By Roger Elliott<\/p>\n
Many of our readers\u00a0are aware that I look after\u00a0Uncommon Knowledge’s marketing efforts, and so it’s not unusual for practitioners to ask me for advice in that area.<\/p>\n
Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened at a\u00a0recent hypnotherapy conference I attended.<\/p>\n
When Tom asked me for marketing advice, I asked him what he was already doing. As he proudly reeled off an intimidating list of social media activity, all I could think was “Strewth! We’ve got a whole team<\/i> of people working in marketing and we don’t even do all that stuff!”<\/p>\n
Resisting the temptation to feel that he probably knew more than I did about the matter, I asked, “So how’s that working for you?”<\/p>\n
“Terribly!” he said, looking suddenly deflated. “I don’t even know if it’s actually getting me clients. I just feel that I should<\/i> be doing all that \u2013 I mean, everyone else is.”<\/p>\n
And I realized (not for the first time) that it’s often not what you are<\/i>\u00a0doing, but what you’re not<\/i> doing that makes the difference in business marketing.<\/p>\nWhat do practitioners want?<\/h3>\n
I recently asked you<\/a>, our Uncommon Practitioners, what your business goals were. When most of you came back with the answer that you want more clients, it was no great surprise.<\/p>\n But once you’ve established a baseline of clients for your therapy business, aiming for ‘more clients’ is not good enough. You need to start setting specific<\/i> goals, looking at questions like:<\/p>\n Luckily, all these questions have the same answer:<\/p>\n Stop doing so much.<\/i><\/p>\n It’s now well known that 20% of your effort brings 80% of your results. It’s even got a name: Pareto’s Law. And for a solo practitioner, the\u00a020% bringing 80% of results is most likely “seeing clients”.<\/p>\n The fantastic news is, this means you can cut out almost everything else you’re doing, and still get 80% of your current results!<\/p>\n The question is: What to stop doing?<\/p>\n Well, here’s my list, based upon my own experience of moving from solo practitioner to business owner.<\/p>\n\n
Things to stop doing as a practitioner<\/h3>\n