I recently started working with a gifted, committed, passionate coach. Like many, she moved away from a more traditional career in order to follow her heart and make a difference. And like many, she’s invested years developing her skills and expertise so she can offer exceptional value to her clients.
But then she did something most practice builders don’t do – she gathered her courage, took a leap of faith, and hired a consultant to help her build the business side of her practice. She realized that in order to be successful, she needed to develop as much competency in selling her services as in providing them. So she found someone who had a lot of experience with small businesses, paid him $36,000, did everything he said to do for six months…and generated virtually no new clients.
In fact, it was even worse than that.
This consultant didn’t just waste her time and money. He actually guided her to do things that were the exact opposite of what would make her successful. He pushed her to do things that felt out of integrity, that turned off potential clients, and that pulled her away from her purpose – all at the same time.
In response to her story, I realized there’s one thing, more than any other, I wish I could help every practice builder understand. If I could wave a magic wand, and give just one piece of information to every purpose-driven coach, counselor and healer in the world – this would be it.
Most standard business practices don’t work for purpose driven practice builders.
They don’t work practically and they don’t work energetically. They don’t generate the results we want and they don’t feel good when we try to do them.
Here’s why.
Your services are not an impersonal commodity.
Traditional business is based on selling the same thing to everyone. If you buy a Toyota Prius, you can customize a few things like the color and options, but you’ll still be one of 1.6 million people driving this car. Traditional business is a fundamentally impersonal process.
However, you’re not selling bananas, cars, or cheap plastic toys. You’re selling services that change people’s lives. You’re selling the equivalent of heart surgery. As such, what you’re selling is based on intimacy, which is the opposite of what most sales and marketing techniques create. (Imagine if you were to receive a coupon for heart surgery – Buy One, Get One FREE! Ridiculous – yet that’s what we often think we have to do to sell our services.)
Your value is not based on offering the cheapest prices.
Because traditional business is based on selling commodities, the primary way retailers can offer value is by selling things at a cheaper price. But that’s the opposite of what works for us. With coaching, counseling and healing, the number one thing that creates exceptional value is the level of commitment your clients bring to the relationship. If you have a client that is 100% committed to their growth and healing, you could read the phone book to them and they’d get value. If you have a client who is 100% committed to resisting their growth and healing, nothing you can do will make a difference.
Commitment creates value. And in our culture, one of the most powerful ways we commit ourselves is with our money. If you try to compete based on offering the lowest prices, you end up decreasing the value you offer – not increasing it. You end up doing a disservice to your clients and to yourself. Again, this is the opposite of how most business works.
Your value is not based on helping people hide from their issues.
When you’re feeling insecure or lonely, how do you deal with this? For most people, the answer is to consume something. Feeling bad? Eat something. Watch a show. Pop a pill. Buy new clothes. Drink a beer. Go on vacation. Buy a couch. Traditional business does a great job of enabling our addictions. It loves to help us numb out and hide from our issues by offering us sugar highs that feel good for the moment but come with a long term cost.
In contrast, our services are based on helping people embrace their issues and work through them. This isn’t quick or easy, and it automatically brings up deep, unconscious fears. In fact, the more value you offer, the more likely it is that people’s defenses will get triggered during the enrollment process (usually without them even realizing it). And when this happens, people automatically start thinking “I don’t have enough time or money to do this.” This usually isn’t true, and being of service involves learning how to lovingly work with this instead of helping enable their fears.
Your paradigm isn’t based in stress and scarcity.
Not only don’t traditional business practices work for us practically. They also don’t work energetically. They don’t feel good, or in alignment with our core values. So no matter how many times we tell ourselves that we “should” do more to build our businesses, we often find ourselves procrastinating or getting sucked into cycles of meaningless busywork. Or we’ll waste money paying others to try and find our clients for us. These patterns don’t work. Yet virtually every purpose driven practice builder I’ve worked with has them, because at the deepest levels, the energy most business runs off of isn’t compatible with the energy we’re committed to living our lives from.
Traditional business is based in stress and scarcity. Stress is the fuel source most people in business use to keep themselves motivated. They amp up on caffeine, deadlines, and endless to do lists. But what is stress? It’s a polite name for fear and self-judgment. Plus, the foundational principle of modern economics – the law of supply and demand – is based on the assumption that prices are set by competing over scarce resources.
Yet we seek to live from a paradigm of abundance, and we seek to be motivated by purpose and inspiration rather than fear and unworthiness. And when we try to do business in a traditional way, we naturally find ourselves procrastinating – consistently – because of this core energetic conflict between how we want to be and how we feel business is “supposed” to be done.
So how do we work with this?
Being successful as a coach, counselor, healer, or other type of purpose driven practice builder requires learning a new, different, more caring way of doing business. It requires letting go much of what we think we know about business, or how we think business “should” be, and learning what it means to do business in a way that works for us, both practically and energetically.
Selling By Giving provides a complete system that you can use to learn how to do so. It teaches what it means to do business in a new, different, more loving way. One that empowers you to make money and make a difference, while doing what you love.
And rather than try to sell you on why you “should” buy something from us, our goal is to build a relationship with you, based on a set of stair steps of trust and commitment.
Hopefully you’ve taken advantage of the first, free step – the $197 Practice Building Kit you can claim (for free) at www.sellingbygiving.net
Then the next step is either the Home Study Course or the 6 Month Practice Building Academy. Not sure which one would be best for you? If so, we’ve made it so you can’t make a wrong choice. If you start with the Home Study Course and then upgrade to the Academy, your HSC tuition pays for your first month at the Academy. And if you jump in to the Academy and decide it’s too much too soon, you can leave after the first month and keep your HSC.
Plus, both programs are covered by our exceptional value guarantees. So what have you got to lose? (Except any limiting beliefs about business that have been holding you back?)
Love and light,
Brian