If you’ve been following my 90-Day Video Challenge, you know that I have a really BIG purpose! My desire to connect people who need help with the practitioners who can help them has pushed me to new places, seeking new connections. I couldn’t do that before I brought what was going on inside my head into alignment with my purpose.
I had to search my soul, deal with my gremlins, learn new skills, challenge my fears… in short… get all of myself on the same track.
It’s like Moshe Feldenkrais’s example of not being able to open the hand and close it at the same time. Making the muscles work that way doesn’t get us what we want, because it essentially creates paralysis — and causes a lot of pain, too![Tweet “You can’t open and close your hand at the same time – get into alignment to build your practice.”]
Here are some things to think about, if you want to get more clients and help more people in your practice…
1. Discover what makes you really want to help people
When you’re aware of what that is, it’s easy to make it your central motivation. That’ll ramp up your level of excitement and make you more attractive to clients!
You don’t have to apologize for being passionate about wanting to help people… your clients love that about you! Nobody wants to work with a person who doesn’t really care about them, so it’s excellent if you can bring your caring, your passion and your compassion to the fore! Then your current clients and the ones who haven’t met you yet can feel your desire to make a difference in their lives!
2. Be honest
No one has all the answers, and nobody likes people who pretend they do. Nor is anyone perfect, and people run in the other directions when they’re around people who are pretending they don’t see their imperfection — or worse, really don’t see it at all!
We all need to be working on ourselves in order to keep growing in our practices, our understanding, our skill and our confidence. There’s nothing wrong with doing it, and there’s nothing wrong with admitting it.
Try it — I’ll bet you’ll find that your students will appreciate your honesty about what you don’t know! They’ll grow from your example, and your practice will flourish because of your openness.
3. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel
It’s not necessary to figure everything out on your own – you just need to hook up with the information that’s already out there. Find the program that fits your need, the mentor who speaks to you, the Study Buddy who celebrates your successes as if they were her own.
The sooner you take advantage of what other people know and the mistakes they’ve made, the sooner you’ll have the practice you want – the one that allows you to help as many people as you can.
4. Get comfortable with actually earning a living
I’ve talked to a LOT of practitioners who have a mindset about money that gets in the way of earning enough to live on. If you’re one of them, you’re sabotaging your efforts to build your practice, without knowing that you’re doing it! And you won’t grow your practice until you grow out of that mindset.
5. Align your heart-based practice with heart-based business practices
Business doesn’t have to be sleazy! If you work for yourself, as most practitioners and movement educators do, you can’t afford to ignore the business side of your practice — that’s just shooting yourself in the foot!
“Business” doesn’t inherently have to make you feel bad! And it isn’t just “busy-ness,” either. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re taking care of business, when you’re just busy. Find a mentor who can help you be successful as a heart-based business-person, and you’ll find yourself and your practice growing in more ways than one!
6. Raise your standards: charge at least what you’re worth
When you consistently cut your rates to get new clients, you send messages you don’t intend… you tell people that you’re desperate… you don’t value the work you do… you think they can’t afford it… you don’t care about their level of commitment to their own growth and change.
Charging what you’re worth doesn’t mean you can’t ever give someone a special rate… but it does mean that you make a conscious choice in a certain set of circumstances rather than caving in as soon as you see that someone wavers on hearing your price.
7. Help another practitioner
You don’t have to be trainer to help your colleagues!
Encouragement, friendship, sharing your questions, answers and successes all contribute to the collegiality most of us long for and don’t know how to get. Working together increases the visibility and the quality of everyone’s work. You don’t have to wait for an invitation from me or anyone else with “more experience.” Go after what you want and get it for yourself!
Pick one and get started!
Don’t let this list become overwhelming because that turns into an excuse for doing nothing! Pick one thing and get started… when it’s going well, choose another. When your growth as a practitioner is incremental, it will feel easy!
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I blog to help you think about your practice and how to make it better. If you need more clients, subscribe to my newsletter so you can get tips and help from me in your inbox twice a month, as well as information on growing your practice from your strengths! Simply enter your name and email below to get started.
