Give Yourself a Promotion

If you are a solopreneur, you probably have a pretty varied job description. Like any career-minded professional, you probably also have goals for the future; things you would like to accomplish and ways in which you would like to challenge yourself.

In the corporate world, there is a structure in place to encourage us to think about our professional development. If we excel, we are given new, more interesting responsibilities, and more money. When that happens, some of our lesser responsibilities are taken on by other people, so we have time to address our new tasks. When this happens, it’s called a promotion.

While we solopreneurs may have goals for professional growth and development, there is no structure in place to help us get there.

Certainly, if we excel, our business grows and we make more money. That part of promotion happens naturally.

The task-advancement aspect of promotion only happens for solopreneurs if we make it happen.

We can only try new things if we make it happen. We can only make time for new things if we relinquish the tasks that no longer serve our goals.

This can be a very difficult thing to do. To stop teaching a class because you need the time to write a book, for instance, can be a tough decision. To stop working street fairs because your time is better spent elsewhere may require a whole new business plan.

Solopreneurs are like sharks. If we don’t keep swimming, we’ll die.

We must constantly update our skills, offer new products and adapt to changing technology. We also need to be our own HR department, and our own supervision.

When you have your own business, if you are not moving up quickly enough, it’s because you forgot to give yourself a promotion!

Three Heinous Marketing Mistakes Made by Healers, Part Three

This is the third and final installment in my series about marketing mistakes made by healers.

To illustrate the third mistake, I will tell you a story about my friend who went to a new dentist. On his first visit, he felt very “upsold.”

Before returning for his next visit, he did some on-line research and found a YouTube video of the dentist being interviewed on a marketing webcast. In the interview, the dentist is proudly explaining how she is monetizing her practice, and the tricks she is using to make the most money from each patient.

This confirmed what my friend had felt; the dentist was more interested in his money than his mouth.

At his appointment, he told the dentist how he felt. She was offended, but couldn’t say much when mentioned that he saw her on YouTube claiming that she commonly did exactly the thing she was now denying.

My friend has a new dentist, one who care more about keeping her patients healthy than she does about taking their money.

The third heinous marketing mistake is caring more about marketing than you do your clients. That mistake is compounded if you, like the dentist on YouTube, brag publically about your unsavory practices.

The best advice here, is have ethical marketing practices. Don’t take advantage of people. Don’t be greedy. If you are inclined to take advantage of people, don’t be a healer. If you are a healer who takes advantage of people, don’t brag about it.

There is a crass edge to some marketing enthusiasts. In the first installment of this series we talked about not being shy about marketing.

Today we will add something to that.

Don’t be shy about marketing, but also don’t be crass.

Marketing people often freely talk about how much they make. They love to talk about six figures. “Six figures! I’m making six figures, and you can too!” I can guarantee you, people who make real money, and people who are worthy of the money they make, don’t talk about it quite that way.

When you give something away, give it freely.

I once interviewed a healer who is well-known for providing great free services. I commented on that, and asked her about her philosophy on business and freebies. I expected to hear something about sharing, or giving back, or even sampling. What I heard was a comment about generating hits for her website. She even told me, off the top of her head, the number of hits free offers were generating.

To me, that’s crass. It may be true, and it may be the kind of thing we talk about privately in strategy sessions. If you are a healer, service should be your top-of-mind priority always. Web hits and six figures are the happy byproduct of that, not the goal.

Three Heinous Marketing Mistakes Made by Healers, Part Two

This is the second in a three-part series about mistakes that entrepreneurs with healing practices often make.

The first mistake, which I covered last week, is about being afraid to market, being shy about marketing and not doing the research to become knowledgeable about marketing.

The second mistake, our focus for today, is sort of the opposite problem.

Don’t become a spammer, or an in-your-face-business-evangelist, no matter how excited you are about your product or service.

If you are paying more attention to the size of your mailing list, rather than the quality of your mailing list, you are making a mistake.

If you are sending newsletters to thousands of people but getting an open rate of less than twenty percent, you are not marketing, you are spamming.

If you invite folks to your webpage and then require them to sign up for some free offer before they can read about your services, you have clearly demonstrated your questionable priorities.

And, if your freebies really aren’t free, or aren’t valuable, you are guilty of some of the oldest tricks in the book.

P.T. Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute. But do you want your client base to be full of suckers?

If you are guilty of these sorts of high-pressure marketing techniques, you get a gold star for enthusiasm and hard work. If your tactics are working for you, and you are OK looking at yourself in the mirror, that’s your choice. However, there are considerable drawbacks to these types of techniques, and, once you are labeled as a spammer you will lose a lot of ability to promote your work at all.

Sometimes we become spammers unintentionally. I woke up the other day to find myself included in a very large group message on Facebook. The healer was marketing a webinar. In her great wisdom she felt the best way to do this was to send a group private message to eighty of her closest friends. When she realized how poorly received this was, she apologized, saying that she didn’t realize what she did was wrong. If even one of those eighty people reported her to Facebook for spamming, her marketing problems were only just beginning.

She was guilty of spamming, but she was also guilty of last week’s mistake; failure to do research and learn how to market.

Getting labeled a spammer is a very real risk. In the past year I have tried to partner with two different organizations whose URL could not be included in my weekly newsletter because the URL was already identified as a spam site. It’s hard to promote an online event if you can’t send the URL to your client base.

The other risk of these kinds of marketing mistakes is that you will simply look cheesy.  If you want to be the “Amway” of your particular modality you certainly can, but you will end up limiting yourself more than you will be helping yourself.

Find the balance that works for you. Quality is better than quantity. Classy is better than cheesy.  Do get your word out. Don't be a spammer.

Six Rules for Success

Having achieved some success in my metaphysical career, I love the opportunity to encourage new students to move forward in achieving their dreams. Here’s the synopsis of a recent exchange that happened over a period of a week or so.

Student: I want to take the next step.

Me: Ask around and find the person who will give you what you need so you can do that.

Student: I asked three people and they said no. This won’t work.

Me: Ask more people.

Student: I ask more people, and someone said yes!

Obviously, that’s a simplification, but the truth is evident. If you want something, be tenacious and don’t give up.

Here’s the problem. What happens if you really are just banging you head against the wall? At what point is it appropriate to give up?

Tenacity tells us to keep knocking on doors until one opens. But if no doors ever seem to open, at what point should we just go with the flow and figure the Universe has other plans for us? Sometimes it’s confusing to know the right thing to do.

The answer is usually this. If you are grounded, patient and hard-working, your tenacity will usually pay off, as long as you have the talent to go along with it.

Spiritual people, by their very nature, bring their spirituality to their business practice. This is helpful, as long as we understand some simple rules. Tenacity is one important rule. Here are five more.

Trust that the Universe is always operating in your best interest.
When bad things happen, this can be a hard one to swallow.  Trust anyway.

Have a fearless and accurate understanding of your own talent.
Neither false modesty nor overestimation of your ability will get you anywhere.

Learn from every experience.
Everything that happens is a helpful lesson if you look at it the right way.

If you are not talented enough, make it a hobby instead of a profession.
Lots of things can bring you joy. There’s no shame in being a happy hobbyist.

Don’t overthink things.
The Universe is simple in its complexity. Thinking too much will make you more anxious, not more prepared.