Do you find yourself thinking: “I just want to do ‘my work.’ I don’t want to have to worry about the business part. I’m a (fill in the blank). I’m not into marketing, and I don’t like sales. I just want to do ‘my work.’” Sound familiar?
This is a common attitude of service providers, particularly helping, healing folks, who went into the area of expertise they have because they want to help others. And that’s just what they want to do—help others through their chosen modality. And that’s what their training and certification programs taught them to do—help others with their chosen modality or modalities.
If “your work” is something that you can find a job doing, then you are good. Because when you get a job doing “your work,” someone else is doing the business part. Someone else is creating the structure, enrolling the clients, managing the money and the taxes, providing the infrastructure, and taking most of the risk.
Trouble is, for most transformational practitioners and teachers, there aren’t jobs available for your doing your work. You are on the leading-edge. You are creating a New World. You are on the forefront of change. You are a Visionary in many ways.
Thinking “I just want to do my work” is a holdover from school. When you’re in school, you are taught to just “do your work.” Your assignments are given to you, your teachers grade you, what you are to learn is clear, and you just need to “do your work.”
This conditioning is designed to create workers. It’s not designed to create entrepreneurs or business owners. That’s why so many entrepreneurs don’t do well in school or may not even finish school—they don’t want other people telling them what to do.
Workers rely on others to create the vision and the structure for implementing it.
You CAN beat your conditioning once you recognize it for what it is. If you continue to think “that’s just the way I am,” then you can’t change it. But it’s not the way you are—it’s the way you were taught to be.
Having said that, it is also true that not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur or a small business owner. Some people are better suited for working for someone else.
You have got to be honest with yourself. I see many people with the attitude of a worker wishing they had a business, and putting themselves in the position of needing their practice or their business to provide for them. And then they struggle, and live out a money story of not enough.
They just “want to do their work”—and they think someone should pay them for that—just because they are good at it. This is magical thinking—and not the helpful kind of magic. It’s an aspect of the Child archetype that wishes someone else would just take care of the issues you don’t want to deal with.
I’ve had these thoughts and feelings myself, so I really understand this point of view. And it’s insidious because it perpetuates a disempowered state—one in which you are dependent on others, but you are not actually getting the support that you need.
It takes a certain kind of maturity to step out of this dependent, conditioned thinking, into taking command of your life and your business. It’s not for everyone.
Is it for you? Because to have a successful, lucrative, impactful, soul-inspired business, you need to engage in the fundamentals of business, not just delivering your service.
But I want to emphasize that this, too, can become exciting, interesting, and even fun! You do not need to suffer when you have the right attitude.
Once you make a decision to think differently, your whole perception can change. I’ve seen it over and over again in my clients as they have come to understand that marketing is about community outreach, and sales are about making invitations. And without these two, they cannot provide their service, and so cannot help many people, if anyone.
Read Johanna’s story below to see how she shifted her perception—after many years just providing her service, taking on the actions of a business owner. Her attitude shifted, and her results soared.
I am actually beginning to enjoy marketing and sales now!! I can see that this helps me to reach more people who otherwise would not know about me. I also get the benefit to my clients for me to contact them to come in for treatment, and to work with me more consistently over a longer period of time. I no longer do such a hodgepodge approach with them, or with my business, and that’s better for all of us.
Johanna Alper
CourageMountain.com
Now post your comments about what’s true for you. I’m asking you to take a deeper look, and share your perspective so we can all learn!
