I don’t know about you but I loved training to be a holistic health practitioner. I was passionate about what I was learning and excited about helping people. Not to mention relieved to have found my calling in life. 

My teachers were skilled and experienced and I soaked up their knowledge like a sponge because I knew that this would help me to succeed once I was working in the real world.

And whilst their wisdom has served me well – I still have their tips running through my head after all these years – what they taught me about running a business actually set me up for failure. Here’s why:

‘Charge less’

Towards the end of my acupuncture degree, we had to write a business plan. I put a lot of work into it because I planned on using it once I graduated. I came up with a pricing structure for my services which felt great and guess what happened… I was told that I had to lower my rates if I wanted to pass the business unit and if I wanted to get any clients! Can you believe it? To this day I’m still enraged!

My lecturer told me that practitioners who’d been working for 20 years didn’t charge that amount so who was I to. That I should ‘be humble’ and charge less than experienced practitioners. This was such a load of bollocks because here’s the thing; when you’re undergoing training you know so much, everything is at the forefront of your mind and you’re incredibly passionate about what you’re doing, all of which makes you a highly skilled practitioner who gets results. Which. You. Should. Get. Paid. For.

Marketing for the dark ages

On every single practitioner training I’ve been on, the focus was on creating business cards and leaflets. To be fair I did qualify some time ago, but I was still being taught this in 2012 when the world of online marketing was booming and the focus should have been on websites and developing connections online.

I’ve never used business cards or leaflets to promote my services and I hope that these days training institutions are more up to speed on what constitutes effective marketing!

‘Just get started’

When I was starting out as a birth and postnatal doula, I was fortunate in that I did my training course because I had a birth to be at, so I had my first birth client booked in. But I was hustling to get booked for postnatal jobs and I was encouraged to ‘just get started’ and work with anyone who would take me.

I wound up working with a family who was not a great fit for me and every time I left work for the day, I felt like a piece of my heart had broken, so much so that I found other support for them and quit. All of which had an impact on my confidence.

Sure, getting your first clients booked in is important, but not at the expense of your confidence and sanity. When you work with clients who aren’t a good fit for you, it rocks your confidence and often comes from a place of scarcity and fear – a belief that you won’t succeed in business unless you take whatever work comes your way.

They don’t consider niches

In my final year at uni, I told my course director that my appointment time would be longer than most practitioners as I knew that’s what would get results with the clients I wanted to support – those with menstrual health or fertility challenges. He told me that in his experience people are very busy and want to be in and out so I should make my appointments shorter.

Thankfully, I was already working as a practitioner and doula so I knew my niche like the back of my hand. I knew that my clients often have complicated medical histories and carry the emotional and physical trauma of their experiences, and I wanted to allow time in each appointment for that to unfold, for the tears to flow and the tension they carried to come out without me rushing or silencing them. 

But my course director didn’t know my niche and wasn’t able to understand why this was so crucial to how I treated my clients so I chose to ignore him. Treating everyone – practitioners and clients – as having the same desires and needs is a surefire way to screw up your success in business.

Charge by the hour

Okay, this is a BIG topic and one that I love to discuss because it’s so prevalent. Charging for your time is always going to limit you because guess what – your time is limited! There are only so many clients you can work with one on one in a week, not to mention the work we do as practitioners is rarely confined to the time that we spend with our clients. How much time do you spend outside of your client sessions writing up notes, researching and considering treatment strategies and even undergoing specific training to help individual clients?

Instead of charging for our time, how about charging for the value we bring our clients?

That’s my experience but I’d love to know about yours so let me know in the comments – did your training prepare you for marketing and running a business?