The 6 Little Known Secrets of Successful Wellness Practitioners That Work — Even In Unprecedented Times
For the first 2 years that Holisticism existed, I spent most of my days up to my ears in data. Studying the businesses of thousands of practitioners taught me so much.
I was obsessed with seeing the backends of popular wellness practitioner's businesses. I learned a lot — about what business practices worked really well, and which practices ... didn't 🤡
When I say "wellness practitioner," I mean anyone — anyone — who has a service-based business that brings other people into well-being equilibrium.
We're talking psychics.
Spell-casters.
Nutritionists.
Coaches.
Breathwork guides.
Meditation teachers.
Astrologers.
Branding wizards.
Therapists.
Piano teachers.
Lactation consultants.
Social media mavens.
You get it.
Here's the thing about service-based practitioners:
They're typically very intuitive and actually very sensitive to energy, whether they realize it or not. Highly sensitive people, empaths, intuitives, the whole nine yards.
They do their work because they deeply, honestly, with every cell of their being, love helping people — often at the expense of their well-being.
This combination is saccharine-sweet but deadly. It's a perfect formula for burn out, financial despair, and exhaustion — big yikes! Maybe if you resonate with the term wellness practitioner, you're nodding along as you read this like, "Yep, checks out."
Why? Shouldn't helping people be as easy as, well, just raising your hand to help them?
Everyone knows when you're a good person, and you work hard, good things have to happen to you eventually — right?
Oooooh no. No, no, no. That's a distorted style of thinking that many practitioners get caught up in that we'll get to in a hot sec.
Here's the unfortunate truth: Many wellness practitioners struggle forever to get their work to a place that supports them financially, energetically, and spiritually. That, objectively, sucks.
Because when you take a very sensitive and skilled person, gas them up with a love of humanity, and flip the switch on "helper mode" without giving them the necessary business-y tools to fulfill their purpose, you're almost guaranteeing the struggle.
In this post, I'll be talking about the seven little-known secrets that successful wellness practitioners are in on — grab this free worksheet to see how well you score on the six secrets (and where you could use a little help!)
Dispel Heaven's Reward Fallacy
So, listen. We're spiritual here. VERY spiritual. But Heaven's Reward Fallacy is not the type of spirituality you want in your life. If you subscribe to Heaven's Reward Fallacy, you expect your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if someone is keeping score.
It can sound like this:
As long as I'm a good person, I know that I'll get rewarded for being good.
If I work hard enough, eventually, my hard work always pays off.
The harder I work, and the more I give other people, the more I will ultimately get rewarded in the end.
If I pass tests and work hard enough, eventually, the Universe will reward me with financial abundance.
Heaven's Reward Fallacy is a distorted thinking style — what is otherwise known as a false belief. Hate to break it to you, but it doesn't check out fam.
Hard-working wellness practitioners might unknowingly use Heaven's Reward Fallacy-style thinking to justify avoiding change in their business even though what they're doing is clearly not working.
Successful wellness practitioners know that their success doesn't depend on how "good" or "perfect" they are. They also know it has nothing to do with how hard they work — burning yourself out doesn't get you any closer to your goals.
Wellness practitioners who find joy, pleasure and abundance from their work understand that they need to marry their skill and intuition with practical business systems that set them up to succeed.
Know the Difference Between Service vs. Product-Based Business
Most small business owners are doing THE MOST. And the most is, welp, way too much.
The key is to start with one focus and expand out as you get more experience and expertise.
If you're a wellness practitioner, I recommend starting with deciding if you are a service-based business or a product-based business.
A service-based business provides a service to an individual. A nutritionist who sees clients, a social media agency that works with fledgling brands, a photographer who takes infant pictures, and a graphic designer who works with couples to design their wedding invitations are service-based businesses.
Most people start here — which is a PERFECT place to begin.
Eventually, they find that they either can't keep up with the amount of work they have, or they want to create more passive forms of income that don't require trading hours of your time for money.
Because they've spent years building their service-based business, they now have expert-level clout and experience to make a product.
A product-based business provides products at scale. A digital course, a vitamin line, a skincare range, and a paid podcast are all product-based businesses.
Of course, people do both! Many coaches provide 1:1 appointments and DIY courses to their potential students. Holistic estheticians still see clients for facials and make a product line on the side.
The mistake most people make is doing both of these things at once, from the jump.
Smart wellness practitioners tend to focus on nailing the service-based side of their business before investing in making products.
This works for two reasons:
If you're good enough to be at capacity in your service-based business and ready to scale to the masses, you probably have a proprietary method or framework that you've perfected over the years (which will make a great product!)
A thriving service-based business provides the upstart capital, aka cash money, to get your product off the ground
Stop Side-eyeing Everyone Else
The most successful wellness practitioners I've gotten to work with basically have blinders on. They don't pay attention to anything that other people are doing — at least not in a competitive way.
When I got to pull the curtain back on how successful wellness practitioners ran their businesses, I noticed one thing — the focused 100% on their clients and what their clients needed.
Unfortunately, the wellness industry is unregulated and lacks transparency. There's virtually no oversight on the business, marketing, and pricing practices of wellness practitioners.
The lack of transparency in this industry has perpetuated the idea that you'll be successful as long as you have lots of followers on Instagram.
This could not be further from the truth.
There are many, many "celebrity" or "influencer" wellness practitioners who struggle behind the scenes to take home any revenue.
Honestly, this is one of those myths that just makes me really mad, because it doesn't help ANYONE. It doesn't help the influencers who are plastering on a smile pretending everything is fine and that they're rolling in the dough, it doesn't help fledgling practitioners who feel like they need to invest all their energy into growing their following, and it DEFINITELY doesn't help the real people out there who are searching for practitioners to help them.
Take Email Seriously
This brings me to my next point — successful wellness practitioners take email seriously because they know that Instagram is just a fun distraction. [Oh my gaaaah, it is the most fun distraction, amiright? But, alas, a distraction nonetheless.]
I'm a big fan of the 80-20 Rule — 80% of your results come from 20% of your work. That's email, in a nutshell.
You set up things like email sequences once, and they work super hard for you every single day by making you look soooo good and converting new clients for you while you're off doing other things.
Literally set it and forget it.
In this way, email is the total opposite of Instagram. Social media is like, stress about what to post for 14 hours and then you don't forget about it ever like you're remember that you posted that blood orange with a 💉emoji on your deathbed, BUT LITERALLY NO ONE ELSE WILL BECAUSE ONLY 6% OF YOUR AUDIENCE EVEN SEES YOUR CONTENT ON INSTAGRAM THANKS TO THE ALGORITHM.
Crystalline Vision On Their Offering
A great quote from our patron saint, Brene Brown: "Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind."
Get clear, my guy, on precisely what you do. Future clients should land on your homepage and figure out what you do within 15 seconds.
People buy what they understand.
If they don't understand what you do — no matter how good you are — they're not gonna bite.
Embrace Your Multidimensional Nature
If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that we are not one thing.
We can hold many identities, many perspectives, and many beliefs at once.
You can be intuitive and spiritual, FOR SURE. You can also know your way around a profit and loss sheet. These two things are not mutually exclusive.
I'm done with the wellness world telling us that they are.
Because first, it's wrong. And second, it's insanely harmful.
You can run an intuitive business. You can rage against the toxic power structures in capitalism and still create a business that provides for your financial needs (and creates opportunities for others)
We are multidimensional.
Conclusion
I firmly believe that running an intuitive business as a wellness practitioner doesn't have to be exhausting, feel impossible, or drive your bank account through the mud.
I also believe that you can run your business in a way that feels intuitive, aligned, and not skeevy and gross. So start with these six points — and move from there.