Private Practice Success-Creative Collaboration
by Lynn Grodzki, LCSW, MCC (Master Certified Coach)
Do you feel under pressure from competition? If you are a therapist, does it seem as though your practice is under attack from newer, younger, and hungrier therapists? If you are a coach, are you daunted by the number of executive or life coaches whose websites blanket the internet? As a healer, are you worried about standing out from among dozens of other massage therapists and healers in your community who offer similar services?
If so, you are not alone. The threat of competition is common in a crowded marketplace. How do you tend to respond to competition? Do you lower your fees? Over-promise results? Do anything in order to try and hold onto a potential client?
The CEO of a major automobile company says that all his competitors are his enemies and he faces war every day. But what if you don't want to conduct business in a war zone? Can you respond to competition in a gentler way, with integrity, and still succeed in your private practice?
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.- Edith WhartonOne strategy to consider is creative collaboration. Creative collaboration means that you approach an over-saturated market from a framework of addition and expanding resources, not subtraction or eliminating enemies. Instead of trying to kill off your competitors, you devise creative ways of enlarging the market and including your colleagues in your efforts.
First, become an educator and work to broaden the market. Devote a percentage of your overall marketing time to enlightening people about not just your particular services, but the value of your profession in general. (Imagine if every therapist, coach, consultant, or healer saw this as his or her duty, to spend two hours each month to proselytize, write, teach, advertise, or heighten awareness about the value of their profession.) Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up. - Oliver Wendell Holmes
Second, extend this marketing to others. It's a lot less lonely, and more fun, to share the effort of finding clients and projects with select colleagues, rather than going solo. If you are facing competition and feeling jealous and wary of colleagues, ask a few colleagues to join you in an educational effort to create a larger market for all. Set a goal for the next six months. How many people would you like to reach and enlighten? Decide on a plan, and build in some pleasure points.
Maybe you will jointly write a series of articles. How could you make the writing more fun and pleasurable together? Maybe you will give a series of talks, for the public at large to build the broader market. How could you work together to make those talks a hoot to prepare and give? Maybe you will both approach a new corporate client, with the added power of your joint experience and credentials. Other ideas will occur as you brainstorm ways to work together. Suspend self-interest, and creatively collaborate.
Collaboration often results in raising everyone's level of energy and sense of abundance and can turn competitors into friends. Take it up a notch and collaborate with those colleagues you most envy, to shift in your evolution as both a person and a business owner.
It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak, and another to hear. - Henry David Thoreau
The third level of collaboration is between you and your business, possible when you consider your business as a separate entity. Assess your business and let it teach you what you need to learn. Here is a 3-part inventory that can help you do this kind of assessment:
1. Feelings Inventory:
How do you feel about your work and your private practice this year? What did you learn that is important to you? What skills did your acquire? How else did your practice change from last year? How did you change in response?
2. Financial Inventory:
What did you gross and what did you spend last year? What trends, events, or patterns do you think caused your best and worst months? If you wanted to increase your profit by 15% for the next year, what could you do?
3. Foresight Iventory
What meaning can you make out of any missteps, mistakes, successes or challenges that you faced last year? How can your practice make a difference in the lives of your clients, and the world this year? What is the most loving vision you can hold for your business?
Contact Lynn Grodzki
Email: lynn@privatepracticesuccess.com
Website: www.privatepracticesuccess.com