Way back when I started this blog I was in the final stages of tidying up a manuscript for a practice building book. In my mind, the blog was mainly a vehicle to connect with practitioners while I wrote and eventually released the book. Well, life has a way of taking its own twists and turns and my manuscript ultimately became my online course and community, Practice Abundance.

People often ask me if I regret not getting my book published and out there and my response was always, “Kinda”. I truly feel like my book was meant to transform into Practice Abundance, but it did bum me out that there wasn’t a printed book that people could get their hands on to help them grow their practices. There is something powerful about the printed word, after all.

But there’s good news! I no longer feel “kinda” bummed out! Hoorah! Hoorah! Dan Clements and Tara Gignac N.D. have stepped in to fill the void by publishing their outstanding book, The Practitioner’s Journey. I was fortunate enough to get an advance copy of the manuscript from Dan, so I’ve read it and can honestly say that I think it’s an invaluable resource for people looking to grow their practices. Let me say it again: invaluable. I give it 5 stars, you know, if I had stars to give out…

If you’re feeling like you could stand to have a book to guide you as you grow your practice, you can check out this blog post that describes the book and all the delicious gifts that it has in store for you.

And if an online course and community seems like your thing, just a reminder that Practice Abundance will open to new students this July so if you’re interested in getting information on that, you can get on the list here.

I hope your practice building journeys continue to unfold beautifully and that you are sharing your healing goodness with the world- the world needs it!

Wow time sure does fly! The Practice Abundance Course opens to students from March 17th to March 20th, er, that’s two days away!

So just a quick post to point you to the sneak peek resources in case you missed them.

You want the complete course outline? You got it. Here’s all the information about all the goodies we’ll be learning over the next three months.

And if you’re wondering how this whole online course thing works, and what kind of support it includes, well that’s right over here.

Those of you who read the blog know me pretty well by now, but for you new readers, this is where you can find out all about who I am and decide if I’m the kind of person you’d want to learn from.

If you think you might be interested get on the list to be notified when we open for enrollment. I’m only taking on a small number of students this go around, so if you think it might be for you I’d mark your calendar.

THE LOVE:

Over and over again here’s the story I always hear from wellness practitioners about why they decided to study what it is they currently practice: One day it occurred to them that if they ever truly wanted to party with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton that they would have to A. have a job that made a TON of money and B. have a job that was sexy and flashy enough that all the VIP clubs would want to take them straight to the front of the line and comp them all the overpriced champagne they could drink.

So, with that goal in mind they sat down at a desk and made a list of all the jobs that would fulfill both requirements A and B. Turns out acupuncturist, massage therapist, naturopathic doctor, yoga teacher, therapist [enter your modality here] wound up being at the top of the list, so off they went to school and upon graduation they started partying with spoiled celebrities and lived happily ever after…

Sound familiar?

No.

Exactly. When you decided to study whatever it is you practice some part of your being- your heart, your body, your gut, your mind, your spirit, or perhaps all of the above- called out to you and said, “Yes. This.” and you dove into it not for any promise of what life would look like after graduation, but for the love.

And it was easy to bask in the love while you were in school. You were surrounded by like minded people who shared your same passion and you were all diving headlong into work that was coming straight from your heart.

But I’ve found that after graduation things change. There’s still the love, of course, but it often gets silenced by a sneaking and very unpleasant feeling that you’re now in the business of convincing people to pay you. Which sucks. It’s hard to love that feeling.

I think what happens is a version of “deer in headlights” syndrome. There you are, basking in the glow of a concentrated period of time spent with colleagues just gleefully geeking out on what you love about what you do, and then you come back to Earth. Where not everyone knows just how endlessly fascinating fascial anatomy, or Udayana Badhna, or the joys of using intersection needling points can be, and so you wind up feeling like an arm-twister.

What are you supposed to say to potential clients? “No really! This work can change your life! Just hand over some money and you’ll see- it’s amazing!” Depending on the tone you’ve become a used car salesman at best and a cult leader at worst. And so you retreat. You hope that your love for your work and the tremendous value it has to offer will shine through, but you’re not sure how to get the word out without feeling like a sleazoid.

THE PROBLEM:

Our schools, while great at teaching us how to be highly skilled practitioners, seem to be at a loss about mentioning that we need to actually know how to get clients through the door (i.e. manage to pay our bills doing this thing we love so much and are really pretty good at.)

Don’t get me wrong, I love our schools for creating places where more and more generations of practitioners can be trained to positively impact the world. I love, love love that. I adore it. Really. However, I also wish- forgive me for my bluntness- that they would take their heads out of their collective asses and find a way to give this skill set to their students before graduation (really, honesty give them what they need, not mess around with telling people useless things like, “You should have a business card.”)

And so here’s my rant. I recently received an email from an acupuncturist where she told me about how her school constantly repeated the mantra, “In 5 years, 50% of you won’t be working as acupuncturists anymore” to the students. That is all. They never followed that sentence with one that started, “so here’s how you can avoid being a part of that 50%…” Gee thanks guys, the future’s feeling pretty bright now! Here’s my tuition check- or shall I just flush it down the toilet!? To the schools I would like to respectfully say: Don’t take our money, put us through your schools, tell us how we’ll likely fail, and then send us out into the world with no attention paid at all to how we might avoid becoming the aforementioned statistic.

What is wrong with this picture? Why are they such defeatists? What do they think the awful statistics are about? That people who studied acupuncture don’t actually care about acupuncture? That acupuncture doesn’t actually have much to offer people? That they tend to have lazy or flaky graduates? Or could it maybe, just possibly, be because people who love what they do and are committed to sharing it with the world enter that whole private practice thing with little to no idea of how to do that successfully? Maybe? Ya think? Ok, rant over.

AND SO…

In general I find that complaining about what other people should be doing is an ineffective strategy for creating positive change. I can’t really think of many times that straight up complaining got anyone very far. Imagine if Rosa Parks only complained loudly and ceaselessly amongst her friends about how unjust sitting in the back of the bus was, without ever plopping herself in the front of that bus and thereby claiming her own power to make a change? The former strategy wasn’t likely to change history. The latter? Pretty effective.

Ok, so I’m no Rosa Parks. I think that’s fairly obvious. However, because of my own experience of struggling through my first three years in practice and then falling in love with practice building (no one is more surprised than me…) there does happen to be one thing I can do to make some change. I figure if I can pass on the tools and create a place for a supportive community of complementary and alternative medicine providers to gather, then maybe we’ve got a shot at changing the lame statistics. And if we change the lame statistics, then we’ll have a lot more practitioners around and a lot more people getting the help they need.

And so I built the Practice Abundance Course. It’s an online course that is the result of nearly ten years in practice, starting three practices from scratch, one ebook, one mega manuscript for a printed book, a year and a half blogging about practice building, and lots of conversations with practitioners who felt just as helpless and hopeless as I did when I was starting out. I designed it to be the FULL course that our schools left out, coupled with community warmth and support.

It will be open to new students from March 17th to March 20th (kicking it off between St. Patrick’s Day and the first day of spring seemed fortuitous enough…) and I’ll only be taking on a small number of students this first round. The soonest it would open again is this summer, so if you think this might be for you I’d get on the list to get all the delicious freebie information about it that I’ll start sending out this week.

Happy practice building!

I’ve got great news! I failed! OK, so no one ever gets that excited about failure in the moment. And yes, it’s a wee bit humbling to write a blooper reel post for all of you today. But when I announced I was kicking off a new practice from scratch I promised total honesty, even with the flops. So here goes:

That whole Meet the Neighbors promotion that I dreamed up to keep my December busy? It was a total wash.

In my haste to keep momentum going through December (which I can tell you- brutal honesty remember!- didn’t work. The last 2 weeks of December and first week of January were quiet as usual) I broke one of my own most sacred rules and did the whole wide net thing. You know the one: toss out a big old net to everyone you can possibly think of and you’ll dredge up something which is better than nothing. Except it never works. It’s only a sure fire way to maximum effort and minimum return.

The sacred rule that I broke is this: do practice building outreach for who would be your ideal** clients, and forget about trying to reach and please everyone.

Seth Godin (who yes, I quote constantly, but it’s because it’s well deserved) described it best when he said, “the problem with huge markets is the same problem you’d have playing squash or racquetball on a court that’s too big. The ball doesn’t have a wall to bounce off of.” This is a great visual- imagine trying to play racquetball in an open field. Imagine whacking that ball with all your might only to send it off into empty space and you get a feeling for how exhausting and fruitless trying to target everyone is. If you can get on a proper sized court, so to speak, you can get a good game going. You also don’t waste energy sending balls out into the void.

So let’s break down the damage on the Meet the Neighbors idea.

Lost:

• About 3 hours of my time
• $60 in the cost of printing, shipping, and envelopes
• Potentially $60 in income (The only person who took advantage of my 50% off deal was the only person in the building that was already a client of mine. He may have been spurred into setting up a session because of the promotional discount- in which case I gained $60 I wouldn’t have had. Then again, he may have come in anyway and paid my full fee- in which case I lost $60. I think we’ll call this one a toss up.)

That means… drumroll please… that exactly no one who was new to my practice took advantage of the 50% off offer. No one. Nada.
For comparisons sake, I reached out to a fraction of the number of people through my Help for the Helpers promotion and it jump started my practice in no time flat. And it continues to feed my practice. That first group of people who came to see me are such generous spirits that they keep spreading the word.

So what’s the difference? In the Meet the Neighbors promotion I offered a very generous discount as a holiday gift to people based solely on the fact that they work in the same building as me. In other words, the only thing we have in common is location.

In the Help for the Helpers promotion I offered it only to the people who have been my best fans and referrers over the years: yoga teachers and other CAM practitioners.

Ok. Lesson learned. No more wasting time with those who aren’t likely to be my ideal clients.

The other experiments fared better- I got a good amount of interest from my gift certificate program, and I was right when I predicted that people find a lot of services via flyers in this town. Every time I put up flyers I seem to get between 2 and 5 new clients within 24 hours. These ivy league towns sure do love their flyers! My business is also now up on Yelp, but it’s too soon to report on that one yet. I’ll keep you posted.

So yes, there are some wins among the loss, but the thing I’m most excited about is the failure. Failures range from being a bummer (like this one) to a life altering catastrophe (trust me when I tell you I’ve had one of those). But the thing about them is that you always learn a ton. The learning is almost always more valuable than the loss. Even if the loss hurts like a bitch.

I think we spend so much time walking on eggshells terrified of making a mistake that most of us err on the side of doing nothing. Our educational system rewards those who are the best drones, and drones don’t put themselves on the line and risk failure. They color inside the lines to receive whatever tasty morsel of praise coloring inside the lines promises (hint: it’s not that tasty).

Whereas those who are willing to take a stab at something when faced with the alternative of doing nothing actually gain, well, something. Yes sometimes it’s heartbreak or embarrassment, but coupled with those is always (always) a big quantum leap in your knowledge which can get you where you want to go. All you have to do is dust yourself off and start moving again by putting that new knowledge to work.

Those who try nothing- hoping to not stand out, hoping to avoid criticism or embarrassment, hoping to coast by and that some miracle will drop into their lap what it is they’re truly yearning for- they most often get only more of the nothing.

As Seth Godin says in his newest book Linchpin (which is brilliant and addresses just how we avoid doing the work that matters out of fear so go buy 25 copies and hand them out to everyone you love) “Do the work. Fight the resistance.” In other words- keep going! Do something!

A blog post with footnotes! Hilarious!

*The title of this post is lifted from my dear friend Jonathan FitzGordon who used to own Brooklyn Yoga Center. When I first walked in and saw that he had t-shirts printed up with Brooklyn Yoga on one side and Failure is my Friend on the other, I knew I had found my dream yoga center. He’s currently doing righteous movement work at www.Fitzgordonmethod.com.

**While “ideal client” is a business-speak term that encompasses defining your ideal clients’ demographics and psychographics, I define it as “those who you’d be most delighted to see walk through your door every day, and who are likely to be vocal fans of what you do.”

Thanksgiving has come and gone and we’re entering what is, for many of us, a slow season in our practices. Yes, the tumbleweeds are about to start blowing across the prairie my friends.

Every year since the beginning of my practice I’ve written off that barren stretch of time between Thanksgiving and New Years as a time when everyone is too busy and cash strapped to schedule with me. I had caved to the defeatist in me by consoling myself with the knowledge that the New Year’s Resolution boom always followed.

Eh, I think it’s time for a change. This year I’m just saying “no!” to the inner defeatist! No more tumbleweeds in December!

Ok, ok, to be fair my first couple of weeks of the month are looking as full as usual. But I know that we’re in that lull where people haven’t quite realized just how many commitments they have this month, and just how surprising the cost of holiday shopping is. I figure the time is now to grab people while they’re in their lull and try to keep a little momentum going. After all, we private practice people have gifts to buy and travel to pay for too!

So here are my Operation Thriving December brainstorms that I’m working on. Feel free to steal whatever feels like a fit for you, and to leave your own December practice building ideas in the comments. The more we can share with eachother, the more we can all rock it this holiday season.

• Get to know the neighbors: The wellness center I have my office in happens to be one bright spot o’wellness in a large office building filled mostly with lawyers and mortgage brokers. It’s a bit odd, but it works for us. The thing is, our dear neighbors don’t really know we exist (the center is a year old, and did I mention it’s a big building?). Turns out the holiday season is the perfect time to introduce ourselves to our neighbors with a little ethical bribe gift to inspire them to come on down and get some work. I’m thinking we’ll get some holiday cards or postcards printed up with “Happy Holidays from your neighbors! Hope this gift can bring you some holiday cheer and help you to kick off your New Year’s Resolutions. Bring this card in for 50% off one session if you book between now and January 15th.” with a link to our websites, etc. Yes, 50% is a big heap off a session- but it’s only for one session and we didn’t want it to seem too self-serving. Yes the goal is to juice up our practices, but it is also a gift. In my mind a gift requires a certain level of generosity. If you decide to use this idea- remember the crucial cut-off date. You don’t want to be honoring these things come spring when the whole idea is to keep your winter busy. For printing, I’m looking at Zazzle’s holiday postcards. This design is my favorite so far. Overnight Prints has some custom card and postcard options as well. What neighbors- whether they’re near your office or not- need to know you exist?
• Give thanks: There are always a few people who grow our practices for us like crazy by spreading the good word. You know who they are- they’re your true fans. Methinks tis the season to express our gratitude with a dollar amount off of a session. You decide just how generous you’re feeling- $10 off? $20 off? 50% off? (gasp!) free? Send them this discount thank you in a cheery holiday card and your true fans will be spreading the word about just how fab you are with even more vigor.
• Rock the gift certificates with a little something extra: If you offer gift certificates, don’t sit around waiting for someone to request one. Remind your clients of this wonderful gift idea by sending out an email to your client list. I’m thinking I’ll up the ante a little with a perk for the purchaser: anyone who buys a gift certificate gets $10 (or $20?) off their next session with me. That way they get a gift for themselves at the same time that they’re gifting another, and it insures that they’ll be more inclined to schedule with you sooner than later.

These projects ought to keep me busy through the New Year. However, I usually report on practice building experiments after the fact to let you know how they went, so this time I’ll do a follow up to know what flew and what bombed.

Very Happy Holidays to all of you! And again, I’m just ridiculously honored to be able to be of service to all of you. Thanks for reading.

Oh it is so easy to lull oneself to sleep.

So a few months ago I announced to all ya’ll that I would be kicking off practice number three and regaling you with tales of the tactics I used to grow the aforementioned new practice. I imagined much trial and error- lots of goodies for a blooper reel- and some shining successes. However, the thing about doing something the third time over a span of nine years means that my radar for what will or won’t work is pretty well tuned. (It only took nine years…)

So the grand experiment started well- too well. After sorting through all the minutiae that comes with starting any practice (finding an office, getting licensed, building the website) and running one big old promotion- things were really hopping! I had, and have, a full practice full of delightful clients.

And very little to write about on my blog in terms of real-time experimentation in practice building.

Like you- I don’t particularly want to spend gobs of time on the growing of the thing when I am, in fact, already doing the thing. Especially when the other nooks and crannies of my time are veeeery full with raising my wee one, some work with other clients, and a mega overhaul of the The Well Practice going on behind the scenes (the grand unveiling is probably about 4 to 6 months away- so stay tuned- it will rock. Oh yes, it will rock.)

However, unlike you I’ve commited to being a practice building guinea pig and I’m a full blown practice building nerd (we’re a very rare species). So it’s time for me to rouse myself from my slumber and up the ante. I have loads of practice building experiments in mind that I can (and will) run. These are my upcoming commitments to you with more to follow:

I will:

• Go old school by running a full-blown flyer campaign. That’s right! Paper tacked to bulletin boards! I live and work very near the campus of Yale- so it’s kind of a flyer town. I figured I’d go super low tech and see what happens.
• Put a Rolfing ebook for current and prospective clients up on my website for free download (aaaah, some tech deliciousness).
• Get myself on Yelp and perhaps a few other directories (more tech deliciousness).
• Advertise. Wow, I never thought I’d go for this one again. The last time I ran an ad for my practice was about nine years ago and it wasn’t just a dud of a failure- it was a mind-blowing failure. (story to follow) so I’ve been pretty allergic to the whole ad thing. But so many people do it that I’ll give it a shot and report back.

And you will? Let me be your guinea pig?

All (reasonable) suggestions for practice building will be considered. I’m not going to walk naked through town with a sandwich board for Rolfing- but if you throw some ideas my way that you’re curious about trying, or that you have tried with limited to no success- I’ll dive in and give it a try and report back.

Who doesn’t love having their own personal guinea pig? Go ahead and email suggestions or leave them in the comments section. Let’s get this party started.

I’m not usually the type to dedicate blog posts to people. This isn’t the great American novel, after all. But these people have been such glowing examples of teaching as they learn, that I have to give a shout out to them for their inspiration in writing this post. If you haven’t yet discovered Lissa Boles, Chris Guillebeau, Mark Silver, or Jonathan Fields (and especially this gorgeous post of his that was so moving to me) please go discover them.

I have to come out of the closet on being a wee bit uncomfortable with the “practice building expert” role that I’ve stepped into. Yes, I feel like I have the experience and know-how to effectively (and passionately) teach people how to grow their practices. And yes, I have a deep desire to turn my experiences into something tangible and useful that can contribute to other people’s lives.

What I don’t have is the desire to guru-ize myself. And when you step into a role as a writer and a teacher, there’s this funny underlying pressure to adopt the guru track.

Let me clarify. There are real gurus in the world. By “real gurus” I mean spiritual masters who are kind enough to be patient with those of us who are behind them in our own evolutionary paths. People who are worthy of a devout respect.

The kind of guru I’m talking about though are the false gurus we see everywhere. The people who are eager to step into the “I have this all figured out” role and who want to step on that stage and preach to you about how you can be as “empowered” as they are. They fan the flames of their own egos and work hard to convince the people in their audience that they are worthy of the pedestal they’ve put themselves on.

This kind of guru- who usually has little to no spiritual message but more often preaches about making dollar signs appear in your life- is so ubiquitous now that the idea that anyone should ever be on a pedestal goes largely unchallenged.

The pedestal says, “I’ve completely figured out what you seek to learn.” I’d like to argue that there is no official, concrete endpoint of figured-outness that we attain. In short, the pedestal is bullshit.

If we’re honest and awake to life, we’re always on some new learning curve. Teachers are people who may be ahead of you on any particular trajectory- whether that be growing a successful practice, having successful relationships, or any number of other things that we seek to learn- but they aren’t finished learning.

Without the admission that  we’re still on that trajectory with our students, we get lost in this flashy ego place. Worse, we stop learning because we decide we’ve arrived at the endpoint and we stop engaging.

In truth, there’s always the missteps, the bumbling around, and the epiphanies that come along with life and learning. Don’t buy the “I have it all figured out” guru message that we all get sold. We all learn from one another at our different stages, and we just keep on keeping on.

And so, in the spirit of un-guruing myself, here’s what I had going for me that allowed me to grow a full practice in a month:

Preparation.

Yes, it all boils down to one very un-sexy word. Lately this is the A number one thing on my list of what’s needed for success in anything. Which kind of sucks, because it’s not all the flashy things that we’re told we need (especially in America) like charisma or a a will of steel. And it requires a lot of patience. And work. The myth of overnight success and riches is, well, a myth.

My preparation for this particular endeavour came in the form of nine years in practice, and this being the third time I’ve started a new practice from scratch. So much for overnight success. My ability to grow a full practice in a month wasn’t really about that month, it was about the nine years that preceeded it. 

That means that this time around I got to skip all the wandering down alleys that are dead ends. I cut out so much of the wasted time, the heartache, and the confusion simply because I’ve done it before and figured out what works.

I knew how to pick a town that would enthusiatically greet a Rolfer, I knew how to pick the right office location and the right office mates, I knew how to grow my referral network I knew how to make a website and how to write great copy to attract my ideal clients. I knew what the hell an ideal client was, for that matter, and that I would talk directly to them. All this stuff I learned, slowly, drip by drip, over many years.

On the other hand, with this website and related projects that I’m working on to shine a big ol’ light on the holistic health world, I’m four years into what still feels like a new learning curve (The Well Practice hasn’t been up for four years. But the preparation that got me here has been four years and counting).

In this I’m still that person who is wandering into alleys that have dead ends. However, these days I can look way down that street and see the brick wall, whereas before I would have kept walking until I smacked into the brick wall. Only then would I have noticed that I should turn around and walk aaaaall the way back, nursing the big lump on my forehead. So that’s progress. I don’t fear brick walls as much any more- each lump on my forehead taught me something new that has allowed me to keep moving forward.

Fortunately and unfortunately, there is no over the rainbow. Keep stumbling, keep learning, that’s what we’re all here for. That’s where the juciness of life is. I’ll be stumbling into alleys and epiphanies right along with you.

This post is part of a series of posts chronicling my experiences starting my practice from scratch (again) in a brand new city. To catch up on the earlier posts, you can find them here:

Starting from Scratch (again)

How to Become a (Local) Rockstar

Office Space and Dr. Evil

Good Design. Get Some.

I Am Not a Robot

Practicing Radical Generosity

Whew. What is it with me and the long posts lately? If you want to skim, you can just browse among the headers you have a question about: Website, Business Cards, Office Space, Legal, and Practice Building Know-How.

This whole starting a new practice thing costs money. Between licensure, office space, a website, business cards, and the rest of the whole deal the end result is that you’re spending a bundle of money for a while. You’re launching a business (even if we holistic health types shudder at calling it a business) so it’s natural that there will be some up front expenses, but as with launching any business (ha! I used the B word again!) it’s best to keep the upfront costs and overhead lean. Not so lean that the important things are scrapped, but certainly not overdone so that you’re starting out with a bundle of debt.

I happen to be on a spectacularly tight budget these days (I’m setting aside money for big upgrades to The Well Practice, raising my sweet boy, and paying off an old business loan- hence my warning about not starting off with debt). And so with that, I present to you my list of stellar cheapies that will help you save money and have all the important pieces ready to go and looking lovely.

* Evenif you’re not kicking off a brand new practice, this list will help you cut costs as you grow, and also just happens to be a list some of my favorite services out there for small business owners.

Website

Hold on to your seats. Lecture mode is bubbling up within me. I’ll keep it brief: don’t be that person who decides to save money by launching a practice without a website. Build the website first. Without a website in this world, you have no credibility. Without credibility you have a veeeeeeeerrrrrry difficult time building a practice. I’ve seen lots of folks trapped in the “I’ll get a website when my practice is busy enough to pay for one” spiral of doom many times. You won’t have a practice that can pay for anything- rent, groceries, heat, let alone a website- until you have a website. Fortunately, the days of laying out a thousand dollars to get a site up (and this would be considered cheap) are gone. There are a couple of stellar platforms you can use to do it yourself. Lecture rant over and out.

*One side note: I love my web designers and am more than happy to pay them for their services as they provide a ton of insight and expertise to a more complex site build. However, if what you need is a brochure site to let people know you exist, you can definitely go the DIY route with these tools:

• Squarespace: This may be my new favorite find of the year. This is a genius platform for building websites yourself. There are so many businesses out there that promise a platform where you can “build a website in 5 minutes!” and they’re all crap (at least all the ones I’ve investigated). But Squarespace is like this beacon of hope in the DIY website world. It’s easy and highly intuitive to use, requires zero knowledge of code, has a lot of beautiful templates to choose from, and a nice variety of features. I built my New Haven Rolfing site on Squarespace in a couple of hours and it costs me… drumroll please… $14 a month. This is what you’d normally pay in hosting fees alone- and this fee covers it all. I’m in love. Seriously. I’m strongly considering shifting The Well Practice onto their platform and testing out their more robust features- of which they appear to have many. To check out other Squarespace sites, head on over here.
• Wordpress: My second favorite option is Wordpress. It’s primarily what this site runs on. While it’s a blog platform, it’s also very flexible and you can easily create your whole site with it. In other words, static pages like “About my practice” can happen too. If you go the Wordpress route you’ll need to choose a theme. Word on the street is the Thesis theme is the way to go- but feel free to browse around. Thesis will cost you $87, and running on Wordpress with your own domain name, and ad free (if you don’t pay to be ad free, they’ll run ads on your blog, which I’m not a fan of), will cost you $44.94 per year. Still not too shabby for a righteous web platform.
• Domain name: While both Squarespace and Wordpress offer cheap (Squarespace) or free (Wordpress) options to run your site without owning the domain, I recommend against using them. It’s a longer conversation than I’ll have in this post, but the short version is that it doesn’t look very professional, and you’re going to want to own your domain name (the name of your website) anyway. Domains are still cheap, usually $15 or less per year. You can buy them at Network Solutions or Go Daddy (though Go Daddy’s been annoying the hell out of me lately with both the minefield of pointless “extra features” you have to walk through on your way to checkout and Bob Parson’s lame “womanizing is a great marketing model” mindset- just sayin). I recommend trying to get a .com. It may seem silly, but it’s still a signifier to all of us of quality- .net, .biz, or any other incarnation of the .whatever comes off a bit shabby (unless you’re a non-profit or educational association in which case .org and .edu are the expected norm).

Business Cards

Business cards still give us a lot of mileage since most of us work with clients one on one in the tangible world (Shout out to the life coaches! Keep rockin it in cyberspace!). Clients will pass them along to others, and it’s handy to leave stacks of them in related businesses with permission.

When getting the cards together, there are two issues that are going to cost some dough- design and printing.

*For more information on navigating design check out my eariler post Good Design: Get Some.

Design

• Crowdspring: While I haven’t used Crowdspring myself, it does seem like a very nifty idea for getting custom branding done cheaply and easily- and with input from a lot of creative voices, rather than just one.
• Elance: I also didn’t use Elance for my New Haven Rolfing design work, but I have used them for other projects with good results. This is a huge site filled with people who can create a brand for you. The best way to go is to post your project and see who bids on it- otherwise it’s a pretty big sea of portfolios to sift through.
• Friends and colleagues: So if I didn’t use Crowdspring or Elance, who did I get to do my design work? My dear friend Nette Gaastra who was kind enough to help a girl out- and who also happens to be a crazily talented designer. Don’t forget to look in your circle of friends and colleagues- and if you want to keep it super cheap, remember the power of barter. Exchanging one service for another can be fantastic in the early days of your practice when the appointment book isn’t exactly bursting at the seams. Just keep in mind that the designer you approach about barter may be very busy and/or not interested in what you offer. I ended up paying Nette, and since she gave me a very gracious discount because of my friend status, I won’t post it here because the truth is she’ll charge you more than she charged me. What can I say- being together through all the ups and downs of pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing has its perks.

*  If you do decide to hire someone to create a custom logo/brand for you remember that you’ll need the logo, a business card design, and a web header to use on your Squarespace or Wordpress site.

Printing

• Overnight Prints: I’ve always used Overnight Prints and have always been happy with their work. It looks professional, the cardstock is heavy, and they have quick turnaround and great customer service. You can also order in small quantities if it helps for cash flow. I decided to do a small order to start and for 100 double-sided, round corner, full color cards I paid $39.96- and that includes shipping. I did run out of those cards mighty quick though- so in retrospect 100 was too conservative an order. 

The all in one Solution

• Zazzle: If you don’t want to bother with getting a custom logo and do the whole branding thing, you can always use Zazzle’s templates. Overnight Prints and Vista Print also have templates you can use, but I find Zazzle’s to be the nicest by a wide margin. They have lots of beautiful templates that you can just plug your information into, plus they do all the printing and ship them out to you. I have friends who have been very happy with their Zazzle business cards and they do look gorgeous. The reason why I skipped it was because I wanted my web header and my business card to match- so I got the custom logo.

Office space

If you don’t have any clients yet, and don’t want to fork out some cash for an office rental, there is a good alternative. First, look to share a space with someone else. A practitioner rarely works 7 days a week (and if you do- stop it!), and wellness centers usually have shared rooms in which practitioners alternate days. My office colleagues were gracious enough to accept a temporary pay by the session situation, which will turn into a monthly rental. The bonus of this is that, for now, I only pay when I use the space. In future, I’ll pay a monthly rent like everyone else. Since this is a situation that has to work for everyone involved, here are a couple of pitfalls to avoid for you and for whoever is renting to you:

Pitfalls for them:

• It can be perceived as lose-lose: Depending on their mindset, your paying only per session, and then switching to a monthly rent once it’s cheaper for you can seem like they’re getting the short end of the deal. The main thing that will make the difference is how you utilize the deal. If you dawdle along, safe in your pay-per-session cocoon and don’t really work it to build your practice, then they’re losing money on that space indefinitely. To resolve this, I propose first that you get out there and totally kick ass at practice building so that they see the dollars stacking up quickly. You can also set a time boundary- that they only rent to you per session for three months (or whatever), and then you have to pay the rent on days you use the room. This way they know you’re motivated and that they’re not wasting their generosity on you. Also be sure to clarify that it will be either one or the other. You begin at a per session rate and then transition to a monthly rate. You can’t flip flop between them or resentment will build. There can be no “I’m having a slow month, can I pay you by the session until it picks up?” happening.

Pitfalls for you:

• You can wind up paying out tons of money: Pay-per-session sounds great until your practice takes off and you’re stuck paying 10 times the average office rent. In my last practice in Brooklyn, NY we settled on an indefinite pay-per-session rental. Within 3 months I had a full practice and was paying $2800 a month for the space- which I only used 3 to 4 days per week- dang! Fortunately the owner of the wellness center was gracious enough to realize that that wasn’t sustainable for me and we settled on a much more realistic monthly rent from then on. Also note that it’s almost never workable- or reasonable- for someone to ask for 50% of your sessions. A per session rate of $15 to $35 seems to be the norm.

Legal

Oh there is always more I dotting and T crossing than we anticipate. C’est la vie. Getting the legal stuff set up can feel really intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Here’s my super simple option- and remember, by no stretch of the imagination am I an attorney- so please, take this with a grain of salt, do your own research, and find out what works for you. For me, the easiest thing one can do to protect themselves legally (besides the liability insurance- which you should get- but which varies so much by modality that I won’t get into it here) is to set yourself up as a Limited Liability Corporation. To do this cheaply and easily, head over to Legal Zoom. It will save you a ton of money by bypassing the need for an attorney to draft it. I’ve used them for several things and have always had a great experience.

Practice Building Know-How

Unless you were blessed with a very concientious school, you studied somewhere that- for all their good intentions- totally botched teaching you anything about practice building. I feel your pain (and I’m on a mission to change it). That means you’ll also have the job of figuring out how to get the word out. Fortunately, there are loads of free ways to learn what you need to know.

• Practice Building 101: Shameless plug for my own ebook? Perhaps. But the fact of the matter is it’s free, and I wrote it specifically to help get us all up to speed on spreading the good word.  
• Seth’s Blog: Anyone, of any business, anywhere on planet Earth, should read Seth Godin’s blog (and books). He’s my hero. He posts every day, and every day I read it and come away with a new shiny nugget of wisdom. There is much to be learned here.
• The Fluent Self:  Havi Brooks’ blog is full of so much goodness. I’m a bit addicted. She talks about all sorts of things, some that are not specifically about growing your thing, but I learn so much from reading her work and following along with her that I think she’s a great resource.
• Chris Guillebeau: Chris is just one of the loveliest people imaginable. And there is so much to learn about getting the word out from reading his work.
• Itty Biz: Naomi Dunford writes this rockin’ blog specifically for businesses with 5 or fewer employees. Since most of us are flying solo, we’re totally her people. I always find myself both crying with laughter and learning boatloads when reading her blog. 

Don’t let the list intimidate you- remember, small bites people! Now get out there and spread your healing goodness!

What did I leave out? Please let me know what else you’re grappling with, and share any tips and tricks you have.

This post is a part of a series chronicling my process of starting my third wellness practice from scratch in a new city. If you missed the other posts, feel free to check them out:

Starting from scratch, again

How to become a (local) rockstar

Office space and Dr. Evil

Good design. Get some.

Yahoo! New Haven Rolfing is born in cyberspace! The website for my new practice is up and ready to go and the most amazing thing happened while I was creating it: I enjoyed the process.

The last time I had to write copy for a website or brochure for my Rolfing practice was many moons ago (about 6 years ago, to be exact) and I labored through writing it. At the time I was still in that nervous, newbie mindset- even though I’d been at it for 3 years already- which was dominated by the thought, “I’m new at this. So people are going to think I suck at it. So I’d better prop up my web copy with a bunch of big, fancy words to they know I studied really  hard in school, and will think I suck less.”

This mindset resulted in a boring website with a bunch of academic words sprinkled around. In other words, a snooze fest. Worst of all, a snooze fest that doesn’t give new clients any accessible information about what I do, or any indication of who I am as a human being.

As I see it, almost all wellness practitioners of every variety stumble into these same two pitfalls. So let’s address them each separately through the lens of my own ridiculous blunders:

You do what, exactly?

Rolfing is one of those modalities with a bad name. Literally. I’ve had people think it was called “Ralphing” and ask me if that means I actually make people throw up. (Good times. And no, if you were wondering). This unfortunate name makes Rolfing more challenging to explain than, say, massage therapy, but regardless of what you practice, you have to work at articulating what you do without dredging up all the gobbledy-gook words you learned in school. Your new and potential clients didn’t go to school with you. They have no idea what you’re talking about if you use the big words as a crutch.

For example, I can say, “Rolfing works within the fascial network to achieve palintonicity so that gravity can act as the therapist.” (ok, I’m not sure my old website was quite that bad, but that is exactly what I learned in school) or I can say, “As a Rolfer, my sincere goal in working with clients is for their alignment and posture to improve, for pain to significantly decrease or disappear, and for movement to become more supported, balanced, and fluid.” Which makes more sense? Which one makes you want to head but a curb? Which one makes you want to check out this thing with the wacky name?

Who are you, exactly?

The other bummer about writing like a robot is that people think of you as, well, a robot. That is to say, that you become in their minds “generic acupuncturist” or “generic yoga teacher”.  The biggest problem with this, besides the fact that you’re not “generic wellness practitioner”, is that what potential clients are most interested in finding out before they contact you is who you are. Not in any kind of deep, soul-searching way, but they want to get a sense of your personality. Your personality is the main thing they’re going to go on when they decide to work with you. Think of all the people you’ve worked with who have been your practitioners. The people who you’ve developed long term therapeutic relationships with are the people who get you, and who you get.

This leads us to the crucial issue of finding your voice. This is something that I feel like I’m just settling into. I was looking over older blog posts yesterday and I realized that this feeling of flow when I’m writing is pretty new. And it’s a good feeling. Really, really freaking good.

I recommend you take some time to get in touch with your voice- whether it’s your written voice, your spoken voice, or your way of being with clients (which, ideally, is quite a lot like your way of being when you’re with everyone else). You don’t have to be sharp or hip; you don’t have to be a genius or a joker- you just have to be you. When you’re you, you attract the kinds of clients you’re going to capital L Love working with- because they’re your people. The added bonus of this is a built in burn-out defense since your work days won’t be spent with people who make you feel like you’re swimming upstream.

One of the best ways I know of to get in touch with your voice is to write or tell the story of how you found the modality you practice. (If you’re a writer, put pen to paper or finger to keyboard. If you hate to write, record yourself speaking, or have someone interview you and record it.) Everyone has the story about their first acupuncture session, or first Pilates class, or whatever. It’s that moth to a flame story. Something about what you practice totally lit you up inside when you first found it. Talking about that is the most natural way I know of to begin to notice your natural voice. That and practice. Finding your voice is a skill that takes time and experimentation- at least it has for me.

*Once you’ve done this exercise, include this story on your website! One of the things that I did get right on my last website was talking about what I call my Rolfing Hallelujah experience. I’d say that at least 80% of my clients came to me and told me they chose to work with me over other Rolfers because I had talked about my personal experience with Rolfing on my website (the current version is here). People want to know who you are and why you do what you do- so hop to it and let the world get to know your lovely self!