Is Your Fear of Risk Slowly Killing Your Practice?

These two terms -- solopreneur and risk-taker -- are operationally synonymous, when looking back from the vantage point of success. Businesses that succeed engage in continuous investment in marketing foundations and growth structures.

This is especially true of one-person practices in the helping and healing arts.

Yet, when looking forward from the mindset of a novice self-employed business owner, taking risks seems to be an anathema. I see a lot of this anxiety in those who are used to working for others and getting a steady pay-check.

Therapists, NDs, and coaches who aren't experienced with or temperamentally suited for wise risk-taking get emotionally, financially, and operationally paralyzed. When they can't overcome their fear, they soon find themselves out of business altogether.

It doesn't have to be that way. Fear of investing in your practice can and must be tamed.

One way to do that is to relate to your business as if it were your own child. It needs care and feeding, and new clothes on a continual basis. You can't feed it once in July and expect it to thrive on its own until October.

If your fear of risk is slowly killing your private practice, here are the action steps to turn that around.

1. Set a monthly budget -- think of it as an allowance for your child
2. Use all the do-it-yourself resources you can
3. Get expert help in outlining a marketing plan so you know the right things to do and when to do them
   
4. Discipline yourself to tend to marketing your business every day
5. Increase your budget as your practice grows
   
6. Develop and market multiple streams of income
   
7. Track the results of your efforts, discard what isn't paying off, increase what is

Above all, don't focus on the fear. Focus on the steps you are taking to nourish your child.

SP* Seeks Confidence for Self Promotion

SP = solopreneur. That's you if you're self-employed in a one-person business, as many of my counselor, coach, and naturopathic doctor colleagues are. And having the confidence to promote yourself is about the biggest problem I'm hearing about these days.

Isn't it curious, this lack of confidence? What happened between the moment we make the decision to pursue all that training, believing that we could do it, and the moment that we graduate and start in with the anxiety of, am I good enough? How does that initial confidence evaporate?

One very likely cause is that we stopped believing our own "can-do" inner voice. We gave away little pieces of our confidence power when someone else had a different idea, or challenged our view, or required evidence we didn't yet know of.

In becoming educated, we learned how much we didn't know. And perhaps that scared us. Then we got out in the world, opened a practice, and realized, holy cow, no one ever taught us how to get clients.

Fear, doubt, need, recognition of our lack of knowledge -- all these erode belief in the self, and a confident can-do attitude.

Here's a hint: if you think you lack confidence for promoting yourself (meaning your skills, your knowledge and training), then don't promote yourself.

What do you / can you have confidence in? That you have a desire to help? That you know more than your clients? That you can interpret or reframe their suffering or problem in a way that will help them?

Promote that.

To paraphrase the famous movie line, If you build on that, they will come.

Anxiety Poisons Self-Employed Business Spirit

Anxiety is toxic to body, mind and spirit. It clouds thinking, promotes irrational fear-based decision making, and causes us to contract not just physiologically in our muscles, but to pull back energetically on hopes, dreams, and plans.

From the perspective of attracting clients for your business, this is a period in which we all need to think smarter and be more creative. And that will be a challenge for some who get paralyzed by their fears.

Fear paralysis is a threat to our survival instincts -- the embodied reflex that prompts us to want to escape from danger. But as a biologic response that seeps into our financial and business thinking, it is counter-productive for a self-employed business owner.

This instinctual response leads some to taking rash actions that make things worse, including in some cases to abandon our dreams, sense of personal mission in life, and even to get out of self-employment altogether. What we mistakenly think is taking the safe route, actually prolongs the time we spend in danger.

Financial realities may require taking on some part time work in another field for a while, but I encourage you to not let go of your entrepreneurial dreams forever. Do at least one thing each day that keeps your own business going, no matter how small, or seemingly trivial. That keeps you connected to your goals, and helps maintain the posture of being ready for a comeback when the economy begins to rebound.