5 Things That Successful Wellness Practitioners Always Do
In the past year that I've been running the software side of Holisticism, I've gotten to work very closely with some of the best wellness facilitators and practitioners in the biz.
I'm not that different than you, Dear Reader. I scroll through Instagram, I listen to podcasts, I have my finger on the pulse of what's happening in the wellness universe. Hell, I even made it my job!
And I thought I had an idea of what the most "successful" wellness practitioners did in their businesses.
I totally assumed I knew how much money they were making. (Lots)
How many clients they had. (Hundreds)
How they ran the insides of their businesses. (Like clockwork, with a giant team)
Man, I love being wrong.
When I got a behind the scenes look at what worked (and what decidedly did NOT work) for successful practitioners, I was delightedly blown away.
Here's what I found.
1. they know their time is valuable — so they don't waste it
Across the board, the most exceptional practitioners I know understand that their time is precious. As such, they don't waste those potent moments on things that don't have a high output attached to them. So, if they invest an hour into something like Instagram, it needs to reap beaucoup benefits.
This results in two great habits that anyone can learn from: killing your darlings and outsourcing.
Killing your darlings is the process of auditing everything in your work that requires your energy and time. Write out everything you do in a week — how do you spend your days? what do you do in order to keep your business going? what do you continue to do because you feel as if your business needs it?
Now take a look at that list. Chances are, half of it is stuff that isn't getting you new clients or making you a better practitioner. It could be that your list is full of things that you enjoy, like making a weekly video or doing in-person events, but those things don't do much in terms of moving the needle. So, you've gotta stop doing them. Kill your darlings. Be ruthless because your time is valuable. And right now, the way you're spending your time is blocking you from stepping into the powerful practitioner you're supposed to be.
If you feel must continue with a certain task — maybe it's writing a weekly newsletter or blog post, or maybe it's posting on social media — and it isn't worth your time, you can outsource it.
The best practitioners also outsource their research and learning process. When they really want to learn something, they fucking sit down and learn it from an expert. Instead of spending hours pouring over Google, listening to endless podcasts, and running expensive, impotent 'experiments' on their own, thoughtful practitioners go straight to the source for the best information ... even if it means it costs a little more money upfront.
You can always make back money — but you can't get your time back.
And the longer you spend putzing around on the internet trying to learn something (and maybe succeeding, but also perhaps not) the more time you're spending not getting the results you wanted.
2. they're honest - they don't lie about the number of clients they have, create a false sense of urgency, or withhold their prices in a skeevy way.
This one is important. The most successful practitioners — i.e., the ones who book the highest number of clients and/or make the most money — do not lie about how busy they are.
I've never heard a very successful practitioner say, "I'm so insanely busy, I can barely fit you in ... but I'll figure it out if you really want to work with me."
Listen, we all know that's a lie. If you're genuinely booked out, you have a waiting list OR you have availability a few months out.
If you're fake booked out, you can magically "fit" someone in because either, 1) you're lying and you actually had availability, or 2) you don't have time integrity for yourself and you're overbooking your time, which means you're running on scarcity mindset and lord knows nobody likes that.
Yeah, I know this is harsh, but it's the truth. The only people who say they're so busy are the ones with gaping holes in their bank accounts and blind spots in their egos. Real pros have time integrity and don't need to play mind games to get people to work with them.
3. They encourage clients to make their own choices.
On that same note, the most-booked practitioners don't do a hard sell on clients. They stand in their worth — they understand that their services are invaluable to many clients — but they don't pretend that a client can't heal without seeing them every week or that NO ONE can help their client other than them.
That's just ... a falsity. The truth is, nobody needs us to heal. Anything we want to know is in a book somewhere, or on Google, or inside of our hearts.
And! The reason clients hire practitioners is that YOU, my practitioner friend, are an expert. And while your lovely client could get your information if they spent a lot of time in school or doing their research — they don't want to. That's not how they want to spend their time, so they hire someone to help them get to that learning in the quickest, least painful manner.
Booked out practitioners understand this, so they don't need to be pushy when working with clients. They encourage their clients to make their own decisions from a place of empowerment — not a place of fear or lack.
4. They know their impact is more significant than just one session and they prepare accordingly
If you asked me what attributes I'd think the best practitioners had in common when I first started Holisticism, without a doubt I would have answered, "The ones who can fix someone after one session."
OK, so, I was wrong.
Admittedly, I still operate from a Western perspective when it comes to much of healthcare and wellbeing. I want — DESPERATELY! — healing to be so singular and straightforward that it involves the flick of a switch. A one-time appointment.
Alas, healing is a multidimensional thing. It takes time and many different types of approaches, and it rarely ends at destination: Healed Forever, population: You.
I've learned that a good healer can do their job in one session and "fix" you then and there. But a great healer works with you as you integrate the healing they deliver to you over time in bite-sized ways that you can truly understand. A great healer supports you as you evolve, gives you precisely the information you need to succeed (nothing more or less), and encourages you to move on when you're ready.
5. They're humble.
Self-possessed, confident people ask for help when they need it, they admit when they don't have an answer, and they do that because they care about clients first and foremost.
They're humble and gracious. And they don't just say "I'm so grateful," with affected piety — they actually are grateful, and their actions embody that.