It is so easy to get obsessed with marketing tricks these days and to believe that we need to master every new shiny technological advance in order to stay current and to grow our practices. We begin to panic and try to hurry up and master all the fancy new stuff that is out there. However, I can guarantee you that your practice isn’t slow because you have yet to reach 3,000 Twitter followers, to make your Yelp page, to run a set of Facebook or Google ads, or any other number of online activities.

I am not saying that I think any of that is useless; far from it. I myself maintain a blog, a Facebook page, and a Yelp page just for starters. I’ve also taken part in a myriad of other online practice-building activities from Groupon® to Twitter to ebooks, etc. But what I’ve found is that these new tools are amplifiers. They will take whatever it is that is happening on the ground in your real world practice and expand that. To be more clear, your online practice building will magnify two things. First, if you were to anonymously poll the last fifty clients you saw and get their honest, no-holds-barred feedback on their experience working with you, that information is what will be conveyed through any tech channel you choose to work with. And second, all of these tools will simply make it easier for you to serve your people in the best way possible. But remember, they are tools, they are not the whole story. It’s the tangible serving of people that still makes the foundation of the house, and it is only in being attentive to that foundation that your practice will grow and thrive. Think about Dr. Rolf’s love for session two of the Ten Series. She knew that if you didn’t get some good stuff going on in someone’s feet, it was going to be very hard to get good stuff going on in his spine. Same deal here. This is the “session two” of Practice Building, and without it, all else is at worst meaningless, and at best an uphill battle.

All that said, in this article I would like to tackle the dynamic duo that I believe to be the fastest and most effective ways of growing a practice; that duo being generosity and delight. We will take apart those terms and look at three specific and integral pieces to getting it right: processes, trust, and collaboration.

But before we do that, let’s talk about what generosity and delight are not – because we in the holistic health field love to define those things in terms that undersell ourselves. Yes, I’m talking about the ubiquitous discount. By far the most common practice-building strategy that I see people trying is giving a discount on services. This is unfortunate since it always proves itself to be the least effective strategy. In certain situations – and when done very rarely and for a very short period of time – it can be an effective strategy to discount services provided you have exceptionally clear intention and boundaries. But, more often than not it has a negative effect. Generally when you discount your work, you are telling yourself and your potential clients that you are worth less (worthless). [A sad but true fact in a culture that has been trained to view marketing messages (of which we all see thousands per day) with both extreme savvy and trepidation. All of those “free!” and “cheap!” offers that disappointed people in the past are rattling around in their memories, and you will get lumped in with them even if it’s not deserved.]

It is incredibly common to think that giving, or generosity, needs to happen in a way that removes something from us. But I would argue (strongly) that this is “scarcity mindset” at play. When you believe that you have to take something away from yourself – your full fee – in order to give to someone else, you are believing that there is a limited supply of giving. In reality, true generosity is generous to all parties involved. It should be a win-win situation. As Brené Brown said in her beautiful book Daring Greatly, “The greatest casualties of a scarcity culture are our willingness to own our vulnerabilities and our ability to engage with the world from a place of worthiness” [italics added]. So let’s use the ideas that follow in this article to turn up the volume on worthiness.

Now that we’re clear what we are not talking about, let’s briefly define “generosity” and “delight” as I’m using them here, then we can move on to looking at the three areas in your practice that you can infuse with generosity and delight in order to grow your practice and your long term referral base:

Generosity: Operating from a place of worthiness and “enough-ness” so that all things are created and added to from a place of open-palmed giving. Taken from the Wikipedia definition, generosity “includes the individual’s pure intentions of looking out for society’s common good and giving from the heart.” For our purposes, I would add that this happens in a way that benefits the greater good for all parties involved.

Delight: Infusing things with an unexpected specialness that both benefits people and surprises them by going above and beyond. This extra oomph that you give to things brings pleasure and joy to the recipient.

To ground these definitions in some tangible examples, we can now look at how they can be put to use in your processes, trust-building, and collaboration strategies as practice-building activities.

Looking first at processes, these are the nitty-gritty details related to our day-to-day operations in our offices – things like intake forms, how we welcome new clients, returning phone calls and emails, and how we set up our offices. Processes can seem so undeniably boring that we often pretend they don’t exist and do them by whatever rote method we set up when our practices began. I invite you to redefine the term processes from “the boring/meaningless day-to-day details of my practice” to “an opportunity to show the world how I do things here.”

The little details are indeed how people learn what you are all about; they are therefore the first touch-point you can use to show people that you aren’t just another holistic health practitioner, but are indeed extraordinary. People return to and talk about things that are extraordinary. You have to believe and behave as if what you are offering to people is so amazing that they will be delighted to discover it. If not, why are you doing the work you do? As Jim Jantsch says in his excellent book The Referral Engine, “If you don’t feel strongly enough about the value you or your products deliver to expect that your clients will voluntarily make an effort to see that others receive it, then there is little chance that you will ever come to depend on a consistent flow of referrals. Expecting referrals is not about you; it’s about getting the customer what’s possible. Find a way to detach yourself from any personal feelings of pride or self-doubt and get to work on creating a brilliant system that’s focused on getting results for your customers.”

Now about that system (otherwise known as your processes), here are just a few examples of ways you can surprise and delight your clients through your processes. I will give you resources to make all of these things in the “Resources” section at the end of the article.

• Every time a new client commits to a Ten Series, give them a “welcome to the Ten series” gift. It could be a book of quotes from Ida Rolf or testimonials from your clients, a book or brochure with photographs of people before and after the series (these need not be your own, they can simply be pulled from available media shots from the Rolf Institute®), a book or ebook that you create that compiles media articles on Rolfing® Structural Integration, a printed book that you have created on what to expect in each session, or simply a postcard that points them to a page on your website where they can download an ebook that you have created which they can follow along in as they go through their sessions. Why not make this ebook part description (of each session) and part journal (blank space where your client can fill in her experience after each session)? Additionally, if you have any self-care tools that you teach people to use in your practice (for example I frequently show people self myofascial-release work on Yoga Tune Up® therapy balls), also include those in your welcome gift. Be sure to be attentive to the details here. Handing someone a brochure is very different than giving them a lovely wrapped gift. Infuse it with specialness, don’t just half-heartedly chuck them some extra reading materials that you have lying around.
• When a client completes a Ten Series, send a handwritten “graduation” card to his physical address. It has become so rare to receive a handwritten card that they have a meaningful quality for most people. You can even take it up a notch by including in the graduation card a link to yet another ebook they can download, one that briefly discusses what’s next, what post-Ten work looks like.
• Make the process of becoming a new client incredibly easy for people. Things like how quickly you return phone calls and emails, having online booking available, and having online intake forms make an enormous difference in how people experience you, and therefore how people make a determination about your value. Don’t disregard the simple stuff! Review all of the steps someone needs to take to get to her first session with you and see if you can’t make those steps easier, tidier, and more delightful for people. Note that one of the biggest first steps most people will have is encountering your website, so make sure it’s design friendly, user friendly, clear, and informative. As another example, I regularly have people tell me what a lifesaver my online booking (on my website) has been for them. In this day and age where most people have atypical and overly busy schedules, things like having easy online booking available can dramatically impact your client numbers. It’s hopping online to click a couple of buttons and book versus taking a deep breath and committing to a game of phone and schedule tag.
• Look at your office through the eyes of a new client. There are so many things that become invisible to us when we’re in that room all day that won’t be invisible to the client. With a simple glance clients will see those three empty shea butter containers on your desk, that overflowing and falling-apart laundry basket in the corner, and the total lack of an obvious place to settle in and hang clothes and coat, and those things will signal that your practice is half-hearted. Scan your office to see what changes you need to make for your clients to deem it a whole-hearted practice.
• Create an event for your clients that adds benefit to their work with you and for which you don’t charge extra. As I mentioned earlier, I teach a lot of self myofasical-release work, so I have considered holding a quarterly “Free the Fascia!” party where people come and take a group class on how to use therapy balls to get more benefit out of their Rolfing SI work. If you don’t have a system like that that you use, you can always just host a quarterly meet up where people can come and chat with you about whatever is on their minds related to their bodies and the series (or this can happen online in a webinar so people don’t have to leave their homes and/or can tune in later).

Next we’ll look at trust – a rare and cherished resource in the world these days, so when it’s found people flock to it and talk it up to their loved ones. To get a taste of this, just go on Yelp.com and look up auto mechanics in your area. Mechanics are one of those professions, like car salesmen, that has earned low trust in many people’s eyes. On Yelp, you can watch a community passionately pointing out the mechanics who have earned their trust.

As Rolfers, we work in a high intimacy field. People are putting their bodies and their health in our hands, literally. This means that people must have a lot of trust in us in order to show up at our offices at all, and certainly to return. So if you can amplify that trust beyond simply being an ethical and non-creepy practitioner, your clients will go out of their way to spread the word about you.

As an example of using generosity and delight to enhance trust in your practice, be sure that your clients know that in hiring you, they are hiring you as their Rolfing practitioner and as an unbiased person committed to seeing them get well. The unbiased part is important. Spelling it out starkly, it means you are not biased towards being the person who will “fix” them, and you are not biased towards taking payment every week regardless of whether they are making progress or not. Clients assume that when they hire someone for a specific issue, whether knee pain or a leaky roof, it is the other party’s job to a) fix the problem and b) take their money. So what if there is a snag with fixing the problem? What if you work on that knee and you discover that the ligaments have no integrity? If you’re like me, you’re going to give the client a referral for a prolotherapist, acupuncturist, and orthopedist. Who knows which of those people will get the integrity back in the ligaments, but you identified that the client needed to see you for Rolfing SI only after he sorted out an issue better served with different work. Sending clients away will bring you more clients. As an example, I frequently refer to an amazing osteopath when I am scratching my head over a client who isn’t responding. Often she does get those people’s issues resolved, but the funny thing is that the clients I refer remain passionate supporters, referring to both the osteopath and me. The trust I build with them by knowing when to refer out and sending them to the right place has earned their loyalty. Everybody wins!

Another important piece to building trust with clients is following up. I would argue that in our overly busy, over-stimulated contemporary culture, people feel more and more alone, disregarded, and unseen. This is particularly true within the current allopathic medical establishment. But here is the good news: your clients took a detour out of allopathic care and found their way to you! So why not show them how you’re different by making them feel seen and heard. Other than being attentive in sessions, a nice way to do this is to follow up with them from time to time via email. As our much-too-much culture has created the chronically overflowing email inbox, don’t overdo it, but reaching out on occasion to send a personalized and relevant email asking a client how she is since her last session (with no mention of booking with you again – this is about making her feel attended to, not sold to) can do a world of good for trust-building. A colleague who made this a regular part of her practice said that an unexpected side effect was receiving stunning testimonials back from the people she contacted. (Of course, ask your clients for permission to put the testimonials in your marketing materials.)

I saved my favorite for last: collaboration. If you want to grow your practice like wildfire, fall in love with collaborating. When we are trying to grow our referral network, most of us look around at all the thriving and like-minded businesses in our communities and think, “How can I get them to refer to me?” If you instead ask, “I wonder what we could all build together?”, or simply “How could I contribute to what they’re up to?”, it takes on a much more light-hearted, playful, and indeed delightful feeling. In what is one of my favorite articles of the year so far, “10 Reasons Why 2013 Will Be the Year You Quit Your Job” (online at www.techcrunch. com), James Altucher writes about his own process around collaboration: “It starts the moment I wake up: ‘Who can I help today?’ I ask the darkness when I open my eyes. ‘Who would you have me help today?’ I’m a secret agent and I’m waiting for my mission. Ready to receive. This is how you take baby steps. This is how eventually you run towards freedom.” Here are some ways you can generously collaborate your way to a full practice:

• Let’s say there is a group of practitioners in your community who you are always hearing good things about and whose radar you would love to be on so that they could refer to you. Instead of contacting them and proposing a networking meet up, propose a monthly soup club where one member hosts each month and you chat about whatever’s on your mind in your practices as a way of helping one another out of what can often be the loneliness of private practice. Or perhaps you make it a monthly body nerd meet up where one member gives a brief talk each time about what they’re currently fascinated by in the human body. Creating a themed reason to hang out is certainly more genuine and compelling than handing out yet another business card.
• Create a blog or website that compiles posts from all the holistic people in your town. In this way it becomes an aggregate of what’s going on in the holistic health community local to you, which will make it a much more widely used resource than if it were just for your practice. The effect is that you are growing traffic for everyone, and as the creator and host of this community you are certainly given top-dog status. Is it a bunch of extra work? Yes! A lot of it! But if that seems naturally fun and compelling to you, the side effect of taking it on will be a much busier private practice for you.
• If you already maintain a website or blog, interview other practitioners in your town to both highlight them and to have them add even more value to your clients. For example, is there a healthy personal chef or a naturopath who talks about clean eating a lot? Have him contribute to your blog a piece on eating for chronic pain. Your clients will benefit from a new perspective on what they are working to resolve, the other practitioner will be honored to be featured, and you make your website a more valuable resource for everyone.
• You could also collaborate on a project with other practitioners, like creating an ebook on resolving chronic pain that has chapters written by your local communities’ top holistic providers, each giving his or her take on how best to address it. You write on structural integration, the naturopath or personal chef writes on an anti-inflammatory diet, the acupuncturist writes on how Chinese medicine views the issue, etc. Once you have it completed, all participating practitioners can offer it as a free or paid download on their websites, so that it becomes a local resource that is more widespread.

In conclusion, embracing a generous and delight-full practice-building strategy should take much of the drudgery out of getting the word out about your work and can often send you into new and unexpected adventures, not to mention a very busy practice. As you infuse your practice with more generosity and delight, you will often find these qualities in your life much more often as well. I will close by going back to quote Altucher’s article again, for he says it much more eloquently than I can: “Become a beacon of enhancement and then, when the night is gray, all of the boats will move towards you, bringing their bountiful riches.”

Resources

Ebooks: To make a book or ebook, I hire a designer to lay it out and make it a snazzy PDF. You can do the same, or you can check out the printed book and ebook creation options at www.lulu.com and www.blurb.com

Online booking: I use Google’s free and easy option, www.youcanbook.me. Another good option is www.fullslate.com/.

Online intake forms: These can be easily created at www.wufoo.com

Websites and blogs: To make sure your website is wowing your potential and current clients, and to keep it from being a pain to update or overly pricey, either create a site at www.squarespace.com, or make a WordPress site (my favorite option and the most flexible one).You can visit www.wordpress.org to get started and www.woothemes.com to grab a beautiful template that can be powered by WordPress.

Brooke Thomas has practices in New York, NY and New Haven, CT. She also runs the practice-building course and community Practice Abundance at www.practiceabundancecourse. com. It’s the marketing-phobe’s guide to growing a thriving wellness practice

Generosity and Delight as Practice-Building Strategies[:]