Here are some bullet points from the interview with Valerie Lis:

• Have multiple streams of income: speaker, workshops, 1 on 1 counseling, teaching
• Credibility is a key component to getting referrals from other professionals
• Specialize in your modality, dont be all things to all people
• If in a larger city, strategically have more than one location to meet clients
• To be a successful business owner practitioner you have to run a profitable business

Valerie Lis lives in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and is a co-owner of Courses for LIFE, she teaches college courses in Integrative Health and Healing, has a Masters Degree in Holistic Health Studies and presents training seminars to health and business professionals.

Valerie is a national speaker with HPSS Global, Inc.

Our interview focused on the business side of being a Holistic Practitioner.

Jeffrey Rose has appeared and been featured in stories on hypnosis on CBS’ The Early Show, the CNN American Morning news segment “Kick the Butt,” the “Tyra Banks Show’s, “Your Future Face,” CBS News New York’s “The Hypnosis Fix” and WNYC National Public Radio’s “The Take Away” story “Can Hypnosis Help a Resolution’s Resolve.”

This is a great interview for learning a little about getting recognized and promoting your skills and passion in the main stream media.

He is the founder and director of the Advanced Hypnosis Center is a Certified Master Hypnotist and a nutritionist. Mr. Rose has a degree in Psychology from New York University and is certified by both the National Guild of Hypnotists and the International Association of Counselors and Therapists.

AHCenter.com

Get a jumpstart on your business before the New Year.

Every year comes the new barrage of blog posts touting goal setting like it’s some sort of mystical, future telling strategy.  I bought into the belief that setting a goal was of some value, but after 20 years of doing it and seeing the majority of my goals go by the wayside, year after year, I finally figured something out.

You need a VISION.

Here is a video I did going step by step on how to create a VISION WORKBOOK.

This is a great tool for you and staff.

I’ve also enclosed a downloadable document listing all the pages I reference.

Please leave your comments as to how this helped you and what improvements you made by using this model.  I know others would benefit from your input.

Here you go!

Vision workbook TWS

Vision workbook calendar

Joan Angarano is from Whiteplains, NY. While working as a copywriter Joan began having dreams and intuitions that told her what she was currently doing wasn’t what was in her life plan. She quit that job and became a licensed massage therapist and ultimately a holistic practitioner with many different modalities.

Joan talks about how working for herself allows her to manage her time with clients the way she sees fit and how important that is for her. She talks about the business side of renting office space and discusses balancing the startup of her holistic practice while balancing her responsibilities with her son and other family members she took care of.

Joan has been in the business for about twenty years and intuition has played a huge role in her decisions and successes.  Listen as Joan shares her story, challenges and advice.

Lifestreamshealing.com

Guest Post: Pat Flynn

Relationship management is the idea of organizing the interactions that you have with other people.

It’s a simple idea, but it’s not simply implemented – especially as your blog, business and brand begin to flourish.

When I first started blogging it was very easy for me to remember who contacted me, when, and for what reason – mostly because contact with other people was few and far between and getting an email from a reader was a huge deal.

Now, emails from readers are still important to me but they come in much larger quantities (sometimes 100s a day) and there is no way I can easily remember the history of interaction with every single person.

This is why I get help from a very slick Gmail Application called Rapportive. It is, by far, the best thing I’ve discovered this year. A big thanks to my buddy Cliff from Podcast Answer Man for showing me this amazing tool.

What Rapportive Can Do

Rapportive creates a dynamic CRM (customer relationship management) tool in the sidebar of your gmail account.

*NOTE – you don’t have to have a @gmail.com account in order to use Rapportive – you just need to use Gmail to view your emails. I setup Google Apps for Free to manage emails for SPI through gmail.

Even if the people who email me are not exactly customers, I’d like to treat them as such because you never know – they could become one in the future (or at least refer some) – and using a tool to help build and nourish that relationship makes this much more possible. Plus, it just looks much more professional (and saves a lot of time) when you can easily recall information about a person in just a few seconds.

Here’s what I see when I view an email from Cliff Ravenscraft, for example:

This is shown right next to my email in the exact same window, which makes it extremely easy to see all kinds of things related to Cliff.

Who They Are

Rapportive pulls information from existing social network profiles to give a quick snapshot of who that person is. Even if you’re getting an email from a person for the first time, if they are connected to these networks you’ll see important information about that person.

You can use this information to help guide how you respond to that particular person, and just imagine if you include something you learned about them from Rapportive in your reply. You’ll look like you’re very on top of your game.

Quick story - one person emailed me asking for advice the other day and Rapportive showed me that he was an Ohio State Buckeyes fan. At the end of my reply, all I did was say “Go Buckeyes!” and within a couple of hours I received an email back from this person saying he was very impressed, and asking how I knew. Of course, I told him it was because of Rapportive.

If someone said “Go Bears!” to me a reply, it would definitely be a great first impression and something I would absolutely remember.

Social Network Activity

I know a lot of you are going to dig this.

Not only can I see this person’s latest activity on a ton of different social networks (there’s about 200 you can choose from), which could enhance my emails even further, but I can see if I’m connected to them or not – and if not I can immediately follow or friend them directly from Rapportive and expand my network.

This is exactly how I’ve been able to grow my LinkedIn account, which I’ve had for years but never did anything with. With the simple click of a button and nothing else, I’ve been able to create a ton of new connections.

Below, I’ve expanded the Facebook portion of Cliff’s rapportive dashboard to see what his latest post was, and I can even click on any links and comment on his post too.

Previous Emails and Shared Docs

Showing previous emails is something that most email clients do already, but having the titles show up here in the Rapportive Dashboard, again, is just super convenient so I don’t even have to do any work to find that information. I can click any of those emails to open them too in case I needed to refer back to them for a response.

Cliff and I also share a couple of Google Documents together, and having the ability to see what those documents are is great too. If you’re working with a number of people on various projects, and using Google Documents to manage things, I can see this being extremely helpful and an absolute time saver.

Email List Subscriber Data

If you’re building an email list, you can integrate your email service provider (such as Aweber or MailChimp – others will follow soon) to see if this person is subscribed to any of your lists.

If you click on the list name you can see exactly when it was they subscribed and the last email in your follow-up sequence they received too.

This. Is. Amazing.

Here’s what it looks like:

Imagine – if you notice a person isn’t subscribed to your list, you can simply ask them in your reply to sign up if you feel it will benefit them.

If you wanted to get super slick, you could use a tool like Text Expander to easily type in a few letters which would then automatically insert pre-written copy asking a person to subscribe to your newsletter, with all of the appropriate links.

If a person is already subscribed, you can see where they’re at in your autoresponder sequence and talk about that briefly in your reply too.

For example, for the person above I could say, “I hope you liked my newsletter about Suprise ‘em Marketing. Please let me know if you have any more questions about it. If not – I hope you like the next one which is all about how to use LinkedIn” – or something like that.

Adding Notes

My absolute favorite part about Rapportive, in addition to all of these awesome things I already covered, is the ability to add notes about a person.

At the bottom of the Rapportive dashboard, there’s a text field that I can use to write down anything I want.

Often times, when I get an email, I’ll jot down 4 or 5 words in this text field so that if this person emails me again in the future, I can refer back to it.

Scenario:

Someone emails me asking for advice about his new blog. I quickly just write down “Asked for advice about NameofWebsite.com”.

In the future, I get an email again from this person in regards to something else. I am reminded that this person asked for advice about NameofWebsite.com and I just ask in my reply how NameofWebsite.com has been progressing.

It’s the little things like this that can totally change how a person perceives your brand and interacts with you in the future.

If you sell products, a simple note that describes what the customer purchased can help you see what else they may be interested in down the line too.

What Rapportive Cannot Do

Rapportive is just a tool – it doesn’t replace the fact that you still have to engage and reply to emails in order for this to be effective.

You still have to be a real person.

As I mentioned in SPI Podcast Session #26, the relationships that you build with your audience and those in the same space as you are vital to your growth and success. Rapportive, I’ve found, has made building these relationships with people much, much easier.

Do you use Rapportive, and if so, how do you like it? If not, what are you doing to help manage the relationships you build?

Enjoy your week, and I wish you all the best!

Cheers!

 A six year journey, dealing with a medical issue, took Shayna Bracha Farber from traditional medicine to the holistic side. As she says, she literally “fell into holistic medicine”. Once she did the sky was the limit when it came to self-promoting through the internet. She used her background in sales to self promote herself right into the public mainstream in her area with radio and TV engagements.  Within six months of setting the intention, Shayna got herself featured on the TV show “Wild Chicago”.

Shayna also graciously opens up and shares about her struggle to find a balance of offering her services and charging a fee for her expertise.  She also expresses herself with holistic art and teaches other to do the same.  Be sure you check out her website.

Listen as Joan tells about her journey and what she did to get from A to Z.

http://www.shaynabracha.com

Holistic Marketing and why you need it!

It is a basic fact that most budding entrepreneurs in the world of holistic medicine struggle to get their business up and running, especially after they first begin. The primary issue is that they simply do not have the tools to properly advertise their offerings. A common belief is that turning a passion into a business is enough to make the money come easily…

Well, you do need the passion. But that’s a given or you wouldn’t even be doing what you are doing. As a matter of fact, many holistic practitioners are so passionate about what they do that they don’t even think they should be charging money at all. This is a huge misconception.  You are providing a service and you are helping people in ways that you probably don’t even realize. It’s okay to benefit financially from your talents!

In my point of view, you have to invest in yourself in order to create the right mental approach as well as external factors such as online advertising and marketing, fostering business partnerships, and making new contacts.

Holistic entrepreneurs who understand the value of holistic marketing are usually the one who have the most profitable businesses. In this article, I offer suggestions on what methods to put in place in order to create a thriving holistic medicine business.

1. Create a top-notch, visually pleasing, search engine-optimized online presence.

My most important technique for creating a successful company entails a highly visible online existence. This can do wonders for your business. Most customers are browsing the search engines for holistic treatment options in their town or region. Having a site which appears near the top of the search engine results for a given keyword provides a definite edge over competing companies.

One of the biggest reasons having a site is so crucial is that it is your company’s primary way of letting customers know what you are all about.  It is smart to build an online presence which contains easy to understand and honest information in a clear format. Try not to use phrases and terms which the customer may be unfamiliar with.

2. Become an expert at networking.

For the most part, you must train yourself to naturally discuss your business or products with your peers or contemporaries. You must be able to describe your objective and exactly how your holistic practice meets consumer needs. Because many people are curious, but not familiar with holistic practitioners, being able to communicate the details of your business is of utmost importance. The better a business owner is at communicating, the more successful he is likely to be with his holistic marketing.

3. Understand how to keep your customers.

Countless holistic practitioners miss out on future opportunities with clients because they simply don’t have a good system for keeping track of them. The primary goal of any holistic practice business must be to educate clients and change their points-of-view when it comes to preventative health care. Furthermore, customers must be fully aware of the benefit of taking control of their health and happiness.

Armed with these techniques, you will be well on your way to creating a thriving holistic medicine business.

You know you have a lot to offer…but people have to be able to find you and know what you are about in order for them to benefit. Holistic Marketing is the path to getting your message further than you may have ever envisioned!

www.thewellnessschool.com

Kismet Salem shares her insights from Venice, California. Kismet spent much of her younger years traveling the world with her parents and, as she puts it, always had “one foot  in the door and one foot out the door” when it came to holistic health.

Kismet talks to us about how much more common holistic medicine is in other countries and how she transitioned from a career in acting, modeling and art to that of massage therapy and spiritual counseling. Many of her referrals come from medical doctors, primarily surgeons, as she has teamed up with them because of her work as a Prepare for Surgery Program.

She gives us insight on how she decides on her fee for services, the type of website she has, and how she structured her practice early in her practice to have a separate office that she sees her clients.

Don’t miss this session!

KismetSalem.com

prepareforsurgeryla.com

Sarah Hinson is originally from the UK and currently living in Kansas.  She has a whole lot to offer when it comes to how and why you should be using modern technology in your practice.  Sarah has an IT background and is also certified in reflexology, EMF and NLP.

Sarah says she is on a spiritual journey and, like most of us in this industry, life circumstances brought her to where she is.

Sarah talks to us about her blog “Mom on a Spiritual Journey” as well as her use of twitter, skype, how she handles “remote” clients, where she obtains her clients and how she is growing her practice. Sara also talks about “raising awareness” and that’s where she puts her focus.  She also talks about her strengths and challenges within her practice.

Be sure to tune in to this excellent perspective on marketing your holistic practice in our age of social marketing and technology.

PS…this was taped during Hurricane Irene and I actually called Sarah, Irene at the start of the interview….so sorry Sarah!!

http://www.momonaspiritualjourney.com

Sarah Hinson Interview from allen freeman on Vimeo.

Kimberly Rex comes to us from Bellingham, Washington.  Kimberly has a background in education and does Resonance Pattering and continues to work full time in the public education system. She is also a certified Person-Centered Expressive Therapist and this is the basis of her holistic practice. Listen as Kimberly explains how she balances both, and how she is strategizing her move into full time with her holistic practice.

Kimberly publishes newsletters on Twitter, Linked In, and Facebook.  Amazingly, a whopping 98% of Kimberly’s clients are virtual and she discusses how she connects with them through Skype and other means.

The quality of this video is not great…we apologize for that but the information is wonderful and the audio is great.  Kimberly talks about “a day in the life” and what that looks like. Great info that could apply to many people.

http://www.windowstotheheart.net

Kimberly Rex Interview from allen freeman on Vimeo.