You’ve probably heard the terms signature system, signature talk and signature program before. Typically these are what you become known for – that’s why they are called “signature” – something unique to you.
For many practitioners, these are a mystery! So if they are to you, then know you are not alone! Most people who think of themselves as practitioners, identify with the modality or modalities they’ve been trained in and understand their business to be providing service in those areas.
When you move from thinking of yourself as a practitioner, to becoming more of a visionary entrepreneur, your relationship to your service changes and you take on a bigger understanding of what your work is all about. While you may still be committed to your modalities, you begin to step back and see what you do from a different perspective. This new perspective includes all of who you are and what you bring to the table – what I call your Soul Signature – and also that includes your ideal clients, your Tribe.
Developing your signature anything – system, talk or program – expresses the third layer of your message. This third layer lies at the center or core of your business, or the heart of your Village within your business model. It’s here that you do your “real work” – the one-on-one work with clients or high-level intimate groups.
(This is the third in a series of three articles about the 3 layers of your message. You can access the first two articles here: www.SoulSignatureSuccess.com/home.)
In shifting thinking of yourself as a practitioner of a modality to a visionary entrepreneur, you will also shift your perspective on your service from something you were trained in by others, to owning your own expertise and experience and the true value of what you do. Doing so enables you to develop your signature system and high-value programs and elevate the significance of why you are doing what you do.
Isn’t that exciting?!! Maybe a bit scary, too?
When I work with clients, I teach them how to express what is often implicit knowing as explicit knowledge. This enables them to develop a signature system, talk and program from deep inside themselves based on what they now do “automatically” or “intuitively” based on their years of training, practice, and engagement with their clients.
The “message” that emerges expresses your expertise, your specific perspective, your understanding of what it really takes for your clients go from the challenged position in which you begin your work together, to the transformed state they experience as a result of your work together. That’s how you make your mark, your contribution – and write your signature!
Most practitioners do not own their value and expertise to the full extent that they could. They see themselves as providing services they learned from others, and they just do their work without articulating it, expressing it in words or images.
I know that when I was supporting clients with Clarity Breathwork®, I had a place to start with them based on my training (identifying their birth script). But after that I followed the direction that the client brought to each of our sessions. We delved into really deep material together, and I often felt that incredible transformation occurred.
Yet when my coach first asked me what my system was, I told her I didn’t have one. I asserted instead that having a system would go against the grain of the type of work I was doing because it was client-centered. Maybe you can relate?
But then I started to track the type of conversations I was having with clients, and patterns emerged. Issues tended to fall into certain categories, and the way that I spoke to them and guided my clients was in fact more of a blending of many, many different things I had learned and experienced in my life, not something I was taught within my Clarity Breathwork training.
Out of that exploration came the first versions of my Soul Signature work, which I further developed over time as I worked with clients, taught my first class on Stepping into Your Soul Signature, and paid attention to what I was actually doing. Even as I have focused on my tribe of visionary entrepreneurs, my Soul Signature work has deepened and become a cornerstone of my Creating Money Map and my Village Model of Marketing. Step by step my signature systems, talks and programs have emerged – and they can for you, too!
Here are the steps I recommend:
- Track the work that you do with clients, writing down your words and phrases, your tools, approaches, responses and outcomes of your clients (your experience).
- Make a list of your primary trainings and the key tools and strategies that you use from them (your learned knowledge).
- Note your most transformational life experiences and how they influence the work you do with clients (your wisdom).
- Notice themes and ways you work with them similarly time and time again.
- Step back, breathe, and begin to categorize what you’ve got, and see if they go in a certain order or not (they may or may not).
- Create a structure that includes most if not every single thing you’ve got. Create some kind of order, even if it’s not sequential.
- Give the categories names in your own language, words and phrases that are particular to you (this is the fun and challenging part).
- Consider how your categories speak to the primary issues of your Tribe, and their most desired outcomes and results. Update the names to include these if you can.
- Take your new signature system and test it out with clients. Create a webinar series or workshop that takes students through your system. Keep track of what works, what you want to improve, the responses and results of your clients and students – and then update!
That’s it – go for it!