Playing It Safe Is Playing It Dead

Two core fears must be overcome to succeed in being in business for yourself as an ND or therapist:

• your visibility in the marketplace must be as large as your desired bottom line, and ...
  
  
• in the beginning you will need to be able to tolerate spending more marketing dollars than you gain in client payments.

Some Degree of Visibility is Necessary

Marketing for naturopaths and counselors is the art of being attractively visible to your ideal clients. Without visibility, how will your practice ever fill up? Even word of mouth referrals are a form of visibility.

If you are basically shy and reluctant to be noticed, if you have self-confidence issues, if you feel you aren't good enough or struggle with feeling like a fake at what you do, your willingness to be visible in the marketplace is likely to be hampered.

How can you address these emotional blocks to your success?

Perhaps you need a reality check from a supportive friend. Could be that you'd benefit from taking a personal inventory of your strengths and resilience. Maybe the help of a coach would be just what you need.

Once this resistance to being visible at a level equal to your desired bottom line is overcome, you're likely to find yourself shining like a beacon and attracting the numbers of clients you need, provided your other marketing efforts are in place and ready for that energy burst.

Calculated Risks in Strategic Spending Required

Lots of us are risk-avoidant. I personally feel punched in the gut when a $20 bill falls out of my pocket, so high risk stock market trading isn't going to be an activity I engage in.

But, as business owners, we have to be able to step a little bit out of our comfort zone with the attitude that it really does take money to make money. It helps to realize that much business spending is for things that come tax time are counted as legitimate expenses that are tax deductible. Consult your accountant or these internet articles:

A Dozen Deductions for Your Small Business

Business Owner's ToolKit

About.Com Deductible Business Expenses List

Now I'm not well versed on the subject of taxes, but I can tell you as a very risk-avoidant personality that it relieves a lot of pressure to know that all my spending on marketing and advertising expenses, professional services (such as for a bookkeeper, tax consultant, and even for a marketing coach!), and for professional development (such as the costs of home study programs and books on building websites, writing compelling ad copy, etc) will all help me reduce self-employment taxes at the end of the year.

Business expense spending is what I call a calculated risk. (I'm sure the more savvy financial wizards are laughing their heads off right now. LOL. Ease up, boys. Give me a break.) The risk is in not knowing until the money is gone whether it will result in bringing clients to your appointment schedule. But you know what? Money sitting in a business bank account isn't working for us. It's just sitting there. We have to put it to work by spending it.

The calculation of the calculated risk of business expense spending is in being very clear about what you need and want your spending to produce, and in knowing when you are getting good value for the bucks.

When you think about it, using our allowed business expense tax deductions is to a business owner as using health insurance to pay for counseling or naturopathic medicine is to a client.

Isn’t the health of your business worth that investment? (Hint: the correct answer is YES!)