What to do in Your Down Time

December is traditionally a very quiet time and many therapists report time on their hands and not a lot of clients in the last week of December. THIS DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN SLACK OFF!!!

Firstly a change of mindset around the holiday period could result in clients coming through the door. Often this time of year brings “emotional stuff” up for people that they need to deal with and having your mindset open is a really grand idea. I did a successful presentation that will bring a lot of abundance to my business just two days ago and anyone would tell you that wasn’t possible at this time of year.

But if it is genuinely quiet for you, then now is the time to get all those jobs done that you have been “meaning to do”.

It is also a wonderful time to be getting ahead of yourself – so why not try some of the following:

• Get several articles written and finished
• Submit articles to various different media or websites
• Set up systems that you have been meaning to complete all year
• Do your filing (lets get honest – I’m sure there is a pile somewhere that needs doing!)
• Write your Future Letter for 2008
• Network – go out and go to some year end gatherings – you are bound to meet someone who might need your services
• Take a colleague to lunch or reward a strategic alliance partner
• Re-do your Welcome Pack to have a new energy for the New Year
• Design that program you have been meaning to write
• Have a spring clean in the office
• Handwrite some note cards thanking your favourite/regular clients
• Phone and book your favourite self care treat - nothing like doing something yourself to stir up the energy you want in your life
• Plan next years Grass Roots marketing campaign
• Start making lists of people to call in the New Year to ask if they need speakers
• Write a new talk you can do at these talks before they are even booked

The list of things we could be doing is endless so why not do them now. If you use this time wisely you will be highly prepared for the influx of people that will be looking for you to help them get their New Years Goals and Resolutions in place and working for them in 2008!

Gosh with all that work you are gong to need a holiday!!! SO TAKE ONE – don’t forget to spend time enjoying the things that give you joy.

How Writing Articles Gets You Known

A friend recently sent me an article on getting outside your comfort zone. The topic is close to my heart and I might as well have written the article myself. I’ve included the link below for you but that’s not the point of this blog post.

People often ask me why they should write articles. Well this is a good example of how any article can be a powerful tool in your PR campaign.

The newsletter that this article appears in is for a Government Department. Somewhere in that Government Department some poor soul is given the task of creating articles of interest to feed to the waiting readers every Tuesday. A big ask for even the most prolific of writers. What they have done to overcome their content challenge is to go to an article publishing service and they probably got this item for free or they may also have purchased it. The reason the author gave it away for free is because they understand that it will get into places (like this) and it will get them free publicity. Free publicity are two of my favourite words linked together – my most favourite two words linked together are Free Lunch but we all know that to be a bit of a thing of the past!

So if you write articles there are websites that will list your article so people can come on and promote the article and your business by way of the little resource paragraph at the bottom of the article. This article even let him list his website plus the landing page you happen to land on - has his books that you can buy. Do you get the chain of events here. From one article he could get known to thousands of people without even getting out of bed that day.

If you have any ability to string a few words together I would recommend you start writing articles and submitting them for publication. The trick is to have a strong WHO & WHAT in place so your articles can be listed with people in your target market.

You can read the article here

Working From Home with Kids

Question

I'm mother of two small kids and can't go out for work, so wished if, I could get cases at home with the help of centers running here. I wish you could say something on this.

Answer

I haven’t heard of centres outsourcing treatments in the way you describe because they have a vested interest in keeping their clients under their own roof so they can maintain their standard operating service. I suspect only an incredibility busy centre that was overflowing would look to moving their clients to a secondary location. Of course if you offered something unique and different to what they were offering perhaps they might do that but your standard would have to be very high.

What I would recommend that you do, to get clients at home, is to re-read through the 90 Day Challenge in the area of strategic alliances – it might give you some ideas how you could work with others LIKE YOU. If you could build up a selection of women with kids who were doing natural therapies at home, that complemented yours – then you could refer clients between you if it were appropriate for the client. I know a lot of women work from home – the trick will be finding them as they often get clients via word of mouth. You could also put flyers up where your children attend classes or school because women with kids go to those places and they would be interested in having treatments with a female therapist with similar circumstances to them. You might also like to consider do some talks or demonstrations at mothers groups or small community centres to help generate clients. Giving people the opportunity to meet you is the best and easiest way to get clients. People like to work with people and the more those people have in common with them – the more they like working with them.

What to Do When Your Website Gets Hacked

Hacking or stealing pages on websites is quite common and this week my site http://www.margaretgill.com/ got hacked.

My poor site looked more like the inside of a warehouse selling internet drugs than my lovely little site filled with love. After my initial feelings of violation and insecurity it became something I just had to “get over” because it is one of the hazards of having a website.

If it happens to your site, the first thing to do is to get your hosting company to change your password so the hackers can’t get at the site again, or at least it will make it harder to get back into your site. Be aware too that the hackers may have imbedded code in the site that will make it easy to repeat the action again, in which case you will need to completely reload your website from your back up files (tell me you have those!)

Also don’t forget to change your policy on passwords because lets be honest I have had the same password on my website since the day it was created back in 2002 and it has caused some minor irritations for me today. Also make sure you have numbers and letters in your password, it just makes it a wee bit harder for the hackers to get through.

Internet security is something we always have to be aware of and I’ll be speaking with my supplier to ensure I have everything in place to be certain it doesn’t happen again but it is not something that should make you stop in tracks and not use the technology. In my instance, the Universe has come in with a little message to remind me to make myself as safe as I can and then just “get on with it”.

Why Websites Don't Attract Visitors

Websites

MP3 File

Question

Why aren’t people visiting my website?

Answer

Let me answer that question with a question

Did Jackie O have a little black dress?

You bet she had several because she knew they got her attention. Website design is a lot like fashion design. Catwalk designer outfits look good on a select few but most of us look best in basic traditional styles that bring out our best features.

It’s the same with websites. Don’t be talked into the latest design fade when a basic site will be what brings the compliments and the visitors.

Most websites result in the search engines going straight over the top without even pausing for a look - quite simply because the site is invisible to them. Remember search engines love relevant text not pictures!

The majority of people who visit websites only stay 10 seconds. If you make it hard for people to see your site, or haven’t given them a compelling reason to stay you can rest assured they will be hitting the back button and will be gone in under 5 seconds. They will NEVER come back. You only have to look at the way you visit websites yourself to know this to be the truth. Isn’t that depressing!

The bad news only gets worse. Most search engines find you via four methods and many websites have these areas blank.

• Titles – these are the words that appear in the tabs of your browser and is the heading that appears in a search engine ranking
• Meta Tags – the description you see when a site comes up in a natural ranking
• Keywords – are coded into your site and help search engines match your site to a search string
• Text - the actual words you see on your website

The more these four items match and compliment each other, the higher up the search engine ranking you go. People seek up to the minute information and for that reason blogs frequently out rank websites these days.

This nifty tool will let you see what a search engine sees when they pass through each page of your site click here - it’s sobering!

So check your text and make sure you have the required items that search engines can see.

Further resources

This blog forms part of an article I wrote for the Empowering Women website. You can read the full article here

There is further information about this topic on the Ladies Who Launch blog

Also you can purchase the "How To Get the Most from Your Website" workbook on my website

How to Push Past Your Fears of Self Promotion

Mirror work and self promotion

MP3 File

Question

What are the best tools you can use to push past your fears of self promotion?

Answer

This is a key question in the success or failure for many practitioners. It’s the fear of self promotion that kills people who work from the heart. There are many different tools to use to get you out in the world but the best one is getting a firm belief in your abilities to help people. Once you have that nothing can stop you. If you can put your own stuff aside and only focus on the fact the every time you go out the front door you get a chance to tell another person how you can help people come to gain greater health and wellbeing in their life. You will go to great lengths when you have a higher vision.

The biggest thing to remember is that not everyone is going to want to know you. In the old days my coach made me go out with the expectation that 100% of people were going to say no, that way I could never feel I’d failed. If only one said yes, well it was just a big bonus. Try not to put too much pressure on yourself to get a big bundle of yes’s in the early days. The thing is once I went out with no expectation of course I was just being myself and that helped people say yes more often.

The greatest tool I have is the mirror. In the early days I was encouraged by my coach to stand in front of a mirror and look myself in the eye and say really outrageous things that voice your fear in positive terms. So if you are afraid of speaking, you stand there and say I am the best platform speaker in my state. When you finally believe that, you start saying I am the best platform speaker in the country. Then you just repeat it over and over again until your cells start to believe it. Much of my fear busting is a result of mirror work and then going out and facing the fear. It’s worth the discomfort to get to work positively with people and live your dream of helping others.

Getting A Natural Therapy Practice Known

Question

How does one get an unknown therapy known and trusted?

Answer

There is no simple answer to this one apart from saying “commitment and a lot of hard work”.

Trust in any relationship is gained over time and a natural therapy practice is no different.

You have to be walking your talk all the time and making sure you are projecting the right image and message to people constantly. This is part of your brand and it’s not just about logos and the colours you use – it’s about everything you do.

Getting known is about going out there and wearing down your shoe leather and shaking a lot of hands! Therapists generally hate this part but to be known, people need an opportunity to get to know you. The only sure fire way to do this is by going out and meeting people.

My system has various ways in which you can do this and I recommend you try them all because you could just find out you enjoy doing something that you initially hated, like public speaking did for me. Initially I was absolutely petrified of talking in public but after forcing myself to do a few talks and learning some of the tricks of the trade, I now love it. Actually I hate myself for agreeing to do it until I’m a couple of minutes into the talk them I love it once I get going.

Choosing a strong WHO and WHAT (who you work with and what you do for them) speeds the process up because all your time and marketing activities can be done to a smaller group of people which results in a higher take up rate. It also sets you up as an expert in that particular field which makes it really easy for others to understand what you do and how they can refer others to you.

What I recommend is that each month you do at least

2 x Speaking events to your target audience

2 x Networking events or functions where your target audience will be

1 x Newsletter to your database (tell me you have one!)

4 x Approaches to a strategic alliance (someone who can pass clients to you)

And each quarter do some sort of grassroots marketing campaign

Follow up all your leads and contacts and ensure they get on your database because your database is your friend!