I’m a big fan of growing your practice in a way that’s a fit with your personality. One of my core passions is that we should get rid of our imagined unpleasant practice building activities and ask ourselves to get a wee bit more creative. If you hate public speaking couldn’t you start a blog? If you hate dropping cash on some ad, couldn’t you introduce yourself to your community in other ways?That said, I got on my “you don’t have to do the practice building activities you hate” soapbox after a couple of disastrous attempts that I made very early in my first practice.

Hilarious “What the hell were you thinking” story # 1:

Enter Brooke’s deluded internal voice:
“Hey Brooke, I know you detest public speaking and you get all freaked out and deer in headlight-y even at the thought of it, but why don’t you go on down to that meeting of local chiropractors (none of whom you’ve ever met) and give a talk on just how great Rolfing is? You know, because you get nervous and shy in front of groups of people you’ve never met and you’re a new grad whose ability to talk clearly about the benefits of Rolfing is still working itself out? Doesn’t that sound great?”

And here’s how it turned out:
A group of men who’ve all been in practice for, and known one another for, eons meet up and are sharing that warm familiarity that this kind of history brings with it. Everyone is asking after everyone else’s kids, inside jokes abound, you get the idea.

I show up, the 25 year old woman who’s just moved to town and recently graduated from The Rolf Institute and I timidly (barely) introduce myself to the group.

After they all get seated and their friendly banter dies down, I clear my throat, flush bright purple, begin shaking and sweating, and squeak out a few words about Rolfing. I can’t remember for the life of me what I actually said, but I can assure you the gist went something like this, “Rolfing is really great. And it probably is beneficial alongside chiropractic. And I like it. You should too probably. I just moved here and I don’t know anyone and I don’t have any clients and I’m dyin’ out here guys so if you could please make some clients magically appear on my doorstep I’d be really grateful. They’d be sure to ask you why you sent them to this weird nervous girl, but still, it would help me to eat this month. Thanks.”

I wish I could track down one of those guys so that they could attest to the fact that I am in no way, shape, or form exaggerating here. It was that bad. But I can’t track them down because, bizarrely, none of them ever referred to me or spoke with me again.

Hilarious “What the hell were you thinking story” # 2:

Enter Brooke’s deluded internal voice:
“Hey Brooke, I know that chiropractic talk was awful, but this time one of your clients actually invited you to this gathering of local people/political fundraiser type-deal. Sure you’ve never met any of them before and you still get nervous surrounded by strangers and that whole debilitating shyness thing takes over, but I’m sure this time it’s gonna be great! These people are going to be so psyched that you showed up with so many business cards to hand out!”

And here’s how it turned out:
I do get some points for progress because at least I wasn’t giving a presentation on Rolfing. But I was there to talk it up, so I timidly mentioned to everyone that I met that I had a new Rolfing practice in town. That is, until the saucy lady with the dramatic gestures heard the word “Rolfing” from across the room and started yelling towards me, “Rolfing! Rolfing! Oh my God!” (This was not in a delighted or happy tone. Her tone skewed more towards horrified.)

You haven’t met this lovely party-goer before, so you don’t know just how commanding and over the top her gestures are. So I’ll tell you this, she now had the attention of literally everyone there, and they were all forming a circle around her. Once she had everyone’s full attention she then began telling them exactly what Rolfing was all about: “It’s like you’re a chicken being de-boned! It’s awful! It’s practically abuse. Horrible! Horrible!”

Now folks, first off, um this is not true. But Rolfing has this old school reputation for being intense (we’ve evolved, seriously) so by now I’m used to the occasional outburst like this (but no where nearing the fevered pitch of this one). These days when the Rolfing-is-so-painful storyline comes up I can laugh with them, talk about it, and soon everyone is giggling and at ease.

But back then? No. I was super sensitive and terrible at rolling with this kind of thing.

She polished me off by asking me what I was thinking moving from Boston to open a practice in Sonoma- implying with very little subtlety that Sonoma didn’t take kindly to outsiders on their turf.

I drove home crying. Good times.

Ok, so I have good reason to preach about taking on practice building activities that feel like a fit for you. That one was learned in the fire.

However, sometimes it’s worth expanding the old comfort zone a little. Sorta a good tip for life in general, I think. It’s been many, many years since those experiences and I recently found myself actually considering teaching a workshop at my favorite local yoga studio.

The problem is, when I sat down to think about what I’d be saying to all the people who would show up for it, I drew a blank. Rolfing is experiential, yet I couldn’t exactly tell a room full of 30 people that they’d each get a session in the 2 hour workshop.

I finally hit on a compromise that allowed me to get in front of a room of people again, but to do it from my strength- i.e. introducing people to my hands and my quality of touch, not some blah, blah, blah about why they should want to pay me for Rolfing.

My dear friend Ellen Lenson teaches an amazing restorative yoga class, and one bonus of restorative (among its many) is that people are in supported, passive poses for long periods of time. Just the kind of thing that’s perfect for a little touch!

I asked Ellen if I could assist her in her class by giving her students a little hands-on work in their poses and she was game. So last Wednesday I got in front of a room full of 30 people and introduced myself as the new Rolfer in town for the first time since the two California debacles (it only took 9 years, but whatever…)

And it was great! Just a short little “this is who I am and why I’m here” intro and then I got to connect with people in the best way I know how- by working on them. The result was that I gave out all the business cards that I brought (they were requested, not foisted upon people), I have one new client who has already come in, and had a lot of really lovely and thoughtful conversations about Rolfing with some of the students after the class.

I’ll be there every Wednesday now, challenging my “stand up in front of a group” fears, and easing in to some new practice building skills.

What could you do to widen the comfort zone circle a bit?

Tags: networking, practice building, public speaking, yoga

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 11:19 am and is filed under For When You Feel Like You Can't Keep On Keeping On, Practice Building in the Tangible World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.