Monday 26 May 2008

Health and Wellness — A Smart Investment

I was interested to read an article on the Ladies Who Launch blog recently that stated people in the USA are sometimes investing as much as $100,000 (yes that’s right ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND dollars) on their health and wellbeing over time.

At first I was a bit “whoa, that’s a lot” but then as the writer Beth Tansey Peller, a health writer and wellness coach rightly states, these people may be taking a “pay now or pay later” approach.

What can you do as therapists to promote this “pay now or pay later” concept in your marketing. I always hear how hard it is out there to get people coming regularly for natural therapy treatments. Why not introduce a conversation about how much NOT coming is going to cost in the long run.

A colleague I worked with in my corporate days once shared that she had conservatively calculated the cost of her breast cancer recovery at $13,000 ON TOP of the hospital bills & treatments her health fund paid. When you look at these types of numbers, it makes a lot of sense to take the action up front because the emotional cost of being “unwell” adds an even greater cost.

Click here to read the full article

Sunday 25 May 2008

The Defiant Decision

I’m going to share a BIG dark secret with you. Please don’t tell any of those wafty positive souls who never let any dark thoughts or words pass through their being.

We have a lot of fear to bust and challenges to overcome when setting up a small practice, often working from home with little knowledge of what it takes to run a small business.

I love my positive statements but to be totally frank and honest the thing that makes me do the really hard stuff in my small business (like pick up the phone when I really don’t want to) is my Defiant Decision.

Do you remember the wonderful little cartoon of the defiant mouse that did the rounds a few years back? There was a cute little mouse standing on a barren cliff face with no where to go. Flying towards him was an enormous eagle with a massive wingspan and talons & beak ready to swoop in and rip him apart. The little mouse was standing there knowing he was seconds away from being eaten but he was defiantly giving the eagle the finger. The caption was “the last act of great defiance”. This is a funny but memorable message that has been etched into my brain as I defied the odds and got my practice happening.

My defiant decision statement is the thing I’ll do ANYTHING to avoid and it is:

“If you DON'T do this, you have to go back to corporate”

There it is my ultimate driving force. When everything else fails and I’m faced with doing something I really don’t want to do and all the positive affirmations aren’t working I simply say “well Margaret if you don’t do this and make a bit of money you’ll have to go back to corporate to pay the bills”.

You would be amazed how defiant I can become to that statement and how quickly I go into action when faced with the thought of going back to corporate.

The reason is that as humans we relate better to pain than pleasure (as weird as that sounds). So when I weigh up the pro’s and con’s of what it means to not be working for a boss again and not working on soul destroying projects with people who have sold their souls to the machine against the freedom of my own business, then it becomes an easy option. The reason is because I know what working for the machine feels like is because I can evoke that feeling in every cell.

My ultimate positive driver is to bring peace to the planet via helping natural therapists see more people. It’s a wonderful thought but as yet I haven’t fully experienced it so I can’t always use it fully to motivate myself.

So what is your defiant decision??

Saturday 17 May 2008

Wellness Becomes Mainstream

For some time now I’ve been banging on to therapists about how natural therapies are going to become more and more mainstream as time goes on.

Once upon a time natural therapies were for hippies in white flowing dresses or wildly esoteric people who “grew their own” and were considered quite mad by the mainstream.

Now the mainstream are beginning to understand that natural therapies can not only “fix” whatever is wrong with them, natural therapies can in fact stop them getting sick in the first place if they eat well and have treatments that reduce stress and promote wellness. Gosh – we’ve known this for such a long time. We are early adopters but the mainstream is slow to catch on. Look at how long it took for the mainstream to believe the world wasn’t flat when Christopher Columbus first started touting his “weird” theories.

I read an article today about one-stop shopping for wellness in South Africa. They have set up a wonderful environment where you can buy your groceries, visit the natural medicine dispensary and pharmacy; and have a spa treatment & purchase eco friendly health and fitness products all in the same warehouse type structure. There is already a shop in Richmond Melbourne that has a few of these aspects all under one roof but on a smaller scale.

If natural therapists don’t start embracing these big money themes we will end up with the same fate as the local corner store with big one stop shops knocking out the little guy.

Now it is time for natural therapists to stop thinking like “flat earthers” and stop marketing their businesses like they have done in the past. The hippies loved all the angels, butterflies and stars we so love to put on our marketing but these images & mindsets will alienate the mainstream because they are used to being influenced by more contemporary marketing.

Now is the time to start thinking how you can best market your business to the mainstream.

You can read the article here

Friday 16 May 2008

FOLLOW UP UNTIL THEY BUY OR DIE!!!

Question

I did my very first public speaking gig last night- and they loved me and I loved doing it too! It’s kinda cool to be paid to talk isn’t it? I handed around feedback forms at the end which they all filled in positively and at the bottom I had a ‘please write your contact details if you would like more information or a private consultation’ section – and they all filled in their names and numbers.

My question is – what time interval is appropriate to ring them – within the next week or two? Sooner? Later?

Answer

This is a great question and the short answer is FOLLOW UP UNTIL THEY BUY OR DIE!!!

Leads get cold very quickly and the longer you leave them the less chance you have of getting these people as a client. We like to think our messages are memorable and people will remember us forever but in most cases we are gone from their memory banks within a few days. This is why newsletters, follow up activities and making the phone your friend are so important. If you don’t keep yourself in front of your prospects someone else will swoop in and pinch them from you.

So in an instance such as above – the answer is to ideally follow up the next day with a phone call. If you can’t do the phone call immediately you need to at least make email contact within two days and then a phone call a couple of days later.

In future, whenever you speak, as soon as you get the booking, schedule time in your diary for the very next day so you can do your follow up immediately.

Well done on getting out there and doing speaking engagements. This is one of the best and most powerful ways to get known and grow your business.

If you would like to know more about follow up please visit my website and read the follow up article that appeared on the Empowering Women website.

Tuesday 13 May 2008

Release of Robert Rabbin's New Book RealTime Speaking - Which I am Featured In!

I am VERY excited because I have been featured by prominent author Robert Rabbin in his latest book called "RealTime Speaking: YOU are the Message!", which was released this month.

You can listen here to an inteview I did with Robert earlier in the year where he spends nearly an hour discussing what RealTime Speaking is and how we can use it in our lives and businesses, particularly when we are promoting ourselves as the message.


Robert Rabbin Interview

MP3 File


My chapter is titled “Dark Night of the Soul” and tells the vivid story of a decision made on the freezing cold floor of my Victorian cottage in Hepburn Springs. The decision to get up off the floor has lead to an ability to speak publicly about my passion to work positively with others who lead from the heart. The story follows what needed to occur to take me from feeling like “a total loser” after my move from the city to finding the authenticity and power to deliver messages others wanted to hear.

In August 2008 I will deliver a key note speech at the Utopia International Retreat in Noosa called “Leading from the Heart” and this win was made possible by working with Robert Rabbin and learning what it took to express my true self.

Rabbin’s book comprises 26 essays by RealTime Speaking workshop participants — Australians from all walks of life, from leadership experts to magazine editors, from corporate managers to holistic healers — who tell their profound and poignant stories of personal growth and professional success by claiming their power to speak publicly with credibility and confidence, finding deeper meaning along the way, and transforming their lives with the power of authentic self-expression.

The book is drawing excellent reviews can be purchased from Roberts’s website at http://www.realtimespeaking.com/ .