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I need to get the word out now! I must fill my classes now! I can’t wait and let the opportunity slip past! I need to fill my diary, I need clients now. How do I do it all at the one time? I have to, I need the money… etc. I expect this has been the case all year, but now it feels like it has to happen NOW! In reality there’s never a good time to start. Really, it’s true. But that also means the best time is now. Not for any reason than it gets easier when we take action. The down side of the ‘It must be now’ thinking, is it creates false precipices for us to fall off. We make arbitrary decisions on dates, we…

‘I’ve told people what I do’, ‘I’ve put who I am out to the world’, ‘I’m really working hard to tell people I can help!’ Why isn’t it working? Don’t people want my help? Sound familiar? I bet there’s someone you know who’s at that point, aren’t they? Here’s the 5 most common ways we sabotage our good work by using the wrong language: #5 Talking about what matters to us not what matters to someone in need. Ok, yes, I’m guilty of this one too. I did it a lot at the start. I talked about therapy, I talked about how life could be great, I talked about what I found fascinating in what I do. I kind of missed the client in that 😊 Yup, sorry to say…

"I’m not feeling this is my passion anymore." That’s a phrase I hear too often. ‘I’m struggling to find clients, and this just feels like work. I used to love this but now my passion is gone’. ‘Should I even be doing this?’, ‘If it’s my passion shouldn’t I be enjoying it?’, ‘Maybe it’s time to pack it in.’ Now, to be honest, I’ve had those thoughts myself when starting out. When my energy was forced into struggling to find clients, worrying about whether I could afford to keep going, and desperately trying new things to get my help out to the world, it certainly wasn’t fun. I started to confuse the two aspects – the ‘business side’ and the ‘helping people’ side. For most self-employed therapists, we confuse being…

Something that comes up a lot is therapists wondering why their websites are not bringing in clients. From Shamans to Psychologists, I see the same thing: ‘I’ve spent a fortune on a website and it’s doing nothing for me’, ‘Why doesn’t it deliver any clients?’, ‘What do I need to do get it working?’ It’s heart-breaking. We want to help people, we’ve trained for it, we have skills that make a difference, but we only get to use them when a client finds us and chooses our help. The money keeps going out but it’s all wasted until we’re making a difference with people suffering. As someone who needed help for decades without finding it, I know how much this hurts the person in need as well as the therapist.…

I was chatting with a therapist earlier this week who is in the usual position – not enough clients to really make it work and having to keep a job she hates just to pay the rent. She’s stressed, angry, and unhappy. She’s done the usual - business cards, flyers, an advert in the local paper, gotten on Facebook but was unsure what to do there and is near quitting altogether. Sadly that’s where seven out of ten of us are. Struggling, feeling a bit lost, afraid of wasting time and money, and feeling we have already wasted our training and effort in becoming the therapist or coach we are. Yet when I spoke to her it was so obvious that she really wants to help people and to do…

It is amazing that all over the world the pattern is the same when we start our therapy or coaching businesses. We have lots of worry and lots of hope. We all do the same things, largely because that’s what we see others doing. We have a place to work from, insurance, our qualifications, and usually a website and cards or flyers. Often armed for the most part only with blind hope we set out, swinging wildly from ‘what if it fails, do people want my help, what will people think?’ to ‘I want to make a difference, I know this works and helps, there are so many people suffering!’ We put cards out, post on Facebook, or leave flyers around town. Then the anxious waiting starts. We make sure…

1. ‘I’m empty I must not be good enough.’ Sound familiar? I felt this at the start, but you know what? Until I’d seen a good number of clients, I didn’t have any info to determine how good or bad I was. Turns out I delivered value even at the start, but I was only going to know that if I put myself out there and found clients. That’s the test of this. It’s not how good you are at the start, it’s how easily can people find you! 2. ‘People don’t want my help.’ & 3. ‘I must have the wrong skill set.’ These two, while both are common, are really the same issue at heart. If we stay empty or are struggling for a while, we often decide…

  Price should never be ‘how much can I get?’ but should be a fair price for what’s offered. Some therapy and coaching offerings take a lot and are going to be higher priced and that’s fine, however they can often be more difficult to sell. A point that has come up with a lot of therapists, is that often we assume a price is ‘too expensive’ if something is not availed of. It’s not that simple. People spend huge amounts of money on stuff all the time. Why is that? Is it because those things deliver more value? Let’s consider a few options that cost around €1,000: These are all things people spend money on. The bicycle listed is in the top 5 most popular on the online bike…