Hi there,

My friends with young children are attending “back to school nights” this week.

It got me remembering when I was a kid. Back to school meant new notebooks, pens and pencils, and new clothes. There were new kids in my class every year and I loved learning new things.

What does back to school mean to you? Do you get excited about the prospect of learning new things?

Recently, a therapist told me she wanted to learn more about how to write a great business plan. While my heart soars when I hear someone wanting to learn more about business, I am often concerned when I am asked this question.

That is because many of us will use the excuse “I have to learn something new before I start anything” as an opportunity to procrastinate. (Okay, maybe that is just me…)

So, to satisfy those of you who want to have a business plan, you can do it very simply.

Answer the questions below and you will have an abbreviated but well-conceived business plan.

1) Business Vision - How do you want to spend your time in your business? When do you want to work? How much do you want to earn? Whom do you wish to see as clients?

2) Mission - Why are you called to be doing the work you do? What is the mission of your business?

3) Ideal Client - Whom do you wish to serve?

4) Unique Selling Proposition - What makes you unique? How does your message/wisdom differ from others?

5) Objectives or Goals - What do you want to accomplish in your business?

6) Strategies to Achieve Your Goals - What marketing activities will you employ? (This would be your marketing plan.)

7) Plans - What will you do this month, this week, today to meet those objectives and goals? These are your “to-do’s” and should be designed with an eye toward your goals.

8) Accountability and Measurement - How will you stay motivated and on-track toward those goals. How will you know if you are fulfilling your mission?

This exercise can be a lot of fun. Take yourself to Starbucks, have a double-diet-no-soy latte and play with it! You might find yourself clearer on your business and feeling that old “back to school” excitement.

Hugs,
Casey

Marianne Williamson has been quoted many times when she said:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.”

It is true. Your playing small doesn’t serve you, your clients or your community. Let your wisdom out. Let the world see your beauty and your “fabulous-ness!”

I believe in in you.

Are you an introvert? Do you find yourself better in one-on-situations? Does the idea of marketing your practice make your stomach knot?

Well, it is a little known fact that introverts can be the best marketing people.

Surprised? It is true!

In our Build Your Full Practice Workshop in Houston, TX on October 26 & 27, we will be discussing 17 ways to market your practice - 11 of which are perfect for introverts.

Online client attraction - it is easy!

One of the easiest ways for introverts to market a private practice is via the internet. Hundreds of thousands of people are searching for therapists online these days. That is very good news for introverts.

There are 3 simple steps to attracting clients online.

a) Get an online presence - a website, an online therapist locator listing or a blog.

b) Make sure your online presence is attractive to the client. A good website, listing or blog should show your online visitors that you care about them - that you understand their problem.

c) It should be easy for your online visitors to contact you and make an appointment with you. Just as you return your phone calls quickly, make sure you check and return email messages quickly.

d) Consider an online scheduler so that clients can make appointments with you on their own. Mark Saindon, a therapist in Portland, Oregon says he has as many as five new clients a week signing up via his online scheduler.

Don’t be frightened by technology. If it seems to complicated for you, enlist the aid of a high school or college student. They can help you to quickly get an online presence. Don’t be left out of this fabulous way of attracting clients.

Great news for the next 10 workshop registrants.

Want more detail on how to create a dynamite online presence? How to create a blog? What to put on your website? How to put an online scheduler on your website?

Whether you are an introvert or extrovert, please consider joining us for the two-day workshop in Houston, TX. We are freezing the registration fee to $277 for the next 10 seats. So if you have been on the fence, you might want to snap up your seat now by visiting: http://www.beawealthytherapist.com/Workshop/

Hope to see you there.

Where is the next workshop?

Also, several of you have asked me if we have plans to do the 2-day workshop in other parts of the country. While I do speak at national conferences, our next 2-day in-person workshop will be in Orange County, CA in May 2008.

Final note to Introverts

Introverts have this incredible way of getting the focus off themselves and onto the other person. This is the introvert advantage. With it, you can attend structured networking meetings, and armed with the right scripts, can make as much $10,000 from referrals from these groups.

Till next time, happy practice building!

Love and blessings,
Casey

A woman recently told me that she was afraid to show me her business card because she thought I would like it so much that I would use it as a sample and everyone would want it…that they would steal it from her.

I understand that worry. Some people worry about the saturation of therapists in their area - they are afraid the other therapists will take their prospects.

On my desk is a card that says “Since every request is granted, I feel no competition.”

Took me quite a while to accept that. I was always looking over my shoulder wondering who might be my competition.

As Michael Ports says, “If you feel called to share a message, it’s because there are people in the world who need to hear it.”

What is your message? What do you feel called to share? Because I know that no one will express it in just the way you will. Your perfect clients are out there. They aren’t everyone’s perfect clients - they are yours. Waiting for you.

Let them hear your message.

Hugs,
Casey

Some of you have asked me to talk about the process of writing the book. Here is the Cliff Notes version…

We were in the middle of a whole-house remodel and Bob was just two months out of his glaucoma surgery. We were looking for a facility for Bob’s mom who suffers from Alzheimer’s. My computer seemed to prefer being in the shop and went back and forth to tech support for several weeks. There were a zillion reasons to put off writing a book. I mean, really - how could I do my best work with all those distractions?

But I felt called to get this information out. I didn’t want to ignore that calling. I really felt I owed it to therapists, coaches and healers to get this information published.

In a sort of lame procrastination attempt, I was reading books on marathoning - not that I planned to do that either. In these books, over and over I read “The miracle is not that you finished - it is that you started.”

I thought more about writing this book and knew I wanted to do it. So, I decided to “just start.” I started with the concept of the book. Rather than another book strictly about practice-building, I wanted it to be a coaching book. I wanted to invite the readers to go deeper and work through the issues that can keep us stuck in our practice building efforts.

What will we call it?

I also knew the title was very important. I played with a bunch of them:

The Courage To Make A Good Living Helping People
Not Your Supervisor’s Private Practice
The Business Of Serving
Wealthy Therapist Is Not An Oxymoron
You Can’t Help The Poor And Starving If You Are The Poor And Starving (a quote from my dear friend Chellie Campbell - author of The Wealthy Spirit and From Zero to Zillionaire)

In the end, I decided to just be true to myself and the mission. The title of the new book is:

“Be A Wealthy Therapist: Finally, You Can Make A Living While Making A Difference.”

And in the book, I talk about how money and marketing are not bad words. I discuss how to answer the question “Do you take insurance?” And of course, we talk about 17 different practice building strategies. The book is full of stories and case studies. I want my readers to see that they can have the practice they want! It just takes some changes in thinking and implementing some different skills.

But where to sell it?..

Rather than put the book on Amazon right now, I have elected to have a pre-sale for my subscribers. The book will be formally launched early next year but I wanted you guys to have a chance to get it now. If you want to take a sneak peek, just visit:

http://www.BeAWealthyTherapist.com/book/

What is your next project?

Whether it is learning more about marketing your practice, taking up tennis, or gourmet cooking, I hope you will “just start” and “focus on completion.”

Many blessings to you!

Does this happen to you?

As I try to keep providing quality marketing information to healing professionals, I often get stalled by my Achilles heel - trying to be perfect.

Do you struggle with it too? Here is a conversation that goes on in my head sometimes:

“There just isn’t enough time to do it ‘right.’” Or, “It just isn’t perfect yet.” Or, “I can do it better than this.”

If you struggle with this, you know what I am talking about. It is the place where it feels too hard to move forward and yet you might like a failure if you don’t. You just feel stuck.

Well, in May I decided to confront this perfectionism/procrastination cycle once and for all. I decided to write a new book and “just finish it” and let it be - not perfect - but good enough. But I wondered, can I really do it?

Here is the mantra that helped me finish the book…

My coach said to me “Focus on completion - not perfection” and that was the motto that moved me through the process. I will post more later of my book writing/overcoming procrastination story in case you might be interested.

But if you struggle with that “I’ll think about it tomorrow because I am too tired to make it perfect today” thinking then I hope you can take a page out of my book (hee hee) and “Focus on completion not perfection” - whether it is in your marketing efforts or somewhere in the rest of your life.

And yes, the book is completed!

This book certainly is not perfect - but it is completed. I am so excited. We are receiving advanced reviews that are fantastic.

It is in the final production stage and we will be shipping in just a few weeks. You can check it out (and pre-order your copy at a discount if you like) at:

http://www.BeAWealthyTherapist.com/book/

Ready for more? Consider joining us in Houston - October 26 & 27

Of course, I can only cover so much in a book. I love interacting with people as they work through these issues of money and move on to create their marketing plan. To that end, I will be teaching and coaching these strategies in detail at the 2-day power-packed Workshop in Houston, TX on October 26 & 27 2007.

There are a few workshop seats left at the discounted price of $277. Soon the price will be going up to $350. To see my 2-minute video and reserve your seat, visit:

http://www.BeAWealthyTherapist.com/Workshop/

Can’t wait to hear what you think of the book!

As always, I wish you great success!

Truth be told, I have always wanted to do so but was overwhelmed with the idea of training. I knew my knees wouldn’t allow me to run it but even the idea of walking seemed out of my reach.

Yet recently, my friend Nora, a fantastic psychologist in Chicago told me that one Sunday, she walking her first half-marathon. I asked how she was able to walk 13 miles.

“Casey, it is a lot like marketing. You start out learning how to do it. Then you just do it. But it is how you think about what you are doing that is so important.”

We discussed her “thinking” strategies.

“I didn’t think of it as walking 13 miles - I thought of it as walking from Gatorade stand to Gatorade stand. You see, the stands are 1 mile apart. So, I thought of it as walking 1 mile 13 times. And I just kept walking.”

How inspirational is that!

And she is right - it is just like marketing. You figure out how to make it work for you. You create a plan. You adjust your thinking and then you just keep going. Walking 13 miles isn’t easy. Neither is marketing your practice. But step by step, it can be done.

And when we accomplish something that is a challenge … when we do what others put off … when we see ourselves at the finish line, we are never the same. That pride and confidence keeps us moving forward - in all areas of our lives.

Get started. Make a plan. Get moving. You can do this.

Blessings,

Casey

P.S. For anyone considering a marathon, Nora suggested the following book:

Marathoning for Mortals by John Bingham and Jenny Hadfield