Sunday, November 17, 2013

The Truth About Getting Started

This blog post by Stephanie St. Clair is funny while also painfully true about the realities of going into business to do the thing that you love.

Here are some of my favorite bits from the post:

Your success (and financial stability) will come from expertly running your business — not teaching yoga, life coaching, writing copy, or making jewelry. In other words, you will spend 15% of the time doing what you love (your gift..in my case coaching and writing) and 85% of the time marketing, administrating, selling, strategizing your business, and answering a shitload of email. Survival will totally hinge on how quickly you adopt this role of Business Owner first, creator of pretty things, second.

Your trajectory for success will take as long as everyone else’s, even though you’re special and brilliant.

Our enemy is not lack of preparation; it’s not the difficulty of the project, or the state of the marketplace, or the emptiness of our bank account. The enemy is resistance. The enemy is our chattering brain, which, if we give it so much as a nanosecond, will start producing excuses, alibis, transparent self-justifications, and a million reasons why he can’t/shouldn’t/won’t do what we know we need to do. (Though this is actually a quote from Steven Pressfield that Stephanie uses in her post.)

I thought marketing = slimy sales letters with big arrows and opt-in boxes and I couldn’t! I wouldn’t! So I put my head in magical fairyland sand, stubbornly insisting that my customers would be tractor-beamed into my budding practice by the pulsating, heavenly light that radiated from my vision boards and 4 blog posts. And then I ate canned food and spaghetti for a long, long time.

Do not price your offerings around your personal ability to pay for it — you are not your ideal customer.

Money! Money? Money. Money........

Notice something about yourself....

*  When you think about your work, how does that feel in your body?
*  When you think about making money from your work, how does that feel in your body?

Are these two feelings compatible? Incompatible? There are a lot of MTs who are uneasy / uncomfortable / twitchy around the subject of money. I just read a great blog post about this from Mark Silver, who is worth following if you want the heart that guides your hands to also guide your business.

Here's an excerpt:
Your best work has nothing to do with getting paid. When you’re in flow, you give, and it flows, and whoosh-waba-waba, your clients and customers receive yowsa good stuff.

What a high. That feels great. Love it. But it’s only half the story.

The other half is you on your knees, needing support, help, caring, and cash. The trick is remembering that the money is attached to actual, live people.

It’s a subtle distinction. You don’t want to see people as money faucets, but you do want to respect them as people who have received money themselves and have it to give to you.

The subtle shift is in identifying the endpoint. If you’re thinking “connect-create-offer” to receive money, then money is the endpoint, and the heart will not rest there, it will want to keep moving.

However, if you’re thinking “connect-create-offer” to serve and help people, and money is part of the “connect,” that puts money in its place.

Here's the whole post.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Just Booked

I just booked a long weekend for myself at a state park in West Virginia in January. One of my favorite places.

Yes, it's time for my annual business retreat! 4 days I devote to the business side of my practice, getting ready to pay my taxes, close out the books for 2013, think about what I want to accomplish in 2014. Get a massage, maybe have a soak at the tiny national park. Visit some favorite restaurants.

I feel like I'm a solo voice in a vast maelstrom that is the massage therapy profession. So many of us. whirling and spinning, keeping our practices moving forward, just trying to keep one step ahead of the next thing. And then the next thing. Who's got time for four whole days away??

You do. If you're serious about growing a business, you do. Here's why:

If you take a 2-3 hours to quietly close out your books for 2013, tax time will be easy-peasy because you'll already have all the information you need for your Schedule C (and associated forms). Without panic. At 11 pm. On April 15.

If you take 1/2 day to quietly think through who you want to market to, it will easier to see good ways to reach them. You're less likely to waste time and money on marketing efforts that don't work.

If you take 1-2 hours to really look at the numbers for your business (income, expenses, growth, etc.) you can set realistic goals for 2014. "Make more money" is accurate but stupid.

You can spend an hour reflecting on the types of clients you've been seeing and contemplating what continuing education you need in 2014 to best serve them and yourself. That beats blindly grabbing at whatever comes your way the month before your license renewal is due. (I already know it's lymph drainage for me next year. It's the missing piece to make the other modalities I've learned truly the best they can be.)

You can spend 20 minutes making sure you're on track for your next license renewal! Ethics? CPR? HIV? Enough hands-on hours? Spread the costs out so it's not all heaped into the last few weeks before license renewal.

Believe it or not, if you don't have a business plan you could write one in 3 days. It would be a simple one, a one-pager, but a huge percentage of us only need a one-pager. I've said it before, a business plan helps you see clearly and honestly what your business is and what it can be. It keeps you honest, with yourself.

It's also a chance to celebrate everything you accomplished in 2013, mourn the stuff that didn't work, and just pause to realize you're still here, you're still moving forward, you're still providing quality service, you're still in business. (And get a massage)

I'm going to a state park lodge in West Virginia. $80 / night. Simple, quiet, effective. Where can you go?



Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Why I've Given Up On Exchanging

note: "barter" has specific meaning to the IRS which is why I use "exchange".

I've been trying to find someone to help me get my website on a new platform. My go-to person for web services insists on exchanging massage for her services. She says it's a way to make sure she gets the massages she loves so much.

However, she's been "working on" getting me some information about this platform change for 8 months. I'm not waiting for my website, I'm waiting for information about the process!

When you are "paying" another professional for their services with massage, you are always going to be a lower priority than a client who is paying them with cash. And I can't blame them. I'm a small business. Getting paid, cash flow is a high priority for me too. I understand. I just hate having to wait. And wait. And wait. And, no, withholding the massage doesn't seem to make any difference.

I've also given up on exchanging massages. Like exchanges for service, it's too easy to cancel the exchange massage when a paying client calls and wants that time. Wouldn't you choose a paying client over an exchange client?

I want the freedom to try lots of therapists or to hang in there with just one. When I'm paying, I get the massage when I want it, not when there's no one else angling for that time.

I get massage every 3-4 weeks now and I pay for it. Something I've come to realize is that paying for my massages has an added benefit: I'm reminded every time what it's like to be a paying client. I have a new chance to empathize with my client's experience. That's (almost) as valuable as the massage itself. It's very humbling to have a therapist do something you dislike when you know you do that very same thing!

It's good to stay humble.

So, if you want my services, be prepared to pay. Because, no, I'm not interested in trading massages for them.