In the last week, I’ve talked with so many professional service providers — an electrician at ARISE Music Festival, the gal who does my lashes, and an amazing naturopath in my community — who have reminded me that their practice/business issues are all exactly the same.
These are the exact same issues that face the lawyers we train in our New Law Business Model program.
Business is business is business — all professional service providers go through the same stages in the growth of their practice into a business that truly supports their lives.
First step:
Figure out how to get to a “full practice” with enough 1-1 clients/customers so your time is full and you are making enough money to support your practice (your life + a team member or two).
Usually, that is going to mean that you need to focus on your structure for getting hired by the clients you want to work with and establishing a pricing and packaging system for those services that works for you and your clients.
Ideally, during that stage you are going to stop charging hourly for your time, or by the session, or by the month, and shift into charging for the outcome you provide.
We guide purpose-driven practice owners to do that through our Eyes Wide Open Coaching and lawyers to do that through our New Law Business Model coaching.
Where I see most practice owners go offtrack here is by focusing too much at this stage on marketing (and why their marketing isn’t working) before they have a clear enrollment/engagement structure with correct pricing and packaging for their life and the people they serve.
This includes, by the way, having a great client contract and an easy way for your clients to pay you.
Mastering that is likely going to get you to the point where you realize that you’ve run out of time and need to earn more income to support the life you really, really, really, REALLY want.
Or you might realize that you have exactly the life and income you want. And then you can relax and feel into your next steps.
The outcome of this step is what we call Financial Liberation: knowing you can earn what you need, when you need it, on demand by offering your highest value services to the people you want to and love to work with.
At that point, you are ready for step 2. I’ll be back soon with another post on what step 2 is, once you’ve mastered step 1.
Any idea what step 2 would be? Have you mastered step 1 in your practice? If not, why not? Where are you getting distracted or lost along the way?
