Setting Yourself Up For Success

Here, at The Therapists' Business School, we often talk about the limiting beliefs, which can hold back our success. A very common limiting belief is that as we get more successful we will have less time. A variation on this limiting belief is that as we become more successful we will be more stressed. So, when we hold this limiting belief, it causes us to subconsciously move away from success. Often, people will stagnate in their business, or even self-sabotage to avoid the time restrictions and stress, they subconsciously associate with success.
So, where does this limiting belief comes from?

It can come from parents. Many of us were taught, by our parents, that the only way to make a lot of money is to work as many hours as possible. It can also come from our own experience. I started my career in the corporate world. As I looked at the more senior staff, all I saw was people who were working longer and longer hours for a small amount of extra money. I saw people whose lifestyles were severely limited by their poor work life balance. It knew it wasn't what I wanted.
We need to challenge this limiting belief about success and time. If you work for yourself, as a therapist, then actually success brings you more time. You can increase your per hour fee to work fewer hours. As you become more successful, you can outsource many of your business tasks, allowing you the time to focus on the parts of your business which satisfy you.

As you become more successful, you can also use your increased income to outsource many chores. For example, get a cleaner, have someone to do your laundry, get your shopping delivered or even get entire meals delivered to your door.
The wonderful things about the age we live in, is that almost everything can be outsourced and more success allows you even more free time to do the things you are passionate about.
So, what is the best way to manage our time and set ourselves up for success?
How we feel physically will affect how mentally focused we feel and how productive we are. Therefore, look after yourself. Make sure you schedule time every day for some exercise. This will make you feel great, you'll be mentally alert and have more energy.

As well as scheduling time for exercise every day, find time for meditation. There's a great meditation app called Headspace which contains 10 minute long meditations, so there's no excuse not to fit it into your day.  Meditation is great for decreasing stress and helping you to feel more focused.
Once you have exercised and meditated, you feel physically and mentally prepared for anything.
It's often best to schedule your exercise and meditation for as early as possible in the day, to set you up for success.
Once you've set yourself up for success, what is the best way to maximize your work productivity?
A good strategy is to limit the amount of time you have on certain tasks. For example, set yourself 30 minutes to work on content generation for your newsletters. Limiting the time, makes you more focused. If you know you only have 30 minutes to work on a task, you will avoid unnecessary distractions such as Facebook.

Another great strategy is to choose your work environment wisely. If possible, get out of your house. Otherwise, you'll be tempted to do some housework! Aim to work somewhere without friends or family around to distract you. If you don't have your own premises, to work from, then a library or café is great. Make the environment a pleasant please to be. Choose a café with great light and ambiance. If it works for you, then put some music on. If you have your own office, make sure it is clean and put beautiful pictures up.
Avoid multi-tasking. You might think you get more done when you are multi-tasking, but in reality you probably don't. Sometimes we can feel overwhelmed by the number of tasks to complete each day. However, just take one at a time. Choose your most important task, which must be completed today and work on that for 30 minutes. Another benefit of meditation is that it makes it easier to focus on one thing at a time.
Everyone's lifestyle is different so design a daily success plan which works for you. Personally, I find I am better at exercise later in the day, so will schedule blocks of work and break up those blocks with a work out.
A fantastic book, which details how to be more productive, is The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. We highly recommend it.

If you have any hints and tips for being more productive, please do comment below.


Get the 7 Steps To Creating A Successful Therapy Business here. 

Great Podcasts For Business Owners

As a therapist you have two quite distinct roles. One as a therapist. The other as a business owner. Both roles require significantly different skills. Often, we have extensive training on the therapy side, but when we start our therapy business, we realise that we need just as much business skill as therapy skill.

Thankfully there are lots of wonderful books and podcasts to help you to learn these skills and to become more entrepreneurial minded.

Podcasts have the advantage that you can be learning while doing other things such as cleaning, walking or commuting.

Here are a few of our favourite business podcasts.

The Tim Ferriss Podcast
Tim Ferriss is the author of The Four Hour Work Week, which revolutionised how people think about business and their lifestyle. In his podcast, Tim interviews high achievers from a variety of fields and identifies the tools and strategies they use to achieve their high level of success.

The Suitcase Entrepreneur
If you want to expand your business beyond one to one consultations, this is the podcast for you. The Suitcase Entrepreneur explains how to turn your therapy skills into online products (e.g. courses, books, membership clubs). As therapists we exchange time for money. We often then hit a ceiling in our business because our time is limited. This podcasts guides you through the process of moving parts of your business online to create more financial and time freedom. 

The Entrepreneur Radio Show
Hosted by a highly successful and experienced entrepreneur, this podcast contains interviews with other successful entrepreneurs. It gets into the nitty gritty of business and is a wonderful learning resource, particularly if you are very serious about making your business highly profitable,

Unemployable
This sits between The Suitcase Entrepreneur and The Entrepreneur Radio show in its style. It contains a high level of practical detail, such as how to set up sales funnels and how to manage your email list. Its target audience is people who want a business which allows them freedom in life, as opposed to a business focussed exclusively on profit.

Lewis Howes - The School of Greatness
While this podcast is a business podcast, it also focusses on general personal development and being the best version of yourself in all areas of your life. A wonderfully motivational podcast.

Which other business podcasts do you recommend? Please do comment below.

Unlocking Your Superpowers

As a therapist, you wear lots of hats. You have the role your clients see, as a therapist. However, you also have to wear your book-keeping hat, your social media marketing hat, your networking hat, your organization hat and so on. With only 24 hours in the day it can be very difficult to know where to place your focus.

Place your focus where your superpowers lie. Yes, for a moment we are putting hats aside and donning a superhero costume, complete with underwear worn on top of clothes! You have superpowers, lots of them, and by focussing your attention on those superpowers, you can build a thriving and fulfilling business.

So, how do you find your superpowers? A good place to start is to identify what you enjoy the most. What lights you up? What do you enjoy doing?  Take some time to write a list of all the things you enjoy in your business and all of the things you enjoy in your day to day life. This will be different for everyone. For example, many people would find coding very dull, but Derek Sivers, the founder of CD Baby, enjoyed coding so much that he kept doing the coding, even when he was running a multi-million dollar business.

As well as writing these lists of what you enjoy, take some time to write down what you are good at. Ask your friends what you are good at. There will be things that you find easy, which you assumed everyone else found easy too. Your friends will identify these superpowers.

For example.
Things I enjoy in business
Meeting clients for the first time
Business networking


Things I enjoy in life
Going out with friends
Going to new places
Travel

Things my friends say I am good at
Confident with new people
Organised with dates
Great at planning events
Make people feel at ease.

Once you have identified your superpowers, you can apply them to your business. If you are someone who has great tech skills and attention to detail, then you can focus your time on studying Google Analytics and tweaking your sales funnels. If your superpower is public speaking and networking, then great, get out there and market your business that way.

One of the wonderful things about taking that leap and starting your own business, is that you discover new superpowers. Often, in the world of employment, only a limited number of tasks are required of us. However, when you start your own business you can suddenly discover that you are good with numbers, a great public speaker or fantastic event organiser. Enjoy the process of your new superpowers shining through.

As well as discovering superpowers, you didn't know you had, your own business is also a great opportunity for growth. It is one of the steepest learning curves you will ever go through. Most skills can be learned and, if you have an interest in them, you will learn them easily. You can add to your superpowers by learning business strategy, online marketing or how to use social media platforms. Here at The Therapists' Business School, we have a range of online and classroom courses to allow you add to your superpower repertoire.

As well as running your business day to day, you also have to think about how to grow your business. There are so many directions you can take your business. Do you want to do group therapy? Do you want to hire another therapist? Do you want to create online products? Or sell a book? With so many options and with everyone giving you a different opinion, it can be hard to know which direction to take. Use the same strategy of identifying your superpowers and apply them to business strategy decisions. For example, if you hate working on your own but love mixing with people, then don't write a blog or book. Instead, you could organise wellness events. Sometimes, it can be hard to know what we want. This is very common. A good way to get into the flow state of mind is to do something you enjoy. You will tend to find that when you are in a good state of mind, new business ideas will flow to you. A common distorted belief, which can hold business owners back, is that if something is easy for us we can't charge for it. Remember, just because it is easy for you, doesn't mean it's easy for someone else. Someone else will happily pay you to alleviate whatever problem they are facing.

So, now that you've identified your superpowers and how you can use them in your business, it's time to talk about the rest. All the things you don't like, the tasks in your business which feel like chores. This is where outsourcing comes in. These days you can outsource almost every business task. Outsourcing doesn't mean you have to employ someone. You can outsource as much or as little as you like for a fraction of the cost it would be to employ someone. You can hire someone to do your SEO, write your blogs, do your accounts, even book your travel or do your laundry. A great website for outsourcing is  Upwork (www.upwork.com).

Discovering and then utilising your superpowers is one of the best things you can do for your business. So, take the time to do this today.

Find out the 7 Steps To Creating A Successful Therapy Business

10 Ways To Be A More Successful Business Person

1.       Keep fit and healthy. You will have more energy to work hard and your mind will be clearer. As a therapist you must walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

2.       Model others. Learn from people you admire. Find out how they run their business and what steps they took to get where they are today.

3.       Overcome negative beliefs. We can pick up distorted beliefs about money and success throughout our lives, such as:

a.       To be successful you must sacrifice your relationships

b.      You have to be lucky to become wealthy

c.       You have to treat others badly to make it to the top

d.      You will become arrogant if you are successful

Challenge these beliefs. Read Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad Poor Dad” series for more information on distorted beliefs.

4.       Meditate. A wonderful way to keep focussed and manage stress.

5.       Who you associate with. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So, surround yourself with people who support your dream.

6.       Be congruent. Make sure everything you do in your business fits with your own values. You will enjoy your work more and ultimately attract more clients.

7.       Continuously learn. Take CPD course directly related to your field. Learn about business and marketing for therapists from us. Read plenty and listen to podcasts from experts in your field.

8.       Have a clear vision. To stay motivated, have a clearly defined goal for your business. Establish a time frame in which you will achieve your goal. We are visual creatures so create a vision board and place it somewhere you will regularly see it.

9. Don't be afraid to say, "No." If a client makes you feel uncomfortable or asks for an unreasonable discount, it is ok to refuse them, Set your boundaries. 

10. Ask for feedback. This is tough and it is normal to be worried about the responses. However, without feedback you cannot improve your service. 
          

Keeping Positive When Business Is Slow

Running your own holistic therapy practice has many wonderful benefits. More freedom, a better hourly rate, rewarding work. The flip side of this is that running a business can be tough. Your income can fluctuate wildly, sometimes clients do not get the results they were hoping for, and selling your services is hard.

We have all felt disheartened. Perhaps new leads dry up, maybe we have a number of cancellations close together, or perhaps we suddenly find out our office space is being sold to housing developers (this one happened to me!)

As a business owner your emotions are linked to the success of your business. When you are going through a bad time in your business, it is difficult to stay positive. Sometimes you might feel like giving it all up and going back to the job you were doing before.

It is very normal to feel like this occasionally, but do not let it deter you from your dream. Achieving your perfect lifestyle takes time and effort, so be willing to accept some uphill struggles.

It can be reassuring to know that everyone feels overwhelmed from time to time. The good news is that the longer you are in business, the easier it is to weather these storms. With time you get used to managing a fluctuating income. You also learn that the bad times do come to an end and after a few years you can see patterns and know when you will have quiet periods.

It takes time to build a business. We often hear about the overnight successes. However, we hear about these because they are the exception rather than the norm. Also, if you look in details at a lot of these “overnight successes,” the reality is that they have been working very hard, for a long time before the success started.

It can be very useful to join a peer support group, whether that is a group of other therapists or even just other small business owners in your local area. Talk to other people about your concerns. Learn how they overcome the same hurdles you are now facing.

Our mind set is so important to the success of our businesses. A good way to boost mind set is to take time every day to focus on the positives. Remind yourself of the great result one of your clients has recently achieved, re-read that lovely testimonial and celebrate the new leads you have obtained recently. Focussing on the positive helps to shift your mind set to a more confident one. As you appear more confident, new clients will naturally be drawn to you.

Our mind set is the most important factor to business success. The first week of our Business Success Course, focusses exclusively on mind set. For more information click here.

The 5 Most Common Business Mistakes of New Therapists

Running your own therapy practice is a wonderfully rewarding job, for many reasons. However, it is tough, really tough to get it off the ground. At The Therapists' Business School we work with a range of therapists, and we notice the recurring business mistakes when they are starting their own business.

Mistake 1 - Investing in the wrong sort of learning
I'm going to assume that if you have your own therapy practice you have a qualification which is recognised by your industry specific professional body and the CNHC. This is vital. Assuming this, you are already very capable of treating clients. So, how do you continue your education?  Time and time again we see perfectly capable therapists, who invest an excessive amount of time and money into more courses directly to do with their therapy type. This is great to increase the level of service you offer and is necessary to adhere to CPD requirements, however, if you are not seeing any clients, it is a wasted effort. Consider if that time and expense could be used to learn about business development. Bear in mind that potential clients, in general, recognise the job title and not the specific qualifications. You might be ten times as qualified as a similar therapist in the same area. However, if she has fantastic marketing, she will be the one seeing the clients. In the first few years, invest your time and money into learning about business, specifically marketing. Then, you can build a successful business and your therapy skills will naturally improve, through experience. Once you have a thriving practice you will have the freedom to further develop your skills.

Mistake 2 - Not spending any money on advertising
Word of mouth marketing is fantastic. However, you require a big enough pool of former clients to enable word of mouth marketing to generate a significant flow of new clients. While we do have to watch our expenses, some forms of paid advertising are necessary to generate that initial group of clients. The beauty of digital marketing such as Facebook and Google AdWords is that you can test various marketing strategies without committing large sums of money. You can set small budgets and test a few strategies against each other to establish the best one. We go through how to do this in more detail in our Business Success Course. Be honest with yourself about how much you have spent on training in the last year, including hotels, meals and transport. The chances are that the same amount would have been sufficient for your marketing budget for the year.

Mistake 3 - Lowering prices too much
There is a sweet spot when it comes to pricing your services. This differs dramatically between areas and therapy types, as well as between different therapists. Many therapists lower their prices (sometimes very dramatically) when they go through a quiet spell. It's a common mistake to think that lower prices will equal more customers. However, this is rarely the case. There are always quiet and busy spells, often coinciding with times such as the school holidays. Lowering your prices during these times will most likely result in getting the same number of new enquiries you would have done anyway but without the same income. Keep your prices steady through the quiet spells. Things will improve again.

Mistake 4 - Looking unprofessional
Whether we like it or not, first impressions count. Nowadays, potential clients will look at your website for a few seconds before deciding whether to leave the site or find out more. So, we have just a few seconds to make that vital first impression. Make sure that your website is user friendly and has no spelling errors. We once saw a hypnotherapy website with hypnotherapy spelled incorrectly in large letters at the top of each page! The same applies to photos. Make sure that the photo looks professional. Don't crop your partner out of a holiday snap and use that as your professional work photo! Yes, this is another website faux pas we have seen more than once at The Therapists' Business School. Perhaps ask a friend to read through your website and give their opinion. Of course, looking professional also applies to face to face meetings. Dress well for your therapy sessions. Be on time and make sure your treatment room is clean.

Mistake 5 - Lacking in Confidence
Starting a therapy practice is very daunting and it is very normal to feel a lack of confidence. Unfortunately, if this is too obvious, clients will also lack confidence in your ability to help them. Building confidence takes time, but there are strategies you can use. Make sure you have a support network of other therapists around you. Peer support groups are fantastic. Take the time to reflect on all the clients who have made a good improvement. Congratulate yourself often. Notice the language you use with your clients. Speak in a confident way about the therapy to instil confidence in them.

Building your own therapy practice is a very steep learning curve. Hopefully being aware of these common mistakes will increase the speed at which you build a thriving practice.

Our Story - The Therapists' Business School

The Therapists' Business School was created less than a year ago.  We recognized that, time and time again, very talented therapists, were having to give up their dream career, because they could not make the business work. As therapists we need to be business people as well as therapists and this is often the difficult part. It was heart-breaking to see so many great therapists have to return to employment and stop the career they love.
We realized that a lot of therapists lacked business and marketing skills. Often we, as therapists, have not worked in industries which required these skills, so have never developed them. To suddenly have to master these skills in your own business, with no support, is really tough!

We want more people to benefit from holistic therapy and therefore we want more therapists to be successful, to share their skills and help more people. We also want to see therapists who have been brave enough to take the risk of setting up their own business, to be able to live their dream.

We decided to set up this company to help other therapists, like you.

We are fortunate enough to have a team consisting of very successful therapists, who have been there and done it and have an in-depth knowledge of business and marketing, as well as experts in specific marketing fields such as social media and Google marketing.

Our vision is to provide a collection of resources, including courses, to enable holistic therapists to grow their business, be successful and ultimately live their dream.

Creating A Marketing Funnel - Level 2

A marketing funnel is the most valuable marketing strategy your business can have. Although it is time consuming to set up, once done, it will run itself and generate lots of new leads. In our previous post, on creating a marketing funnel, we discussed landing pages, email capture, hooks and identifying your ideal client. If you have not yet read the first email you can do so here.

Assuming you have now identified your ideal clients and have your landing page ready to go, let's move on. It's important to get these stages done first, so, if necessary, go back to the previous post.

Your next step is to set up your ads. You can do these on a variety of platforms. However, for today, we will focus on Facebook.

The first step is to open up the Facebook page which is specific to your business. If you don't have that, please set up a business Facebook page before anything else. It really is important to be prominent on social media.

On Facebook start by creating a normal post.


First of all choose an image, which correctly represents the freebie you are giving away. Make sure the image is clear and the correct size. If there are people in the image, then aim to make them the same age and gender as your ideal clients.

Now for the copy. The text on the ad (or copy) needs to be snappy and appealing. Through a lot of testing, we have found the best format for copy is to state three problems that really resonate with the client, and express these as questions, then to offer your freebie and finish with a call to action.

For example:
Do you dread big social occasions?
Do you get nervous when meeting new people?
Do you worry about what other people think of you?
Then download your free hypnosis for confidence MP3 here.

The reason for asking three questions is to create something called a "Yes Set." Once someone has answered yes three times they are likely to also agree to the call to action.

The word "here" should contain a link which will bring the potential client through to your landing page, where they can enter their details and automatically receive the freebie.

Now to target your advert. In the previous blog post we talked about identifying the characteristics of your ideal client. Now we put this into practice.

Once you have created your advert, it is time to boost it. Boosting it means that you pay and the advert will be shown to people who fit your target demographic but do not necessarily like your page.

Click on boost at the bottom of the post and you will be brought through to this screen.


You are given a few options in which to boost the post. We recommend targeting to a specific audience.

Now target to the specific ideal customer you identified. Target based on age, location, gender and interests. For example, you might know that most of your clients are women between the ages of 50 and 70, living in the local area who enjoy travel, specifically cruises, and reading. Facebook is wonderful because you can be so specific.

Now it is time to set a budget. We recommend starting small so you can test what does and does not work.


Getting the advert right takes a lot of trial and error. A/B testing is very important in all areas of your marketing and luckily Facebook makes A/B testing very simple. A/B testing is when you test 2 posts against each other. You change just one thing about the post, for example the image or the copy, and run it at the same time as the first post you created.

At the end of the campaign, Facebook will tell you which post had more interaction. The best post will have the lowest cost per click. You can view this is Ads Manager.

By constantly performing A/B testing you can create the most effective advert.

Now you've learned how to create your advert, you can just relax and wait for new email addresses to come in.

In the next Marketing Funnel email we'll talk about how to convert those email addresses into clients.

The Problem With Leaflet Advertising

Here, at The Therapists' Business School, we recently conducted a survey of holistic therapists in the United Kingdom.
An interesting finding was that many of you are using leaflet advertising. However, for all of you who use leaflets, this was your least effective form of marketing. Leaflet advertising generally has a very poor ROI (return on investment) both in terms of the financial investment and the time investment required for leaflets.
There are several reasons that leaflets produce such a poor ROI. The first is that this form of marketing is not targeted. You are marketing to everyone in the local area, regardless of whether they are interested in having therapy or if they are your ideal customer. To market your business effectively, it is much more beneficial to invest only in those who are interested in your specific type of therapy. You can do this with more targeted forms of marketing such as Google AdWords and Facebook ads.
Secondly, therapy is a very personal experience. The client will be revealing themselves, whether that’s physically by taking of their clothes for a massage, or emotionally by talking about their issues in a counselling session. Of course, many people very anxious or vulnerable when doing this. Therefore, they do not choose a therapist hastily. A client will choose a therapist they trust and will only continue to see them, if they continue to trust the therapist. A leaflet builds no trust and therefore is a very inefficient form of marketing. A much better way to build trust is to use a marketing funnel. The marketing funnel will be explained in detail over the next few blog posts, (it’s quite meaty so we decided to split this technique across a few weeks).
Therapy is generally a reasonably expensive service. To be able to charge a good price for your services you must portray a professional, trustworthy, upmarket service. Sending leaflets puts your service in the same category as local takeaways. It’s not the impression you want for your business.
So, how can you build up a good level of trust in a cost-effective way, which will bring new clients into your business without a huge investment?
The best way is to use a marketing funnel. This style of marketing is known as permission marketing and is much more effective and less aggressive, than big brash marketing, which annoys people. The marketing funnel allows you to start a conversation with a potential client, to build trust. The client does not have to spend any money initially so there is no risk to them. The beauty of modern technology is that it is possible to build these conversations with a large group of potential clients for a very low cost.
A summary of the way the funnel works is as follows:

1. There is an initial hook which encourages the potential client to give you their email address. This is the only part requiring a financial investment from you.
2. You send an informative email campaign to the client, providing them with useful information and telling them about your business but without aggressively selling.
3. Once a relationship of trust has been built up, you can sell more overtly and convert a portion of these conversations into sales.
4. You constantly ask for feedback and assess how the different steps of the funnel are working.
   In the next blog we will go through a step by step guide to creating the most effective initial hook.