Many of you have been graciously asking me lately where this book of mine  (Practice Abundance: The Marketing-Phobe’s Guide to Building a Thriving, Heart-Based Wellness Practice) is and when it will hit the shelves. First of all, many thank yous for your interest and for reaching out.

Ah, the book. The short answer is that I don’t know when it will officially be ready, though I hope to release it in some way by late summer.

The long answer is that I really shouldn’t even say anything that resembles a tangible timeline (like, for example, typing the words late summer) because the process of birthing this book has been far less predictable than I would like. Creative processes will do that sometimes.

Here’s what I can tell you: The manuscript was completed and edited many months ago and that’s when I began opening my big mouth in the first place. I figured, hey, if it’s written and edited then it’s ready to go, right? Unfortunately, everytime I got close to shipping the thing off to the printer, my inner voice kept nagging at me, “not yet.” Argh! That dang inner voice. But what are you going to do? When the inner voice keeps saying the same thing, you listen. So I slowed down, started interviewing other practitioners to gather their stories, pulled together a free ebook from bits and pieces of the manuscript, began writing this blog, and, most recently, began the process of starting another practice from scratch. Collectively these things have informed the direction of Practice Abundance a great deal. In the spirit of making it a stronger piece, I’ve been re-editing it and I’m very grateful to have listened to that inner voice.

My hope for Practice Abundance is that it can spread far and wide and help as many wellness practitioners as possible to avoid the punishing experience I faced in my first three years of practice. My other overarching goal is and always will be that wellness, integrative medicine, holistic healthcare- call it what you like- can continue to gain momentum so that as many people as possible know that this whole world of options exists that can make their lives vastly more vibrant.

With those overarching goals in mind, I deeply want this book to be as useful and relevant as possible. I’m proud of my work and confident that it will deliver once it’s birthed into the world. I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

If you feel like you’re drowning out there and you don’t know how you’ll ever manage to pay your bills doing this thing you love so deeply, here’s what I can offer even if I don’t have a tangible book that you can hold in your hands:

The free ebook: My free ebook is (aaaaaah!) also in the process of being edited in the spirit of making something of very high quality, regardless of the $0 price tag. As I began editing it a few weeks ago, I admit it, I cringed. I feel like it is full of a lot of useful information, however it’s also cluttered and poorly edited. I’ll keep you posted on the release of the new and improved ebook, but in the meantime, please grab a copy here by clicking the ‘get the podclass now’ button. And yes, with the release of the new ebook it will be much easier to just grab the pdf from this site.

The “From Scratch” Chronicles: Right here on this handy dandy blog I’m chronicling my experiences (read: wipe outs and successes) in starting another practice from scratch. Subscribe to the blog by hitting the RSS button and you’ll be sure to catch all the updates. I’ve promised total honesty about the process, so there will be lots to learn from reading along.

Email me!: If you’re feeling lost at sea, please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask for help. Yes, I’m crazy busy these days, but I do want to hear from you and to be of service. The more specific you can be with your questions, the better I can help. You can find me at info [at] thewellpractice [dot] com (typed out to avoid evil spam bots…)

Thanks again for following along and for caring about my baby- I mean book- in the first place. Now go forth, keep the faith, and make that practice happen!

As you all may have read, I recently wrote a post that: A. Talked about why I’m out here writing this blog, and B. Gave me a shot to win a free ticket to the Social Media Success Summit which was offered by the very kind Chris Garrett.

Well folks, I did not win the aforementioned ticket. Sigh. I did get a shout out on Chris’s post when he announced the winner- which has got me feeling pretty good. It’s nice to feel like my story resonated. The good news is that the gracious winner, Charles of Wordful, has offered the additional free ticket to someone who can answer these questions for him. Yay! Here you go Charles:

1. What’s your single greatest challenge with blogging?

Writing is one of those activities for me where, as Chris Garrett said in a recent post, “Time seems to distort, my brain turns to sweet mush, and the words just arrive on screen.” Writing this blog is a great joy where I’ve finally found the marriage between my love for writing, and my long-time passion that there needs to be a bigger spotlight for the wild world of wellness; And that if we’re ever going to reach a tipping point where people line up at their local wellness center like they do at Starbucks, then practitioners are going to need some tools to thrive in their practices (and avoid experiencing what my first three years in practice were like). I’ve got the love, I’ve got the passion, and I’ve got the why.

What I don’t have is a very good social media strategy for how to get this blog to reach its tipping point. I’ve spent the last few years learning a lot about marketing. However, almost a year ago I decided to intentionally boycott all the classes and strategies. I started to feel the potential to become one of those people who is endlessly taking classes while postponing the doing of the thing. I decided that instead, I’d do the thing and strategize later. I knew this wouldn’t get my blog on the home page of Digg, but I wanted to take a step back. The result is that I’ve gotten boatloads of clarity about what marketing means to me, namely that all marketing actions can be heart-based, transparent, and rooted in integrity. However, I’m just emerging from my ‘no more classes’ hibernation, and I’m ready to take my own advice: No matter how wonderful you are at what you do, if you can’t connect it to the people who need what you have to offer, there’s no point. It’s time to be more conscious about connecting the thing to the people.

2. How will the Social Media Success Summit help you with that challenge?

That said, the Social Media Success Summit would be a wonderful way for me to emerge from hibernation by diving deeply into the Summit, and coming out with the best possible plan to take the blog from being a blip, to being of service. I know there are a boatload of things I need to do to get this blog on the radar, and hopping into the Summit would allow me focused time and education on how best to get it happening. I’ve greatly admired many of the teachers who will be presenting at the summit, and I would be honored and delighted to learn from them.

3. How do you envision your success online?

I decided a while back that I have no interest in being a guru. My intent with this blog, my book, whatever it is I do isn’t to build a platform so that I can demand exorbitant fees for speaking gigs. I don’t have all the answers and I never will, but what I do have is a natural love for connecting people to resources. Nothing makes me happier than seeing people thrive. My marker of success will be when I start hearing from large numbers of people that my work here helped them to grow thriving wellness practices with less of the pain we helper types normally go through with this process. I’d been over-the-moon-happy if this blog could grow/help a readership large enough that wellness schools need to sit up and take notice and- gasp!- give us the tools we need to succeed in our practices as a part of our educations. Until schools give us a bonafide education in more than just our modalities of choice (hello! We’re small business owners too!) there won’t be any Starbucks-esque lines outside local wellness centers.

As many of you have read, I’m starting from scratch again. I’ve hit my first hurdle: *Licensure. Argh! The legal minutiae! However, it’s important to have all those i’s dotted and t’s crossed. In Connecticut I have to take the NCBTMB exam. Because my two previous practices were in states that didn’t require national certification, I never took it. That’s right folks, I have to study for a test nine years post graduation and I have to fess up about it since I promised total transparency in my practice building process. Yikes, I sure hope I pass or it’ll be really embarrassing. I’ve spent the last 9 years unlearning academia terms in favor of finding words that can be easily understood by my clients (dorsiflex your foot, or flex your foot towards your head- hmmm, what’s clearer?), so I have to hit the books. It looks like the whole process will take four to six weeks, which means that I won’t be kicking off my practice for a while.

So what’s a girl in licensure limbo to do? While trying to jog my memory to recall the names of all twenty-six bones of the foot (twenty-eight with sesamoids!), I’ll be busily getting cozy with my community of fellow wellness providers here in New Haven. When you’re unable to charge for your services, it’s a great time to set up trades, give free work away, and just generally get to know those who need to know you exist.

Seek out the wellness rock stars in your community by showing up where they are (hello yoga studio!), and listening carefully to whose name keeps coming up. Likewise, if someone is telling their amazing story of their practitioner, make a mental note. Local papers can also be helpful, but I tend to look more for articles than ads. “Best of” editions usually come out annually and they can be a great way to see who is getting acknowledged for their work in your town.

Trust me, once you connect to one person, the floodgates will open and you’ll have a long list of names that will give you a pretty good idea of who’s rocking it in your town. I showed up to one yoga class, met an amazing instructor, and things have snowballed from there. I’ve already connected with some really wonderful people and I feel super enthusiastic about all the juicy wellness stuff going on here. As a result of my current trades and giveaways, I already have my go to Pilates teacher, nutritionist, personal trainer, massage therapist, and yoga studio. I’ve also just met an amazing group of midwives and Ob/Gyn’s and am soon to connect with a chiropractor, and an acupuncturist and naturopath. There are so many people doing amazing work- it’s in your best interest to find out who they are in your community and then- please!- think of them and treat them as colleagues, not as competitors. I’ll be gladly sending business to all of these people once I’m up and running.

Forming these relationships with fellow practitioners is a practice building essential. To make it a success for yourself, here’s my list of ‘Do-s’, ‘Don’t-s’ and a ‘Why Bother’ for how best to connect:

Do:

• Get to know them before you introduce yourself

We live in a digital world. This is easily done. A little Googling is all you need to get a sense of who they are, what their practice is all about, what they’re interested in and value. Once you’ve gotten input from the great Google, dive in! Read their website and bio, if they have a blog or newsletter read it and subscribe. Follow the digital breadcrumbs and really get a feel for who they are. This should be enough to get a sense of if and how you want to reach out to them.

For example, when I first found Sarah (who is an amazing Pilates teacher) her blog mentioned that she’d be heading to San Francisco to do a Pink Ribbon Program. In my first email to her, I acknowledged this and told her I thought it was a wonderful thing to be a part of. It was a simple thing to do, and I wasn’t blowing smoke up her ass. Sarah and I have since become fast friends and I’ve rediscovered my love for Pilates. Don’t miss out on great relationships by being too shy (or lazy) to make a relevant first connection.

• Ask yourself the question: “what can I do for them?”

This is my prime piece of advice in developing networking relationships. Just take this one thing to heart, and you’ll do beautifully. Because we’re out there networking we usually approach people because we hope they’ll do something for us, namely send us clients. If the true question in your mind is, “what can I do for them so they’ll do something for me?” it will turn people off and send them running. Everyone can smell an ‘I’ll scratch your back’ vibe coming a mile away and it’s, well, gross.

• Follow through with what you can do for them

The answer to that question will take a myriad of forms depending on who it is you’re approaching. This means that you have to follow rule number one and get to know them a bit before contacting them. Once you have met, you’ll surely come across other things in conversation that you can do for them. Finding these things simply requires staying tuned in.

Two quick examples: I met Sabrina, the nutritionist, and she was talking about how she recommends to her clients that they keep food journals. I happened to have discovered Gyminee recently, which is a great free tool for food and fitness logging- so I passed that on. Jason, the massage therapist, mentioned how frustrated he was with the stool he used in his office, because he couldn’t adjust the height. I happen to know about Rolfing benches that adjust to different heights, so I passed that on. Are these mind-blowing contributions to their lives? No. But doing this kind of thing demonstrates that I want to be a helpful resource, rather than a leech.

• Continually follow through on what you can do for them

Stay in touch without becoming a stalker. If they have something that is continually updated, whether it’s a blog, a Facebook profile, or they’re on Twitter, stay up to date. If three months from now they Tweet that they’re thinking about doing a renovation of their wellness center, send them the info on that great contractor you know. You get the idea…

• Let go of all attachments to getting something from them

Seriously. They don’t owe you- just be a resource out of the desire to contribute and leave it at that. Connect with wonderful people who are doing amazing work and then treat them well. That’s all. Build a relationship, and the rest will follow.

Don’t:

• Blanket your town’s healthcare offices with a form letter

Please, please, don’t send a form letter introducing yourself to every wellness provider, doctor, and physical therapist in your town and just blanket the area with the same stale letter. In a day and age when you can make a relevant connection to someone by spending a little time Googling, form letters are insulting junk mail to the person who receives it and it’s a waste of time and paper.

• Ask for anything in your first meeting

Re-read the “What can I do for them?” bullet point above.

• Ever ask for them to refer to you

Nope. Never, never, ever. If someone wants to refer to you, that will happen naturally. If someone doesn’t want to refer to you (or doesn’t have the opportunity) then they won’t and that’s ok. Really. Re-read the “let go of all attachments” bullet point above.

Why bother:

Why bother spending all your time on developing relationships with other practitioners when what you really need to be doing is developing relationships with clients!?! After all, we all have bills to pay here, right? Because, this is your connection to clients. Becoming a well regarded member of your town’s wellness community:

1. Puts you on people’s radars. Suddenly they’ll be hearing your name around town.

2. Establishes your credibility and authority.

3. Makes you the kind of person people want to refer to, without having to ask for it.

*side note: The licensure thing can be a drag if a state’s requirements are a total surprise to you. Depending on your modality, things can vary wildly from state to state. If you’re in school, be sure to sniff out what will be required in your state before you graduate. This should be talked about in class, but if they leave out this essential information, ask for it and/or approach the administration to find out where you need to look to get the info. If you’re already in practice and are moving, do your homework in advance of your move to see what will be needed. Your school’s member or alumni services office should be able to point you in the right direction. And there’s always Google.

So here’s the deal my fair readers- I was just about to sign myself up for a blog critique from the lovely Chris G, when he posted a contest to win the aforementioned critique, and a bunch of other fabulousness connected with the Social Media Success Summit. So this entry is to let you and Chris Garrett know why I want to nab the prize and bring back all the juicy info to you.

*Side note: It’s an amazing teacher line up and the delightful part is that you don’t have to travel- yahoo! Go forth and check it out- it’s a great opportunity to learn a boatload about social media. Without further ado- here’s my why me:

Before I found Rolfing, I was a sunk ship; A total wreck. Some of you know the whole story already, and for the sake of keeping the recap short, I can say simply that pre-Rolfing I was dealing with 22 years of chronic pain (I’d had a birth injury, not so fun), a jaw that was locked shut, doctors telling me I’d have to accept that I would be eating soft food for the rest of my life, and just general 92-year-old in a 22-year-old’s body unpleasantness.

Then I had the great good fortune to have my conventional medical doctor tell me that I had to get into meditation classes and someone’s bodywork office stat.

What!?! I’d had no idea that there were these other options. Because my wonky-ness had started with a birth injury, I’d had a lifetime of doctors generally scratching their heads at my chronic pain and other symptoms. But now there was this whole world of other options for getting well. Needless to say, after one session of Rolfing I knew my life had dramatically changed. I’ve been (mostly- I’m still human) pain-free and happily eating solid food for 12 years now.

But the thing that’s stuck with me most from my experience is this: why oh why didn’t I f@#*ing know that there was this whole world of other options sooner. Since my Rolfing hallelujah experience, I’ve been equally delighted with the discovery of many other genius modalities- homeopathy, Shiatsu, acupuncture, yoga, Gyrotonic- I could go on since I’m a wellness junkie… But each time I go back to that same initial reaction: more people need to know this exists.

The trouble is, there’s an art to letting the world know that something exists, and we wellness providers are trained only to be technicians. Then we’re pushed out into the world where we’re asked to be small business owners and tribe leaders. And yet, our schools give us little to no (or worse, incorrect) information on how to spread the word and sustain ourselves. 50% of acupuncturists are no longer in practice at the 5 year mark. The average career span of a massage therapist is 18 months. Are we flakes? Dim bulbs? No. We’re missing the foundational element that allows us to share our skills.

These days, I find myself in the incredibly happy position to be acting as a translator between the marketing world and the wellness world. I’ve fallen deeply in love with both for the same reason: you can change people’s lives.

While the word marketing often gives people an icky vibe in the wellness world (we need a new word!)- when its powers are used for good and not evil you can spread the ideas that matter; The ones that can change the world. We’re at an incredibly exciting time in history where suddenly it’s no longer the mega-corporations who have the only access to marketing platforms. It’s not a ‘who has the most dollars wins’ game anymore. Technology is rapidly evolving and gives every individual equal opportunity to create their own platform and spread their own ideas. The Social Media Success Summit is exactly the place where we can all learn how to use the tools that are at our fingertips, just waiting to be put to use for the higher good. I get goose bumps every time I think of what this means for the world- we’re on the cusp of some serious big-ness here.

This blog is my way to do my part to make sure that more people know these options in healing exist. For people to hear about them- wellness providers need to have thriving practices. Winning the grand prize for the Social Media Success Summit would fuel my passion and expand my toolkit so that I can help more of my wellness peeps get out there and connect to the people who need them. And for all of you blog readers out there who are working to grow your practice- get thee to the Summit- and enter this same contest to win for yourself!

Those of you familiar with my bio know that I was a Rolfing practitioner from 2000 to 2008, and that these days most of my time is spent raising my sweet boy and writing about my own adventures in practice building. My practices- in Napa and Sonoma, CA and in Brooklyn, NY- were built from scratch having moved to both of these cities without contacts, clients, or office space (or savings or trust fund- so I couldn’t afford to dawdle). It was the old throw a dart at a map, show up, and make it work routine. By throwing myself into the fire this way I learned a tremendous amount about practice building and even fell in love with it. My practice building experiences are the inspiration that led me to start this blog and to write my book.

But here’s the thing: what that means is that the last practice I started from scratch was in Brooklyn in 2004. The world has changed A LOT since 2004. There are huge upsides, thanks mainly to technology: Yelp! Wordpress! Zazzle! And one downside of note: the punishing economy. It’s occuring to me that to kick back and reflect from the perspective of the good ‘ol days is not the most authentic way to write this blog or to publish my book. I need to be out there with all ya’ll making it happen.

That brings me to the experiment: I just so happen to have moved to another new city where I don’t know anyone who isn’t family: New Haven, CT. I’m going to kick off a brand spanking new practice and write here about what exactly I do that both does and doesn’t work for me. Think of me as your very own guinea pig and read along to avoid my mistakes and copy my successes. I have the benefit of knowing how to grow a practice quickly, but the knowledge I’ve gained is my only upside. Everything else is starting from step one: I need office space, a website, business cards, and all the other uber important things that will get the word out about why the good people of New Haven should invest in Rolfing in a down economy.

Follow along with the blog posts and we’ll learn together! Click the shiny RSS button and subscribe so you don’t miss any of the ups and downs- I’ll be posting twice a week.

*side note: I just read The Think Big Manifesto and my brain was exploding with great ideas through the whole thing. It’s a good read if you’re interested in making a big impact by way of being totally authentic. Gotta love that.

I spend a lot of time talking with wellness providers of all different modalities about practice building. More often than not, I’m giving one core piece of advice over and over: “take action!” It gets more finessed than that- how to work from their strengths, how to connect with the why of their practice to fuel their desire to bother with practice building- but at the end of the day, ya gotta take action on all the handy tips and tricks or nothing will change.

However, the other evening I had the opportunity to talk with a lovely Pilates teacher who just opened her  studio this past January and she got me thinking: hmmm, sometimes “take action!” is the absolute LAST thing someone needs to hear.

This lovely and talented Pilates teacher has been kicking ass and taking names since she set up shop, and from where I’m sitting, she’s doing an amazing job. In a really tough economy she’s started a new business and she’s got lots of great clients coming through the door. She’s not at her maximum capacity, mind you, but she’s doing great. Light years better than I was in my first few months of my first practice. Truly. Light years.

So what burning question did this wonderful woman have for me as we sat across from one another over some mighty tasty Indian food? She wanted to know if it was at all reasonable that she might like to take one day off per week, and at what point (i.e. how many years down the road) might it be okay to start doing that.

Aaaargh! I had to resist the simultaneous urges to hug her and tell her that her Pilates studio is going to rock, and to grab her appointment book out of her bag and put large black marks through two days of each week.

So here’s the deal- if you are running around like your head is on fire trying to get clients through the door please, stop. You absolutely, positively, need to set up your business in a way that is supportive of your own sanity (side note: the running around like your head is on fire approach to practice building is also felt by your clients as desperation. Desperation is uber repellent- so cooling it will dial down the desperation vibe and establish you with more authority in your client’s minds. It’s a win-win). If you work like this for too long you’ll burn yourself out and before you know it you’re sitting in a cubicle somewhere complaining about that time you tried to be a Pilates teacher, massage therapist, acupuncturist- whatever. At this point, you’re no good to anyone.

Trust me, self-care is and has been my weak point in my own practice. I’ve learned the hard way (I feel your pain my fellow overachievers!) The first year that things started to come together for me I felt like it was crazy to say no to any request. A session at 10 pm, no problem. Squeezing in an extra day of work when I’d sworn it would be my day off, why of course! I worked like a dog for a solid year and I made a boatload of money. But I was shredded. The next year I decided to get super clear about what felt like a healthy practice for me. The result is that I now know that maximum capacity for me is 4 clients per day, 3 days per week. That’s it! The rest of my work time is spent on all the minutae we always forget about- scheduling, bookkeeping, and- oh yeah- that big ol’ job of practice building. At this pace I’m happy, my clients are happy, and things hum along beautifully. The result was that, yes, I did sometimes have a waiting list for people to see me, and yes, I did sacrifice some income. Honestly though, it wasn’t enough of a bummer on either end. Once you have a waiting list your clients elevate you to super-genius standing in their minds so that has its clear upside. As for income- I went from about $86,000 to about $67,000. $19,000 is no small number- but I didn’t even feel it. I paid significantly less in taxes- so it didn’t feel at all like a $19,000 loss- and most importantly I had a practice that was sustainable over the long haul.  

If you’re working like a dog- slow down! Please remember that one of your most important jobs is self-care. When you approach growing your practice, think of working economically and put clear boundaries on your time. The Pilates teacher who got me thinking on this said that she felt like she couldn’t say no to anything. I’d like to amend that by saying you can’t afford to say yes to everything. What you can’t say no to is the stuff that really counts. If someone approaches you to be a part of a thriving networking group; say yes. If a local tv channel calls to feature you on their fitness segment; say yes. If the gym that pays $10 per class calls and you know the class will be sparsely attended; say no. Be thoughtful about what is in alignment with your goals for your practice and your life. If something comes along that doesn’t support that- say no!

Now go breathe deeply, take out your appointment book, and mark down your days on and your days OFF.