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?

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 Realistic Expectations for Solopreneur Success

Because few of us in the counseling, coaching or naturopathic medicine professions have been trained for being in business, we tend to have unrealistic expectations about how long it should take to consistently turn a profit.

Likewise, we can be overly idealistic about how soon marketing efforts will start bringing in clients. And the danger of this is that we adopt a shotgun approach to setting business goals and working an effective marketing plan.

Exact timelines will vary according to what degree of resources you start out with, how much time is available to work on your business, and how persistent you are at following through on a small number of daily tasks. But there are some generally realistic timeframes to keep in mind.

If you are like most solopreneurs I work with who have a small pool of resources to invest at the beginning, and are financing the launch of your business on personal credit cards or family loans, it will take longer to get a continually full client load.

The realistic expectation for the time it takes a one-person businesses to truly succeed is about 5 years.

If you are reluctant to set business goals with targets for where you want to be in 6 months, 1 year, and 3 years, it will take longer to feel and be successful. The more organized and business-like you are in your approach to running your business, the faster it will settle into a nice rhythm of keeping clients coming in.

The realistic expectation for success without a detailed business plan is from 3-7 years.

Note that detailed doesn't have to mean extensive. You don't need a 20 page business plan with charts and graphs. Start with 3 goals -- big, medium, small -- and target dates -- long range, mid range, near term -- by which you intend to achieve them.

If you are impatient or scattered in your marketing strategies, or trying to make a method work that goes against your natural personality, it will take longer to generate powerful client attraction. The more concrete, specific and consistent your marketing activities are, the faster they will pay off -- although not always in the direct ways you can measure.

The realistic expectation for highly effective marketing to be producing a steady stream of clients when you're a one-person show is from 12 months to 3 years.

These timeframes may sound like a very long time when you need clients now. There's no time like the present to get started on focused planning and follow through.

Overwhelmed? Not sure where to start? Email for a brief strategic steps chat.

3 Things that Steal Your Confidence -- & 3 Easy Daily Actions that Build It

3 Confidence Thiefs

• the unfamiliar
• procrastination
• fearful mindset

Confidence in life and in business, especially as a solopreneur, is sabotaged by encountering the unfamiliar -- situations in which we don't have a positive automatic reflex for knowing what to do, or believing we have the answers we need.

Procrastination robs us of success momentum. Putting things off for whatever reason -- especially the things that our business needs for daily growth and hygiene -- lets all the ingredients for success dry up and blow away.

Perhaps the greatest thief of confidence is the fearful mindset. Fear is generated when we soak in negative thinking about taking small risks, trying something new, or making a choice and following through. Probably the worst eroders of confidence are the self-asked questions: what if something bad happens? and its cousin, what if I do it wrong?

3 Confidence Builders

• be persistent
• take action now
  
• have learner's or adventurer's mindset

Things that we do over and over again become familiar. They become second nature. We learn to trust what to expect and know how to meet it. Persistence builds the confidence muscle. The most successful business owners try, fail, adjust, and try again. Confidence comes from the commitment to keep going.

Taking action that moves you forward in accomplishing your goals provides valuable feedback -- you can't know what works and what doesn't until you put something in motion. Many small actions done on a daily basis add up to business success. Small actions that succeed keep the confidence muscle toned and functioning at optimal levels.

Being a solopreneur is a life of adventure, of constantly learning to observe, assess, adjust, measure, and reap rewards. An approach that comes from the mindset of let's see what happens will bring more positive, delightful, and initially unexpected surprises that build confidence in tolerating risks.

So your coaching questions for today are:

1. What marketing activity do you need to apply some persistence to throughout this month?
2. How will you take action on promoting your business every day for the next 28 days?
3. Who can help you maintain the adventurous learner mindset, and how will you be accountable for being positive?
   

Are You Making These 7 Marketing Mistakes Right Now?

1. Waiting until your client load has dropped by 25-50% before you take action?

2. Depending solely on referral sources / insurance panels, or word of mouth to fill your practice?

3. Using cancelled appointment times for everything except marketing?

4. Thinking a website or traditional networking is all the marketing you need to do?

5. Not revising your website to be high touch and client-centered?

6. Not thinking NOW from a prospective client's point of view about the problems they'll be facing come October through January?

7. Wanting to believe you can succeed by doing less than building a systematic marketing system and tending to it on a daily basis?

If you're making any of these mistakes, what are you going to do about it?

What 3 things can you do differently to turn your practice around?

Making the commitment to your business -- as if it were a child whose life you were responsible for, rather than a game to be played when it kills time -- is essential for all solopreneurs in the healing arts who want a thriving practice. What commitments are you holding yourself accountable for today?

Being Professional -- What Does That Mean Anyway?

One of the worst ideas -- in my opinion -- that mental health counselors and naturopathic doctors get saddled with in graduate school is the notion of what is or isn't professional looking. I'm not talking about ethics, record keeping, or other business practices. Just the more subjective qualities of professional appearance and personal conduct.

Hidden in this idea that there is some "professional" way to look and be as opposed to some "regular" way to look and be is, I think, a particular ego trip. It's an intention to feel better about ourselves by giving the impression that we are more successful, more competent, more experienced, more wealthy, more something than we actually are.

Or, it's an unconscious defensive posture designed to get past normal insecurities about being self-employed. It's trying to match someone else's level or idea of confidence or success, rather than being comfortable with what's real for us at any given time.

Either way, isn't that type of professional appearance or conduct dishonest? Seems to me it's an attempt to impress prospective clients and colleagues by being something other than what we are.

When I was first out of graduate school, I rented a room in an office park suite overlooking a lake, where there was a mix of solopreneur businesses and a busy reception office to serve us all. I thought this would make me look "professional."

It ended up making me feel like a pretender because it didn't fit who I was as a person or a clinician. I moved out when I realized that I was trying to emulate my father the lawyer -- putting priority on what his 1950s vision of "professional" was, rather than developing my own 1990s personal version.

Over the years I've decided for myself that being professional doesn't require having a receptionist, waiting room, or prestigious magazines on expensive coffee tables. It has nothing to do with what car I drive, or whether my address is in the "right" part of town -- although it does require me dressing one notch above the jeans and t-shirt attire of most of my clients. It's not about how much I spend to impress prospective clients or referral sources.

Being professional, for me, means:

• being on time, every time, for every one
• unfailingly doing what I say I will do, and being quick to say what I can't or won't do
• taking nothing personally, not publicly showing discomfort, frustration, or anger when I'm annoyed
• being clear and firm in interpersonal expectations and business policies
• at all times remembering that my mission is to be of service, and to give a little more service than is anticipated
• serving the clients best interests at all times, even when others disagree with what those are
  
• using the common courtesies and normal social manners
  
• being congruent -- that is, as good a model of what I advise as I can humanly be

What's your personal, confidence-based, ego-less vision of being professional?

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 Much Do Prospective Clients Know About You?

What do you tell prospective clients about yourself? What will they know about your passion for your work, and what led you to your choice of career field? Do you generate trust and rapport with bits of your own life story?


If you are like most of my clients, you probably feel uncomfortable with those questions.


A big issue in marketing among many of my clients is how much to disclose about themselves. As counselors, coaches and NDs, we've all been taught to keep extremely tight lipped about ourselves.


That training is a huge obstacle when it comes to effectively attracting ideal clients.


There is a natural conflict between the standard ideas about no personal disclosures and the need to talk about one's personal unique selling points and compelling story in relationship-based client attraction marketing.


Successful business owners work through this uncomfortable conflict.


Strong, prohibitive indoctrination about revealing anything about yourself generates fear of judgment from peers. We're left with a serious misunderstanding of what might or might not be ethical in marketing ourselves.


Consequently, most solopreneurs in the healing arts err on the side of just listing educational credentials and licenses, which often has a cold, egotistic, and distancing effect.


This is institutionalized, professional self-sabotage, similar to what doctors and lawyers faced decades ago when the AMA and ABA frowned on marketing private practices. It's a fear-based mindset that belongs to a past century, and that's out of step with today's business world.


It's a mistaken idea that marketing a self-employed business means talking about yourself. That type of self-promotion doesn't work very well.


A bit of your own life experience helps establish the know you, like you, trust you factor that is important in relationship-based client attraction marketing.

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.

2 Marketing Tasks to Rethink, Redesign, and Relaunch

We're half way through the year ~ how's your marketing plan working? Time to take stock of how well it's serving you.

Marketing is a dynamic process. That is, it's always in motion (or should be). If you aren't adding new ways to reach and interest your potential clients in your services, you won't have a steady flow of income. It's not enough to order business cards, set up a website, post a profile, and wait by the phone.

Every marketing tool -- which is anything a client comes in contact with -- should be evaluated periodically and changed if it's not putting clients on your appointment schedule. Here are some essential taking stock coaching questions for you:

Rethinking Your Business Card

• Does your card have a powerful, catchy, motivating tagline?
• Are you using the backside for brief tips, questions, or a compelling call to action?
• Do the colors coordinate with your website?
• Is your photo or logo displayed?
• Does it have your website or blog url, and your email address?
  
• Have at least 5 people told you your card is a keeper?
• Can a 10 year old tell you what your business is all about from looking at your card?
• Is it time to redesign your business card?

Redesigning Your Website

• How many sticky elements are on your home page?
• Are you tracking where people come from to get to your site, and how long they stay to read?
  
• Are graphics supportive or distracting? Do they reinforce your message?
  
• Are you giving prospects a way to interact with or request content that they are desperate to have?
• Does your content exude your personality, and generate trust?
• Is your contact info on every page?
  
• Is your photo prominently displayed on at least 2 pages?
• Are you using the same tagline on your website as on your business card?
• Does your content speak directly, simply, and emotionally to prospective clients?
• Is your content 80% about the client's problems and want they want, and only 20% about you?
  
• Have you written in the 1st person tense?
• Is it time to do a major rewrite of your website?
  

Ready to kick your business up a notch? The fastest way to do that is to determine which marketing pieces you have in place are stale, inaccurate, and not performing for you, and to rethink, redesign and relaunch them.

And after that? Let's talk. :)

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?

Change and Consistency

The topics of change and the value of consistency have been "up" for me lately. Events in multiple areas of my life and work are prompting me to think about when change is good, when it might not be, and how can I be consistent during a transition process, and consistent with what. After going through many changes in my professional life through the decades, here's how I'd currently coach my clients on these issues.

Major change is your business is good when it:

• starts from the identification and assessment of a specific problem that can't be easily fixed without major change
• involves all stakeholders in the assessment and solution-generating process, including clients
• develops a solution path that leads to a better way to consistently serve your vision and values
• crafts a strategic implementation plan with well described action steps
• puts in charge the players (or parts of your solopreneur psyche) who thrive on taking risks
• gains emotional investment and accountability commitment from key players and supporters (parts of the solo-psyche)
• assesses impacts and progress during transition openly by collecting and evaluating feedback
• adjusts action plans based on feedback, or weighs the costs of not adjusting and provides rationale for those choices

If you are thinking of taking the next leap with your business, major change is likely to be required. Coaching questions you may want to think through would include:

1. Have you completely assessed the problem you want to solve, involved stakeholders, and developed a strategic plan?
   
2. Do you know where objections and obstacles to change will come from?
   
3. How can you be ready for that?
   
4. Where's your personal emotional investment and level of consistent accountability?
5. How will you measure progress and impact?
   

Think: Dating and First Impressions

Relationship marketing, like dating, is a process of getting good prospects to know you, like you and trust you, so that they will want to see more of you. First impressions count.

If we come across as interesting and nice, or funny or helpful, we likely get a second date. If we come across as an unapproachably emotionally cold, intellectually distant, and like a professional know-it-all, those good prospects go elsewhere.

I'm reading a great book right now called The Relationship Cure by the famous relationship therapist, John Gottman. It's not about marketing at all, but does have some interesting parallels to consider regarding how we make bids for connection that cause listeners to turn towards us, away from us, or against us. Obviously in marketing our private practices, we want ideal clients to turn towards us, and to want connection with us.

Basically what works in marriage, parenting, friendship and co-worker relationships, works in client attraction as well because marketing for the healing arts is all about using relationship skills to be of service when others are suffering. I'd boil it down this way:

1. Prioritize your prospective ideal clients' needs over your own
2. Engage with sincere interest in their experience of their pain or problem
3. Downplay your wonderfulness (credentials, training, associations, achievements -- nobody likes a show off)
4. Do tell compelling stories about your own life / imaginary clients that relate to theirs, but don't over do it
5. Take time to be genuinely helpful (with no expectation of a goodnight kiss--er, uh, signing up a client)
6. Have a way to ask them out for more dates (follow up marketing)
7. Listen with enthusiasm and compassion, validate emotions and worries, be supportive

This is a qualitative checklist that can be applied to a wide range of marketing tasks no matter who you're trying to date. Um, I mean, attract as clients. Like mom always said, just be yourself, and you'll be fine.

Things to Do When You're Too Tired to Do Anything

It's being one of those days -- up too early, firefighting all day, dealing with personal pressures, yadayada. The morning's come too early and now long gone, and I still can't wrap my head around marketing.

That ever happen to you? I bet it has.

So here are my thoroughly tested, highly recommended, brain function rescue tips for solopreneurs to try the next time you're in this state.

1. Stop trying to be productive. Seriously. Give in to the energy, go take a walk, fix a better than average lunch, have another cuppa, call a friend or a colleague, catch a nap and journal any dreams afterwards -- indulge in creative avoidance.

2. Declare this a Piddle day. Piddle around with finding and fixing broken links on your website, install a Twitter icon, read some of the backlog of others' ezines you've been keeping, clear out your email inbox -- do minor marketing or business housekeeping. (Oooh, wouldn't be great if someone started a Merry Maids for business housekeeping!)

3. Take care of the guilts. Catch up on your charts or progress notes, do that Google search you've been meaning to do for that client, dust the shelves and pick up the out-of-control / gonna-get-to-this-soon piles in your office, write that thank you note, send the flowers -- do all those little nice things you've said you would, but haven't gotten around to.

4. Try a natural remedies cure. The FES flower essence remedy called Madia is wonderful for helping regain focus and concentration. DHEA and vitamin B-12 help boost and sustain energy. Eat a complex carb like an orange or apple, or a small bit of protein like a cheese stick, or 1/4 cup of walnuts or my favorite: almond M&Ms.

5. Bring your intention back to sharing yourself with your prospective ideal clients. They too have days like this. It's helpful to let them know how you deal with it. Write a blog post, engage a little on Facebook or a professional forum, find someone else's question you can answer off the top of your head. You'll be surprised how the marketing juices start flowing.

I'd love to hear your brain function rescue tips. Leave a comment to this post, won't you? :)

What's Your Morning Marketing Routine?

Following up on yesterday's blog, I am wondering today what others do in their morning marketing routines. (No, I don't mean like jogging to the Starbucks -- although if you do that wearing a tee shirt with your business logo on it, that might count. LOL)

Like Dolly Parton, I tumbled outa bed and stumble to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of ambition....and then I turn on the computer and get to work. In an hour or less I have done all the following:

1. glance at the news headlines on my start page -- reassure myself that the world is still out there
2. check email for urgent notes from clients and friends / family, and skim through AlterNet.org e-news
   
3. scan through / respond to new posts on forums for counselors and coaches, get ideas for blogging
   
4. scan through Twitter, get more ideas for blogging, and respond to any Tweets from followers
5. scan through Facebook and do some keeping in touch with colleagues
6. blog or deal with the urgent emails
7. check appointments for the day and my other projects task list

Since starting that routine I've generated 6 new clients. Of course, I have all the foundations in place -- like my websites -- and often on my project list is the designing, marketing or giving of a signature talk or the writing and sending of a email campaign. Those activities I do in the second hour of the workday, or later in the afternoon, depending on my client appointment schedule.

The systematic approach really works. What's yours?

Guaranteed Success Method -- for Private Practice Failure !

Here's the No Hype Truth this morning ~~ most private practices in the healing arts flounder NOT because the counselor, ND, or coach doesn't take insurance, is fresh out of school, poorly trained, or delivers bad service.

Most solopreneurs fail to put the same level of daily commitment into building their business that they put into getting their education. The harsh fact is that you cannot develop a thriving, self-sustaining, self-employed business if you don't ruthlessly focus 50 - 70% of your time in the beginning on marketing.

Any successful business coach will tell you that spending 4 hours A DAY on marketing is absolutely necessary in the first year if you want to be breaking even or doing better than that. Sounds like a lot? Don't worry, there's plenty to do to keep busy -- it may not even be enough!

And, you want those 4 hours to be spent on the most client-attracting tasks possible. Those include:

• creating a sticky, value-providing website, and continually updating it
• blogging, Tweeting, and other traffic-driving activities
• listing yourself in online locator services and/or doing Google Adwords
  
• monitoring your web-presence and search engine rankings
• writing articles for local, hard copy publications
  
• outreach to referral sources with personal visits, and follow up materials that give valued info
• networking interactions where your ideal clients are
• scheduling, preparing, giving signature talks and / or workshops
• developing and tracking email marketing campaigns
• writing auto-responder series and special reports
  
• evaluating your efforts, eliminating what doesn't work, maximizing what does

There's more that can be done, but these are the can't-do-without basics.

The trick to making all this easy is to be methodical in getting your foundational pieces in place first, because they will then work for you on auto-pilot while your attention is on more advanced marketing tasks. In the beginning, or when struggling, if you want your business to survive and thrive, it's crucial to spend the needed 4 hours a day and be laser focused with self-discipline, commitment to success, and accountability to the health of your business.

I can't emphasize this enough -- being methodical means to have a marketing map and work on one or two things at a time until they are running smoothly, then move on to the next.

The scattered, unfocused, headless chicken approach is a successful, guaranteed method for business failure.

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.

Are You a Business Dabbler?

A coaching colleague has been telling folks that it takes 4 or 5 years to get a solo practice really profitable. That's true for a lot of self-employed people, it seems. But the questions to me are, why and is that timeline the only reality?

You may have already been asked -- are you running a business, or a hobby -- and not realize what that means. Here are my rules of thumb for making that distinction:

You're dabbling at a hobby if you:

• tell a few friends and ask them to spread the word
  
• send a few fliers or postcards to names out of the phone book
• design a website that talks all about you
• put a few "articles" on a blog, call it a website, and never update it
  
• try to appeal to everyone with every problem because you "can't afford to turn away clients"
• spend more time getting organized than doing marketing tasks
• change your pricing too often, or give away your services, or use sliding scale too much
• use less than 4 hours a day for marketing in the first year (or more)
  

You're seriously running a business with a commitment to succeed if you:

• create do-able business and marketing plans before ordering business cards
• schedule 4 hours a day, 6 days a week to accomplish tasks on your marketing plan
• hold yourself accountable for keeping those appointments with your business
• isolate an ideal client niche and use the language they do in describing their problem
  
• work methodically in developing the foundational pieces of your marketing message
• be systematic in pursuing your marketing strategies for connecting with those ideal clients
• create many ways to give valued help as a relationship-building strategy that gets clients
• develop an emotionally compelling, helpful to clients web-presence
• lead with your personality strengths in determining the right marketing activities for you
• pull together a support team that includes professionals with expertise you don't have

Sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? It is.

Being in a self-employed business is like having several businesses going at once. You have to do the all the work that corporations have multiple departments and many people to accomplish. Yes, some of the work can and should be outsourced to those who can do it better, faster, and cheaper than you can (after factoring in trial and error).

If you aren't ready to eat, breathe, and sleep your practice, you've got yourself a hobby.