting. And if you tell someone that acupuncture treats cancer, that's not true, right. So you can treat the symptoms that you might have, but you're not gonna treat cancer. So from that point of view there was never any conflict between East and West. Does that make sense? Because I had my lane and they had their lane.
Speaker 1:Now, with reproductive health. Actually, then it got really really mixed up because I have my lane that frequently went into their lane, which sometimes reproductive endocrinologists didn't love. But I learned to work with them and they learned to work with me because statistically and we ran statistics for our patients in the same way that they run their statistics Statistically my patients did actually have ongoing implantation rates, ongoing pregnancy rates and live birth rates that were higher than without acupuncture. Wow, now remember, in a study that doesn't count, right, because you've self-selected, it's not placebo, it's not double blind and all that kind of stuff. But if you just look at the statistics, I was something was happening.
Speaker 2:I know you ran the clinic for 20 years. I did. What do you think contribute to your success most than anything?
Speaker 1:I think I was always incredibly straightforward. I never wasted people's time or money. I would always tell you whether or not I thought I could help you, how long I thought it would take. I was very not woo-woo. I'm extremely pragmatic. I would not throw a bunch of supplements at you that might work.
Speaker 1:I was very specific and clinical and I really knew the Western medicine aspect of it. I read all the journals that reproductive endocrinologists were reading. I was up on everything, all the current research. So if a patient came in and wanted to ask me a question about their treatment, generally speaking, I could give them an extremely educated answer that I think their reproductive endocrinologist would have absolutely approved of and said yes, that's exactly what we're doing.
Speaker 1:But frequently those doctors didn't have the time to sit and talk with someone for 20 minutes and explain to them why clomid was not going to work for them and why they might need to do another drug like, or IVF, etc. Etc. So I could spend that time with them. The other thing I think I was really good at is helping patients find the right doctor, because some reproductive endocrinologists are much better at poor ovarian reserve and older women that are trying to get pregnant. Some are much better at polycystic ovarian syndrome. Some are much better at implantation failure. They all had, like, their skills and because I've been doing it for so long and I talked to them so much, I could kind of figure out what was the best fit for a patient. And that was a pretty unique skill.
Speaker 2:So, between treating patients and doing all this research and reading all these articles, it was a 24-hour job, right.
Speaker 1:Actually, interestingly no, because I found really great employees and so in the beginning it was a seven-day-a-week job and I was getting burnout really quickly because my patients wouldn't see anybody else and let's say they were doing an IVF cycle. Wouldn't see anybody else, and let's say they were doing an IVF cycle. The classic literature back then was acupuncture just before and just after. Ivf transfer increases your ongoing pregnancy rates by blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:So frequently they'd transfer on a Sunday, or they'd transfer on a Saturday, or they'd transfer on Christmas I'm you know I'm exaggerating, but and they didn't want to see anybody but me, and so it was seven days a week and I just thought, OK, this isn't going to work. And so what I did was I cut my work week to four days. I found someone amazing who was going to be there the other three days a week and they were used to her, so they would see me and they would see her and they saw us together, and so then they were OK seeing her. So I actually worked four days a week for most of that 20 years out of necessity, because I needed patients to be more comfortable with someone other than me, and because of that she would usually take over my practice for the month of August and the month of December and I would go on vacation. I do my water stuff.
Speaker 2:You're sailing? Yeah, I'm sailing. If somebody wants to get into the field or wants to change jobs and get into acupuncture, what would you recommend they do?
Speaker 1:Well, first they have to go to school, so you have to get in.
Speaker 2:Usually, how long of a program is it?
Speaker 1:Well, it depends on if you want to do acupuncture and herbs or whether you want to do acupuncture alone, which I think isn't a great service to Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine really is both, and there are things that herbs can do that acupuncture can't, and vice versa. But if you just want to do acupuncture, I think you can do it in like two and a half years, but if you want to do both things, it's close to four years. So I went to school year round, so summer's included, for three and three quarters years.
Speaker 2:So then you go to school and then do you have to intern with somebody?
Speaker 1:You do that during while you're at school. But then you can do continuing medical education credits, which I actually taught all over the country. People would fly me in to speak about reproductive endocrinology and acupuncture and women's reproductive health and all that kind of stuff. So you can you can and certainly should take extra courses after you graduate or while you're in school if you wanted to specialize, but you don't have to.
Speaker 1:I think probably the hardest thing about starting a practice now is like with any small business. I mean, there's small business, is small business, right, they're all the same. We always think that, you know, manufacturing is gonna be different than healthcare, it's gonna be different than computers or internet. It's all the same thing. It's so weird. Someone said that to me right when I was starting out and I just thought, oh well, you know, he'd started a bunch of internet companies really successful, and he was like it's all the same. And I was like I'm a healthcare practitioner, I'm a healer, I'm not, and he was totally right. So I think starting a small business is capital right Research when can you work? So I think New York City is probably super saturated with acupuncturists right now, but I hear that in like Alabama there's four acupuncturists. So if you're willing to move down there, you would have people coming out of the door because there's just not enough practitioners for the people that are interested in getting acupuncture. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yes, but about being in Manhattan or a big metropolitan with huge competition.
Speaker 1:Right, how did you stand out? Again? I well, I mean I had that beautiful base of patients sorry, of yoga students that many of whom became patients or told other people about me, and so that was like that first wave that I rode. Well, yeah, then it's back to small business, right? So then I was like, how do I put myself out there? And at first I did it through reproductive endocrinologists. So I would go to them and I'd say here are my stats for the past year, here are your stats for the past year. Do you notice a difference? You know what I mean. So I did that. Then there was early days of Google AdWords. So I spent literally over. I mean, for a small business I mean numbers are meaningless because a big business, small business, but for me it was a lot of money.
Speaker 1:I mean I was spending, you know, $100,000 a year on yeah, on Google AdWords, and I'm probably exaggerating a little bit, but it was a lot and that was because I needed to be on the first page of Google and that's, back then, how you did it. And you know, every morning you wake up and you're trying to gamble Is it 5 cents a click? Is it 25 cents a click? How do I stay there? And then there was search engine optimization. There was all that kind of stuff. And then there was again the direct referrals from doctors, scheduling meetings for them, getting them to realize that they could take me seriously, and you know all that kind of stuff. But that's all just small business.
Speaker 2:Right. And what would you say? What kind of skills do you think somebody needs to have in order to be successful in this business?
Speaker 1:The first thing that comes to mind is you've got to be able to run your own business unless you want to be an employee, right? So, generally speaking, acupuncturists at an hourly wage don't necessarily make great money. So if you want to be a great acupuncturist, go to a really good school. Study the medicine, know every point, know every herb, know the Latin, know the opinion, know the Chinese, like know everything. Super saturate yourself. Follow healers that you think are really good, learn from them, which I definitely did. So I guess I wouldn't call it interning, I just basically like can I follow you please? So yeah, it's that combination of being a really great healer, learning to listen, learning to empathize, learning to budget your time, figuring out what to charge and how to do pro bono and when you should offer free treatment, and I can talk all about that, because it was an interesting journey.
Speaker 2:Yes, I would like to, but again small business. It's really, you know, it's a thing what would you say, is if somebody wants to get in the potential earning for a business like that. Well, I mean aside from paying rent and all of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean and but actually, but aside from like, what does that even mean? Right? So if you're in Manhattan, you're paying five to $10,000 a month in rent, depending on your space, right when you want to be located. And then you have to think of all those things. So is it better for me to have a nicer, bigger office farther away from Midtown or is it better for me to take something smaller right in the middle of everything so people can get to me easily? I mean, those are just the decisions that you have to make. I charge $120 a patient.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And when I was busy I saw two patients per hour. That's not bad, yeah, that's not bad, that's very good. So but you know that's before expenses, so but you know that's before expenses and that's also remember they're busy months and they're less busy months. So one of the reasons I would leave in August and December and go sailing was because August all of my patients were in the Hamptons and December nobody did IVF because they were with family and they would usually stop treatment sometime in early November and resume treatment sometime in late January.
Speaker 2:I know that you eventually, after 20 years, you sold your business.
Speaker 1:I did.
Speaker 2:What's the process of selling a business like?
Speaker 1:You can have someone come in that is a professional evaluator and you can pay them a certain amount of money and they're going to tell you what your practice is worth.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And that is very helpful for you to understand what your practice is worth, but also for a potential buyer that this non-biased person has said your practice is worth $5. And then that everybody agrees that $5 is the amount of money. So I had someone come in and evaluate my practice and then I had a lovely employee at that time and I wanted to really give her the longest runway possible to let her know I was probably selling. So I literally said I'm getting the business evaluated because I wanted to be completely transparent about it, and she came to me the next day and made me an offer.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:Cause she knew what the value of the business was. She had boots on the ground, and so I sold it to her. Oh, fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what would you say is the biggest misconception about acupuncture?
Speaker 1:Well, a fun one is I was talking to a reproductive endocrinologist and he said I don't believe in acupuncture, I think it's just placebo. And I said, okay, but let's think about that statement for a minute, right? So placebo effect means it works, so I'm down with that. So if you think it's just placebo, we're all cool because that means it works, so therefore it works. Do you know what I mean? So I just thought that was hilarious, that yeah, it's just placebo, therefore it doesn't work. No, no, no, that is placebo, but misconception.
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, I I really dislike when any practitioner of any modality of medicine says they can fix or heal anything. It drives me bananas, right? That's just not true, right? So my husband is an emergency physician. If you break your arm, you need to go to him, right? Don't come to me. So I think that you know acupuncture has very specific things that it's wonderful at and really effective, and you see that effect immediately. If you're doing it over and over and nothing is happening, there's something wrong. But saying that it works for everything is just completely not true, and that's true for any medicine. But frequently we say, oh, it fixes everything. Of course it doesn't.
Speaker 1:What was the most rewarding experience you had.
Speaker 1:I'm such a feminist and I so believe in women having the time to have a life and to have a career and to get educated and do all these extraordinary things to find the right guy, right To not rush into anything. And frequently that means that they may not try to conceive until they're in their mid to late thirties or even their early forties, and I loved supporting those women and you know, the odds are stacked against them a little bit and we can talk about all of that and why, why that biological clock starts ticking and all of that. There's so much to say, but the short of it is helping women get pregnant and realize that dream of having children, like it just never gets old. It's so wonderful, you know, and I, for years, I get pictures here's the baby at one, here he is at four, here he is at eight. And like every time I get one of those cards or letters, I mean I just fall to pieces. It's amazing to help someone have a baby. I mean, my goodness right.
Speaker 2:That's a big one. Yeah, that's big yeah.
Speaker 1:And what was the biggest challenge? Business, small business, always, you know. One day, for instance, I was on the first page of Google at that point because of my search engine optimization and like I'd spent a fortune on that, right, but it was worth every penny because I was on the first page of Google, just as one example of so many things. And then one night, google changed their engine to something new called Panda. I think this was in like 2013. And suddenly I was just gone, like I don't know what page I was on, but I was just out of there, right. So immediately my new patients went down by, say, 30%.
Speaker 2:Wow, well, just you know, that's the nature of it Right, so I'm getting referrals from doctors getting referrals from other patients.
Speaker 1:But you know, google was really helpful at that time not always. So now I'm trying to figure out how to do, how to how to get that 30% back. So what do I literally need to do? So at first I just threw money at Google and search engine optimization. That did nothing. I was completely outcompeted because everybody's suddenly going to the same space at the same time. So then I went back to my original model, which is talking to doctors. So I just started pounding on doors again.
Speaker 1:You know, metaphorically speaking, but you know scheduling meetings. You know I've been practicing for 15 years. I teach other acupuncturists these are the reproductive endocrinologists I work with, these are my skills and then just sort of slowly getting my foot in the door and starting to get them to refer to me. So you know things like that, you're always. You know things like that, you're always. You know small business is a wave. You're always surfing it Like. Things change all the time and I think some small businesses like, once they get going, they're rolling, they're good, but most of the people that I know that own small businesses are constantly having to reevaluate and rethink and retool to just, you know, to keep moving forward.
Speaker 2:You said teaching other people, other people to do acupuncture. Was it to supplement your income? Was it good?
Speaker 1:I love teaching. First of all, I felt that I had a unique skill set and something to offer. There wasn't really a course when I started out there specifically about acupuncture, herbs and women's reproductive health, so I kind of created that course and then I loved teaching it because I again to go back to wasting people's time or money or all that kind of stuff I wanted to make sure that someone that came to my class would have the tools to know what they could treat, what they couldn't treat, what to use, what herbs work, what herbs don't work. You know what I mean, Like how to find a good endocrinologist A way of really making sure that if someone took my class and learned what I had to offer, that they would be able to honor their own patients in their journey to having children and that they would be the best that they could be. Can you do acupuncture?
Speaker 2:on yourself. No, no. No, did you used to go to treatment with other people. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, do you still do that Occasionally, sure? What do you miss the most about?
Speaker 1:it. You know, it's kind of like when people say what do you miss about living in New York City? I don't necessarily Do. You know what I mean? I'm still practicing, so I still treat patients here. Just instead of seeing 50 people a week, I see five, right, so I still get to keep my skill set up. I'm still helping women get pregnant. I'm still doing it.
Speaker 2:I know some people that come to you for acupuncture and they love it.
Speaker 1:They swear by it yeah so that's really nice to hear, thank you. And so I'm still doing it. So I don't miss it from that point of view. And do I miss running a small business in Manhattan and all the strum and drang and madness of that? I don't miss it from that point of view, and do I miss running a small business in Manhattan and all the strum and drang and madness of that? I don't, you know what I mean. Like it's so nice to have sold it and to let all of that go and to just be able to just see a few people a week. It's fantastic. So I'm essentially retired and it's really nice.
Speaker 2:All right, well thank you very much, of course. Okay, that's a wrap for today. If you have a comment or question or would like us to cover a certain job, please let us know. Visit our website at howmuchcanimakeinfo. We would love to hear from you. And, on your way out, don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with anyone who is curious about their next job. See you next time.
