I saw those photos. A peeler. A grater. Things out of her kitchen drawer, and a white sheet of paper. Ten minutes. Beauty.

I was stunned. I had to ask, “How do you *do* that? Those photos are so enticing and beautiful.”

Her answer? “I seriously love the world. I love everything I photograph deeply…even if it’s junk….”

Love Is Trite

Love is simply the most discussed, most sung about, most poemed (is that a word?), most cried over, laughed over topic in the world, ever. There is nothing new to say about love. You’ve heard it so many times, it’s easy to dismiss, even if you believe in the power of love.

Yet did you see those photos of hers? The presence of love took the ordinary and made it glow. The next time I go up to my kitchen, you can bet I’ll be looking at my peeler differently.

I know I don’t have to convince you about the power of love. But I feel I do need to open all of our eyes to remembering the power of it.

Love Needs Context

In my tradition of Sufism, love is talked about needing both an object and a subject. A lover and a beloved. Without a beloved, the one loved, love is not activated, engaged. It does not come alive.

And without a lover, the one who loves, love has nowhere to live.

When we talk about bringing heart into business, we’re talking about love. But what we’re really talking about is the miraculous, immersive experience that happens between the lover and the beloved, and how that affects everyone around.

If you are bringing love to your business, what is your context? Who is the beloved, who is the lover?

Love is (Often) Hidden

Take a moment right now. Close your eyes. Put your hand over your heart. Allow your lungs to fill with a gentle, full breath. Now, in your heart, ask for love.

Open your eyes. Look at something to do with your business. Keep your eyes open. Put your hand over your heart. Allow your lungs to fill with a gentle, full breath. In your heart, ask to witness love within whatever you are looking at.

Take your time. Sometimes our previous experiences veil the deeper witnessing of love from us. Look at your phone, or your computer, or your desk. Look at a pile of paper you need to clean up. Ask to witness the deeper love in it.

What changes? What becomes possible?

Love Requires You

You may need love, but love also needs you. As Mevlana Jallalu’ddin Rumi wrote, “The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.”

Be awake to love. Honor the lover and beloved in each context. Look deeper for what is hidden.

My photographer client I mentioned above? She’s found a way to help people open their eyes to seeing differently. It costs nothing but your attention. And, in my opinion, it’s fantastic. Check out re:focus here.

What does this have to do with business? You tell me. Right here on the blog, let me know how this affects, or doesn’t affect, your business in a real way.

This is a guest post by Bridget Pilloud and Matthew Stillman and is part of the Do No Financial Harm discussion.

Recently Mark Silver asked a very honest and interesting question.

“Can we do financial harm to our clients?”

Yes. We can.

We can do financial harm to our clients in several different ways, most of which go beyond taking money from someone who needs the money for something else.

The exchange of money between a client and a provider is only one of several exchanges a person will make during the process of transformation that your product or service provides.

It’s only part of the energetic equation. When a person buys a service, they are paying for a transformation, typically for their business or for themselves. Most transformational products and services require a client to put in time and effort, and also require him or her to change their ways in the work.

The equation of the energy that a client gives to get an outcome includes: money,time, work, transformation, emotional processing, systemic changes, courage, trust and other efforts. When the energetic exchange that we expect from a client exceeds the perceived value of our service, we’re expecting too much. We need to dial something back or provide something more.

That we focus on the monetary aspect of this exchange is no surprise. We use prices as a placeholder for value. Our economy favors efficiency. We use money instead of a bartering system. Twenty bucks is easier to split up and spend than a chicken and an hour of your time.

We are used to a measure based on money.

We live in an economy of ease where we are used to paying more for conveniences. We pay more to have a valet park our car than to park it ourselves. We pay more for someone to buy and cook food for us than for us to buy raw product and cook it at home.

It is instilled within us that the more we pay, the less we have to do.

The more we pay, the easier it is. – NOT TRUE

If I am a potential client of yours, and in your well-crafted copy you distort my expectations, changing them to believe that through our work together that:

money/success/traffic/fame/subscribers/passion/flow/conversions/customers/happiness/skill/ meaning/relationships/travel etc.

will suddenly come easily and make my life empirically better in all ways, then you are doing me financial harm.

This is a distortion because it removes the effort from the equation. It doesn’t matter what you charge, even if you charge a little, because I am not going to get the outcome that I am expecting. The distortion echoes forward into other transactions. It changes my financial, entrepreneurial, and emotional choices because I expect ease.

When we allow our clients to buy the dream instead of the reality, they are paid in dreams.

It is possible to do financial harm to them even if they never spend one dollar with you simply by not being honest about the experience or process of transformation.

The energetic exchange between a provider and a client is never just about money. We talk about it like it is. We talk about the price of things as if that’s the entire payment. It’s not.

The value of what you provide is made up of the value of your customer’s relationship and experience to/with your product or service as well as the value of your relationship to your customer.

The trouble with prices as placeholders is that money is relative.

One person may use your service and because either they don’t relate to your service, or you don’t relate to them, the service has no value to them. Perhaps they paid you $100, but really $100 doesn’t mean anything to them, it’s not a big deal.

Someone else can come to you and have a great relationship to your service and a great experience. They may also pay you $100, but for them, that’s a big sacrifice.

Each of these clients paid you $100. The value they received is relative, but because they perceive the value of $100 so differently, they both walk away feeling like they got what they paid for.

All $100s are not equal.

Your experience earning this $100 is different with each person too. Some $100s are easy. Some are damn difficult.

This isn’t to say that you can’t or shouldn’t use money.

But don’t mistake it for work or value or affection or support. It’s a placeholder for part of the experience. Bring conscious attention to the use of money as part of the equation, but don’t confuse it for the whole equation.

When we are reduced to being solely a consumer we are reduced from being a whole being to a consuming output.

When we are reduced to being solely a producer, we are reduced from being a whole being to a producing output.

That is how financial harm is done to both the producer and the consumer.

Your pricing plan should take into account the entirety of the exchange. You don’t need to get rid of a standard base price, but there will be times when the client relationship will require you to lower it.

The client is giving a different energy.
You are getting a different experience.

There may also be times when you choose to raise it, because the relationship of you to this client requires a greater effort on your part.

Also, because money is relative, what you charge should have nothing to do with your own personal theory or philosophy about money.Your demographic may have a different view of value than you do. Broadly speaking your pricing should be based on the market more than your conceptual value of money. Why do you think so many things online have similar price points?

It’s more important to think about who you’re charging that to, and the nature of the exchange.

Product Pricing is Different.

With a product, your relationship is not so personal. It is a fixed and finished thing where you interact less. You have to price it according to what the market will bear at the top end. This price has nothing to do with what you think the product is worth. Your personal pricing paradigm does not matter.

It would be easy to think that we’re saying that if someone puts in a lot of effort, we should charge them less. We’re not saying that. It’s an energetic exchange. A lot of effort on their part can equal a lot of value to them. If you are getting more out of the relationship than money, if the energy is different, you have more leeway to charge a lower rate.

If someone comes to you and says they can’t afford you, you need to understand the validity of that statement. Are they really saying they can’t afford you? Or are they saying they choose not to fulfill the energetic exchange. Heart-based entrepreneurs, if they are listening, can tell the difference and respond accordingly.

Here is our approach to not doing financial harm:

1. Create a clean slate : realize that you have had financial harm done to you and you have very likely done it to others. That is okay. It will probably happen again on both ends.
2.  Understand the energetic exchange that you are asking of your client.
3. Listen deeply to the message that you are putting out there.
4. Do not distort the perspective of your clients.
5. Be a gentle friend to all aspects of our own money story, every part within you-the overly-generous, the miserly and the reasonable.
6. Don’t base product prices on your own money story, but on what your market will bear.
7. Meet people where they are with your products and services so that they can make that energetic exchange that moves them in a direction that is valuable for all parties.

We do financial harm when we reduce others to consumers who can pay our prices or when we reduce ourselves to a monetary value.

Bridget Pilloud (@intuitivebridge) and Matthew Stillman (@stillmansays) write at intuitivebridge.com and stillmansays.com respectively. And have teamed up their brains and hearts at stilloud.com to offer a different approach towards inner and outer work. They wrote this long ass post together.

When it works, it feels fantastic! And when it doesn’t, it’s scary and sometimes puzzling. What happened? Where are those clients?

In those less-abundant times, there are five things to look at. Of course it helps to look at these five things before you make your offer, but show yourself some compassion! We, yes me included, all make miss-steps and miss even really obvious things. Even if it’s afterward, you can learn a ton to make the next offer even better.

The Five Things

1. Your intention.
2. Size of audience.
3. Problem addressed.
4. Campaign details.
5. Price.

Each of these requires a little more explanation, so let’s dig in.

First, Your Intention

Our needs for love, approval, acceptance, and security are extremely powerful and subtle, for good reason. No matter how heart-centered you are, you can be at risk of having your intentions subtly overcome by neediness.

This can color your decisions and your self-expression. You can miss cues of internal guidance, and you can write your emails, or hold conversations in a way that pushes people away.

Taking extra time in spiritual practice, such as the Remembrance, can make a tremendous difference in how well your offer goes out into the world.

It can be tricky, because the other side is that you can get too lost in spiritual practice and perfectionism and never take action. So at some point you do have to step out and do it however you are.

Second, Audience Size

You never want to treat anyone like a number. Each person you reach has a heart, with hopes and dreams. Yet, not everyone is ready, or even appropriate to jump in with you.

In order for an offer to work, you have to reach enough people so that the much smaller percentage of those people who will respond is large enough to meet your goals. If you need to fill five spots in a group, if you’re reaching only 50 interested people, I can pretty much guarantee you won’t fill all five spots.

How many people do you really need to reach? There’s no hard-and-fast rules, but you probably need to reach more people than you think. This is why it’s so important to work on building your audience.

Third, The Problem Addressed

Your offer solves a problem. If it doesn’t, you need to think about this long and hard. Although solving a problem isn’t all you need, it’s a necessary ingredient.

People put off action, sometimes from overwhelm, sometimes from fear and uncertainty. But when they are stuck facing a problem and can’t get past it to where they are trying to go, then they are often willing to finally get help.

It’s imperative that you talk about the problem that your client wants to solve, plus something else.

Fourth, Campaign Details

When I say “campaign” I mean the effort you put into letting people know about your offer. You don’t need to hammer someone with emails every single day, but you also can’t get away with one single email or, worse yet, advertisement or announcement.

How many times are you letting people know about your offer? Is there a deadline? Do they have all the information they need to make a decision?

Really critical. One more thing I’ll say here: if you’re heart-centered, chances are what you feel is “too many emails” is probably barely even getting their attention.

Fifth, Price

Pricing is so important. You know this. A price has to be right in order for others to resonate with it. Too high, and people shy away. Too low, and people wonder what’s wrong.

You need to find your just right price.

Make It A Checklist

Look at any previous offers you’ve made, or upcoming offers and run it through this checklist. What was missing? What could’ve been better? What can you work on for next time?

And, anything you would add to this list?

The idea of a hero seems almost quaint in these sophisticated, over-informed times. Everyone has a flaw, everyone is morally questionable. Everyone in the public eye wilts under the burning glare of the always-on information stream and unrealistic expectations.

Walking with Justice, by Dr. Mollie Marti, stares into the sarcastic glare and outshines it.

In brief, Mollie served as clerk to Federal Judge Max Rosenn (1910-2006), and Judge, as she and countless others called him, became more than just a legal mentor to her. The book uses Mollie’s own stories from her time with Judge to illustrate how he carried compassion and justice not just on the bench, but throughout his personal life.

This book gave me hope. It gave me hope that there are indeed heroes in this world. It gave me hope that there are people of deep love, compassion, caring and integrity serving in many areas of our society.

The stories told, the lessons drawn from those stories, and the profound sense of love, devotion and integrity is transformational.

You can get the book here: Walking with Justice.

My client had been struggling to shift her business away from seeing individual clients as a therapist to a more expanded business model, with groups, learning products, and coaching.

She had been rightfully nervous as she shifted her attention away from her weekly client load to building up new, and as-yet unproven for her, revenue streams. We planned it carefully, so she wasn’t taking any unnecessary risks, but still, I can understand how nervousness kept coming up.

But then something she was saying tickled my Sufi sense, and I asked that question about acceptance versus making it.

She sat in her heart and realized that acceptance was actually what was really going on. So time to dive deep into the heart.

What Missing Acceptance Looks Like

In case this is resonating for you, a lack of, or need for, acceptance can look like this, among other things:

• Seeking approval and being hungry for praise and good feedback from those you are serving.
• Comparing yourself to others who *seem* as if they are doing better, getting more attention, appear to be more “popular.”
• Spending more time in networking, social media, and other business-social contact than is actually useful for your business.

It’s okay. These are normal reactions that happen to everyone. It’s just time to refocus a bit.

Be Oh So Gentle

Your heart, my heart, the heart is oh so tender, dear one. It is the most sensitive of our sense organs, the most feeling and permissive of our being.

Because of this, it allows us access to unimaginable mysteries and love. At the same time, it also can be the doorway to a whole lot of gunk and stuckness.

The heart, the metaphysical spiritual heart, works like this: whatever it witnesses fills it.

As a business owner, if you forget who you are in service to you, you can become filled with a whole lotta emptiness.

Every Time I Teach

Each year, as I approach certain classes, my heart becomes filled with certain feelings amplified. As the Heart of Money course approaches, all of my money and survival fears come up. As the Sacred Selling course comes around the calendar, my selling doubts and worries start to hit me.

Then, I remember, my heart is full of the people who are coming to the course. It’s not that the fears aren’t mine, because they are, but they are being amplified beyond all reasonable proportion as I witness the dozens of people who are joining the course to help with those fears.

I’ve lost focus.

Turn To Witness Something Else

This is an incredibly subtle and important step to take, and often misinterpreted. Gross misinterpretations tell you to not associate with any supposedly “negative influences” or people who are “downers” in your life.

Right idea, totally wrong action. The turning away is an internal refocusing of the heart, not replacing all of your furniture. As your heart refocuses, your life will re-arrange itself, usually without you having to do anything very drastic or painful.

Here’s the trick: Who (or What) are you in service to? Most business owners get caught thinking they are in service to their clients and customers. Some believe they are in service to a larger mission.

The truth is that we are all in service to Divine Source. Since we are expressions of the Divine Source, that’s where guidance, wisdom, truth, love, and the ability to act comes from.

Analogy: If you work for a hotel, you may be serving the guests, but you are really in service to whoever runs the hotel. So although you want to be aware of the guests, you want to be deeply aware of your boss and the priorities set down by her.

You are working in the Hotel Divine. Get it?

Try This

When you are finding yourself hungry for approval and acceptance, and scrabbling for feedback from your clients, gently stop.

Now, remember who you are really in service to. Remember the Source of Love that fills you with life and that is your true direction of service.

p.s. The Heart of Money free learning series began with the first lesson January 12.

Perhaps it might be time to get really healthy with your relationship with money. I hope you join us for these three free lessons and free teleclass.

“Do you have a heart-centered guide for finding an assistant? I need it! My intention is to find someone who can support me and the business as we grow; start with a bit of work and take on more as needed.”

“I’ve already had one assistant and had to let her go, so I’m feeling overwhelmed at starting the process again and needing guidance.”

Let me tell you, I have been through a LOT of learning in this area the past five years. Hockey-stick learning curve with many painful and some good experiences and few really good experiences.

I had written The Two Hiring Help Freak-Outs That Stop Momentum. Looks like my client took that advice, but it ended up not working out. So let’s take it a step further.

First: It’s Unavoidable

It would be amazingly wildly fortunate if the very first time you hired someone to help you, the very first time you tried this out, you found the exact right person and it worked forever.

It didn’t work like that for me. I went through two or three before arriving at Susan. And then I’ve been through two more people at a higher “operations manager” level, and still haven’t landed with the right match, though I know that person is out there.

Second: Three Questions to Ask

The biggest mistake I’ve made, and that I’ve consequently seen others make, is to focus way too much on the hired person.

That person is coming into an environment and relationship that can be, at times, intense. If you don’t prepare for them, your business and your personality will kick them out unconsciously, over and over again.

• First question: Where is your business going?

Although I’ve never seen myself as visionary (I’ll wait until you stop laughing. Ahem.), I do have a sense of where the business is going. In fact, a strong sense. (That’s why they call it “visionary” right? Sigh…)

Your assistant needs to know the big picture so they can understand and even begin to anticipate what’s going on.

If your person is not interested in the big picture at all, then they may have more an employee mindset than a team mindset, which is Not Good. More on that below.

• Second question: What is your role in helping your business get there?

This can be really hard to answer, because up until now you’ve done everything. This is a BIG question, far bigger than these two or three paragraphs, but it needs asking.

You can ask this in several ways: what needs to be done that only you can do? What needs your input? I’ve seen it divided up into the following convenient categories.

• You must do yourself. (Example: Set direction for the business, create core content.)
• You don’t have to do it, but you must have input into how it’s done. (Example: Work with clients.)
• You don’t have to do it or have input, but you must know about after its done. (Example: After client orders, product is shipped.)

Make sure the answers are truly true. For your business, maybe no one else works with clients except you, so it would go in the first category.

I highly recommend learning about yourself, through perhaps the Enneagram, a book like The Synergist, or another resource.

It will probably take you a few days to a few weeks to get super clear on this list.

• Third question: What support do you need so you can focus on your role and not get distracted?

Notice the wording of this question? It’s not just about other people getting things done for you. You may also need someone to help you co-create processes that the business uses. You may need someone to talk and meditate through strategic questions with you.

Forget about budget. Just get clear on the ideal support you need here.

Warning: this will probably entail more than one person. For instance, you may need a graphic designer, an administrative assistant, a project manager, a web developer, a bookkeeper, a marketing consultant, etc, etc.

• Fourth question: What can you afford to start with?

Strategically, what support removes the most distraction for the least money?

Asked another way, what takes up the most amount of your time and mental space during your average week that isn’t on your “I must do myself” list?

Ask those questions, and you are going to be much more ready to get help than before.

A Couple Other Random Learnings

I’ve learned over the years that some people have an employee mindset and some people have a business-owner mindset. You don’t want employees, even if they end up on your payroll.

You want people who are interested in what you are doing and are wanting to help your business achieve its goals. In these cases it helps if your business has a goal that is larger than “make me comfortable.”

That’s why that first question is so important. Here’s a hint: enrolling a new team member is, in many ways, like enrolling a new client. The process can be very similar.

Also, you want to start small. Rather than try to hand off everything to someone immediately, pick one small project to start, preferably one that will take a few weeks to complete.

You’ll learn over the course of those weeks what your working relationship is like, and how they handle themselves outside of the “good behavior” period of the initial few meetings.

Our team member Susan Lucibello has been unfailingly polite, caring, open-hearted, honest, and sincere for years now. Someone can fake that for a few days or a week, but not for a month, and certainly not for years.

Although this topic is wide and deep, I think this will get you more than started into the process.

How about you? What wisdom can you share from your experiences? Or what questions do you have? Tell us on the blog.

p.s. The Heart of Money free learning series begins with the first lesson January 12.

Before you start hiring others to help your business do better, perhaps it might be time to get really healthy with your relationship with money.

I hope you join us for these three free lessons and free teleclass. 

Since I’m on retreat this week and next, it’s especially timely for you to see this short interview I did with Meg Worden about eating, the creative process, and kicking self-care to the curb. Yes, to the curb. And watercress. And then we’re interrupted by my cat coughing up a hairball. Yes, it’s worth watching.

Meg is the author of Salad Alchemy. Here’s what I have to say about it: go get it. And here’s what I have to say about Meg: if you resonate with what she’s saying, talk to her.

Why put your self care off any longer?

How do you handle food, eating and self-care in your self-employed life? Tell us on the blog.

As a business lesson, notice that if you start writing content for your business, that from time to time that content can give you some time off. For instance, I didn’t have to write an article this week.

Nice…

I hope you are having a peaceful, nourishing, love-filled end of the year, celebrating in whatever way you do. In our family, we’ve been lighting the Chanukah candles each night, and working hard to convince the boys that they aren’t birthday candles to be blown out. So far, it’s working.

And now, for the retrospective, including the most commented on and the most spiritual.

The Three Most Commented

1. Is It Possible to Do Financial Harm to a Client?   166 comments
2. Connecting with Intimidating, Influential People Who Can Promote You    66 comments
3. Why It’s Hard For Me to Be Cheerful Sometimes    65 comments

The Three Most Spiritual Articles

1. Two Routes to Business Healing
2. Is It The Devil, or Do You Just Need a Nap?
3. If You’re So Powerful Why Do You Feel So Weak?

Three From Jason and Yollana

Here’s some of what our star practitioners, Jason Stein and Yollana Shore, contributed this past year.

1. Climbing Gear (for when you hit a wall, and it all feels too hard) by Yollana
2. Is Being Present Killing Your Business?  by Jason Stein
3. To GooglePlus or Not by Jason Stein

Three Guest Posts

Historically we haven’t had many guest posts, but we’re reversing that trend. Here’s three from this past year.

1. Give Coaching to More than the 1% by Sarah Yost
2. 5 Ways to Scale Without Scaling by Chris Thompson
3. The Problem with Being Positive  by Eric Klein

Which ones moved you or helped you the most? Any you think we should’ve mentioned? Let us know on the blog.

It can be an agonizing question. You want to be paid an amount that feels good and supports you well, but you also don’t want to alienate people or shut down your business.

And it’s not an idle question. You can raise your prices too much and see “die off” from your active customer list. By the same token, you can continue to underprice yourself, and that keeps people away, too, and may keep the wolf at your door.

What to do? What to do?

A Few Words About Pricing

One of our most popular and most-referred to articles is on pricing. So, let me add a few more eye-opening thoughts that should make this whole process much easier.

First, raising your prices is inevitable. Maybe not every year, maybe not even every other year. Are you paying the same price for shoes that you did in 1984? Prices go up.

I’m also guessing that you may not be taking into account the true price of your offers. One client realized she was only accounting for her time in front of a client, and not on the administrative time required, the marketing time required, and prep time before and after the client, the continuing education of her own self-development, etc. For every client hour there were 1-3 additional hours needed to really care for that client.

Okay, I think you’re getting it. You probably know whether your prices really need to inch up a bit or not.

And If It’s A New Offer?

A client was about to launch a new offer, and we were talking about it the other day. She was struggling with how to price it because it was radically different than any other offer in her business.

I told her to 1) make it easy for new people to buy and 2) make it significant enough of a price so that it felt good and she could keep offering it.

Comfort and stretch.

If it’s a new offer you’ve never made before, find the price you’re comfortable offering and stretch just a little bit. My experience has been that the price you are completely comfortable with in theory will probably feel too low once you actually start engaging with paying clients.

So stretch a little bit to avoid needing to raise your prices two weeks later.

A Little Pricing Trick

There are pricing ranges, where one price feels very similar to another. For instance, whether I spend $16 or $19 on something won’t really affect my purchasing decision, but the extra $3 multiplied by 10,000 sales may help out the business tremendously.

Similarly, a massage that is price at $80 or $95 is a very similar price to the buyer, but to the massage therapist, that $15 per client, times 30 sessions in a month, times 12 months means an extra $5400/year.

You can jump from one price range to another, for instance from a $65 massage to a $110 massage, but that would require a step up in your marketing and how you describe your service.

As you sense into your next price, see how far you can go in your own heart while staying within the “price range.” It’s all a little subjective, so don’t worry about hard-and-fast lines, they don’t exist. Just feel into it.

Time to Tell The World

Of course, telling your clients about it is a different story. But, they may already know.

And you? Is it time to raise your prices or are you happy with them?

This is a guest post by Sarah Yost and is a part of the Do No Financial Harm discussion.

Life coaching is expensive. And it changes lives. I’ve seen people lose weight peacefully, resolve decades old resentments, become better parents, partners, creators. My clients have finished important projects, learned to trust their own wisdom, became sovereign in their own lives. People live better and love brighter because they got coached.

Therapy has its place for many, but coaching is often faster and more powerful. I’ve been told that 1 hour with me was better than 1 year in therapy.

Some coaching programs cost 6 figures for a year. Most coaches charge between $100-$300/hour, myself included. I don’t think those prices are unfair in relation to the value, but for most people that’s a lot of money. Coaching is inaccessible for most people.

Our industry spends a lot of time and energy selling each other higher end marketing programs analyzing every piece of the sale. This is in the name of healing and creating a heart centered business. There’s a huge question for most people about how to save the world and pay the rent. And how to do both without selling out, selling someone short, or being sleazy.

Leaders lead. That means the people watching are paying attention. They trust us, believe in our vision, want a piece of it for themselves. And some will sell their soul or their Toyota for a shot at it. Ultimately, fundamentally, yes, we are obliged to lead responsibly. Clients are sovereign. They make their own decisions. They’re responsible for themselves. But so are our children ultimately liable for their beliefs and decisions. And we want to lead our children the best, most responsible way possible.

Yes, we can do financial harm to our clients. Some coaches are sleazy. Most probably don’t mean to be, but their sales tactics are questionable.

Of course it’s possible to make money, give value and not harm people. But it takes a minute to establish the structure, to figure the pieces out and to get clear on how to bring it all together. Still, we can change the world even if we can’t quite figure out how to market ourselves.

It’s time to bring coaching to the people

Coaches coach so we can change the world. We know we’re here for a reason. We have gifts of intuition, compassion; we have a keen ability to problem solve, we possess remarkable insight. We’re quirky. Special. We’re living on our own terms. We delve deep, ruthlessly seeking out the crevices in our psyche that hold us back. We face them with courage and grace so that we can be more in tune with our intuition, more compassionate. So that we can see clearly and be more fully ourselves. So that we can lead our people and show them how to do the same.

We are changing the world. If only we could find takers.

Blazing our trail and spreading our message takes skill and dedication. There is a time to pay for expensive business building programs to help that happen. And there is a time to coach.

The Coaching Clinic

Populations who really, really need coaches: women stepping out of domestic violence, young men addicted to Heroin, returning soldiers trying to find their place in society, new college graduates who don’t know what they’re doing with their life, teenage moms.

Business building advice centers around figuring out who your ideal customer is, figuring out what their problem is so you can solve it, figuring out where they are so you can find them, figuring out how to structure your services so you can appeal to them.

But what if you don’t know yet? You just know you love to coach.

Who are your people? If you don’t know how to find them yet, or if you don’t really know who they are yet, I propose a coaching clinic to help figure it out.

How it works

Massage schools give low cost massages to people in the community. This gives new massage therapists the opportunity to practice and gives people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford massage access to care. Same thing with students of dentistry, psychology, acupuncture, hairdressers, and aestheticians.

I want to create this for coaching. This gives coaches the opportunity to deep practice skills, to test out different niches and ideal customers, to find their way while building their business structure.

People won’t have to mortgage their house, put an expensive program on their credit card or further harm themselves financially. They could receive coaching on a sliding scale. Coaches can coach. People get coached. The world gets changed. Win. Win. Win.

Sarah Wagner Yost is a life coach specializing in helping Soulpreneurs with Shiny Object Syndrome. She believes your distractions are not your problem, they’re your gift. You can find out more about her at www.sarahwagneryost.com.