Break all the Business Rules...and Thrive?

The “Rules” of business-as-usual say…

• Work long hours 

• Hustle harder than everyone

• Be everywhere on the internet 

• Market with sleazy high pressure tactics

• Launch shoddy programs …

• Then upsell when they don’t deliver results  (cue the “from 6-to-7 figures expert advice”)

• Sacrifice your talents to “prove your worth”

• Undercharge for your services to “stay competitive” 

• Undercharge because you’re a woman/minority/neurodivergent in business

I don’t want to live (or run my business by) those rules anymore. 

There are more important things to prioritize than hustle culture. 

Democracy is being threatened around the world.

AI is coming for our jobs and affecting our brains.

Racism is experiencing a global resurgence.

Misogyny seems to be the new(again) standard. 

A history of violence against women is no longer a barrier to nomination (or election) to the highest levels of government in the United States.

No longer is it gauche to attack someone based on their beliefs, racial identity, or gender: online or in person. 

Which is why NOW is not the time to play by the rules: their rules.

Now is the time to toss out the rule book and get rebellious. 

Now is the time to be the change.

Mindful, yes. 

Not quiet. Not demure.

Let’s ignore the rules and embrace business-as-Unusual. 

Business as Unusual says… 

• Honor your body’s needs to build a business that doesn’t burn you out

• Center in your strengths for optimal productivity and less overwhelm

• Be intentional and strategic with your online presence

• Market with trauma-informed, ethical approaches that honor agency

• Craft thoughtful services and programs that demonstrate your expertise

• Invite people into deeper work instead of chasing internet fame

• Price to prosperity and sustainability not to fund a “4 hour work week”

• Encourage referrals and repeat business through generosity and excellence

• Own your place in the marketplace and name that privilege

• Break all the Business-as-usual rules (they were never meant for you anyway)

Business as Unusual says your business (or mission-driven organization) is a vehicle for social good and commerce. 

Business as Unusual says you get to decide how to structure your services, offers, and products. 

Business as Unusual says Take. Up. Space. Especially in those spaces (IRL and in the digital sphere) where you, and those like you, are underrepresented. 

Business as Unusual says toss the fear-based marketing and trigger-laden sales tactics: emphasize being of value and generating real connections with the people your business serves. 

Business as Unusual says you don’t need to do what everyone else is doing. Write a book. Develop a Course. Lead a Retreat. Start a Podcast. Start a Revolution. You’re the boss for a reason :) 

Business as Unusual says there is a season for everything. Honor your seasons. 

Business as Unusual = Permission to break all the rules and to …. 

⚡️  Expand your business for the greater good

⚡️  Place better boundaries to avoid burnout

⚡️  Cultivate the radical focus that elevates your influence

⚡️  Rise to your own, values-driven standards for success 

⚡️  Break all the 'business rules' (except your own Rules for Business + Life Alignment)

If you identify as a Rebel with a Cause, I’d love to invite you into Third Jewel —a growth catalyst and leadership circle community to support your exponential expansion (WITHOUT sacrificing your values). 

Join fellow Atypical Founders and Mindful Trailblazers who want to guide their next evolution with the power of intention, community, and strategic action to do more work that matters.

Third Jewel: a boutique leadership circle for female founders + mindful leaders

See you there,

Kellie

Grow your Healing or Coaching Business Beyond one-to-one Sessions

An Epistle on Expansion

Or, making the case for growth even if you’re not maxed out on 1x1 services (yet)

Dear Reader:

As a fellow 1x1 service provider for most of my career (Yoga Therapist, Wellness Coach, and Business Coach), I humbly offer the following case for expanding your work beyond the bounds of 1-to-1 or premium services as early in your career as possible.

Indeed, this applies whether you’re building your private client practice or currently maxed out with private clients.

As you read this letter, consider the wonder of these words reaching through the ether to greet your eyes on the magical fantastical creation you now hold.

Through this device and its connection to the internet, you have access to millions of teachings that provide insight into better health, greater well-being, and more purposeful living.

Before the digital age, this type of learning was layered beneath circles of privilege and kept behind ivory towers.

It is a wonder to have access to this once-cloistered information—and all at your fingertips.

Digital courses democratize access (to an extent).

In time, it is my hope, that more healing, helping, and self-development teachings will be shared even more widely for more meaning, engagement, and well-being outside the circles of privilege of higher education, whiteness, able-bodiedness, and neurotypicality.

In my view, sharing the skillset you’ve carefully curated over the duration of your career is an act of social justice: widening and improving access to powerful healing and helping tools the world needs. 

All humans need these tools, not only those who can afford to pay a premium rate for your one-to-one services. Even more so if you serve an underserved community that is hard to reach.

I know you don’t do the Work for fame, money, or bragging rights. 

You do it for the mission 

You do it because it changed your life

You share this Work for a healthier, happier, and kinder world

There are more people who need what you are sharing—and the world needs your insight.

This letter is an invitation, yes, and it’s also a rallying cry.

If you’re a healer, helper, or change-maker and you AREN’T on fire about lighting up (more of) the world with your gifts…maybe there’s a good reason. 

But if that reason is that you don’t know where to begin…

Let’s start together, right now.

In your 1-to-1 services, you provide a safe container for clients to facilitate their own transformation. Your clients come to you with frustrations, pain, suffering, and problems…and your valuable work provides a solution.

There are so many “problems” your work solves.

Think of a few right now. Then:

Pick one and dig deep, and..

Think of the people who need that problem solved …right now.

What do they need to get that problem solved?

How can you provide a solution in the most effective, time-sensitive way—that isn’t 1-to-1?

People have pain that you know how to reduce, symptoms your support helps them in resolving or mental barriers your techniques breakthrough.

You can only reach so many as a 1x1 service provider because your time and energy are finite.

What if…

You create a resource, a guidebook, a mini-class, a workshop, an on-demand training they can access focused on that specific issue? 

You don’t have to deliver a massive group course, create a clunky membership site, or become internet-famous to expand your work in a mindful way.

What if…

You deliver a single, targeted solution in a way that feels aligned with your goals and your values: that specific people will benefit from again and again.

a mini-book

an on-demand guide

a curated course

a private podcast

a signature talk 

a protocol 

a series class

a Retreatshop

Expanding a small portion of your work to a wider audience allows more people to benefit from your gifts while allowing you to honor your commitment to equity, inclusion, and access.

What, then?

Need more ideas? Join us in the Kula for my full idea brain dump today plus a special invitation to a new way to work with me (hint: DIY is soooo last year. DIT is where it’s at!).

Kula Conversations // WHY IT'S TIME TO CREATE YOUR COURSE ALREADY! The ins and outs of course creation, Kula Conversation-style, today at 1 pm Eastern (10 am Pacific).

You'll learn ...

Where to begin (it isn't where you'd expect)

How to structure for maximum results (and client rave reviews)

Why you want to do it now (and your first action to take!)

See y’all there!

xo,

Kellie Adkins, MS, C-IAYT

Business Alignment Coach + Yoga Therapist

Founder | the Wisdom Method

Want more clients as a Coach Healer or Helper? Solve problems

Business is about solving problems.

The more clear you become on the specific problems you solve for particular clients, the more success you’ll have in your business and marketing efforts.

As a coach, your focus is to help your clients achieve their goals. To connect with potential clients, it's essential to identify the specific problems they want to solve. Good businesses solve problems, but not just any problem – a specific, urgent problem that the potential client is actively looking to solve.

By conceptualizing your business's products and services as solutions to specific, urgent problems that your perfect-fit clients want to solve, you've already done half the work of selling your products and services. Besides, when you are able to reframe your marketing efforts from “all about you” to “all about the problems you’ll solve for your clients” it becomes much easier to show up consistently and share your message.

To attract your perfect-fit clients, you need to identify the problem you solve as —and for whom. The specific problem your business services solve might not be the problem other coaches, healers, or holistic practitioners solve: or you might solve the same problem but for different perfect-fit clients.

Before you go any further in planning your programs, services, or packages ensure you are addressing problems worth solving:

Problems your perfect-fit clients know they have

Your potential clients have hidden problems that they may not know how to fix. Or that they don’t even know are the cause of the surface problems they KNOW they have.

Attempting to solve these “unknown” problems will backfire if your potential clients aren't motivated to find and fix the underlying problem.

For example, if you are a Life Coach who helps clients transition to a healthier mindset, you need to target clients who are motivated to improve their outlook on life. The chronic complainers need your services but they don’t know they have a problem (yet).

Problems your customer cares about addressing

Your potential clients must be aware of the problem that needs solving and care about solving the problem.

In fact, these are the most valuable types of problems for you as a coach to solve because your client is motivated to solve them.

For example, if you are a coach who specializes in career transitions, you need to target clients who are motivated to find a new career path, who are on every job search platform, and who are actively seeking support in their career transition.

What problem(s) do you solve?

Identify the higher-order problems your business solves for a particular client.

Once you clarify these problems, you can develop your unique solution (which is the fun part!).

Solving a valuable problem that your perfect-fit client is aware of, in a unique way, while providing excellent service, is a recipe for success.

By identifying and solving specific, urgent problems that your perfect-fit clients want to solve, you can attract more clients to your healing, helping or coaching business.

Feeling Burned-out? Here’s the Antidote to Overwhelm.

Are you the bottleneck in your business?

Think about it. Are you:

• Working with current clients?

• Hustling for new clients?

• Posting to your social media channels?

• Running a clinic / practice / studio?

• Studying to bring your expertise to the next level?

• Growing your business to the next level?

• Teaching classes or courses?

• Livestreaming or hosting in-person events?

• Doing your own accounting?

• Attempting to have a social or family life outside your all-consuming work?

Grow your business with a business coach

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that many of you are doing all these things AND MORE. If you’re drowning in work, scrambling to do it all, and losing traction with every passing day—you’re not alone.

But you’re also not in a good spot, especially if you want to drive business growth forward. (And I know you do.) In order to prime your enterprise for real, ongoing, profit-generating growth, you’ve got to identify your key tasks, and yoke your focus + energy to get those tasks done.

Your time is limited and precious. Burning through your valuable time and energy with tasks that someone else could do isn’t a sustainable strategy. Understandably, you may need to wear all the hats right now….even if that is the case, track your time and you’ll begin to see where you are able to “retrieve” a few hours by pivoting your focus.

So just how do you figure out what to keep and what to ditch?

Here’s how I decide:

Divide and conquer

Make a list of every ball you’ve got in the air right now. Every task you do from creating long-term marketing strategies to sweeping the studio floor. Then divide them into two groups:

• Those that help maintain the business: The must-do daily or weekly tasks that help keep the business running. Think teaching classes and working with clients, but also paying the bills and replying to emails.

• Those that help drive business forward: Growth-promoting, catalyzing, and profit-enhancing tasks. Think developing new products or programs,  launching higher-value offers or group programs, learning valuable skills, and working with business coaches.

Some of these tasks need you. There’s no trusted advisor or second-in-command who can step in and teach your classes, courses or coaching sessions, so you must be prepared to give them your attention. But there are other tasks that you may currently handle yourself to “save money,” or haven’t considered delegating.

When it comes to that second group, I want you to ...

Hire smart people

No one likes to hear that you’ve got to “spend money to make money,” myself included. (Seriously, who enjoys cliches?) But if you drown yourself in tasks that competent paid staff members could handle, you are quite literally keeping yourself from dreaming up and rolling out new, better, higher earning-potential offerings. Investing in trustworthy, creative full-time, part-time, or freelance staff frees you up to focus on business-building.

If you’re not in a position to hunt down and take on traditional employees, consider digital solutions like:

• Virtual assistants (VAs), who can schedule your social posts, edit your content, or do grahic design work remotely and affordably.

• Provider marketplaces like Upwork or Fiverr, which connect you with designers, programmers, and content marketers through bidding systems.

• Design aids like 99 Designs, where you find and work with freelance designers on logos, packaging, websites, and more.

Once you have the tasks you keep all to yourself and the ones you selectively delegate there will be a few stragglers which don’t serve you or your business.

Eliminate underperformers

Sometimes we outgrow aspects of our business or find that certain responsibilities no longer serve their purpose.

// If you never get more than two students in your Thursday night cooking class, why are you still offering it?

// If you’re spending time populating gorgeous Pinterest boards but they don’t drive sales or generate new customer leads, quit it.

// If you dread the thought of teaching that weekly webinar, axe it.

// If you have an offer, program, workshop or course you’ve outgrown, retire the offer.

You do NOT have to keep doing things just because you’ve done them in the past. And you do NOT have to do things just because your peers are doing them. Keep your top-performing offerings and cut the dead weight. Focus on social media outlets that you enjoy and that bring you new business, and ditch the rest. You’re the boss. Make some tough calls and reduce your workload by letting go of underperformers.

Dial up the discipline

We’ve gone from easy to tough, I know! Making a list of your work tasks is a cakewalk. Increasing self-mastery? Not so easy.

Start with tiny steps like disabling social media notifications and practicing mono-tasking. (Multi-tasking is a total myth, believe me.)

Be honest with yourself about your most productive hours, and schedule your hardest tasks at those times of day. (More productivity tips here!)

Pick up an important, business-focused task to complete each day at the start of your workday. You’ll get an instant boost of motivation knowing you completed an important task for your business growth and that will help keep you motivated whe

As time goes on, you’ll learn the valuable lesson every successful entrepreneur has learned: you can’t do it all. Embrace this lesson with big, open arms. Doing it all is overrated. Focusing your efforts on strategic, key tasks is the only way to fly.

Wanna connect with a supportive group as you manage your task lists?

Join the Kula, a Free Coaching Community for female founders and integrative practitioners. We go Live every Tuesday at 1 pm EST / 10 am PST for mindful business tips and weekly action plans.

Why a Flexible, Personal, Long-term Strategy Will Help Your Business Thrive

Flexible Business Strategy helpS your Coaching, Healing, Helping or Conscious Business Thrive

Let’s be honest: most Coaches, Helpers and Healers aren’t wild about the business-y aspects of entrepreneurship.

Spending your energy on marketing, networking, and concocting promotional strategies makes you feel forced and false.

Self-promotion leaves you feeling smarmy and disconnected from the true purpose of your work:

Using your gifts to ease pain, to increase efficacy, to reduce suffering, or to encourage clients along their personal journeys …. these are the tasks that resonate with us.

If you’ve ever asked yourself:

“Can’t my ‘business strategy’ simply be to help as many people as possible?”

Then, I’m speaking directly to you, dear. (And yes, it absolutely can!)

But if you don’t reach the right people or your messages fail to capture their attention, you can’t help them. No matter how much you might want to.

Your business that exists to solve problems.

Those problems are specific, and a specific group of people grapple with them. They’re googling solutions to those problems late at night when they can’t sleep. They’re buying services and products right now to help them with those problems.

When you promote your classes, products, and offerings to the very people who need them most, you’re actually doing them a tremendous service.

You’re not a plaid-suited car salesman shouting through a megaphone! 

You, my dear, are a passion-fueled entrepreneur with unique and valuable skills who thrives on making other people’s lives richer and fuller.  

To continue enriching lives in a sustainable, long-term, effective way, you need to strategize. Doing good work and hoping the right clients will “find” you simply isn’t enough.

Luckily, I’m here to tell you that building a business strategy can feel creative and rewarding, even fun. No, really! Here’s how.

Make it personal

Sure, some business tactics work universally:

Never over-promise.

The customer is always right.

If you don’t have a web presence 90% of the world won’t believe that you actually exist

These are general business truths these days.

But that’s where the general one-size-fits-all business approach to planning ends.

It doesn't work in most cases, and it certainly won’t lead to exponential growth and phenomenal prosperity for your unique, one-of-a-kind, unicorn business. 

Your business is unique, which means you need to build a perfect-for-you strategy to help it thrive. Discover your own brand of brilliance and use it to fuel your business growth.

Whatever you do, chances are someone else does it, too. And although that may worry you, it’s actually, a very, very good thing because it means there is demand for your classes or skills or products.

To ensure your offerings rise above and reach their intended audience, making your promotions truly personal and bringing your Ideal Clients to your doorstep, tap your Unique Magic.

Your Unique Magic is where your talents, strengths, and skills overlap.

It’s a core skill set that carries through your life like a connective thread, a combination of native strengths, signature skills, and the values and views that drive you. Focusing your business strategy on your Unique Magic attracts perfect-fit customers and clients who recognize, engage and connect with you. It will enable you to differentiate yourself in the market, leverage opportunities for more success, and ensure you are fulfilling your purpose-driven work in the world. Identifying and leveraging the ways in which your Unique Magic makes you truly unique is the path to more meaning and more profit in your business.

And just how do you funnel your Unique Magic into marketing messages, carefully honed offerings, and community engagement that converge into an effective strategy for your business?

Focus on your niche

As a holistic entrepreneur—a yogi, healer, helper, coach, or wellness guru—you have a specific set of talents, skills and experience to share. You likely have services, products and helpful content related to what you offer. But there are LOTS of other [insert what you do] out there in the world, and differentiating yourself in the sea of other [insert what they do], is how you attract more soon-to-be clients to your business (not theirs). Differentiating yourself and defining your target market both help you figure out your place within the industry. Whether you’re a coach, a multi-passionate creative, a massage therapist, or a yoga teacher, chances are there are hundreds (thousands!) of other practitioners out there doing what you do. How do you stand apart from the crowd and effortlessly attract perfect-for-you clients?

Discover, then refine, your niche.

Niching asks the question, “How can I package my purpose, passions, innate strengths, and world-changing ideas into a platform that my Ideal Clients will recognize, identify with, and seek out?”

Part of discovering your niche is uncovering your particular combination of purpose, passion and strengths. When you embrace all of the above—taking your life as your path and your story as a compass—you can easily identify the perfect niche.

Another crucial element of your niche is what people are willing pay you for in the current financial climate. You may be the world’s leading expert in restoring antique clarinets, but if no one is in the market for a clarinet restoration, you will go hungry.

Finally, your niche must address a need in the world and be a reflection of your purpose.  Like the example above, if the world has no need for your particular skill set—and it doesn’t light you up inside!—you won’t be able to earn a living. Nor will you be excited about growing your business.

Be flexible

Creating a business strategy is a very mindful, forward-looking, concrete activity, and that can make it feel daunting and immovable. But effective business strategies are NEVER set in stone. Planning the future of your business and how to help it grow should be a flexible, organic process to channel growth. Having a strategy in place is essential for long term success, but that doesn’t mean you must map out every minute step, chart every possible outcome, and refuse to diverge from a rigid set of self-imposed rules. Your business priorities will change, your client’s priorities will change, YOU will change. And if you can’t bend in the breeze and accommodate those shifts, you’ll break.

Focus on creating a personalized strategy, make the most of your niche, and strive to connect with and help your Ideal Clients. But remember that being agile and flexible will only help you. Build a solid strategy, then allow yourself to reexamine and reevaluate it as time goes on.

People like us—heart-centered healers, helpers and creatives—have good work to do in this world. The work that we do is important and needs to be shared. We must do this work because we see the need, we see how we can help, and we step up. But we also need to earn a living…otherwise, we can’t continue to share and serve.

By building a flexible, personal, long-term strategy for your unique business, you ensure that more and more people can benefit from your precious and much-needed gifts.

And since I love to propose solutions, head over here to check out the Holistic Business Blueprint —a step-by-step guide to creating your very own flexible, personal, long-term strategy for your conscious business.

Defining Your Niche as a Business Strategy

Defining your niche is a business strategy.

What is a niche exactly?

The word niche is a French word meaning “place” or “alcove,” and in marketing, your niche is a strategic position you take in business that allows people to immediately identify how you can serve them and why you are the perfect person to do so.

Many of us feel trapped by the idea of narrowing down our offerings and services to one particular area. I can empathize! As a multi-passionate idea-centric entrepreneur, I know how hard it is to decide on WHAT you want to do in your business: you’re constantly being pulled in a million directions by the Idea Factory called your brain. However, this step—just like finding your Ideal Client—is crucial to your professional success as a conscious entrepreneur.

Because once you know WHO you want to serve, you have to discover HOW you can best serve them. This involves looking at WHAT you—uniquely—have to offer your community and customers. The exciting thing about niching is that it helps the perfect-for-you clients immediately identify YOU as the perfect-for-them transformational service provider or conscious business.

In the beginning, niching is mostly about YOU and what it is that you bring to the marketplace.

Are you ready to find your niche?

Take some time with the questions below: the answers are the first step to discovering your niche.

• What do you love to do, that people already (or may in the future) pay you for?

• What unique experiences, skills and talents do have to share with the world?

• Who do you love to work with?

• What do they need?

• Who seeks you out but isn’t someone who you feel you can truly help?

• How do you work best? (Alone, in a group, as a guide, providing one-on-one support, as an educator)

• Is there an unspoken need in your industry that your experience, talents, and skills can fill?

That last question is particularly important because it forces you to hone in on what differentiates you from your peers. 

In the age of instant connection and information saturation, standing out from the crowd is a strategy for capturing your Ideal Client’s attention.

People (including your potential customers) are weary of bland, watered-down, copycat, or sugar-coated businesses and brands. Now more than ever, people want to connect—they want authenticity, integrity, and originality. They want unicorns.

Good thing YOU are a unicorn.

Let me explain:

Whether you’re selling transformative yoga sessions, integrative psychotherapy, wellness coaching or chakra alignment sessions, there’s a deeper reason behind your business. Sure, on the surface, you are providing [insert the obvious thing you’re providing], but why you’re really providing that is much deeper. How you do that is different than everyone else, too.

That deeper reason (your why) paired with your unique magic (your how) is what clients are really paying you for.

Avoid copycats and cookie-cutter formulas by being the unique unicorn you already are!

Take some time to think and write about your niche. Start with bullet points that pinpoint what you do and how you’re doing it differently. Then try to create a rough mission statement.

Here are some examples:

“I am deeply empathetic Reiki healer who specializes in treating reproductive disorders and personal trauma in young to middle-aged women.”

“My work as an acupuncturist focuses on helping older clients with severe or rheumatoid arthritis regain mobility in their arms, hands, legs, and feet.”

“Through targeted sessions and ongoing consultations, I use my Feng Shui expertise to unblock trapped energy in the offices of small- and medium-sized business client offices.”

Now you! As you write, try to capture the generalities of your business but also how you deliver your services, who benefits most from them, and how.

Once you have this information, it should inform all of your marketing efforts, influence how you speak about your business, and inform the direction of your overall business strategy.

Excited to focus more intently on your niche, but longing for a bit more structure and guidance?

Join us for the Holistic Business Blueprint —a step-by-step guide to creating your very own flexible, personal, long-term strategy for your conscious business, or work with me for customized strategy.

XO,

Kellie Adkins, Holistic Business Coach + Yoga Therapist