That belief soon shifts into feeling that the key to gaining a full client load is to discover the greatest need in your community, and . . . → Read More: Want Motivates More than Need]]> It’s normal when first starting out in private practice to believe that your clientele will just find you ~~ somehow.  I call this the faith-based operating mode.

That belief soon shifts into feeling that the key to gaining a full client load is to discover the greatest need in your community, and then
explain why your particular professional training resolves that need.

I call that the “ I have studied it / they need it / they will come” operating mode.

Unfortunately, marketing doesn’t work like this.  When . . . → Read More: Desire for Instant Gratification Sabotages Marketing]]> It’s sometimes said that therapists go into the psychological occupations to heal themselves.  If true, then from observing the mindset many counselors have about marketing, perhaps what’s getting treated is the driving need to have some desired something NOW — called, in diagnostic terms, instant gratification attachment.

Unfortunately, marketing doesn’t work like this.  When this instant results mindset frames your approach to promoting your business, it’s a prescription for private practice sabotage.

Therapist-turned-coach Casey Truffo, and others, have pointed out that marketing is like dating, or building a good friendship.  It takes time, energy, and an investment in attracting with your best qualities forward.

Clinging to the expectation of instant return on your marketing efforts leads many practitioners to giving up on good strategies too soon.   Consequently….

….Referral building campaigns fail because  – when you get no response from sending out 100 postcards —  you never make another contact with that mailing list.

….Social media use fails because —  when you don’t get new clients from posting great quotes once a week for a month  – you get discouraged and don’t look into how else Facebook could be used.

….Locator directory and website marketing fail because  – when your recitation (in professional jargon) of credentials doesn’t generate new cases —  you don’t re-examine and revise your core message to stimulate a compelling emotional connection with a clearly defined type of client with a specifically noted problem.

Solopreneurs in all the healing and helping arts must get clear on these points:

• Marketing is NOT about getting your name out there
• It’s NOT about getting known in your community
• It’s NOT about telling people what you do
• It’s NOT about explaining the benefits of your process
• It’s especially not saying you (like everyone else) have a warm, safe, confidential environment

Just like you shouldn’t expect to fall in love and get married by the end of a first date, good client generating marketing almost never produces instant results.  It’s a fluke when it does.

But just like courting, marketing is a relationship cultivating process that needs to be nurtured with repeated contact that brings something interesting of value to the table.

In other words, marketing requires:

• patient, strategic action steps and follow through
• focus on what your potential client population is suffering from
• giving generously of your attention, knowledge, and help BEFORE getting the client
• repeated reminders of how interacting with you feels good and helps, so your niche wants more of you

To combat instant gratification attachment as a business owner, I recommend doing 3 simple things:

1. Have a niche so you know who you’re trying to have a relationship with
2. Find the most comfortable ways for you to be a resource for them — for example:
• blog, write articles, sell ebooks
• network on social media and in person
• give workshops and signature talks
• meet colleagues over coffee and develop professional friendships
3. Commit to 2 ways to be that resource for not less than 6 months

No Hype Coaching Questions:  Where can your marketing stand more patience, or more repetition?  How, specifically,  is the desire for instant results sabotaging your efforts?

No Hype Help:  A 60-90 minute strategic consult can help you prioritize your marketing needs, identify the best methods for you to commit to, and give you simple tools and techniques to help you stick with it.

I’m borrowing this idea in reverse today to make a few points about the type of writing required for . . . → Read More: Writing for Marketing is the Zebra]]> In med school there is the adage that when you hear hoofbeats, think horse, not zebra.  It’s an idea meant to help students new to diagnosing illness to start with what’s most common first.

I’m borrowing this idea in reverse today to make a few points about the type of writing required for marketing your private practice.

Academic Writing is a Horse

Due to the labors of getting through graduate school and post-grad programs, counselors of all types become proficient  with academic writing. Even coaching programs are starting to require research papers in proper APA style.

The requirement of producing literature reviews teaches us to present a multitude of other people’s thoughts, and to be personally invisible in the written product.  We get skilled in belaboring a point and using 50 dollar vocabulary.  And we strive to impress an evaluator with our knowledge of a wide range of theories.

Often when we try to soften an academic style to use in marketing the resulting writing becomes definitional, and perfectly suited for Wikipedia.  While informative, it fails to make a strong human connection.

The Marketing Downside:   This style of writing intimidates potential clients, and turns them off.  They simply won’t wade through it. When suffering or consumed with their own problems, the last thing they will put up with is an academic proposition about the abstract value of psychotherapy techniques, or the coaching “journey”.

Academic writing is meant to be impersonal.  To a hurting or confused potential client, it’s cold and distancing. This doesn’t tend to lead them into your office for help.

How-to Writing is a Pony

If academic writing is a horse, how-to writing is a pony.  It’s virtues are that it’s short, compact, practical and uncluttered with citations for other people’s thinking.  Often appreciated for quick comprehension due to lots of bullet points, the how-to is a valuable form of writing for displaying your expertise and furthering rapport and trust.

The Marketing Downside:  While detailing your 5 step process for taming a panic attack or using abundance thinking is very useful elsewhere,  as an approach to the first encounter with your marketing  message (such as in a directory profile or on your website homepage),  it’s premature.  Save that for generating materials for your Resources page.

The Who’s Who Horse Race

Sometimes we get advice to “get our name out there”, and let the community know who we are — and we take that literally.   Being uncomfortable with personal disclosure, we give just the credentialing facts, ma’me, and load the writing with professional jargon, acronyms and references in an effort to show ourselves more qualified than the next guy.

Unfortunately, most of our hard earned achievements sound like psycho-gobbledygook to the average client who have no clue about the difference between a psychotherapist, psychologist, and psychiatrist, or a counselor, coach, and social worker.

The Marketing Downside:  The resulting writing is a self promotion that sounds more like an entry for a Who’s Who volume than a validation that you understand what a potential client is going through. Worse, it creates more confusion as the potential client is left with worry about how to make the right hiring decision when they have no idea what all your credentials even mean for them.

The Zebra

Instead of academic writing, how-to steps, and the who’s who in the healing arts entry, what you want is to be the zebra. Zebras are unusual in North America.  They stand out in a crowded field of horses. They compel attention, even second looks.  They fascinate and are remembered.

This is what you want your marketing to be.  How?   Write like you would speak to a hurting individual who is already sitting in your office.

1. Ask direct, specific questions about their pain that get them to feel seen.
2. Validate how they feel about the trials of their daily experience.
3. Reassure that you will try your best to help.
4. Talk about how it’s hard to be where they are, dealing with what they are going through.
5. Suggest what they want instead of what they currently have.
6. Tell them what to do next.
7. Provide the way to do it (contact info).
8. Lend your confidence that things will be better soon.

This is all your core marketing message needs to do.  Whether you’re writing a 200 word directory “profile” or a 500-1000 word home page, paint the zebra.

No Hype Coaching Question:  What’s your core marketing message, and in what style of writing are you delivering it?

No Hype Help:  Painting a zebra is a skill that can be mastered, but it is like learning a foreign language at first. Want help? I’d be glad to draft what you need for a reasonable fee.   See what’s available by the profile, by the page, or by the website.

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Let me bring this down to . . . → Read More: Yes this IS Plagiarism, Bad Manners, Illegal & Unethical]]> January’s public uprising against the SOPA and PIPA acts in the House and Senate that would inject government censorship over the internet so that mega-billion dollar companies in the entertainment business could prevent digital piracy  has refocused my attention on the issue of intellectual property and copyright law.

Let me bring this down to the scale of the individual social worker, psychologist, marriage and family therapist, counselor, life coach, and everyone else running a one person office and marketing on the internet.

If you think online piracy doesn’t have anything to do with you as a  solopreneur with a small static website, an infrequently updated blog, and a personal profile on a few locator directories, think again.

I hear stories of outrage time and again from colleagues and clients that some therapist or coach has copied something off their website nearly verbatim, and used it as their own.  Under the law, this is considered theft of intellectual property.

It’s bad enough when an article, blog post, or forum comment is ripped off.  But shockingly, some of this has happened by colleagues taking personal profiles and even personal bio material.

I suppose we could be compassionate and understanding and give these  perpetrators the benefit of doubt.  Bless your hearts, maybe you don’t know that everything written on the internet has an inherent copyright that belongs to the original author.  Maybe you really meant to ask permission, and just forgot.   Maybe you think this is a form of practicing the adage that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

None of those generous excuses cut it with me.  If you’ve taken what someone else has written — without their express permission — you are stealing.  Pure and simple.

So let’s assume you are just ignorant of the law, because of course, copyright law isn’t typically taught in psychology and coaching programs — although it’s a fair bet that plagiarism was mentioned once or twice.  Maybe you think only books are copyrighted.

Here’s what you need to know to avoid the very bad manners — not to mention the downright unethical, illegal behavior — of swiping that brilliant paragraph from the website of your colleagues down the street, or across the country.

1. Every one who writes something themselves and puts it on a website is considered the author of that writing with an automatic copyright protection for their work.  It is not necessary to file for a registered copyright.  The protection exists from the moment the website goes live on the internet.  When a website goes live the content is considered published, just like it would be in a book.

The only exception to this is in the case of people hired to produce writing for companies that hold the copyright.  That normally applies to big companies with lots of employees. If I write a letter to the editor for an online version of a local newspaper, by submitting that letter I might be automatically surrendering my copyright on it to the newspaper company.  But what I originate on my own website is published by and belongs to me.

2.  Everything written on a website, unless otherwise clearly marked, is covered by copyright, and no one else is allowed to use it for their own purposes unless:

a.  you ask and are granted permission
b. you see a Creative Commons type of permission

3.  Copyright law restrictions apply to

• web page content, even bio pages
• advertising content, even testimonials
• blog and forum post content, whether forums are public or private
• downloadable products like articles, tip sheets, and ebooks
• email content you write is yours, the reply from your colleague is theirs
• biographical profiles and mini-marketing messages on locator directories
• even social media posts are technically protected by original author copyright law unless otherwise surrendered by accepting the terms and conditions of the social media platform

Saying that you didn’t see a copyright notice on a website and thought therefore that the material was free to take is like saying you didn’t see an anti-theft notice on a package of cookies and thought it fine to open and eat at the grocery store while leaving the package on the shelf.  We all know when we’re taking something that doesn’t belong to us, and when we’re passing off someone else’s hard work as our own.

And by the way, everything I said above about written material applies to photographs and other artwork.  These too are considered intellectual property and may not be used without permission, or unless purchased or acquired from a clearly declared free source.

If you are struggling with writing your web content, your personal bio or your locator profiles, hire a web copywriter or use a service that provides article content for a fee.  These are easy to find with a Google search.

No Hype Coaching Question:  Does fear of plagiarizing prevent you from writing?  What you should know about that is that neither ideas nor titles can be copyrighted.  But, titles may be able to be trademarked.  Check the law at those last two links if you’re in doubt.

No Hype Help:  If you are really stuck for website content or locator profile, I may be able to help.  See the Quick Services page  for details.

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Really?  THE  Dr Pat of talk radio to thrive by fame has heard of little ole me? And she’s . . . → Read More: Can You Resist Temptations of Technologies of the Past?]]> The out-of-the-blue voicemail said:  Pat Bacceli suggested we call. She thinks the work you do is fabulous and she wants to help you reach more people.  Give us a call as soon as you can.

Really?  THE  Dr Pat of talk radio to thrive by fame has heard of little ole me? And she’s interested in my work?  Wow.  I’m stunned. My ego soars. This could do amazing things for my career. I start envisioning being a media star myself, spend a minute thinking of upgrading my car, and envisioning a European vacation.

And then reality smacks me like a 2 x 4.  Oh, they want me to sponsor her show.  They want me to advertise on the radio.

No thanks.  Been there, done that, not gonna be suckered again.  This is one tempting offer I can definitely refuse.

Why?  Because radio advertising doesn’t work well for selling mental health and coaching services. It’s enormously expensive, but doesn’t cultivate the emotional connection nor build the trusting relationship with potential clients that prompts people to pick up the phone and act on what they just heard.

And aside from the enormous expense of radio advertising, there are a few other considerations that help resist this temptation.

All but the most naive people are very skeptical of mass media marketing these days. There’s been so much hype that we have a strong cynicism about everything we hear on the air, as well as see in print and on the internet. In an election year, that factor is ramped up even more and colors everything else trying to break into consumer consciousness. It’s a very high barrier to effective connection and persuasion to try to get past.

Then there’s the problem of the purpose of the message of a 60 second spot.  Is it to drum your name into public consciousness?  Is it to manufacture a sense of  need for your services? Is it to beat your competition by being more glamorous than a phone book ad?

Hint, none of those purposes make a good marketing objective.

Radio advertising was developed in the pre-TV era when people did nothing else but sit and listen, and they were much more willing to believe what they heard — unlike today.  Radio in its heyday was a phenomenon that had no competing attention demands. People weren’t driving, working in offices with constant interruptions, washing the dishes with a TV blaring in the kids’ room, and hurrying to get Billy to baseball practice.

These days, ad time is when we change the station.

Consumer behavior in 2012 is conditioned to bypass what’s known as interruption advertising.  Radio is primarily used as background white noise, with only the outrageous falsehoods of shock jocks breaking through.  That’s company that in my mind doesn’t align well with concepts of nurture, empathy, trustworthiness, and healing.

Today, the public is more plugged in to mobile device technologies. Take the money you resist spending on radio, tv and phone book ads and put it into designing a version of your website that displays well on and takes advantage of  the immediacy and interactivity of the iPhone / iPad / iPod / Android platforms

Then consider developing a great interactive app as another stream of income, too. Get a blog and YouTube going with push notice capability.   This is where you clients will be soon, if they aren’t already there.

No Hype Coaching Questions:  Before you spend money on marketing, do you have a clear idea of what each strategy takes to be effective?  Do you know for certain that your ideal clients make hiring decisions based on messages from those channels of information?

No Hype Help:   Have you reviewed, revised, and updated your marketing plan for 2012 realities yet?  Need some new training on how to get clients in the exploding mobile and social media technologies era?  Enroll in my upcoming free webinar

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Afterall, . . . → Read More: A No Hype Private Practice Planning Process for 2012 Solopreneur Success]]> When I started out in private practice 21 years ago, anything remotely resembling “office work”  – you know, stuff like, bookkeeping, going to meetings (aka networking), business planning, and evaluating marketing strategies — was shunned or delayed as long as possible in favor of having fun working with whoever walked in the door.

Afterall, wasn’t the whole point of private practice to have more freedom?

It soon became clear that this was an upside down, unsustainable, hobbyist approach to making a living.

They didn’t tell us in grad school that having and following a plan is essential for solopreneurs.  That disciplined follow up is what turns a hobby into a thriving practice.

Nor did they clue us in on the fact that most advice for small business  – by Small Business Administration definition a company of  500 employees, or one with up to 21.5 MILLION dollars in annual revenue!  – just doesn’t translate to usable, sensible methods for one-person non-retail businesses.

So I devised a one page bullet point planning tool that focuses on the purpose, needs, and realities of counselors and coaches.   Here’s what I recommend reviewing and revising once a year:

• your inspirational vision statement — what are your personal goals for operating this business, what’s the type of life you are trying to create for yourself and your family?
• your empowering mission statement – what is it your business exists to change, teach, or heal in the world?
• your 3 primary business objectives for the year — what will you hold yourself accountable for achieving by 31 December 2012
• your strategies and related actions to achieve your objectives — with timelines to mark forward progress
• resources you’ll need — financial, energy, outsourcing, relationship support, professional development, etc
• expected realities and challenges  – what can you logically assume will help your client market respond to your marketing or prevent them from doing so?

It’s a good idea to review and revise a business plan every year, and my one page bullet list version makes that an easy process.  Then I recommend hanging it on an office wall where it can serve as a reminder and a road map in support of the daily steps of a marketing plan — which is a separate and more detailed document.

Whereas the business plan contains broad stroke intentions, it’s the marketing plan that really provides the hows and whens of the concrete action steps and your measurable efforts in applying self-discipline for the benefit of business growth.

The best system I’ve come across for this purpose is CJ Hayden’s Get Clients Now! ^tm book and tracking tool.  I’m so impressed with the simplicity and effectiveness of her system that I became licensed to teach it to others.  I’ll be offering a special introduction to the Get Clients Now! system in early 2012.

But whether you take that training or devise your own plan, here are 4 suggestions for you:

1.  make having a website your number 1 priority if you don’t already have one — talk to me about low cost and do it yourself options 
2. choose 1  extrovert marketing strategy  and follow through for at least 4 months
3. select 1  introvert marketing strategy  and follow through for at least 6 months
4. instead of either the extrovert or introvert strategy, use a  hybrid method  for at least 6 months

A little planning and consistent follow up will make 2012 a great year for your practice!

No Hype Coaching Questions:  Have you tried using a business or marketing plan, without success in the past?  Do you know why it didn’t work — was it intimidating, discouraging, or anxiety-making?   What do you need to overcome  those sabotaging feelings?

No Hype Help:  If 2012 is the year for you to learn what they didn’t teach in grad school, or to transition from operating like a hobbyist to taking control like a successful professional, I’d like to help.  I’ll be offering the free  introduction to the Get Clients Now! ^tm system next month.  Register here for your special private invitation to that webinar event.

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1.  Private practice owners with narrow niches and established practices experienced the least slow down in 2011.

2.  New private practice counselors had faster growth . . . → Read More: Assessing What Worked in 2011]]> An informal survey among my clients and close peers who have already reviewed their business and marketing results for 2011 has revealed some interesting points to share with you:

1.  Private practice owners with narrow niches and established practices experienced the least slow down in 2011.

2.  New private practice counselors had faster growth after getting on at least one insurance panel started to funnel clients to them.

3. New coaches had fastest growth from aggressive social media strategies and joint ventures with established coaches who sent promotional launches to  their own large email marketing lists.

4.  All who practiced relationship building niche marketing for the first time in 2011 gained more clients than in 2010 when marketing as a generalist.

5.  None surveyed who marketed as a generalist grew their practice without reliance on aggressive extrovert networking, insurance panels, or high budget expenditures for pay per click advertising.

6.  Practice owners with interactive or resource rich websites did better in client attraction than counselors and coaches with static websites.

7.  Counselors without websites and not on insurance panels gained the least new clients and by year’s end are still struggling to sustain a part time practice.

Where are you in this mix ?  What would an end of year assessment reveal about your business?

A good thought to carry into 2012 ~ a good strategy always closes doors.  Don’t be afraid of that.  Have a strategic growth plan, and pick methods for actualizing it that you can do well, easy, cheaply, and often.

No Hype Coaching Questions:  What worked best for you when assessed over the whole 12 month range for 2011?  How can you increase or expand on that for 2012?  And what didn’t work?  Do you know why?

No Hype Help:  If you’re new to private practice , or have been thinking about opening your own business, and don’t yet have a clear business plan and an outline of marketing strategies for 2012, I encourage you to take one of the many workshops or tele-classes offered in the next couple weeks by my self and my success coach colleagues.

I call those the hybrid client attraction methods.

The hybrid strategies for private practice marketing . . . → Read More: Hybrid Strategies for Getting Clients]]> After reviewing how to  Get Clients Like an Extrovert  and how to Get Clients Like an Introvert, you’re probably realizing that there are some strategies that fall somewhere in the middle — which may be where you are, too.

I call those the hybrid client attraction methods.

The hybrid strategies for private practice marketing combine the connection capability of the extrovert with the introvert preference for more creative, techie, low key or behind the scenes approaches.  Hybrid strategies, as you may guess, make  great use of social media and other online tools, and could include:

• Social media profiles and frequent posting strategies
• Participation on forums where your ideal clients hang out
• Creating webcam or PowerPoint based videos and starting a YouTube channel
• Hosting and moderating a forum on your own website
• Creating an iPod app and keeping it fresh with your weekly blog
• Facilitating a MeetUp on a topic of urgent interest to your niche
• Giving live, interactive webinars or teleclasses

The key to these hybrid strategies is making use of free and low cost technologies to connect with potential clients while developing a following of  people who are interested in the topics on which can be passionate about sharing knowledge, expertise, and resources.

Concerns about the ethical uses of new technologies, and unfamiliarity with using them, are the most common obstacles that counselors and coaches face when incorporating hybrid strategies into a private practice marketing plan.  While it’s beyond the scope of this blog post to get into the need for a 21st century view of the ethics of interacting with potential, current, and former clients, the problem of lack of exposure to helpful technologies is easily corrected.

My suggestions to you about gaining some basic techno skills that will help you attract new clients are:

1.  Take a social media training.  Learn how to use Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn to your advantage, with the least amount of time involvement and the maximum potential benefit to growing your business.  Trainings abound.  I recommend Janet Slack’s  Social Media News Flash  membership group which has already been a great help to me, and her  Face4Biz training  which I’ll be taking in January.

2.  Google “forums+[keyword]“ and investigate a few.  Select the ones that are most active — meaning, dozens of people posting multiple times a day — for the best benefit.  Contribute your help, don’t just promote your services.

3.  Videos are great SEO juice.  If you’re more of an extrovert use your computer’s built in webcam to record a 3 minute piece of advice.  If you’re more of an introvert, narrated PowerPoint slideshows can be converted into video files at www.AuthorStream.com  and uploaded from there to your own YouTube channel.  Then you can embed your You Tube video on your website, and share it on Facebook and other social media.  Videos are a fantastic way to get web traffic and visibility on multiple platforms for one main creative effort.

4. I know a coach who used the self hosting forum strategy to much success when first starting to build her practice.  Some webhosts provide the capability to add a forum page to your website, or www.Bravenet.com has a forum that can be installed to many do-it-yourselfer websites.

5.  Creating a smart phone app  is something I’ve been playing with this week with a free online tool at www.Conduit.com.  The challenge comes in getting your app distributed, which requires buying the privilege basically to be listed on the Android (about $25)  and iTunes (about $99)  app stores.  Because more and more people are becoming dependent on their smart phones and other mobile tablet devices for news, socializing, information and provider searches, and work productivity, having an app presence is THE growing edge in private practice marketing.  It’s easy, and relatively low cost, so not much reason to avoid this strategy.

6. Host a monthly MeetUp, or give a workshop series if you’re the type of introvert who does well at a structured event where you are in charge of the discussion.  There is a small fee for hosting a  MeetUp,  but you can recoup that by asking attendees for a small donation.  There is an online tool for management event announcements, group registration, and distribution of materials, if you choose to use that capability.   Or develop a live workshop series on a specific problem, and book yourself into a community center, a church, a PTA or other venue where your niche audience already gathers.

7.  Give webinars or teleclasses.  You don’t need to be on camera to do a webinar.  But by definition a webinar does give your participants something to view on their computer screen. You’ll need a special webinar host account with something like  GotoMeeting  or  AnyMeeting which can run your PowerPoint slides while you conduct a live and interactive class with your audience.  For a lower tech option, do a teleclass without the visual component where you need a free conference call account where you’re basically just giving a class by telephone.  The conference call account will allow you to make an audio recording of the class that you can download and/or distribute otherwise, which can be a good promotional give-away.

Because most of these hybrid marketing strategies are new to most counselors and coaches, I’ll be providing some basic trainings on these options in 2012.  Stay tuned for those.

No Hype Coaching Questions:  When it comes to marketing your private practice, would you consider yourself  an extrovert, introvert or mix of both?  Are you using marketing strategies that match with your personality?  What new marketing method could you prioritize for 2012?

No Hype Help:  If you have decided to use a hybrid marketing method but have no experience yet with the technologies needed and want to learn, I may be able to customize a training for you.  Send me an email and let me know your interest, and what you want to achieve, and we’ll schedule a phone chat to determine if I’m able to help.

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