If you already have a website- bravo! For those of you that don’t either because you’re just getting your practice started or because you don’t want to commit to the expense I have to tell you- it’s a priority. 90% (at least!) of my business came through my website. Even at the stage when word of mouth was almost totally sustaining me, people visited the website before they decided to give me a call.

A website is truly your virtual self. It’s where people can form that first contact in their relationship with you. Remember, our fields require a great deal of intimacy and trust- no one is going to want to schedule without some indicator that they can trust you. A website is a great way to ‘put yourself out there’.

Fortunately there are several ways to go about a website. I can and will devote several future teleseminars and blog posts on getting your website right (and I have some stellar guests lined up who are experts on web marketing and website building, so stay tuned). However, since this bundle of blog posts is specifically dealing with growing your business in tight times, I’m going to focus on how to get a web presence up cheaply. For those of you who already have a website, read on, both of these free options can also significantly grow the impact of your current web presence.

First up- how do you do it easily, quickly and for free? It’s not only possible, it can be a good way to go. If you want to get a site up in a few minutes for free (with almost no learning curve), there are two good options: Blogger and Squidoo.

BLOGGER
Blogger, obviously, is a blogging application. However, because it’s so easy to use and FREE- did I mention free- a lot of people are adapting it for use for a basic website. (One site to check out for a template on how to do this well is Kumquat Cupcakery. It has nothing to do with wellness, I admit, but I have a major sugar tooth and am a fan of these cupcakes, so I discovered their blog meets website.)

On blogger you’ll have an opportunity to fill the right margin with all the brochure type info you want- contact info, about acupuncture or reiki or pilates or whatever, etc. The extra bonus of using blogger for your brochure website, is that you can, obviously, have blog posts as well. These are going to be the biggest business building piece of a blog web presence. With your posts, potential clients get a chance to get a feel for your voice and personality. Remember the bit about intimacy and trust- your blog posts will establish you as an expert and will flesh out your “virtual self”. If people feel like they can get to know you through your posts, you’ll greatly increase your success in attracting clients. Another plus is that the search engines love blogs. If you have a blog that you’re posting to regularly (I recommend at least once a week) you’ll come up higher in the search results when someone types in something that’s a match for what you do.

In short- if you want to get a web presence going in 5 minutes for free- give Blogger a shot. If you already have a website, it’s a good idea to also get a blog up for the benefit of increasing your communication with potential clients, and giving them an opportunity to better get to know you through your posts. It’ll also increase traffic to your current site.

SQUIDOO
Squidoo is the other free and easy website alternative. Squidoo was started by one of my (and most people’s) marketing heros, Seth Godin, and the man is a master communicator. Because of this the Squidoo site is chock full of everything you could possibly need to know about getting started.

The gist is that on Squidoo you build what they call a lens on any subject- for example Jane Doe’s Shiatsu Practice, or Acupuncture in Pheonix- whatever you want. The lens is then a collection of absolutely any info you want to impart on this subject. In addition to answering whatever questions you want about your practice (who you are, what your education is, etc) You can link to YouTube videos, Amazon books, blog posts, whatever. Lots of people use Squidoo to build a page about themselves and what they do- so it can be a great website alternative.

The marketing pluses of using Squidoo are that search engines, again, love it as much as they love blogs. From a potential client’s perspective, again, it establishes you as an expert and someone they want to work with. If you’re a pilates teacher, for example, you can have links to your favorite pilates books and videos on Amazon. While this may seem like giving business away (i.e. they won’t hire me if they can buy a much cheaper video on Amazon) I’ve found that the contrary is true. We all know that videos absolutely don’t compare to working with an actual teacher. Plus this person is already on your lens- they’re seeking out something beyond the video stuff because they, likely, have already discovered that they won’t get the same thing from video instruction. I digress, but what I’m trying to say is that if you make it clear that your motivation is to be of assistance and you provide great content to people, your good karma will be repaid to you in new clients. Trust me. Anyway- back to what I was saying- Squidoo- same deal as Blogger- free, super user friendly, and fast. If you already have a website and want to get more traffic, I’d heartily recommend getting started on Squidoo as well.

CUSTOM SITES- CHEAPLY!
If you check out these options and you still want to go for a traditional website there are still some good options. If you are of the DIY mindset and want to give building your own site a go check out Dreamweaver- this is industry standard for building websites, but requires knowledge of html. Two simpler tools that don’t require html Coffeecup and NVU. Coffeecup has a free 30 day trial. NVU is completely free.

If you’re willing shell out some money to avoid what might be a steep learning curve (and there is a huge benefit to using your time where your strengths are- I’d never build a site because in the 6 months it’d take me to figure the whole thing out, it’d cost me as much money in lost income as it would have cost to have just hired someone in the first place) you can go to Elance and have people bid on your job. It’s a site full of freelancers who want to work for you. Because they’re competing with one another for jobs, you can usually get a really good price. The site is also tightly controlled for quality with ratings systems and with super secure payment. Elance is good stuff.

That’s a bundle of cheap and free website info- so go forth and put it to use!

Brooklyn- how sweet it is

This past Thursday I hosted my first in a series of free teleseminars. As some of you know, I ran into a snafu with my conference call hosting service and I was unable to record- dang! Since I don’t have recordings to send out- I figured I’d adapt the material into a series of blog posts. So without further ado… here’s some of what we chatted about in my “Beat Recession Depression” teleseminar.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I started my first practice in the bay area in California just as the dot com bubble went “pop”. Everyone was proclaiming the end of the internet and that our economy had been leveled. I was a brand spanking new Rolfing graduate in a brand spanking new town. I had moved there on an adventure move (hey, if you’re going to start a practice it might as well be in Napa, right?) and I didn’t know a soul. I also didn’t know a thing about how to build a practice. My naiveté and over optimism had carried me from Boston to Napa and when I got there I realized that I had my work cut out for me. Not at first, of course. But as weeks without a single client turned into months without a single client, I started to panic. What was my solution to this state of panic? Why, to rent an office of course! If I rented an office (I had planned on using an extra bedroom in my apartment) I’d surely seem like a professional. After all, I’d have an actual place to hang my shingle. Then the clients would start flowing, right? Um, no. Soon I was working (I kid you not) 4 part time jobs on top of trying to breathe life into my Rolfing practice.  It was a deeply exhausting and stressful time in my life and it’s been the inspiration for the work I do now to help out wellness providers. No one should have to scrape that hard to get by.

The thing about this situation was that I wasn’t stupid. Naïve, sure, but not stupid. I just had this crucial piece of my education missing. I had learned a skill in school, but virtually nothing about letting the world know that I now had said skill to offer. I had a house built on sand. The foundational element is and has to be knowing how to build your practice. Otherwise, you just have another hobby. And hobbies, entertaining and fulfilling as they can be, don’t pay the bills. They also don’t exist on a scale where people other than you can benefit from them. We all got into this work to help people, right? If we don’t know how to communicate with those people, they miss out too.

There is a happy ending to this story. As I neared the 3 year mark in Napa my practice started to show honest-to-goodness signs of life. Then came the hiccup. I was going to be moving again. Across the country (again) where I didn’t know anyone (again). Off to Brooklyn, NY I went. I was determined to have a different experience growing my practice in Brooklyn. I knew I couldn’t bear another 3 years full of a myriad of day jobs and far too many ramen noodles for dinner.

I arrived in Brooklyn with only one thing different- I was determined to figure out this whole marketing thing. (As an aside, let me say that I still prickle a bit at the “M” word. When I say “marketing” I don’t mean paying for slick ads or anything that resembles the slimy used car salesman. What I’ve come to learn over the years is that marketing is only about creating meaningful relationships with the people you want to serve. That’s all) The result of this one mental shift- and all the action it took to back it up- is that I had a full practice in Brooklyn 3 months after renting my office. I’d say that I had condensed 3 years into 3 months, but it’s even better then that. In 3 months in Brooklyn I was making triple my Napa income. Not too shabby. I learned a few things from this experience. First, intention backed up by action is a powerful thing. Second, there is no magic trick and it’s not about luck. Growing a successful practice is simply about knowing how to spread the word and get the word spread. It’s not rocket science, just simple know-how.