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.”

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