When you need more clients, explore the things you can do easily without feeling like you have to become someone else. Add some things you’re not so good at yet, and keep adding to your skill set.
Sometimes, when you need more clients, you overlook obvious things:
–>things you already know you should do, or
–>things that you imagine would be effective, if only you knew you should include them…
–>and of course, the things that could be effective, if only you knew how to get them done!
It came home to me at a workshop about filling events… two days of nitty-gritty information on how to get people to come to your Feldenkrais® workshop, your Intro Evening, your book launch party, your training program, your teleseminar, your birthday party — whatever.
One of the things that really struck me is how much filling events is like a Feldenkrais® practice — and especially how much it brings out that everything I do is written in my own handwriting.
For example, an awful lot of filling an event is stuff I know, and don’t do on a regular basis. And it’s not just that I know TO do it — I also know HOW to do it. And yet — somehow, I don’t. Why not?
–>Well, sometimes I forget.
–>Sometimes I don’t want to.
–>Sometimes I think it won’t matter.
–>Sometimes I’m tired of it.
Remember earlier in this series — when I mentioned that Moshe told us that our clients don’t become someone else just because they walk through the door? Well, that means that I’m going to approach filling my events as the same person I am all the rest of the time.
There are lots of ways to let people know about what I’m doing — blog, email, phone, social media, mobile marketing, interviews, videos, print and radio advertising are just a few! Some may be in my repertoire already. Some may be new. Some may be easier to try than others. Some may be more effective with the people I want to find. Nevertheless, my success depends on my handwriting, my level of awareness and my willingness to do something new.
If I don’t see myself as a networker, I won’t even put networking on my list of things to think about in getting ready for an event. If I don’t have a blog already, I’m not likely to create one in order to advertise a workshop. If I see myself as disorganized or forgetful, it may be the last minute before I even see that I need to DO SOMETHING to get people to come!
Filling events is a behavior, just like any other one you might work with in your practice. If you don’t have the success you want, the remedy is to do exactly what you would tell your clients they need to do — look for the things you’re missing, get the help you need, and consistently include the new ways of acting in your life.
Amazing, isn’t it, how much the work we do is such wonderful preparation for everything we need to do to get the clients we want to do that work with!?? What parallels do you notice between what you do in your practice and getting clients or filling an event?
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“What we are doing here is organizing ourselves. We can make that organization good now, so that if you had to face a problem suddenly, you would be able to negotiate it.” — Moshe Feldenkrais, in The Master Moves, p. 88
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