Marketing, Fear, Growth and Ideal Clients

When we get out of our training programs, the biggest marketing problem we all have is niching down enough. When asked who our ideal client is, we inevitably start with, "Anyone who...[something general like feeling better about themselves or living their best life]" rather than being really specific, such as, "Male, blue-collar contractors." We think that if we exclude anyone we'll get less business, but the opposite is actually the case.

Think of the millions of practitioners out there who use basically the same techniques that you do. You can't throw a rock anywhere without hitting at least ten of them. There's nothing special about you to potential clients who don't know you. You have to find a way to stand out and let them see that you're the one for them. Trying to appeal to everyone puts you in that huge group all competing with one another for the same clients. Odds are that you're going to lose, no matter how good you are.

But if you niche down to specializing in working with women trying to find happiness and success after trauma, for example, you're putting yourself in a much smaller group. Any women looking for help getting over trauma will see you as a better possibility than those practitioners without the same specialty. You're attracting a smaller group of clients, but you're in a much smaller group of practitioners. Your marketing efforts have a greater probability of landing you not just any clients, but ideal clients.

That's why we're all taught to niche right out of the gate - so we increase our chances of attracting and landing clients more quickly. It takes time for a business like this to rack up enough clientele to survive, much less thrive, so we need to take advantage of everything that will help us increase our book of business as soon as possible.

There are two problems with this early niching, though. The first is that we don't know what we'll ultimately want to focus on as a specialty. We have no experience, so we have to guess. Most of us guess wrong, but we think we're right at the time. The other problem is that we tend to turn away clients that don't fit our ideal client mold, even when we really need more clients. We need to guard against this self-sabotage. If you notice yourself making business decisions based not on what would be best for your business but rather on a feeling, talk to me or someone who will be brutally honest with you about it to keep you from getting in your own way and not moving forward with your practice. Sometimes your feelings can hold you back.

Specialization is for marketing; you can work with whomever you want. Our own Joel Mercado is a good example of this. He markets exclusively to male, blue-collar contractors. He also works with a few women, but he doesn't market to them or change his marketing to accommodate them. His marketing brings him more ideal clients who are attracted by his specialty, but he is not against taking on someone outside this client profile when he feels it is worthwhile in some way. The result? He's full and killing it.

If you find yourself unyielding in taking on anyone but your ideal clients, especially when you're just getting started, your business may not survive or you may have to stay in that full-time job a couple years longer than you had hoped. If you get a referral from a practitioner outside your scope of business who wants to send clients your way, you don't want to say, "Okay, but only certain clients." You have too much competition for that to go over well. That practitioner will have to find someone else who does what you do to help their clients that you won't take, which will be really easy for them to do, and your relationship will suffer. You will likely lose that referral source to that competitor for whom you opened the door, because that person will make the referral source's job and life easier.

When you have the opportunity to work with clients who are not ideal, ask yourself if it's worth it. Maybe it is, especially if you need more clients, but maybe it isn't, if you've done your time in the trenches and want to scale down the number of sessions you do each week.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Will you get a good referral stream out of it?
- Is the person special to you and you want to help them?
- Is it a referral from a current or past client with whom you want to maintain a good relationship?
- Do you want more business coming in?
- And perhaps most importantly from my perspective, will you grow as a practitioner by working with them?

Put on your business hat and see if it makes more sense business-wise for you to take them on or decline to work with them. If it makes more sense to accept a non ideal prospect as a client but you decline to work with them, ask yourself where that decision came from. It didn't come from a business perspective; it was personal. It most likely came from a place of fear, and you may be rationalizing (lying to yourself) that there's a good reason for that emotional decision. Be honest with yourself if you notice this happening. You don't want to make business decisions (or any other decisions, really) based on fear. There may be some work you need to do on yourself to become a more effective business owner, and that work is most likely going to change all of your relationships, making them healthier and more successful.

If you don't want to even consider working with a particular type of person (men, for instance), you may have an unresolved personal issue that's manifesting in this way. If working with a certain issue (e.g., drinking) really puts you off or even triggers you, you may have some emotion around this that needs to be reprogrammed.

So my point here is this: market to your ideal clients only, but never say you won't work with any particular person or issue. If you only work with people and issues that make you comfortable, you won't grow much as a practitioner. You may be good, but you won't be great. This is the norm out there today in our field, and those folks tend to have full-time jobs and do this as a side-hustle. Do you want a side-hustle or a full-time business?

If you have more business than you are comfortable with and not looking to take on many more clients, then you can start declining certain types of clients outright and telling referral sources to only send certain people your way (if any). You can work with only your ideal clients. You'll build up to this, but your business has to have some amount of success first and you need a lot more experience professionally. You have to be able to pay your bills and regularly save for retirement before you get too choosy.

And even then, you still want to keep an open mind. I dislike working with smokers and other addicts more than any other clients, but every so often I'll accept a new client who wants to get rid of an addiction because of the circumstances and our rapport. I just took on a new client who wants to get past three addictions. Why? Because she felt very strongly that I was the right practitioner for her to work with and we clicked really well during her consultation. We're only two sessions in and it's going great. I love working with her and I see her becoming a monthly client for life.

I'm really confident and comfortable in my practitioner role now, but it wasn't always this way. I just talked with my husband and he remembered how nervous and stressed I was when I first started my business. I was f-ing scared. That fear propelled me and made me do things I hated to promote my business, and I had to take on clients with whom I felt very uncomfortable. I needed the money and had to try to make it work with every potential client who came my way. I didn't even know who my ideal client was and didn't really care. I thought I'd be doing mostly medical support and marketed myself as a Clinical (Medical Support) Hypnotherapist, but it didn't work out that way. I took on every case that I could and grew very fast. It became clear that my focus was changing, and I just rode the wave and let happen whatever was going to happen rather than trying to direct it. I let myself and my practice grow organically. If I hadn't taken all the scary chances and done all the scary things, I wouldn't have grown as much and been as successful.

Start with your boundaries wide open and only start narrowing them as your business and expertise grow. This is in contrast to your marketing, which is more targeted. Get used to this big difference in thinking from a marketing perspective versus a growth perspective.

To encourage growth, I often tell new practitioners to work with everyone and let their clients determine their specialties. I and many of my colleagues started out marketing for a particular specialty and wound up with a different focus after certain clients had more success and marketed more for us via referrals than did other clients, building up our businesses in ways we never expected. Let your practice build organically, being authentic, and you'll wind up full of ideal clients and possibly a slightly or even very different specialty than you started with. Don't be married to your current focus, especially if you're just starting out. Don't give in to the fear, as it stifles growth. Get all the experiences you can and focus more on growing as a practitioner more than anything else. Uncomfortable with a client? Take it as a personal and professional challenge and you'll be better for it. As you grow over the first few years, change your marketing to reflect that growth. Getting more and more kids coming in? Start marketing to kids as your specialty. Float with the current rather than swimming against it, and promote yourself accordingly.

Just keep your options open, let the fear keep you moving forward rather than resisting, and keep riding the wave as you grow. You've got this!! 😊🌟💫❤️