by: Melissa Quiter

As an holistic professional, every day you face the ongoing challenge of adding new clients to your practice. This is your livelihood and how you share your gift. Your success is directly related to the number of people whom know about your services and choose to become clients.

The formula is simple: getting clients equals sharing your gift and making a living doing what you were born to do. However, if you are like the many holistic professionals I talk to daily, the struggle to get clients seems to be extremely challenging. The formula may be simple enough, but something is getting in the way of implementation. That something is overwhelm. And, when there is overwhelm, you also find one of the biggest mistakes in marketing… procrastination.

As an holistic professional myself, I agree. Marketing yourself and getting clients can seem overwhelming at times. But the key word here is "seem." You may think that you are overwhelmed because you aren't sure what to do, but what I have discovered is that overwhelm is actually initially caused by not being sure of what your desired outcomes are. When you don't know your destination, manageable steps for getting there are nowhere to be found. And, if you are like most people, when you are uncertain about where you are going, you go nowhere and do nothing. Procrastination strikes. When you give overwhelm and procrastination your energy and focus, it can have devastating effects on the success of your business.

You may have thought the reasons you don't have enough clients are because there is too much competition, you don't have enough money to spend on marketing and people don't want to pay what you charge (which all certainly can be issues if you have not done your foundational marketing work). But, what I have found is overwhelm and procrastination are primarily caused by not having articulated your marketing goals in order to see the steps that can successfully take you to their achievement.

When you start with the end in mind, the steps toward getting there begin to appear. Knowing where you want to go, allows you to use the destination as a checkpoint for the actions that are the most effective use of your time and money.

Overwhelm and procrastination disappear and clients appear when you articulate your ultimate outcomes (using your foundational marketing) and identify the manageable steps for immediate actions.

Copyright 2005 Melissa Quiter