Pivot Your Practice To Flourish in The Future – Fulltime to freelance - 5 Tips To Use A Budget Wisely As You Set Up Your Practice

There are many starting points to being a coach or therapist with a practice that you need to FutureProof. 

- You may be recently trained, still in a job (Covid allowing!) and wondering about making the leap to becoming an independent Practitioner. 

- You may be fairly experienced and have a practice but notice that it has been impacted by Covid and client numbers are not stable. 

- You may have been right at the start of establishing your practice and the Covid pandemic completely changed the picture so you don't know what to do from this point on. 

In this article I am focusing more on the first person. The one who has been in the security of a paid job and can still carry on in it - but is passionate about coaching and wonders about the freedom of having their own Practice. Other articles will be more focused on the others. 

One of the primary reasons people hesitate to start a Practice is the fact that it is essentially a business and they believe that any business needs start up time, money and extraordinary effort. In the Covid environment the primary reason for hesitation is having a decent amount of security right now, even though there is uncertainty about the future of many jobs in the years ahead. 

There is, of course, good news and bad. If you’re starting a service business like a coaching or therapy practice online, working from the comfort of your own home, then the startup costs are minimal. The bad news is about the uncertainty factor for the future. Because there is no way to be able to predict whether having a job will remain realistic, or whether having an ongoing stream of private clients online or off will be realistic, you have to find other ways to find the inner certainty (or learn to live without it) whilst still moving forward with hope and confidence. I cover a lot of ideas about this aspect in my free webinar (see below). Here I focus on the financial aspect of setting up an online coaching or therapy service so that you can get a realistic perspective on that. 

Here are 5 ways to stay on budget while setting up your practice:

1. Purchase a domain. Every person with a coaching or therapy practice should have a website as part of their online presence so invest in a paid domain. Don’t settle for platforms that offer free domains; those will look similar to www.mynewprac.wordpress.com and screams unprofessional and cheap. Invest the small amount of money needed (about $15) to purchase the www.mynewprac.com instead.

2. Shop around for web hosting. Domain registrars will always offer you a hosting package but those deals are not always the most cost effective. Do some research, ask online associates, and read online reviews. I’ve seen web hosting packages for as low at $10 per month but you also want to inquire about their percentage of down time and how quickly it takes to get a customer service response. If you have an emergency with your site, you don’t want to wait days for an answer. Most people opt for Wordpress as the way to build their sites and choose one of the well established hosting companies who are not likely to fold anytime soon - as many of the small ones are doing now to host it. I personally am with Bluehost and they are fine. 

3. Invest in an autoresponder. An autoresponder is an email service that gathers email addresses from people who fill in that box on the website or on Facebook or wherever you make your presence known. The normal thing to do is to make a free giveaway in exchange for their email; it’s a nice incentive and showcases your talents and knowledge. I will be writing an article on these giveaways soon because I have some tips to creating them you will find helpful. 

Some autoresponders are free up until you reach a certain number of people who have asked to join your list. Others are free based on how many emails you send each month. Do your research carefully because free platforms usually have more rules and regulations to follow. A rough price guide is around $25/month and rising as you numbers go up. 

My advice is to choose a platform that matches your budget but also have a plan to use this tool asap. Growing your list should be a continuous cycle so you can stay in touch with prospects and clients. It really is one of the most essential tasks you will do right from the start and then forever! So be sure you are ready to start collecting names before you sign up. The good news is that even if you use a free one for a while you can easily migrate your list to one of the other autoresponders when you are ready to take it up a notch. 

The other tip is from my mistake. I made the mistake of getting ahead of the game (as I thought) and signing up early on in my decision to make the practice full time and independent. It then took me ages to create the first giveaway - and that meant that I wasted the free 14 day trial I could have had.

Another tip is to be sure to investigate the latest funnel creators (these are just a fancy way to link together the page with what you are offering on it to a page with a payment option). They can be pricey (anywhere from $97/m and upwards) but the latest ones often combine an autoresponder function with the funnel building and there are big advantages to having all the moving parts of a system being under one roof. I have recently switched to Funnelvio and am liking that as it combines several things I was paying separate monthly fees for and works out cheaper than the three others. 

You just never know when a person will move from being interested to get your free giveaways to making a purchase and so move to client status. Staying in touch through your autoresponder is paramount and having some funnels to help people move into buyer/client mode is very useful.

4. Create a brand board. You’ll want a brand board for easy reference when it comes to creating your first simple website and creating any graphics you need for your site, products, or social media.

The way to do it to get started is to look for ones you like and then think what it is about them that attracts you. Use Pinterest to pin the colours, fonts, photos, and textures that resonate with you and provide the kind of practice image you want. Use these elements in your graphics as well as on all your social media profiles.

Then, keeping it as simple as possible and budget friendly too, go to Canva and using their free option, create a brand kit with you favourite elements on it - colours, textures, fonts etc. They also have an option to create a simple website on Canva using templates which are shortcuts and full of useful pointers. That might only be on the paid version but it is possible to sign up for that, create the website and then change back to the free version. It is a very frugal way to try out different looks for the website before you publish it on the host.

In retrospect it would have been a better option for me to have someone build the site but I have always found it hard to find someone who really understands all the elements of branding if they are actually a programmer/website builder. I have found Kaye Putnam, who is a psychology based brand strategist very helpful as she has created many pin boards showing different 'looks' all based on the psychological Archetypes. It's a fun way as well as a very useful way to get a direction for your 'look'.

5. Allocate the most money for equipment upgrades. If you’re an online service provider, your equipment upgrades should be the majority of your budget. It’s vitally important to have working equipment and reliable internet if you want to gain the trust of your clients. If you can’t afford the best of the best equipment, upgrade one step above what you currently have. Unfortunately there’s nothing cheap about computers and electronic equipment but if you pay for quality brands, then hopefully they’ll last a long time and you won’t have to think about that expense for a few years.

In a nutshell, starting a client-based service business is certainly possible to do on a budget. However, get going signing up a few clients as soon as possible as that way you get some cash flow gets going and it spurs you on to finish off the foundational technical aspects of the coaching or therapy practice. The easiest way to do that, even in these times, is to offer a special package of, for instance, 3 half hour coaching sessions for previous clients to help them focus again and get back on track for whatever was important for them. Even if you are new offering a special geared to 're-orientating' and moving forward is what people are looking for at the moment.

Create a Stronger Practice Foundation with My Newest Course…

These steps are just the beginning of your practice Futureproofing. If you want to avoid the trial and error phase, take a look at my newest course, “Full-Time to Independent Practitioner. Create, Launch, and Book out Your Services in 30 Days”. Yes, 30 days is a quick turnaround but if you make time to focus on the lessons and exercises, it’s doable. This is a 4-lesson, self-study course that you complete at your own leisure, when your schedule permits. You’ll get each lesson plus a workbook with exercises and checklists to keep you on track. Just think…in 30 days you could be on track. Here's the link to join my list and I will let you know when the doors open. 

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This is a series for coaches and therapists who are passionate about their work and their clients but struggling to find a way to make things work post-Covid as clients melt away and money becomes an issue for most people.

This is a time when most of us are scared. Nothing is known or predictable and many of us are dithering about what to do. In fact, this indecision is something we all experience. Trouble is, it can become a huge block to your progress. It can derail your success with your practice. Therapists and coaches who are successful are people who have learned to do two things. One is be flexible enough to pivot their business to what will work now - and the other is to break through enough of the fear barriers to get productive again.

Need More Happiness, Freedom and Success? Join My Free Webinars…

If you want quick and easy steps to setting yourself up for a safe and happy future doing the work you love, join me for my free webinars. I usually give at least 5 tips for moving forward and implementing in ways that will move you forward in all of my webinars. Each is about a certain angle on the issue. They, on their own will have an immediate effect on your mood and your outlook on life with your business. Get off the hamster wheel and take some time for yourself with my webinars, learn and act, learn and act – that’s the way to start flourishing. Join my list and be the first to know when I'm live online. https://forms.aweber.com/form/76/1704509576.htm

"Just imagine if the next 5 years is like the last 5 years? How are you keeping yourself financially secure, happy and living your life of purpose by helping other people people succeed?"

Elizabeth specializes in helping you Get Your Coaching or Therapy Practice Back On Track. Sign up for her highly-acclaimed free challenges and webinars to find out how to Pivot that Practice to FutureProof Yourself.

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