When you’re afraid to create a program because people know you only as a therapist:
If people know that you’ve been a therapist for a long time, your program is going to look even MORE valuable to them. Your experience as a therapist is part of what sets you apart. It’s beautiful to have more than one identity. If you’re already wishing you’d done this sooner, now is a great time to show yourself that you’re not limited to one identity or one way of working for the rest of your career.
This is a short episode and it’s really about you giving yourself permission to do the work that is going to feel most joyful and sustainable for you.
I’m going to talk about two different roles we might choose for ourselves as therapists, healers and coaches:
A catalyst who helps people through a big and clear change in a particular area of their lives.
OR
An integrator who helps people grow and maintain changes over a long period of time in many areas of their lives.
Listen above or on your favorite podcast platform.
I’m grateful to be running a tiny and simple business right now. I have no plans to grow this business up to 7 figures.
I was a bit hesitant to tell you that!
I feel some fear that you won’t think I’m a badass, or you’ll think I have upper limit problems or limited beliefs.
Maybe you won’t want to hire me because I’m not as ambitious as you hoped.
Or if you’re my friend who runs a larger and more complicated business, maybe you’ll think I’m judging you when you hear what I have to say about running a tiny business.
(I’m not. I promise!)
But since I have the desire to be radically honest and I think this serves you, I’m sharing it anyway.
I trust you to identify the parts of this that fit for you and the parts that don’t.
Note: I’m talking about service based businesses, because that’s what I know best.
Capitalism tends to point us towards one vision of what it means to be a successful business owner. And that’s being a business owner who always makes and does MORE.
Capitalism tends to pull us AWAY from noticing when we have enough, or even considering what enough might be.
Us feeling enoughness or satisfaction is NOT helpful to capitalism.
Here’s the default vision of a successful business owner:
They’ve got a company bringing in revenue of 7 figures or more.
They’ve hired a big team.
They expand their business to serve more people year over year.
These numbers are all as big as possible: total revenue, number of team members, number of followers, and number of people served.
This person might be a coach who runs a course or membership with hundreds or thousands of members at a time. Perhaps they also have many many other offers at many price points.
But when I look around at my colleagues and friends who are having a good time and feeling fairly stable financially, I tend to see a people with tiny and simple businesses.
Here’s the vision of that (tiny) business owner:
They’ve got a tiny team, like zero or one employees.
They’ve got smaller revenue, like under 500k, but they get to keep more than half of that money.
Their tech is simple.
They don’t have much overhead.
They have one or two high-touch offers.
Sometimes people come work with me hoping to create huge empires. I’m delighted to help them because the first phase in creating an empire should be to create a really solid small business. And that is what I help with.
When you start with a tiny, strong and simple business, you focus on creating value. And that’s where every business needs to start.
Listen to the episode to hear
2 stories of folks who scaled big, hated it, and decided to simplify and shrink their businesses
How I keep Rebel Therapist simple
How you can still serve more people with a tiny business
Resources & People Discussed:
I ran a free and open coaching call recently for everyone in our audience, including podcast listeners, clients, and email subscribers.
A record number of folks submitted questions, and I spent over an hour riffing on a bunch of them.
We had such a great response from the attendees that I decided to share the entire call recording with you.
It’s really fucking hard to be a mother entrepreneur with young kids, especially if you’re the default or primary parent.
My guest this week has a robust business and she makes good money.
She realized last year that she was afraid to take on big projects in her business because as the primary parent of 2 young kids, she didn’t consistently have the capacity she’d need to carry them through. She and her husband decided to switch roles. In this conversation she talks about what’s changed since they made that switch.
Listen above or on your favorite podcast platform.
I mentioned in episode 196: 332K Of Revenue With Over 2 Months Off that I’ve been engaging in some profound trauma healing, and that’s changed the way I experience my business.
I’ve heard from many of you that you’d like to hear more.
This episode is all about how trauma healing has been changing just about everything about how I experience my work.
Although I avoid binaries, I talk about the difference between the old Annie (less healed) and the new Annie (more healed).
I’ve stopped trying to manage/control my participants’ experiences as a way to feel safe.
I still get anxious in moments, but I no longer identify myself as a constantly anxious person.
I’m more straightforward with my participants and tell them the truth about what I see in their businesses right away. (And they can handle it!)
I’m more patient with the process my participants go through as they build their businesses. I embrace the beautiful nuance you each bring to your work.
I’m asking for help when I’m struggling, rather than reporting when I’ve got it all figured out.
I’m more transparent about what’s going on in my own business and life, rather than trying to make everything seem perfect.
