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!

Twitter is one of those things that’s blowing up in popularity, and with all the buzz (or tweets?) circulating I’ve gotten some emails from practitioners about how to use it as a practice building tool.

I’m certainly no Twitter guru (I only have 381 followers, the horror!). However, I have been using it happily for about 6 months now, and I gotta say I see its merits. And its downsides. So here’s my brief overview of where Twitter shines, where it flops, and how to get started:

The good: My favorite thing about Twitter is that it’s an amazing networking tool. If networking is too gross a word for you, allow me to replace it with, “forming lovely and interesting connections”. I’ve found some great people through Twitter, and deepened my connection to some others who I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.

For example, I discovered Chris Guillebeau’s work through Seth Godin and quickly fell in love with his blog and Manifestos. I sent him a few @replies (when you precede someone’s Twitter name with the @ symbol, the message shows up in their @ reply inbox, so they know you either mentioned them or wrote to them), and eventually I caught a Tweet of his saying he’d be in NYC for a tweet-up (meet up of Twitterers). Off I went to the tweet-up and we hit it off.

Several months and several emails later, Chris sent a writer who was featuring him in Psychology Today my way and she included me in an article about people who are living unconventional lives (since I’m shamelessly mentioning it here I should tell you that it’s the Jan/Feb 2010 issue, the “Life Uncharted” article, I digress…) Psychology Today and I wouldn’t have connected if it weren’t for Twitter and Chris’s generosity.

I mention this story purely as a super tangible example of how Twitter can make meaningful connections. I connected with Chris, Chris connected me with Psychology Today, and blammo, I have a wee bit of press. However, in truth, the real gem in this whole story is that I’m connected to Chris at all. Media help aside, he’s just a helluva guy doing amazing work. Now that I’ve gotten my Twitter sea legs, I’ve found lots more wonderful people and follow them on Twitter- this, regardless of any other tangible perk- is what makes Twitter worthwhile.

The less good: I had a Twitter account for nearly a year before I bothered to use it. Every time I checked in it seemed like I was caught in a stream of half-conversations that I wasn’t a part of. It felt pointless and time consuming to me. However, once I found some people who I wanted to connect to, I was a part of this wacky form of communicating, and I grew to really enjoy it.

That said, focus first on finding people who you want to communicate with. The best way to find people you want to follow on Twitter is to see if the people who you already are in touch with are on Twitter (people whose books or blogs you read, or friends and family). In addition, it’s great to see if any businesses that you like have a Twitter account.

This can be especially helpful for growing a local practice if you connect to your local businesses. It can be something really direct, like a Pilates teacher deciding to follow a local massage therapist’s Twitter feed, or it can be really indirect. If you’re a local massage therapist, why not connect to the local restaurants that have Twitter accounts? That way you’re deepening your connection to your community in general, and you’ll be top of mind when anyone in town is asked for a massage referral.

Do I use it this way? Not yet. It’s one of my new experiments, since I mostly connect with people all over the world related to health and wellness. But it seems like a great way to get your name spread around town, so I’ll give it a shot and report back.

Another not so good feature is the huge potential time suck. Keep time boundaries on your Twitter use. Try your best to use it at least daily, but in small chunks of time. I find that if I can check in for 5 to 10 minutes in the am and pm, I’m good. When I find I’m clicking everyone’s links and going down too many rabbit holes, I have to cool it. I don’t need more black holes for my time to fall into.

Getting started:

How do I learn the nuts and bolts? If you want to know the basic stuff like how to respond to people or what the hell a re-tweet is, just grab something cheap and easy like Twitter for Dummies (I’d grab the edition co-written by Laura Fitton @pistachio to Twitter users). Don’t bother laying out a bunch of cash for some social media guru’s product. This isn’t rocket science.

What do I write about? Always remember that Twitter is a social medium, not a place people show up because they’re craving more spam and sales pitches in their lives. Be you, write about what you’re up to, what goodies you find, what you care about, and shine a light on other people doing good stuff, but don’t directly pitch people.

I’m glancing over my Twitter profile (where I can see recent Tweets I’ve sent) and it’s a hodgepodge of stuff: everything from talking with a fellow mom who’s home sick with one of her wee ones, to lamenting that a recipe of mine didn’t turn out, to re-tweeting someone else’s link about one cruise ship making the grotesque choice to go forward with their scheduled stop in Haiti so their passengers could frolic on a Haitian beach while armed guards stood by (seriously). On any given day I could be tweeting about a lot of different things, but they’re all things that I care about and that reflect what I’m up to.

Where can I go for phenomenal inspiration? Yes, I did say not to spend money on any social media guru’s overpriced products if all you want is to figure out the nuts and bolts of Twitter. However, thanks to the goodness of Chris Guillebeau (who is getting quite a lot of mentions in this post!) and Gwen Bell, there is an alternative to the smarmy internet marketing products that clog the “so you want to be a social media superstar” airwaves.

They put together the Unconventional Guide to the Social Web. Gwen’s contribution is the beautifully written, “Yoga for the Social Web”. If you want inspiration about what it means to communicate through social media, I highly recommend. It’s practically poetry. (And Gwen, who co-owns a yoga studio in Japan and is the most un-guru social media superstar I know of, is one of our people. She gets it.)

Some of my fave Tweeps:

If you’re looking for people to follow here are some of my faves (and if you’re looking for me I’m @brookethomas):

@chrisguillebeau
@gwenbell
@lissaboles
@vanessascotto
@melissapierce
@pamslim
@soniasimone
@worldmegan
@jonathanfields
@markheartofbiz
@reese
@havi
@ittybiz
@hellohealth
@marcjohns
@judyofthewoods

As I’m going through the process of kicking off practice number three- it’s occurring to me that it would be useful to have a series of articles here on exactly how to get some of the nuts and bolts basics together as quickly, cheaply, and painlessly as possible. So here goes! Post number one in the series: getting the website done.

I rant from time to time about how important it is for wellness providers to get their website up- so I think you’ve heard it all before (short version: do it already! It’s really freaking important if you want to pay your bills and not collapse in a pool of self-loathing, brought on by watching tumbleweeds blow across your office!). So here’s a little breakdown of exactly how to get your site up:

Stuff you’ll need:

• Planning: This part can somehow be so easily blown off, but nothing happens well, or often at all, without some planning. The most painless way to do this is to decide what your needs are for features- will you simply need pages that answer questions about your practice, as in a traditional brochure type website, or will you also need some more bells and whistles like a blog, or a forum where you can communicate more effectively with your clients? Once you have an idea about what the scope of your project is, find three websites that are similar to what you’d want and write out a critique of them. What do you love about them- both in terms of design, tone, and functionality? Use these points to craft your website. It’s so much easier to pull from something that already exists (and that you love) than to start with the blank canvas.
• Domain name: You will need to grab yourself a domain name- that being the name of your website. I’ve outlined my strategy for picking one here. The short version is that I prefer to keep it simple, and get the name of your location and the name of what you do in the title (i.e. www.newhavenrolfing.com). I hear both Network Solutions and Netfirms are good for buying domains. I’ve used Go Daddy in the past, but have decided that they blow.
• Design: I rant about this one a lot too (geez! so cranky!)  so feel free to take a gander at this post for more in-depth information, but the short version is that you want to make sure your site isn’t looking- how do I put this gently- like crap. Design is super duper important to a client choosing you over someone else- so either invest in working with a designer for logo design, or just use my most favoristist site building tool, Squarespace (or both, which is what I did for New Haven Rolfing). You can get some good logo design on Crowdspring or Elance. My go to girls for amazing design work are Nette and Reese(they’re not a dynamic duo as they have two separate businesses, but if they were a dynamic duo they could probably take over the world. And what a design savvy world it would be).  
• Great copy: I wrote a full post on exactly how to do this, so I suggest wandering over to my I Am Not a Robot post. The short version: be yourself, be yourself, be yourself. People are deciding to work with you (or not) based almost entirely on who you are and if they feel they resonate with you. Fancy initials after your name can help, but the rest of the writing on the site should come from your heart about your particular passion for your work and how you practice. Also have a team of proof-readers, and be sure to choose them on who you know will tell you the truth. Having one or two people on the team (thanks mom) who will compliment every decision you make doesn’t hurt either.
• A way to get building: My favoritist tool for building a beautiful site quickly and easily is Squarespace. This is, by far, the cheapest and least painless way to go that I’ve found. I’m talking two hours (that’s the amount of time it took me including my bumbling around figuring out how to use it for the first time) to get a site up and $14/month. Not to mention that their templates are gorgeous, so some of the design burden is lifted from your shoulders. Kind of amazing really. Wordpress is also fantastic and pretty user friendly if you want to go the DIY route. If instead you decide you want to hire someone to build your site for you, I can highly recommend Technology Therapy who built this site. Keep in mind that hiring a tech team is usually best reserved for larger and more in depth projects as that’s where their expertise really shines, and where the price tag becomes worth it.  

And that’s it! That wasn’t so bad, right? It’s a pretty short list and with the new fabulous tools out there, you can honestly get a site up in a surprisingly short amount of time.

One last tip for avoiding the inevitable overwhelm that creeps up when taking on a new project and a new learning curve: start small. If you’re wondering if you need a forum, or a sign up for a newsletter, or whatever other extra you can imagine- my advice is to start small. It’s better to have a basic site up than a mass of un-used ideas. You can always evolve a site later. On the web, nothing is set in stone.

Let me know how it goes! If you’re getting your site up for the first time, or re-doing an existing site, I’d love to see them! And if you have other tools you love, I’m always happy to hear about them- so feel free to post them in the comments section.