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
Offer Real Solutions for More Clients in your Coaching, Healing, or Helping Practice
Offer Real solutions for more clients in your coaching, healing, or helping practice
For more clients in your coaching, healing or helping practice, speak directly to the problems your services solve.
Framing your offers, packages, programs, and services, as solutions to specific problems your ideal clients have allows them to identify your offers as the right fit (or not) for them.
Ethical client attraction strategies such as these allow you as the transformational service provider to remain in your strengths zone—and most importantly, to avoid marketing tactics that make you feel sleazy.
Are you clear on the solutions your valuable coaching ,healing or helping services provide your ideal client?
This clarity starts with understanding the precise solutions each of your offers provide—and the particular problems they address.
Who has these problems?
How do you solve them differently, better than, faster than, or more uniquely than your competitors?
When you know who you’d like to work with, and you know how your services (or products) stand out in the marketplace, you’re ready to develop your solution-based marketing messaging.
How do you frame your services as an ideal solution?
Start by asking how do your skills, services, and products naturally address those needs and wants? How does what you do and how you do it become a solution to a problem that your Ideal Client already has?
Provide a transformation experience
Know where your ideal clients are before they work with you…and where they will be after your work together. Then frame your services in terms of that transformation.
Tell them the story of how your offerings fill an important and specific need in their lives.
Show them who they’ll be after they’ve worked with you.
Then the act of “selling” simply becomes connecting the dots between what your ideal clients need and what you offer: in an ethical way.
When you focus on value, address a key problem, and demonstrate that you are the person to provide that solution, then it’s merely a matter of figuring out details.
Know What It Takes
Be wary of making unsupported claims or offering specific outcomes when a range of results is possible. Doing so will help you remain in integrity, AND avoid disappointing your customers.
Compose client invitation letters and sales letters ensure you are clear and concise about expected results should they choose to work with you.
A huge part of avoiding the over-promise/under-deliver trap? Understanding what goes into creating a certain outcome.
Don’t create or offer a service that will drain, tax, or overwhelm you … even if you know it’s exactly what certain clients need. Different clients will have other problems that you can solve more easily and elegantly.
Say you’re a yoga instructor who wants to busy professionals who can’t make time for open classes. Offering in-home or in-office one-on-one yoga is one solution BUT be creating that service will mean more intensive scheduling, more commute time, and more intense focus on one client at a time instead of a room full of paying students. If that isn’t your strenght, it isn’t worth it.
Stay in your strengths zone
There are loads of ways to solve your ideal client’s problem.
What’s the best way? The way you do it best!
If you don’t LOVE group coaching / e-courses / live trainings [ insert any “normal” way to provide your transformative work ] then don’t do it.
Break out of the box and provide a solution that suits your strengths.
If group programs drain you, skip it and offer on-demand training instead.
Being an innovator is a strength! Lean in.
If everyone in your industry is offering Retreats but the thought of leading one gives you hives….forget it!
Find a way to do business your way.
That’s the only way it’ll be sustainable long term.
When you find that sweet spot where your gifts and your clients’ unsolved problems overlap, you’ll be amazed by how synchronous your business life will become.
Business as Problem-Solving
How Do You Serve Your Clients?
Have you exchanged your hard-earned cash for services or products within the past week? I’m guessing you have. Consuming is a near-daily activity for many of us, and we consume everything from yoga classes to smoothies and Uber rides to school supplies. Much of the spending we do is moderately mindless, but if we force ourselves to stop and think a moment we can typically divide our purchases into “needs” and “wants”: I need to buy composition books and number two pencils or my kid will start the new school year empty-handed. I want a smoothie because it’s 487 degrees outside and I think my brain is slowly liquefying.
But as an entrepreneur, focusing on needs and wants won’t get you nearly as far with potential customers as focusing on problem-solving.
Every successful business solves a problem for a specific type of person, and consumers are drawn to services they believe will make their lives easier or better. And when you conceptualize business as problem-solving it allows you re-frame the idea of selling your services. If you solve problems for people, telling them about your problem-solving prowess is a service. You’re not selling, you’re helping!
But before you can help, you need to identify the problem YOU solve as a service provider.
What’s YOUR Problem?
Naturally, you don’t want to lean on the idea of your customer or client as a hot mess of problems that need immediate service-based triage. But you do need to determine:
Who your Ideal Client IS
Which problems they most long to solve
And how you can solve them in unique, efficient, or innovative ways
Need help finding your dream customer? Start right here. Not sure how to connect with them?I’ve got loads of tips for you! (no opt in required).
Wondering about those key problems that need solving? Let’s dig into that together. Ask yourself:
What do your Ideal Clients need and want? All humans want to be happier, healthier, wealthier, and wiser. But what else does your perfect-fit client want? Think of core desired feelings, wishes, and dreams. Muse on lifestyle choices, career goals, and favorite hang-outs. What are they searching on TikTok? Asking Google (or WebMD) about?
What general problems plague them? (Examples: Fatigue, joint pain, lack of focus.) What specific problems plague them? (Examples: Too tired to socialize, too sore to play with their grandchildren, too distracted during important meetings.) Sussing out the general problems will get you close but don’t stop there! What’s behind the surface problem? What do you know about that problem that they don’t (yet) know?
What problems are your clients facing that they’re motivated to solve?
That last one’s a doozy, but key. Because there’s a HUGE rift between problems people are willing to ignore and problems so important/far-reaching/onerous that they merit the investment of resources.
Problems Worth Solving
What’s that you say? Won’t your uber-enlightened, extra-savvy Ideal Clients be keen to solve ALL of their problems… especially if you find creative ways to point them out? Heck no.
Let’s rank ‘em:
Problems your Ideal Client doesn’t see: We’ve all got a few of these, and I’m not just talking about tartar on your teeth. (Totally invisible, yet takes FOREVER for the hygenist to scrape off. Ick!) Your Ideal Clients may be aware of a surface problem but fail to see the underlying issue. Alternatively, they may not see any problems at all. Nudging customers to solve these problems can backfire.
Here’s an example: Dove came out with a women’s deodorant a few years back that was meant to combat “unsightly underarms.” Most women, myself included, had never given a thought to how repellent our underarms were. This product purported to solve a problem I didn’t know I had. Did I buy it? Nope. Just kinda hated Dove for making me self-conscious about my pits.
Problems the customer is aware of, but ignoring: In these cases you’ll be battling an Ideal Client’s tendency toward inertia or inaction. This type of problem is often one that feels too large or risky to attempt resolving. People feel frozen and unable to change or address the situation so they stick their heads in the sand, avoid taking action, or launch into non-strategic action without intention.
An issue that a customer is actively ignoring is not one that you can help solve.
Problems the customer is aware of and is attempting to manage: Keyword: “Attempting.” In these cases, customers think they can take the same action over and over, but achieve different results. They’re unwilling to admit that the way they’ve been doing it isn’t working. Think physical therapy that fails to keep pain at bay. Or turning up the car radio to drown out a busted muffler.
In these cases, too, the customer needs to choose change.
Problems the customer is aware of and is actively seeking to solve: THESE are the issues you want to understand and solve on behalf of your clients. This type of problem has the customer motivated to invest resources (time, energy, money) into lasting solutions. And if you can be part of that solution, it can result in massive traction for your business.
Identifying these higher-order problems for the specific clients you serve, and solving them with excellent service and quality products will help you carve out a powerful niche for yourself.
Create the BEST value package - follow these simple steps!
Regardless of how long you’ve worked in the healing and helping arts, at some point, you will hit a wall.
The kind of wall that slams you in the face when you realize you’ve got yourself in a bit of a pickle and can’t earn any more money as you are fully booked doing one-on-one sessions. You have maxed out your work hours and against your better judgment have started booking clients into family time. No more time to trade for dollars!
If this is you then – congratulations!
Why you may ask? Well for one thing it shows me that you are in hot demand because your magic is being recognized by your tribe AND you are absolutely ready to start offering you’re A Grade clients an upgrade.
A chance for these particular clients to have an even better and more valuable experience with you —in a premium, package offering.
It is absolutely EXCITING to create a package that is filled to the brim with value for this perfect-fit client AND that allows you to leverage your time, energy and experience in new ways.
So why wait until you’re choking on the energy of your client’s needs?
Why not begin now by structuring your business to include a natural next step for the client ready to for more growth, healing and transformation?
When you consider the value you are able to deliver to a particular client —one who is ready for big change, big goals, or deep healing — crafting a sure-to-amaze package they can easily say yes to becomes a joy. Because exchanging their investment for a set of values and results (rather than the time you spend with them) is a win-win for both of you.
To begin, ask: what can I bring into my client’s world that will help them on their journey (that doesn’t necessarily equate to hand-holding, time-for-dollars energy exchange)?
From eCourses, Books, Podcasts, Community Access, digital programs, and collaborative offers from sister businesses and more – there are many ways you can build value into your package (and with each additional feature increases their investment) that doesn’t take you any more time or energy to deliver. In fact, more often than not it actually forces you to create a better product that defines you in the market, sets you apart from similar service providers and supports your clients who like to learn in different ways.
What if we take it up a notch?
Think about the actual time you spend with each client one on one that take up a package – it might only be an hour a week, BUT what if you could leverage that time and support 4 clients during the hour in a focused group experience? You could spend that time answering common questions, offering group guidance and delivering valuable wisdom to benefit the group.
The beauty of an offer like this is that it only takes one hour of your own personal time to support 4 (or more) amazing clients. It’s also a smart way of boosting your income and your impact while still staying true to your own values of transforming your client’s lives.
Now before I lose you completely, let me assure you that one-to-one support is always a great idea! In fact, it’s one of the most effective ways to expand your influence and your income when you’re first starting out or when you are in the growth phase —especially if you focus on results-oriented individual packages that provide a high level of support. You and I both know that most people get the most results and traction when they have you guiding them personally. However, that premium one-to-one offer should be your most valuable product with a corresponding investment. It takes the most energy from you so should have the biggest monetary energy exchange.
Regardless of where you are in your journey, are you ready to give more, earn more, working less hours so you can concentrate on creating more magic?
xx
Kellie
Accountability sells.
The power of accountability is undeniable. Psychologists use it. Universities use it. Large organizations use it.
So now the real question is, are you using accountability to grow your business?
As far as I see it, there are two types of accountability—personal accountability and peer accountability. When you're a consciousprenurial spirit like yourself, you need both.
Personality accountability is your own sense of responsibility.
Successful entrepreneurs don't just own a business, they actually Own It. The success of your business doesn't depend on the wholesale supplier, the summertime slump or the new-years-resolution crowd.
The success of your business depends on your strategy and your actions.
If you truly believe this deep down in your core, you already have a strong foundation for your business success.
But don't get too excited, there's more.
Peer accountability is where things get challenging. As entrepreneurs, we are so guilty of creating this little bubble for ourselves. I myself am guilty of not seeing daylight for days on end. Projects, launches, client calls...who has time for a community?
@@Truth is, your business can't succeed without community. @kellie_adkins #consciousbusiness @@
Community promotes growth by holding you accountable. If you've read a single book or article on goal setting, you've read about the power of writing things down. There are entire books dedicated to preaching the gospel of putting your goals in ink as a path to achieving them.
But a list of goals in your diary pales in comparison to telling your kula that you're going to launch your next program by January 20th, 2015.
I am all for stress reduction in life–I am, after all, a yoga therapist. But, we get by with a little pressure from our friends. (That is how that one goes, right?)
I've been an entrepreneur for over a decade. I have read every goal-setting book out there. I have prayed and meditated on business success.
I've written more Dear Diary letters about my business dreams than I care to admit. But nothing is as powerful as telling a group of like-minded people what you want to accomplish.
Well, that may not be entirely true.
The only thing more powerful than telling them, is them being there to support you, share their knowledge and check in with you regularly.
But it's not easy to find these people.
It's challenging enough to make regular friends once you graduate from college. (Why do you think I went back to college? Ok, that's maybe only part of the reason.) But finding friends who have chosen the uncharted path of consciouspreneurship? It can feel impossible.
It's taken me most of my career to create a network of women who are determined to be wildly successful at doing amazing work in the world.
But I found them.
And now I'm inviting you all together so that we can hold each other accountable. But I couldn't stop there. (I mean, have you ever known me to be the type to invite you over just for appetizers? I think not!)
I want to support all of you— I want to give you all of the resources that I've spent time creating over the last several years. And I want to give you information on the topics that are of most importance to you—the topics that are going to help you get shit done.
So what exactly am I calling this secret society of conscious entrepreneurs committed to whole health, mindful wealth + balanced business?
Conscious Entrepreneurs (kula).
If you're ready for the accountability necessary to grow your business mindfully, just click on over here.