Did you get a chance to watch my first video on developing your practice HUB?  I hope you did some thinking about it because we are moving on to talk about using your Honest Unique Benefit to create…

Multiple Streams of Income!

Oh yeah!  I just love making money while I sleep and leveraging my time and expertise so I can make $1000 in an hour. Sound impossible? Nope. You can do it too. And I’m not saying this to be all hype-y and salesy. It’s true and it works when you have a well defined HUB. See the video below for more information!

Want to learn more about multiple streams of income and building a practice that allows you to leverage your expertise to make the money you deserve? Sign up for my RSS feed to get updates sent directly to you!

New videos!  Let’s talk about your specialty (again).  But now, I want to expand the concept of specialty to include your H.U.B. What is tarnation is a HUB?  Watch the video and find out!

Caveat: you can tell a non-professional (me) produced and directed this video because it is very “down home” and kind of shaky, but, hey, it gives you helpful information, so let’s not be critical of the videography, shall we?  Thanks!

There will be MORE videos explaining this HUB concept and if you want to keep up with them as they come out I highly suggest you sign up for the RSS feed, or to get blog updates by email. Why? Because I work fast, these videos will be out Tues, Wed, Thurs of this week and if you wait ’til next week to find them, they will be buried somewhere in the blog.

So what’s your HUB?

photo by DC Cheloveck via Flikr

I’m so happy to see so many of my fellow therapists taking the plunge into the online world!  Welcome!

However, I see some behaviors that give me pause and would like to offer a short course in online etiquette. Marketing a professional business online is a civilized endeavor and so we must conduct ourselves similarly to how we would in the “real world.”

Suggested Rules of Online Etiquette for Healthcare Professionals

1. Be nice.  The thousands of people I interact with every day online are exceedingly nice, polite and helpful. I try to return the favor at all times.  There seems to be an unwritten rule of, “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all.”  I know this seems obvious, but I see some of us, how do I say this nicely….not being constructive.

2. Be honest. Transparency is an important value of quality online inhabitants.  Be who you are, promote helpful services/products, follow up on any and all inquiries, admit when you don’t know stuff.

3. Don’t plagiarize. You cannot take someone else’s blog posts, put them on your own site and pretend they are yours. So uncool.  Now, it is perfectly OK to take someone else’s blog post and with their permission, post it on your site giving them FULL credit and a link back to their site.  But you can’t take my anyone’s words and pass them off as your own.  You will be called out  if people find out you are doing this.  (Not to mention, it violates rules #1 and 2 above).

4. Share.  The online culture is one of open sharing. If I see a post or tweet that I think is informative, funny, cool, important I pass it on.  I will write about it here (and send links to the specific info) or tweet about it. Social media works because of the social. Anyone can do media.  Share and others will share your info, passing it on all around the world!  [For example--if you like this post, please hit the "Retweet" button above. It is so appreciated by me and you may be helping out your fellow Tweeps!]

5. Show your face.  I see therapists starting to participate in networking sites, twitter, linked in, but many of you have not put up pictures.  Remember this space is social. If we can’t see you, we have a hard time relating to you or believing things you have to say.  This is especially important on your own website. If I am a client looking at your website I do not want to see stock pictures of really attractive people smiling at  me, or worse, random pictures of a beach or waterfall (that is nowhere near your office). People are smart and social media savvy, they know those people are not real clients and that beach is not in your backyard.  Just show your face. If they are going to become a client they will eventually know what you look like!

6. Be helpful. Ah, this is where therapists can really shine in social media!  The WHOLE purpose of social media is to share useful information.  So start talking about what you know and share it with those who can benefit. This is NOT therapy. It is sharing information that you might write in a book on stress management (or whatever your specialty is).

7. Trust that your readers are smart. Lots of therapists tell me they don’t want a blog because, “my clients might post comments…..”  Yes, they might, but I can almost guarantee you they are not going to start asking deep personal questions on your public blog or in your twitter stream.  People get it. They know this stuff is public. They will call or send a private message if they want to get more personal.

8. You set the boundaries. Just like a “real life” relationship, you set the boundaries in social media. You can turn off your blogs comments, require phone calls for personal conversations, etc. No one can run amok in your online space (unless you allow it to happen).

9. NEVER EVER discuss client issues in the social media space. Don’t even hint about clients you have seen or will see, issues that come up. You can’t disguise them enough so they don’t recognize themselves.  One doctor I follow on twitter will tweet about patient issues he sees in the ER. Things like, “Laceration from pet dog required stitches.”  I am HORRIFIED when I see this. I know where this guy works (’cause it’s on his profile) and I know exactly what he is seeing in the ER. NOOOOOOOOooooooo….  What if that patient sees this tweet?  He knows when he was in the ER and that he had the dog bite……I shudder to think about the consequences, especially for those of us in mental health.

You can use social media very effectively without ever referencing specific client treatment issues and procedures.

OK–those 9 rules should keep you making the most out of social media. When in doubt always default to #1 and #2. Be nice. Be honest. The rest will come.

If you’re nice, honest and ready to learn more about how to use social media to market your practice you may want to sign up for my RSS feed or email updates to get these posts hot off the press. Want weekly practice building tips? Sign up for my newsletter!

Many therapists and helping professionals are introverts. We do best in small groups of people, prefer one-on-one interactions to big, noisy groups, and we enjoy quiet. Even those of us who are social, probably need some quiet time to recharge our batteries and refresh ourselves.

Introverted traits are part of what make us good therapists. We are comfortable with others’ feelings and pain, we can tolerate silence and are gentle when we speak. However, this personality style can feel at odds with the need to market and promote our services. In fact just the idea of drawing attention to ourselves can be enough to send us behind our closed office door and wait for the phone to ring.

Fortunately there is hope for those of you on the verge of a panic attack. Here is a quick step-by step guide to help the introverts in our midst market like pros.

Step 1: Make a choice. So much of successful marketing revolves around your mindset. If you accept you must market to build a successful practice,the idea won’t overwhelm you as much. However, if you feel that marketing is a “necessary evil,” and are resistant to the business realities that drive the need to market, you will always be stuck. You need to make the choice: Build a practice with marketing, or work for someone else and avoid the whole business side of practice. Either choice is fine. Sitting on the fence just prolongs the agony.

Step 2: Begin with online marketing. Online marketing is an introverts best friend.  Now we can sit at home all by ourselves and put together a fabulous online presence that does much of the marketing work for us.  Yes, it is work (anything that grows your business requires work), but you don’t need to go to awkward networking events or give speeches. Online marketing–yay.

Step 3:  Get a blog.  Ah, the amazing power of the blog.  Your blog will become the “hub” of your marketing. All your marketing materials will go on the blog and all of your marketing efforts will be to drive eyeballs to your blog.  I recommend a Wordpress.org blog. You need some technical knowledge to set it up (or at least some time to read about how to set it up. The actual steps aren’t hard), or you can pay someone to design and set it up for you.

Why not a website?  A stand alone website does not have the flexibility of a blog.  And a blog IS a website! You can have static pages, in addition to a page of blog posts. Don’t invest any money in a website that is not on a blog platform. It won’t be powerful enough for your marketing needs.

Step 4: Put content on the blog.  Here is a list of what you need.

• Home page that briefly explains your services
• An “About” page where you talk a bit about who you are and how you help people
• A “Services” page where you talk about your services
• An “About My Clients” page where you outline the types of clients you work with
• A “How I Work” page where you state how you work with clients and what they can expect when they call your office for an initial consult
• A “Contact” page that includes all the ways potential clients can contact you. I recommend a phone number, an email address and a contact form on the page itself.
• A blog page that you consistently update with new information relevant to your practice specialty

Step 5:  Get business cards and letterhead with your contact information and blog URL prominently displayed.

Step 6:  Write letters of introduction to prospective referral sources in your community. Follow up with a phone call with your goal being to ask “How can I help your clients?” [I know this can be a tad intimidating for we introverts, but, trust me, most doctors, lawyers and other professionals will be thrilled to hear from you!]

Step 7:  Write a new blog post once a week. This can be a list (see this example here!), or a summary of a recent research finding in your area of expertise, helpful hints, or book recommendations.  Content rich blog posts drive traffic to your site.

Step 8:  Consider investing in Google Adwords that can be linked by location. So if someone Google’s “Therapist Spokane Washington” (or wherever your office is located) your ad pops up.

Step 9: Learn how to use Twitter. It’s not hard.  I’ll blog more about Twitter in the near future.  Twitter rocks because it allows you to targeted drive traffic to your blog for free and with minimal effort.

With the exception of step 6, ALL of the marketing advice I just gave you can be done from the comfort of your home or office! The key is to invest your time and resources into really leveraging your online marketing. Yes, you will need to meet new people, get out of the office now and then, but with a powerful online presence you will get a much bigger return on your marketing efforts.

Why is being online so powerful?  Many people search for health care information at night (often very late at night).  It might be the only quiet time they have during the day, or they realize that they are in need of help in their “darkest hours.” If you are not online, they won’t find you, even if you are 2 blocks down the street from their home!

Introverts, now is the easiest time for us to market our services.  What did people do before the internet?

If you found this post helpful, you may enjoy my free audio, The Way of the BizSavvy Therapist. Or if reading is more your thing, sign up for this blogs RSS feed (you can get the posts sent directly to your email).

See the video for my quick review of Seth Godin’s new book : Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? (affiliate link).

I highly recommend it…thought provoking and challenging (in the nicest possible way).

We need new business models, new strategies to make a profit! NOW!

Do I have your attention? Good because we need to talk…..

I’m noticing a trend both here and on David Diana’s blog: Whenever I post a nice, safe article with helpful tips I get lots of traffic and comments. But when I post a “call to arms” article like, “You May Have the World’s Worst Business Model,” I get some comments (thanks to Rachel and Kathy), but it is much quieter around here.

Why is that?  Maybe the idea that we need to do things differently feels uncomfortable?

I actually hope that is the case.  I’m not sitting here writing these things on my own time to talk about safe stuff that you can read about on someone else’s marketing blog.   Dudes (gender inclusive), things need to change.  We are getting our butts kicked by Big Business. You know this, right?  Managed care, big pharma, large conglomerates of hospitals and health care groups.  They have lots of power, lots of money.  You know this.

So what are we going to do about it?

The way I see it. We have four choices.

1. Feel helpless, complain, worry, do nothing and eventually reach a point where we can’t make a living in private practice. Unfortunately, I hear a lot of this and it makes me sad.  We need to use our time more wisely.

2. Lobby your government representatives.   Such a nice idea but…change takes so long, costs so much, frustrating as all get out. If you want this approach to solve the problem (and it won’t, but maybe you are more optimistic than I), join your professional association, donate money, time, make calls. Expect to wait for very little positive change.  Big Business uses this approach well and they have way more money than you. I still think it is important to support out professional associations, but this strategy alone is not going to build (or save) your private practice.

3.  Take a “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” stance and go work for the big guys.  Many actually don’t pay all that well, but there are benefits and it feels safer. (This is where you will end up when you’ve exhausted all your options with choice #1 above.)

4. Get creative, think hard, collaborate, learn about business basics and build new business models. Yay! Empowerment!

It will be no shock to you that I choose #4 and hope you do, too.  With the new technologies available to us, there are so many ways you can make a VERY GOOD LIVING doing the work you love.  (And not to brag, but I offer this as hope:  I made close  to 6 figures last year working 3 days a week and I’m no MBA…it can be done).

But here’s the deal….you cannot get stuck in option #1 above.  I look at it this way: We only have so much time, energy and money.  If we dedicate those resources to #1 we are choosing to waste our time and talents.  Complaining gets you nowhere.

Option #2 is better, but how much progress can we make in a short period of time?  And again, we pass off our power to an outside group to determine our worth. That doesn’t work for me.

Option #3 is a valid way to make a living. It’s where most of us start out.  But why give over 50% of your hourly rate to a large organization, so they can pay you less than what you will make working for yourself, even after you calculate your overhead costs? Just to test this theory I recently applied to a large medical group for a per diem mental health position. They rolled out the red carpet, showed me all of their great benefits but wouldn’t talk salary. Why? Because it was waaaay lower than what I make working for myself. The math just didn’t work out.  They get the same per session insurance reimbursement rate that I receive, but they take out all the overhead that allows me to have benefits, vacations, an office, phone, computer, etc.  Why work for them in their cramped little, no window office when I can make MORE working for myself?? No thanks.

For me, #4 is the way to go.  Not only are you completely in control of your career, you will make more money AND help more people.  But for me, the most important, fun piece of #4 is you get to be creative! You can create new ways of helping, healing, changing the world.  Want to do phone coaching? You can.  Want to teach workshops? You can. Want to offer free reports to teach healthy habits? Go for it!

How do We Develop New Business Models?

First, realize you do not have to ask permission to try new things! Please, if you can be true to your ethical code, you can try new approaches. In fact, you must try new approaches to make your practice successful. Of course, this does mean you will need to learn about new ways of doing things. But we are all life-long learners, so this shouldn’t be an obstacle.

A new business model must include:

• multiple income streams
• variation in how services are provided (i.e. in office, by phone/Skype, social media, etc)
• minimal reliance on third party payers (you can accept some insurance, but it can’t be your only way to generate income.)
• collaboration with other professionals who serve the same or similar clients
• a content driven marketing plan

The good news is this:  A different business model does not have to be ALL new and creative.  Offering traditional approaches is important, but we need to think about what we can add. Or how can you give the traditional a new twist? Here’s an example:  I work with kids and parents, but many parents can’t find time to get to my office, so I added phone coaching that I offer one evening a week.  A new twist on a traditional approach!

Will People Pay Me for My New Services?!

Yes. If you offer relevant services that your ideal clients want, they will pay for it.  For example, since I take very few insurance plans, I now offer 30 minute sessions at a reduced rate. People pay for these without complaint.

The key here is you must have a clear service with a clear benefit. This brings us back to specialty (it always comes back here, doesn’t it? ).

Once you define your services, you can market them in a way that allows people to see your offerings as a helpful solution to their pain. Once you make that connection people are very happy to pay you.

The Bottom Line

We need to become well versed in the world of business. It’s not a choice any more. Big Business will take advantage of us because they can. Health care is a business and we either participate in that or we stand aside and accept what is given us (but no complaining, please. You have a choice.). You are smart, well educated, have resources, are able to learn new skills.  We have reached a tipping point and we all need to make some decisions. Neither path is easy. There is work involved. But always keep in mind you can use your time and energy in many ways. Worrying and complaining,waiting for a bail out are not productive ways to create a meaningful career.  Let’s work together, learn, empower one another. We can be change agents!

If you found this post helpful, you may enjoy my free audio, The Way of the BizSavvy Therapist. Or if reading is more your thing, sign up for this blogs RSS feed (you can get the posts sent directly to your email).

If you are a physician, therapist or any other helping professional whose business model relies on third party manged care reimbursement you are engaged in the World’s WORST business model (and that’s not hyperbole…keep reading to see what I mean.)

Let me start with a story to set the stage:

Imagine you are a bright, idealistic college student. You’re good at academics, want to make a difference in the world and have hundreds of career options in front of you.

After lots of thought and planning you invest $100,000 in a graduate education. After all is said and done, you are in school anywhere between 2-12 years past your college graduation.  You train to change people’s lives, heal what pains them. You make a difference and you sacrifice your life goals to prioritize your career. You may delay getting married, having children, taking vacations.

You do good work, finish school and training proving yourself and set out to make a living practicing in your area of expertise.

The first order of business is to figure out how you will get paid for all of your good work.  The standard business model is accepting payment from a third party and this is where the business model gets funky, so pay close attention…..

This third party decides how much your work is worth.

The third party sets limits on how  much work you can do with each customer.

The third party can reject your invoices at any time for any reason.

The third party prohibits you from discussing your fees with other providers of the same service.

There are many of these third party payers and they all pay different, seemingly arbitrary rates.

The third party can change what they pay you at any time.

If you don’t follow all of the rules of the third party they don’t have to pay you at all.

The business model requires you to rely on an outside source to determine what you work is worth, set your rates and reimburse you on their terms. They can change the rules at any time. Outside forces constantly and consistently determine your bottom line. You have no choice, no chance to test price points. If you want to add a new service that isn’t recognized by the third party, they don’t pay you. The third party tells your customers that YOU are responsible for accessing their funding on their behalf, so no one knows what they really pay you or what your services are worth.

If you have any entrepreneurial spirit at all, please re-read the above paragraphs and tell me if you would sign up for this business model.  Honestly, it’s ridiculous, don’t you think?  Who in their right mind would invest $100,000 and years of their life in education, training and business and then turn over all hope of a profit to an outside entity?

Why don’t health care providers do anything about the model?

Doctors, therapists and other health care providers are not business people. We are not trained to pay any attention to how we get paid or who pays us.  Many of us work in organizations that take care of all the adminstrative silliness so are have no idea how broken the system is.  We are trained to do work that “insurance will pay for,” or to “find something that the insurance will reimburse.” Nice, huh? Your doctors are trying to find things wrong with you so they can get paid.  It’s not their fault..it’s the business model and no one questions it.

Those who understand that business model, CEOs of insurance companies think it is a GREAT business model. They call the shots, they are in charge, they have the power and they make lots of money managing your business and our health care.  Those in power never want to give it up. Just read Shakespeare if you don’t believe me.

As providers we are also brainwashed that if we don’t accept this crazy business model our patients will be harmed. “How will they afford care? Who will take care of them?”   But, in the USA, we don’t want to provide a public health plan to help out those who are less able to afford care, so providers are put in a bind: take the lousy capitalist model that puts you in a subservient position to third party payers, or be a guilt ridden, selfish person for not buying into the model and getting the respect and pay you deserve.

What can we do about it?

Create different business models.  Take ownership of our careers.  Declare, “We’re not going to take it anymore!”

Imagine what would happen if doctors, therapists, dentists, and all other helping professionals declared this at once?  What if we only worked with third party payers who treated us with respect? What if we only accepted insurance that had a real person answer our calls and handle our questions?  What if we dropped insurers who pay us insulting rates and make us fill out 5 pages of busy work to access that cash?

And what if we informed patients that it is their insurance company that restricts their care, pays low rates, makes us wait on hold for hours? Or how about we put the onus on the patient to submit all insurance claims, understand how complex and time consuming it all is? It’s their care after all. [And don't tell me the public 'can't figure it out.'  They figure out auto insurance, life insurance, home insurance. They can figure it out. Now we just enable ignorance].

Do you think the public would speak up? Complain to their insurance company, employers, government officials, congresspeople and senators? Well, yeah, they would.  Would health care policy  need to change if the providers of care stood up and demanded respect, a fair system and lower overhead costs?

Let’s not agree to business models imposed upon us. Let’s educate ourselves about business and empower both the medical profession and consumers to be proactive in how health care is accessed and paid for. If we are told that health care is a business, and entrepreneurs run the system, let’s even the playing field so that the competition is fair.  We have a choice.

If you found this post helpful, you may enjoyu my free audio, The Way of the BizSavvy Therapist. Or if reading is more your thing, sign up for this blogs RSS feed (you can get the posts sent directly to your email).

Fear is underrated.  All the great business gurus tell us to blast through fear. Sure, we need to figure out how to manage it and keep going, but sometimes you’re just scared sh**less and you  get stopped in your tracks. And I think that is perfectly OK. When I started my private practice I was scared. Scared I wouldn’t be able to find any clients. Scared I wouldn’t do a good job. Scared I’d make no money, go broke, have to sell my house.  Really so scared I would FAIL. So for a long time I avoided the scared and worked for others. It was safe, I had a paycheck, there were no administrative demands. I didn’t need to learn anything new. It was safe but I was bored and annoyed that someone else was profiting from my hard work.

It is so easy to get stuck in that place..bored, frustrated, angry that things aren’t different. But that darn fear gets in the way. Stuck.

So I’ll tell you how I side stepped my fear. I didn’t jump over it, victorious like Superman, or plow through it like the Incredible Hulk. I greeted it, said “hello,” walked with it for awhile and then tiptoed around it so I could move on with my life.

I greeted fear

The first step in maneuvering around fear is to acknowledge it. For me this meant sitting in my office saying to myself, “I am stuck here because I’m afraid to take a risk.” I repeated that phrase to myself for many weeks. Hello, fear.

Next, I walked with fear for awhile. Had a metaphorical chat with it, if you will.

Me: “So, yeah, fear. What’s up? I’m stuck in a job I hate and here you are.  What do you want?”

Fear: “I want to let you know that you’re safe now and change is hard. Why change when things are safe?”

Me: “Because I’m bored and I want to do more with my life. Actually, I want to build something that’s mine, and do things my way.”

Fear: “OK, but that is hard work.”

Me: “That I am not afraid of. Hard work I can do.”

Fear: “So what are you afraid of?”

Me: “Not knowing what to do…I don’t know how to run a business!”

Fear: “Can you learn how to run a business?”

Me: “Yeah. I’m good at learning. I’ve been in school my whole life, for goodness sakes!”

Fear: “Ok..so you’ll learn about business. What about getting clients?”

Me: “I am wicked afraid that I won’t get clients! Freaked out! With no clients I’d doomed!”

Fear: “Can you learn how to get clients?”

Me: “I guess so, you can do that…learn how to get clients?”

Fear: “Do you have clients now?”

Me: “Yes.”

Fear: “Do they like working with you?”

Me: “They keep coming back, so I guess they do like working with me.”

Fear: “Will some of them follow you to a new location?”

Me: “Yes, but is that right to do?”

Fear: “You want to know if you can get clients….Don’t overanalyze.”

Me: “Right…so clients, yes, I can get clients. Because if I have some now and I can learn how to find more, I’ll be ok.”

Fear: “You could fail.”

Me: “I know. I could fail.”

Fear: “What’s more important–always being safe and maybe regretting not trying this new thing, or taking a risk, doing your best and figuring out how to NOT fail?”

Me: ” Uh, taking a risk and trying the new thing?”

Fear: “Not convincing…”

Me: “OK, ok!  I need  to try the new thing because I don’t like where I am now.  Anything is better than this. And if I am an UTTER FAILURE I can always return to this job, or another one that I might like better…..So, I guess I have nothing much to lose, do I?  Now, please get out of my way so I can do something and make some changes!”

Fear: “Alright, I will step aside but I will always be here.”

Me: “Good to know because I wouldn’t want to go all rogue and really throw all caution to the wind.”

Fear: “I think we’re done talking…Move along.”

The chat with fear was useful. It took a long time. But I was no longer in a panic, I was sleeping relatively well at night.  So my next step was to do all I could to learn about business and attracting clients.  The awareness that I could learn about the very thing that provoked my biggest fears was what allowed fear to move aside.  Learning is a comfortable action for me. When in doubt, confused or overwhelmed I always default to trying to learn more. But that’s  me.

Each of us has to have our own conversation with fear. We need to figure out why it is there and what we need to do to tiptoe past.  Maybe it’s finding a mentor, reading a book, running 10 miles, having a chat with a friend, meditating, taking a vacation. You need to chat with your fear and ask.

The Doing

Ultimately, you will need to do something to move beyond your fear. And I mean anything. Ordering a book, calling a consultant, reading a blog, registering for a course, jotting down notes.  The trick is you need to move beyond “stuck” and into “do.”

Fear will still be there, but he’s hanging around to keep you cautious and informed, not to stop you from achieving your goals.

Do you know if fear holds you back?  If so, how do you manage it? Are you stuck in “stuck?” How can we help?

As a helping professional you have an ethics code to follow and have been taught the importance of healthy boundaries between you and your clients.  It’s always important to put your client’s needs first, not ramble on about yourself or share intimate details of your daily life.  Sharing personal information can interfere with good treatment, and quite frankly, your clients don’t care.

Often when I speak to therapists or other helpers about using a blog and social media to market they get a nervous twitch and start to slowly back away. Why? They think I am asking them to share their life story online to build their practice and that idea feels wrong. As it should. I would never ask a professional to step over their ethical standards to build a business.

The good news is, you can market your practice with a blog, twitter, and facebook while maintaining the same level of ethical boundaries that you uphold in your office.  Here are 5 smart ways to maintain boundaries in your marketing:

1.  Write about ideas and research findings.  Have you read a good professional article or book recently? Summarize the content and write about it on your blog.  Dr. Nestor Lopez-Duran does this well on his <a href=” alt=”" />Child-Psych.org blog.

2.  Post lists of tips and helpful hints.  What conversations to you find yourself having over and over again with clients? Is it about eating well, relaxation techniques, ways to get a better night’s sleep.  Summarize your suggestions and put them in a brief post. For example: “The Top 10 Ways to Get a Good Night’s Sleep.” These types of posts are very helpful to people and establish you as a trusted expert.

3.  Link to other people’s information.  If you just read a magazine or blog article that contains useful information for your clients, briefly summarize the information and link to it.  Here is an example of how I did this when I heard someone speak on the radio about bullying prevention.

4. Never, ever post anything about your clients. Never. Ever. This should go without saying, however in the past few weeks I have seen doctors and therapists writing about “a client of mine,” or summarizing cases online.  Even if their identity is disguised, these types of “examples” can easily come to the attention of your clients and complicate treatment in so many ways.  There is no need to demonstrate competence by using “real life” examples. People are happy to see that you possess expert information and can logically make the leap that you are a skilled practitioner.

5.  Say very little about yourself, but be a human being.  To effectively market your practice in a blog or social media, you don’t need to expose your life story to people.  It is perfectly ok to post nothing personal at all.  However, the benefit of using social media is it is a tool that allows people to get to know like and trust you.  To use this power effectively you can share a bit of your professional life. For example, you can inform people when you are going to a relevant conference, what you learned there and other professionals you met. Of course, if you want to share a bit about yourself, you hobbies, pets, activities that is fine.  Presenting 90% professional content and 10% personal is a nice balance. Think about what information you would share with a client. If you would tell them that you are a gardener or own a chihuahua it is perfectly ok to share that information in your marketing.

6. Consider your marketing as a public service.  When you share research findings and helpful tips you are providing a public service.  Offering people simple, easy ways to eat better, relieve stress or become a better parent is helpful and appreciated.  Marketing for helping professionals should be a “win-win”. A win for the public because they learn something useful from your marketing, and a win for you as people identify that you are a person they want to work with and become clients.

Yes, you can market and maintain ethical boundaries.

I am living a bad dream of marketing overwhelm and confusion.  Maybe you are, too?  It seems there is a great deal of advice, experts and people ready to tell me the “right” way to market (for a price, of course).

Dan Kennedy tells me I need to know what my prospects want and offer those things if I want to make good money.  That makes sense.

The folks over at  Copyblogger suggest I need excellent, targeted copy and SEO (search engine optimization). That makes sense.

Over at the Third Tribe, they tell me to build a blog, affiliate market and “be cool,” which sort of makes sense.

Chris Brogan tells me he makes his money talking to Fortune 100 companies, but his blog speaks to small business folks. Um, OK.

Naomi Dunford at Itty Biz, just told me that connecting with others is  a great way to market until there are too many others to connect with.  That idea is not comforting.

And Seth Godin eloquently tells me to do my “emotional work,” “do my art” and “give gifts” to build my business. I love these ideas, but they don’t coordinate well with the other marketing experts I’m consulting.

My head hurts

I am living in marketing overwhelm and confusion. (Otherwise known as “marketing hell.”)

I need to get out of this place. I think I  a choice must be made. I need to do marketing that feels right to me.  No, I need to communicate with my clients and potential clients in an authentic way.  I’m starting to dislike the word “marketing,” because at this point it doesn’t mean anything.  It has all these loose definitions and so-called experts pulling me in different directions.

The thing is, I believe that ALL of their approaches work for them.  But I now know that paying attention to all of their voices leaves me confused and unable to find my OWN voice.

My voice is most similar to Seth Godin’s. I want to share my art and give gifts and trust that those people to get my vibe and want to do work with me will find me, start a conversation and we’ll build something together.

There is not one right way to build a business, a movement or change the world.  We each have a unique voice and we need to trust the right people will find us and say “hi.”

What this means to you

Enough about me, what about YOU?  My suggestion is you start to seek your own voice in your business and ultimately in how you tell people about what you do (or “marketing” as some call it).  As helping professionals we can’t be all sales-y and in people’s faces about the benefits of our services. We need to be genuine, helpful, compassionate, and a bit self-promotional to build a practice.  To me, this is part art and part science.  The science part is easy to learn, but it is the art of bringing yourself to the business-building that can be challenging.  There is a significant part of it that is confusing and overwhelming.  Which is OK and part of the process. I was able to figure that out with my practice a few years ago.  Once I pulled together the science of marketing and my art, my practice thrived.

I want that experience for EVERY helping professional because you need to make decent living and there are so many people who need your help.

Let’s find our voice, collectively and individually. Let’s call it something other than “marketing,” and move out of confused overwhelm.  The right people will find me and the right people will find you. And we will all be grateful to know each other.

If this post makes any sense to you, please leave a comment and say “hi.”  We  learn from each other best when we connect and share ideas.