One Deadly Personality Trait That Kills Business

For some mysterious reason, there seems to be a rash of solopreneurs from the healing arts who share a deadly, self-sabotaging personality trait. It's curious, because they are highly skilled counselors, coaches, and naturopathic doctors.

But there's just this one habit that is really holding them back from achieving success. The prime saboteur, I call it.

So what is it, already?

It's feeling like you need permission.

• Permission to invest time, money, and energy in your business.
• Permission to charge what you're worth.
• Permission to promote your practice by talking like a specialist.
• Permission to set policies and boundaries that make your work easier.
• Permission to believe in the value of your own experience and the level of your competence.

Maybe this comes from a misguided sense of politeness. Perhaps it's a delay in developing an internal locus of control. Or not enough chance to grow into your own personal power.

Whatever the reason, this sabotaging mindset comes across in client attraction marketing like you are asking for your prospective clients' permission or approval to offer or provide something. It makes you reluctant to voice firm details about how you work.

It's quite self destructive when it risks you being viewed as a naive professional who isn't seasoned enough to help others.

I know that sounds overly negative, and perhaps a bit harsh. But think about it from the perspective of a person who is ready for your services and is in process of sorting through the field of options to find the best provider for them.

How much direct, grounded, comfortableness with being in business you exude becomes how much confidence that person will have liking and trusting you enough to hire you.

So let me whisper in your ear:

• You already have all the permission you need.
• It's already deep down inside you -- it's the urge that's called self-authority.
• You can trust the self-authority instinct that tells you it's okay to be bold, clear, and direct.
• You can soften your style of directness and still be clear in your boundaries and statements of what you want, need, and expect.
  

Magical Thinking in Marketing

In counseling, we often deal with clients who have what we call magical thinking -- the tendency to base decisions and life on irrational ideas and cognitive distortions of reality.

Interestingly, as self-employed business owners, many clinically competent counselors, coaches, and naturopathic doctors engage in magical thinking when it comes to marketing. I thought it might be instructive to see this laid out in comparison to several of the types of cognitive distortions we more easily identify in our clinical patients.

All or Nothing Thinking -- Have you convinced yourself that all you need to do is have a website that lists the benefits of your services and your contact info, or put an ad in a newspaper or phone book, or a profile on a locator service, or get one time advice, and when that doesn't bring in enough clients to fill your practice, you do nothing else?

Marketing is like housekeeping. It's never finished. There's always something more that can be learned and done. It has to be part of your daily business-keeping routine.

Magnifying and Minimizing -- Are you magnifying the expense of getting your marketing foundation in place and minimizing the long term payoff in doing so? Are you over-relying on scattered piecemeal activities and under-utilizing a structured marketing plan?

Solopreneurs in the healing arts tend to sabotage themselves with a pay-as-you-go mentality, rather than having a mindset of investing in what creates life energy for their business and for the future. Many marketing tasks cost little more than time and self-discipline. The secret is in knowing where and when to put your resources for easiest maximum benefit.

Shoulding on Yourself -- Do you tell yourself you should be networking, seeking referral sources, blogging, speaking, etc, when that goes against your innate personality and skills? Do shoulds form the basis of your marketing expectations: for example, you should be getting clients because your website presents your credentials and the benefits of your work?

Assumptions and pre-judgment really get in the way of successful practice building, especially when you don't evaluate their validity or get input from experienced advisers. Marketing is a heuristic game. It requires you to be self-observing, self-evaluating, and self-correcting without getting stuck in shoulds.

Jumping to Conclusions -- Do you construct your own roadblocks by assuming what your colleagues will think of you if you market this way versus that? Have you concluded that niche marketing will limit your client base without actually trying it?

Personal insecurities and an unconsciously defensive attempt to escape them are at the root of this form of magical thinking in business.

A client attraction coaching program on the best marketing activities for your personality, along with work on your confidence level, can alleviate these destructive forms of magical thinking.

Are You Doing What it Takes to Succeed?

If I asked you to name the 3 top things you are doing to make your private practice succeed, what would you say?

What personal characteristic do you rely on most in making yourself a successful business owner?

Is there something that you know you need to have or do more of, before you will fully achieve your goals? What is that?

Most importantly, what will you do with your own answers to these questions?

For a little inspiration, I thought you might find this video of interest. For practical ideas and coaching, I'm here to help.

1 Big Easy to Fix Language Mistake that Can Cost You Clients

Therapists and life coaches -- and some NDs -- have developed a way of speaking with clients that is rooted in the notion that it's best to help people explore their own truths and discover their own insights. I'm all in favor of that when working on psychologically transformative issues.

I'm not in favor of it in marketing.

The problem with insight oriented language construction in marketing is that it comes across as vague, insecure, lacking in confidence, and inexperienced. Your prospective ideal client is looking for specific, grounded, self-assured help. Insight oriented language fails to connect with their needs at the moment they are ready to hire our services.

Taking a brief look at a number of websites for self-employed professionals in the healing arts, I've found phrases like the following that aren't drawing in clients:

• if you feel I can help, give [private practice name] a call
• if you choose me as your therapist, I will be honored to walk with you in your journey
• I believe I can help
• it's hard to choose the right therapist, I'd like to help you sort out the best fit
  
• please browse my website and feel free to contact me if you have any questions
  

It almost sounds like you're begging for permission, or worse, begging for business.

What works better in marketing is conveying a sense of certainty, and giving a bit of direction. The easy fix is: direct, specific, short sentences.

For example, rather than please browse my website and feel free to contact me if..... a more client attracting call to action would be See the free tips at [your website url].

Take a look at the phrasing on your website and online profiles. Is it direct and compelling? Does it give the impression that you are sure about your own abilities? Can you feel the confidence exuded from every sentence?

Be in business FOR yourself, not BY yourself

Yesterday I was talking with a coaching colleague when one of us used the phrasing of being in business by yourself. That stopped me, and I couldn't quit thinking about how big a difference a simple little word makes to one's empowerment for success when self-employed.

Being in business BY yourself -- it seems to me -- is how many solopreneurs in the healing arts approach tackling all the systems and support structures necessary to getting and serving clients. We see it as a lonely, isolated, almost defeated position to be in. For those of us who are more naturally extroverted social creatures, the circumstance of doing anything by ourselves is distressing and grinds down our enthusiasm for being accountable for the tasks that promote success.

No wonder we then have trouble making our practices thrive.

Being in business FOR yourself -- in my perspective -- is a more empowered mindset. It's knowing you have complete autonomy for daily decisions, long range directions, development of the strategic vision, generating motivations, and harvesting of rewards. It's having total choice about what to do ourselves, to what degree, and what to outsource to others, and when.

Yes, that CAN be scary at first. It can feel overwhelming and intimidating to accept that much responsibility and wield that much control.

But try it, won't you? Your confidence will grow, and you may just come to love it.

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.