4 Things You Absolutely MUST Spend the Money For

Just starting out in private practice, or moving from agency work to be out on your own? Haven't had to market for clients before and don't know where to start?

There are 4 tools and services you need to function as a business owner who relies on attracting clients for one-on-one counseling, coaching, or naturopathic healthcare. They are as important to your business as electricity is to your home.

A Client Attractive Website for Your Practice

It's a well known fact now that most people who have computers do an internet search first when thinking about needing our services. In addition, many allied professional want to check us out before referring, and want to see our website. If you don't have one, it's like announcing to the world that you aren't ready for prime time.

You don't have to pay a designer thousands of dollars to have a website. They really aren't that difficult to create on template-driven webhosts. See my Web-Based Marketing Resource Packs for Counselors, Coaches, or NDs for a list of recommended, inexpensive and easy to use do it yourself web-builders.

Your Own Domain Name

Rather than having your website address be something like yahoo.com/TopekaTherapy it really is better to buy just Topeka Therapy.com. It's more memorable and clear, and looks more professional, like you are serious about your work and the success of your business.

Many webhost / website builder companies will also have domain name registration as part of your package. Some charge more than they should, but many make the whole process very easy. One that I like so much that I became an affiliate of is Webstarts.com.

An Autoresponder Vendor That Can Send Attachments

To build relationship with potential clients who are yet ready to make appointments and commit to therapy or coaching, you'll want to be able to provide them with a useful piece of self-help in exchange for collecting their email address. In the beginning before you have more than 50 names on your business email list, you could manage this manually with your personal email program.

Once your list goes beyond 50 names you really will need an account with an email broadcast vendor such as Constant Contact, MailChimp or Aweber. Short information pieces -- such as tip sheets -- or a series of short articles, these can be delivered by your personal email, but will tend to get blocked from delivery if you send to a group larger than 50.

The best solution is to pre-program an autoresponder to send your self-help tip sheet or special report on request. Constant Contact is the easiest for that, but can't yet send attachments. Aweber sends attachments but is more difficult to configure. All broadcast email services provide a sign up box you can install on your website.

Listing in Locator Directories

Once your website is live on line, with its own address, and with an autoresponder email collection box on it, it's time for the last of the 4 essential items you must spend money for -- listing your practice on a locator directory, such as Psychology Today, CoachDigg, or HealthProfs. Some are free, but the better ones charge a monthly fee to list your practice. Look for the ones that rank high in natural search results, which means more people use those directories to find practitioners.

Don't forget that all these expenses are likely to be tax deductible in the cateogry of Advertising because they are spending you need to do to let the public know you are open for business.

The Shy Counselor Client Solution

So many of my clients -- counselors, coaches, even naturopathic doctors -- are basically shy when it comes to self-promotion. Others might be better described as energetically introverted, and many could be said to have been trained into being inhibited when it comes to marketing their private practice.

I can relate.

It's hard to put ourselves in the spotlight intentionally. It's draining to follow the conventional advice that always pushes for high visibility with a persuasive patter of what feels like selling ourselves.

And we have our professional image to consider -- not to mention professional licensure to protect.

Most service businesses owned and operated by single individuals fail because of either not knowing how to market, doing the wrong type of marketing, or doing no marketing at all.

If you're not getting enough clients for your practice to survive, here's what I'd recommend doing THIS WEEK:

1. List all the marketing activities you are doing on a daily basis, or have in place.
2. Review how well they are working for you -- when was the last time you got a client from each effort?
3. Critique your website for client attractability -- what could be changed , removed, or added?
4. Choose ONE marketing activity and create a multi-step promotional campaign for it. Work at that campaign until it starts working for you by itself.

Not sure how to get started on some of these things? See my new website http://www.ShyCounselorClientSolution.com

Step 1 to Effective Client Attraction

Friends and colleagues, it's time to get back to basics with a pop quiz. What's THE number one most important step to attracting more clients to your healing arts practice?

Aw, c'mon, take a guess. Do a website? Network like crazy? Build a referral system with allied providers? Get on insurance panels?

Useful as all of those strategies are, they are not THE essential first step. So what is?, I hear you ask.

Time.

That's right, time. As in, carving out time -- daily -- for taking strategic action steps, and then giving those actions time to work.

Something so simple seems to be enormously difficult to accomplish. And I'll confess right now that I don't always manage it either, what with actually working with clients, creating new resources (my "artistic" passion), keeping up with bookkeeping and other non-marketing business demands, and striving for balance in the rest of my life.

But I can testify to the fact that when I work an action plan daily, I get more new clients, or returning clients, than when I goof off in my marketing discipline.

I have clients with success stories who are living proof that daily discipline in working an action plan does pay off, and faster than expected.

So why is this a habit that is so hard to adopt? Three reasons come to mind:

1. the thought of daily marketing feels overwhelming
2. we aren't really sure what to do or how to do it
3. we give ourselves legitimate excuses (but those just sabotage our business)
   

I'll let you in on the secrets to getting beyond these reasons and getting into the daily action plan habit. Ready?

• Take on one project at a time
• Make the action steps small and easy
• Track your accountability on paper (or in Excel)
• Use an accountability partner (colleague, friend, coach) to keep you focused
• Get just-in-time help for only one immediate project or one action step at a time
• Set your action plan work time into your business schedule as an appointment with Success
  
• Identify your time wasters and energy vampires, and eliminate them
• Sacrifice a little leisure, social or volunteer time for a month & devote it to your business
  

Coaching questions:

What are your personal time wasters and energy vampires? What will you do today to eliminate them from your attention for the next 30 days?

Look at a project or marketing strategy you know you should be tending to. How can you break it into small, easy action steps?

What specific time block each day will you commit to making your business a success?

Set It and Forget It – Bad, Expensive Idea

Last week I was contacted by an out of state “firm” who had trawled Meetup groups for clinicians seeking marketing help and wanted me to recommend their services to “my constituents.”

In checking out their glitzy website, I discovered that their offer included an onsite assessment from “secret” patients (as if my practice were a clothing store or restaurant), a report replete with statistics on demographics, psychographics, and growth goals, and a strategic business plan – all for only $5000.

Further checking showed their minimum recommended level of budgeting for marketing was $5000 a year, and included items such as promotional incentives and gifts to get new clients – common practices in some industries. This firm could apparently accomplish everything for me short of driving new clients to their appointments.

Hmmm. When you’re a one person show, it’s very tempting to want to outsource all the thinking and planning and implementing of business operations and client attraction work. An offer like this appeals to our desire for set it and forget it marketing.

I can remember the time when I too wished I could hire a promoter to get clients lined up at my door. It would have been a great solution to the anxiety and insecurity I felt about having to talk about the benefits of counseling in a way that would convince people they needed it, and that would persuade them that they should hire me.

What this approach to marketing your private practice fails to consider is that tactics that work in retail, or for large impersonal clinics with multiple clinicians and admin staff don’t work for counselors and coaches with a solo practice.

Our distinguishing feature is in the quality of relationship we build and sustain with prospective, current and former clients. That takes constant personal attention. It can’t be wholly outsourced.

No slick advertising or website / brochure produced by an out of state consulting firm can successfully capture your unique personality and healing presence.

Phew – you’ve just saved yourself several thousand dollars.

Coaching questions:
When you feel resistant to marketing your solo practice, what anxieties and insecurities are under that resistance?

What do you need when feeling those anxieties and insecurities?

How can you feel them, and not let them stop you from extending your warmth and humor and genuine personality when connecting with potential clients?

3 Things You Want Your Blog to Do

Do you think of your blog as a staff member of the marketing department of your business? It really is.

Here are three things you want that employee to do for you on a daily basis.


1. Provide useful information and tips to prospective ideal clients

If your blogs are random rambling musings, you are missing the marketing potential of doing a blog. And you're wasting your time in blogging as a marketing tactic. Instead, imagine a specific individual has asked you a question, and let your blog post provide a direct, immediately applicable solution to that question.


2. Develop rapport and likability between you and your niche market

A blog works best when it is a little online slice of your personality. Write like you speak. Be irreverent, if that's you. Exaggerate the absurd, if you do so in person. This is how your breathe your life-force energy into a flat, "impersonal" piece of writing. Being who you are AND speaking to your audience about their problems and easily applied solutions to their problems increases the sense of trustworthiness that blog readers need to become clients.


3. Establish you as a generous, helpful, knowledgeable, solution expert for your target market's problem

Blogs function best when they are endless sources of quick bits of education and help. Few people have time or patience to take courses or read books anymore, but we all need simple answers to our complex problems. As clinicians we know that real healing and lasting change is more complex than this. But the blog is not the clinician -- it's not supposed to provide enduring transformation, just enough help at the hungriest moment to make you the go-to solution expert for your target market niche.


Coaching question ---

To start thinking of your blog as a valued employee in your business's marketing department, what specific job description will it have? What measurable goals will you hold it accountable to achieving for you?

Poor Mr Sleaze -- Everybody Hates You

Sleaze is one of those things that's in the eye of the beholder. Often what it looks like is a set of tactics aimed at convincing us we need something that we can well do without, and persuading us to hurry up and get it when we can't really afford it.

In marketing a private healing arts practice, high pressure sales tactics that work in some retail advertising are generally considered sleazy, such as:

• creating false urgency that stimulates the greed factor -- i.e.: the buy now or lose tactic

• purporting a false limited availability -- i.e., the this fee good for the first 5 people today only tactic

• emotional manipulation of Maslow needs -- i.e.: the become more sexy, have money raining on you tactic

• over promised results --i.e., cousin to the above, the you too can become an Olympic star tactic

• celebrity association -- i.e., the trained by Tony Robbins, interviewed by Oprah, worked with Andrew Weil tactic

• bait and switch -- i.e., the freebies that amount to more sales pitch / less info of value tactic

Most clinicians and coaches are opposed to using sleaze to attract clients -- as well you should be. But, on the other hand, there is a psychology to marketing a service practice. Understanding that psychology and using it to your advantage is smart for business, without being sleazy.

Let's start with some reasonable assumptions about our ideal clients (regardless of who those are for you). They have a pain or a problem that is adversely impacting their daily life, they don't like that impact, their attempts to resolve it have failed, it's getting worse or spreading into other areas of life and relationships, and they want are ready to do anything to stop it.

(If your picture of your ideal client doesn't address their pain or problem in this way, it's time to go back to square one.)

These clients don't need to be convinced they have a problem. They are all too aware of it. They don't have to be persuaded to pay for the help that will end the problem. They are already willing and ready to do so.

So, what do these clients need to hear from our marketing? They need:

• to feel that you see and understand their pain -- show that by talking about it
• to feel warmth and caring from you -- don't say you're warm and caring, demonstrate that by your language
• to feel a connection with you -- talking to them about them creates this
• to start to trust you -- talking about what in your own life gives you empathy with them shows this
• to believe there is hope for change -- provide reassurance that you will do your best to help

Is Mr Sleaze involved in any of that? I don't think so.

7 Things to Think About When Creating Your Website or Hiring a Designer

Websites and blogs both need to be designed. Fortunately, many template-based, free or low cost, easy do-it-yourself (DIY) platforms exist for tech-less solopreneurs to accomplish this relatively quickly.

To work as the effective center of your web-presence, your website and/or blog needs to be created with multiple functions in mind. The old idea of a website simply being an online brochure is no longer a smart approach for attracting clients.

At minimum, this is what all solopreneurs in the healing arts need:

• a visually attractive and attracting design
• conversion elements such as data base builder contact management and autoresponder widets
  
• good search engine optimization (SEO)
• compelling copywriting
• purposeful strategic marketing
  

Those who are a little more technologically able or fascinated, may also want to include the following (and some DIY web and blog builder programs offer the ability to include these fairly easily):

• appropriate community-building components such as a forum and rss feeds
  
• social media integration

Not all private practitioners will need the more gee-whiz capabilities, particularly if your business relies strictly on in-person clients, and you aren't even trying to reach millions of consumers to become an internationally recognized expert or product seller.

Most web designers can provide pretty pages with smooth navigation and install conversion elements. Many can ensure or advise on SEO. Some will know how to best incorporate community building and social media components.

Few are really skilled in helping you write compelling content. Almost none will know how to develop good client attracting marketing for the private practice professions that have more conservative ethics than the majority of internet businesses.

If you don't yet have a website or blog for your business, or if you know you need to update and upgrade, ask yourself:

• what do I want my website or blog to do?
  
• what do my ideal clients need from my website or blog?
• what's the easiest, cheapest, best way to provide that?
• how much can I create and control myself?
• what will I need a designer's or tech-savvy person to help me with?

3 Reasons to Be a Go-To Guy or Gal

A go-to person is someone who is knowledgeable, resource-full, generous of spirit, and enjoys being helpful without coming across as constantly pushing their own services and products with high pressure sales tactics. It may be a natural personality characteristic, but it's also a great marketing strategy.


Reason #1: It draws more ideal prospects to your door.

Prospective clients -- people who fit our ideal client profile but may not yet be ready to seek our services -- do like to window shop. It's human nature. And everyone likes to get something for nothing, or find a bargain. People naturally seek additional information from former sources, and tend to hire providers with whom they have already created a kind of psychological bond. When we establish ourselves as knowledgeable, generous sources of helpful information is creates rapport and loyalty between you and the prospect.


Reason #2: It keeps the energetic attraction magnet working for you.

There's a metaphysical principle that what you put out comes back to you three fold -- another way to state one of the laws of attraction. Being helpful and generous with your time and information, we invite to us people who will surprise us with referrals and opportunities to take our work into realms we may not have thought of. Becoming known as the go-to person in our area of expertise is like fueling up the lighthouse beacon -- energy flows brightly from us, and unexpected rewards know where to find us.


Reason#3: It deepens your credibility, and others' trust in you.

Giving away some degree of help and information puts our priority on being of service. It furthers the know you, like, you, trust you factor that makes people feel it's safe to trust us with their secrets, fears, and vulnerabilities. In sales terms, it's a try-before-you-buy offer or test drive to determine fit, function, worth of our paid professional services. In other words, it's good business because it helps establish the credibility of our services.


Coaching question:
What area of your professional interests will you become the go-to person for?

Fear, Flow, and Focus

Are your client attraction efforts propelled by fear? How many of these fears can you relate to:

• Fear of not being visible enough to prospective clients?
• Fear of being too visible and drawing people who are wrong for your practice?
• Fear of not doing enough marketing, so you do a little of everything?
• Fear of not doing the right marketing, so you feel paralyzed or overwhelmed?
• Fear of losing traction, so you get caught up in frantically searching for more ways to promote your business?
• Fear of marketing taking over your life, so resistance comes up and prevents doing any at all?
• Fear of looking or sounding unprofessional, silly, stupid, or sleazy?

Having to combat such fears makes it all the more difficult to produce an effective, compelling, client attracting marketing message. A confident mindset with a good amount of belief in yourself is absolutely essential to the success of any self-promotion strategy.

I highly recommend having some strong techniques for feeling the fear and promoting your business anyway. That should include confident self-talk, an accountability partner, and a step by step system to persistently follow.

Many of us by nature or training value being in a "flow" state of mind, where we've heard that high creativity exists. There's nothing wrong with that when we need to generate new ideas or produce a specific product. How that often plays out for marketing a private practice, though, can look like this:

• dabbling at many marketing actions, mastering and following through on few
• interacting with your business as if it were a hobby
• scattering your energies with disconnected approaches to spreading the word about your services
• starting the business day waiting for inspiration, energy, or motivation to strike
• flitting from one strategy to the next without giving each enough time to produce results
• constantly reinventing the wheel, or being terminally "unique" in promoting your practice
  

Approaching marketing with this kind of scatteredness is exhausting and expensive for us, and confusing for potential clients. Worse, it sends a subtle message that we don't quite know what we're doing if we aren't consistent with how we market to prospective clients.

I recommend making the best use of the flow state when needing to brainstorm, when wanting to immerse yourself in a creative process, and in visualizing success everyday.

If I could make just one point about client attraction it would be that FOCUS is the big secret. What focus looks like is:

• making the health of your business a priority on your schedule everyday
  
• a well defined understanding of your ideal client
• an emotionally compelling marketing message
  
• a limited number of effective ways to fill your pipeline, get referrals, present yourself and get hired
  
• a small set of easy, fun, productive action steps taken every day
  

Focus includes defining, detailing, planning, following through, evaluating, and adjusting. It often sounds like a lot of work, but getting systematic about it makes it very easy, efficient, and really produces client attraction results.

I recommend setting aside time everyday to tend your business in a focused way with clear, measurable action steps that lead to achievable goals.

4 Secrets to Compelling Online Profiles

As some of you know, I spend a fair amount of time helping counselors construct compelling practice profiles for online locator services. There are a few secret ingredients that I use to establish rapport with the reader, sharpen the marketing message of the provider, and strengthen the conversion rate (turning searchers into clients).

Secret #1 -- Speak directly to your ideal client about them, not about you

When you've decided who you're ideal client is, you get their attention among your competition in locator search results by asking them a direct question about the specific problem they have right at that moment of being online searching for help. This keeps people reading your profile.

Secret #2 -- Name 3 unpleasant ways their problem disrupts their life

It won't be a surprise, they already know. You need to show that You know in order to begin to establish rapport. Hint: name problems you want to work with, that are fun and easy for you. (see below)

Secret #3 -- End every paragraph with a statement that you can or want to help.

Example: Life sucks? Feel angry enough to explode? Can't sleep? I'd like to help.

If daily arguments are wearing you down, if your irritability is growing and your family is telling you to shape up, it may be time to talk with someone who'll be on your side about the underlying pain in your heart and learn to let it go. I'll be that someone for you.

Secret #4 -- Use a powerful 3 paragraph structure

Paragraph 1: connect with specifics about the client
Paragraph 2: deepen rapport by staying client centered
Paragraph 3: give your marketing claim or hook, and a call to action

Possible marketing claim per #3 example: Learning productive ways to argue and communicate sets the stage for a happy marriage. Isn't that your greater goal? It's a personal strength to get help when you want to change what isn't working. I'm here to help.

Possible call to action: Let's start now. Call today.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Once a great compelling profile is constructed, you can use it in multiple ways and places. If writing isn't your forte, if you're struggling for days over getting it right, maybe I can help. :)

4 Tips for Managing Marketing Overwhelm

One of the most frequent things I hear from counselors, coaches and naturopathic doctors is how overwhelmed they feel with the sheer volume of marketing tasks they perceive it takes to build a successful practice.

And it's true -- there's a lot to do in the beginning and most of us were never trained for exactly how to do it. We quickly end up feeling like we're operating in the dark.

Here's the advice I give my clients:

1. Start with only the strategies that fit your personality.
That is, if you're an extrovert, capitalize on your outgoing networking skills.
If you're an introvert, develop a dynamic web-presence.

2. Get your basics in place as soon as possible so they can run on autopilot.
That is, do first all the things that need to be done just once (get your website up, list on locator directories, get give-aways loaded into an autoresponder feature or email link to you, design and order business cards, develop a brochure or promotional flier, etc).

3. Set aside dedicated time every day to keep yourself moving forward until all the basics are in place.
Optimal is 3-4 hours every day. Realistic for those with families, or another job, may be 3-4 hours a week.
Schedule it as an appointment with your business, as if your business were a client.
Perhaps put this on your schedule as an appointment with someone named Business Self.
Enlist others to help you keep this time commitment, because it's vital.

4. During your Business Self appointments tame overwhelm by:

• having a plan to guide your efforts each week
  
• being clear about your daily task goals
• getting instruction or examples to calm the uncertainty
  
• doing the easiest tasks first
• recognizing your signs of creeping overwhelm
• taking short breaks -- get away from your desk
• avoiding second guessing yourself
• letting go of perfectionism
  
• asking a knowledgeable friend or colleague to give you feedback
• working with a coach to avoid reinventing the wheel
  
• postponing the marketing tasks that require repetition* until the basics are done
• taking a week off once your basics are in place

*Examples of tasks that require repetition:

• blogging
• social media
• attending networking groups
• approaching referral sources and following up

Becoming systematic is the key building a successful private practice, and that includes having a method or system for your marketing as well.

You can do this.

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.
  

Free First Appointments vs Paid Initial Sessions

I attended a workshop the other day where I learned these useful facts in the context of coaching:

• paid intro sessions produce a higher conversion rate -- more prospects become clients
• paid intro sessions produce higher retention rate -- more clients stay with you longer
• paid intro sessions produce higher sales rate -- more clients buy higher priced packages

In contrast, I also had confirmed what I already believed, that:

• free intro sessions can solve too much -- immediate solutions create no incentive to pay for coaching
• free intro sessions tend to attract non ideal prospects -- fewer people ready and willing to hire you
  
• free intro sessions set clients up to undervalue you and your services -- retention rates are lower

Despite these facts, verified by the experience of most coaches with six and seven figure incomes, many new coaches succomb to offering the trial session as a way to "educate the prospective client about coaching." (hint: they don't really care, they just want a solution to their problem).

New counselors also are tempted to try the free first appointment strategy, although few have sustainable success with it.

There are, however, a couple hybrid models for first sessions that intrigue me. One is a type of donation basis strategy, while the other is a type of time control or end-now-or-pay-for-more strategy.

Intro sessions for both coaching and fee-for-service counseling can be offered with the understanding that the client will be asked to pay what they can, or what they feel the session was worth. Personally, I think the cleanest way to do that so that the client doesn't feel pressured to negotiate with you is to direct them to a Make a Donation button on your website, or send a button link to them in an after-session email. Another option is to direct the client to add an extra amount of their choice to their initial required payment for further work.

With a time control strategy, the idea is to provide 15-30 minutes for free, then let the client know what the fee is if they'd like to continue. This should be discussed in advance when making the appointment so that the client doesn't feel tricked by a bait and switch ploy.

Either way, coaches and counselors need to get comfortable talking about their fees and "closing the sale" when talking to prospective clients.

Do You Have to Sell Yourself to Succeed?

A lot of advice for coaches, counselors, and naturopathic doctors revolves around collecting lots of business cards, telling everyone you know you're in practice, and asking for their referrals.

Once you've done that, this extroverted approach says, you have to follow up with everyone and tell them again.

Pardon me, but UGH!

For those with a more introverted personality who might rather eat worms than promote themselves in such outgoing ways, I'd like to offer another set of activities that work especially well for us.

1. Develop a client-centered website with lots of helpful tips for the problems your niche market struggles with. Make sure the site is 80% about them, and only 20% about you. Have a way for people to pre-pay for an appointment or package on your website.

2. Develop a signature presentation topic, in multiple lengths and formats that offers a solution to your niche market's biggest, most desperate problem, and demonstrate your skills as part of the presentation. Approach potential allied professionals and networking/ professional groups who are your niche or who worked with those who are, and offer to be the speaker at one of their meetings.

3. Find an online forum where your niche market turns to when they seek help, and become an active helper. Become their go-to person on your specialty topic.

4. Start a meetup group, host a coaching tele-group, or offer your services to meet a need in an already formed group.

5. Blog daily, or nearly, on topics and powerful questions you'd ask ideal clients in person.

6. Learn to interact with your niche using Facebook and Twitter.

7. Write an emotionally compelling marketing message about your client, not about you, and not about explaining coaching.

8. Don't give away free services, but do give well timed and well placed perspective shifting questions freely -- these are the best intro to your work and the most intriguing taste of your value, while also providing something of immediate value to prospective clients. It leaves people wanting more, and feeling just fine with paying you.

4 Things to Keep in Mind about Multiple Income Streams

Lots of business coaches advise leveraging your time and developing multiple streams of income. Time leveraging generally means working with groups, whether that be via teleconferences or live seminars. Multiple streams of income for service providers may mean developing a product line, or adding a new service, which may mean getting another credential.

Generating lots of different ways to make money sounds like a good idea -- until you realize each one can become a new business start up. How many businesses can you handle having at one time, especially as a solopreneur?

Keeping focused on your central business purpose can be a challenge when you start adding additional ways to monetize what you know and do. But allowing yourself to scatter your energies can be deadly, resulting in no one "stream" becoming more than a trickle.

If your vision as a counselor, coach, or ND is to be a one-person show, here are four things I've learned the hard way that may help you become successful more quickly than I did.

1. Define your ideal client niche with great precision -- know what their problems are, what motivates them to seek help, where they turn when they do, and what they are willing to spend money for (the outcome they want).

2. As a coach, you naturally deliver one-on-one services. That's Stream #1. In what other ways will you deliver the same information and help? Local workshops? Teleclasses? E-books? Ezines? Sticking to one themed (signature) message throughout all these different delivery methods will keep things manageable.

3. Set out to become a topic expert in your signature field. Do one thing everyday that furthers your visibility in your topic. Select the things that either will create income or that promote name recognition, subject authority, professional credibility, personal rapport, and client attraction interest.

4. If you feel the impulse to spend time and money that doesn't fall into the profit or promotion categories, get some coaching on working SMARTer, and look at core beliefs and other self-sabotaging factors in your self-employment habits.

5 Marketing Lessons from Getting My Deck Rebuilt

1. Over-protective preparation may be a waste of time, but will make you feel more in control of the chaos.

• They told me to cover all my electronics, so I bought huge plastic bags and encased everything, then I sealed all the windows with plastic sheeting to keep construction dust out. Probably a bit over the top, eh? LOL

• In marketing, solopreneurs often think that more is better -- it's not. Do only what is needed for the purpose you are aiming at. But you won't be sorry if you take the time to hone your marketing message and develop your marketing plan to it's highest potential effectiveness.
  

2. Making big noise is okay -- do it early in the day, in small bursts, then take an early lunch, and quit at 3 pm.

• Workers are hammering and drilling and sawing and banging on the walls at 7 am. Oy! That's practically like the middle of the night for me. But they are efficient, the sounds have variety, it doesn't last long, and they are done early.

• Marketing is effective when it makes some big noise to get your prospective clients' attention. It's even more effective when it makes the right kind of noise, using various approaches, in limited doses, then respects the clients' ability to make their own choices.
  

3. Take frequent breaks -- work a little, get coffee, work in a different area, confer with colleagues, work some more, rest, etc

• Frequent breaks allow for proper pacing of the job, while conserving personal energy. Corrective consultation, new directions, a little social interaction, all make the work go faster and be more pleasant.

• Self-promotion becomes over-bearing when endless. Clients hate the constant sales pitch, and you don't get useful feedback and input from colleagues. Better to pace yourself, evaluate results, make changes, and come at it again.
  

4. Be careful about promising a timeline or a specific result.

• I think it's a genetic pre-requisite to be in the building trades to never guarantee how long things will take or exactly what it will look like when it's done. Ever try getting a firm answer from a contractor? Forget it.

• A coach might argue there is an accountability issue here, but there is a good lesson too in not setting up expectations that can't be met. Novice self-employed marketers in the healing arts will do well to perfect how to be accountable without inflating unrealistic expectations with their marketing message.
  

5. Ultimately, it won't be as awful as you imagined -- the disruption won't be as bad or as unrelenting as you may have expected.

• Being used to an exceptionally quiet work environment, I imagined needing alternative office space for the 3 weeks or more this construction may take. I fled the premises yesterday with my laptop and cell phone. Today, with my desktop computer unbagged, I've barely noticed the work outside my office door.

• Marketing is an unfamiliar activity for many self-employed business owners. You might imagine all sorts of hassles, challenges, and results that never manifest. Putting yourself in the experience of it is the only way to know for certain how to work around the frustrations.
  

How 6 Psycho-Graphic Factors Will Fill Your Practice

A few days ago I used the word psycho-graphics and was surprised to learn that it was an unfamiliar term among some of my self-employed healing arts colleagues. Whereas demographics outline the objective facts of what age, gender, ethnicity, location, income range, education level, etc, pertain to specific individuals or groups, psycho-graphics are the more subjective factors that pertain to their buying decisions.

In developing an ideal client profile, it's best to know both the demographics and psycho-graphics of your niche market. This knowledge tells you whether a specific group is viable for you as a population to pursue. The psycho-graphics will also suggest how many and what kind of obstacles you may encounter in reaching that niche market.

In crafting your ideal client's identity, it's not enough to know what you can do for them. What you must focus on is what they want and don't want, when are they actively seeking change, and what are they willing and able to pay for. So you aren't done with defining your ideal client until you can provide specific answers to these six questions:

• What are they experiencing that they don't want to experience?
• How does it impact normal daily functioning in job, relationships, and personal satisfaction?
• What motivates them to get help?
• What compels them to be willing to pay for help, and when will that occur?
• Who do they turn to for referrals or recommendations?
• Where do they look for resources and information?

When we know these psycho-graphics, we know where and how to deliver marketing strategies that will connect with our ideal clients at the moment of their readiness to pay for our help.

If we concentrate our marketing efforts on connecting with this moment, the urge to hire us is almost irresistible. Filling a practice then is so much easier, because clients practically beg us for appointments.

Are You Planning to Become a Successful Solopreneur?

Everyone in business intends to be successful. But are you planning how to actually get there?

Plan?? Who me? I hear you groaning.

When I ask clients, what's your current marketing plan, most often the answer I hear is: My plan is to get more clients and make more money.

Uh huh, I say. And exactly what are the structures and action steps that accomplish that?

Well, uh, I hear, I put a profile up on the internet, and I have business cards, and I sent a letter announcing my services to chiropractor's offices but I haven't really gotten much business yet. I guess I just need to do more of that.

Okay, let's stop right here. This is not a plan.

A plan at minimum identifies what you want (goals), what you need to have and do to get it (actions), how you will know it's working (measures), and when you are holding yourself accountable for getting things done (timelines).

A marketing plan is your road map to success. It keeps you focused on the effective and efficient actions that will have the desired payoffs. It helps prevent detours into the land of self-sabotage.

And even prior to thinking through your marketing plan, there are 3 very necessary steps you can take, starting right now.

That's why I introduce my clients -- most of whom are introverts just like you who go into heart pounding, sweaty panic at the idea of promoting themselves at networking events -- to the step by step foundation building and advanced actions that get them on that road to private practice success.

What are the first necessary steps -- before a marketing plan, business cards, profiles, and referral solicitation contacts?

• carve out a minimum of 3+ hours every day for developing your marketing plan, building the structures, taking the actions, and evaluating the results
• start with narrowing your marketing to one ideal client type
• know their psycho-graphics inside and out

If you haven't done these three necessary steps, no amount of planning, or profiles or business cards or letters to others will help you fill your practice on a consistent basis.

The Magic Bullet is Time-Released

We all want results NOW. We have become conditioned in this age of instant messaging to expect clients to flock to our doors and form lines around the building the second we have an online profile posted.

That would be nice.

Reality, however, rarely works that way. Marketing for solopreneurs in the healing arts is a trial and error, prepare and pitch, wait and see, track the stats and adjust the plan game. In other words, it's time-released. There are lots of reasons for this, but what you need to know today is that building your business takes more time and more commitment to daily effort than you have ever expected.

Getting what I call the foundation pieces in place so that they run practically on their own can take months or more of full time effort, even when you outsource major pieces like designing your website. There are always parts that no one else can do for you -- like drafting your web content -- that take most counselors, NDs, and coaches a long time to get just right.

If you are new in practice, or if you are transitioning from paid employment to full time solopreneurship, think of growing your business as if it's taking care of an infant. It requires constant and scheduled attention, multi-tasking, passionate dedication of effort, and a strong vision of and belief in its future.

The coaching question for you today is: Are your expectations of results in realistic alignment with the amount of effort and commitment you are expending on building your client base? If not, what foundation pieces are missing, and where do you need to spend immediate, focused, unrelenting attention?

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?