20 | Don’t Overlook This Simple Way to Find New Clients

(00:03)
Well, hi there, welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I am a registered herbalist and a licensed nutritionist. And today I want to talk to you about building and growing your practice.

(00:15)
And in particular, I have one very small tip for you to implement if you're trying to find more clients.

(00:22)
And I'd like to get more folks coming in the door to work with you. So, as you all know, I do a lot of work with mentoring.

(00:29)
And this is something that's come up several times just this week, in fact. But a lot of times when you're trying to get people to come in and work with you, you'll put a lot of time and effort into thinking about your clients, which is great.

(00:42)
That's exactly what you should be doing.

(00:44)
But I don't want you to overlook other folks in your life who are not necessarily, your ideal future client, so what I'm talking about here is letting people know what you're doing, who are otherwise part of your life. So this could be your friends and family. This could be teachers in programs that you're currently doing or you have done in the past.

(01:09)
This could be people who are in a spiritual or faith group. Or part of another type of club that you're involved with, other parents at your children's school, things like that.

(01:20)
I'm not talking about spamming people and that being weird like that, but a lot of these people who you have regular interaction with have no idea what you do professionally.

(01:31)
And many times, if they do know they are better able to send people your way if they need or opportunity arises.

(01:40)
And just to give you an example of how infrequently, this is implemented by some people, many of you know, I've been teaching at the Maryland University of Integrative Health for Gosh, I don't know, 13, 14 years, something like that, a long time, and for that time, I've probably taught thousands of students. I am in the beginning of the program. My courses are in the beginning of the program. So it's possible that, you know, by the time people are at the end, they've forgotten all about me. But I'm in touch with many former students.

(02:11)
Let's just say that and I could count on one hand the number of former students who have emailed me or reached out in some other way and said, hey, Camille, I just want to let you know that I launched my practice and here's where I am and here's what I do. Or, hey, I'm starting this new program. Just wanted to let you know about it.

(02:29)
And, you know, thanks so much for all that physiology that I've incorporated into my program.

(02:34)
But people don't do that. And if they did, I would know, oh, hey, so-and-so is an herbalist in Minnesota.

(02:42)
And if I come across other clients who are in Minnesota or I think might be, you know, really want to work with somebody in person, I would know their website information and how to send them clients and things like that.

(02:54)
They would be in my mind.

(02:56)
And the same is true for other people in your life, such as your dentist and your doctor and, you know, people who you work with.

(03:06)
If you don't work in this field, other types of folks, you don't necessarily have to be aggressive about this. But you could be like, hey, I'm really excited about my new website. And I just want to let you know that I'm really putting a lot of focus on building up my practice this year. And I just wanted to share with you some of what I'm doing. If you happen to know anybody who's interested in this, please do send them my way.

(03:28)
It can be low pressure. All you're doing is sharing something that's important to you with people who you think would care about it.

(03:35)
I actually was chatting with my dentist one time about, you know, just having sort of normal chit chat before they cleaned my teeth and he was really interested and he actually started sending me a few people because he just learned more about what I do and got a feel for the kind of work I do, and who I am and so forth, so you just never know and it is worth letting people know what you do. It is just a little bit uncomfortable. Some of us there's an aspect of this of putting yourself out there and taking a little bit of a risk.

(04:11)
Thinking that maybe you're going to bother people or they're going to think this, that or the other, and just remember that the only thing you can control is your actions in the intention with which you are doing this.

(04:23)
So don't do it in a way that feels weird to you, but don't let your own sort of mental chitter chatter hold you back from letting people know other people in your life who care about you, from letting them know that you started something new or you're relaunching your practice, or you have a goal this year of getting X number of new clients.

(04:43)
You can bring them in. And if they don't care, they're just going to delete the email.

(04:47)
It's fine. You can let them have their own thoughts, but don't hold yourself back from just sharing the news with people. If you've got a new offering, if you've got a new website, if you're starting something new or if you're just really focused on trying to reach more people. The more clear you can be in these emails about what you do. Make sure you share your offer if you have one. Make sure you share your website.

(05:13)
Let them know kind of where you are and what you do.

(05:15)
Generally, that's really helpful because, again, it helps things stick in their mind so that they can share your work or they can remember you when they come across somebody who might be a good fit for you.

(05:25)
Right. So take advantage of that, tap into your networks and you know that you would do the same thing if you had a friend who was a, let's say, a financial adviser or an accountant.

(05:37)
And they did a really awesome work.

(05:38)
And maybe you personally aren't ready to work with an accountant just yet.

(05:43)
But if you saw somebody posting on social media that was like, hey, I really need a good accountant and I, you know, don't know who to choose, maybe you would refer them to your friend. You would do the same thing for them, but only if you knew what kind of accountant they were and where they taking clients and did they work with people who ran small businesses like your friend owns and so on and so forth. So think about it from the other perspective that you would like to know, and you'd like to be somebody who could refer to your friends and acquaintances and colleagues and so forth.

(06:08)
So start making those connections.

(06:10)
It's my little gentle nudge to you to don't don't overlook the easy things. And this is a relatively easy thing. These are the people in your life already know.

(06:19)
You let them know what you do and see how that goes. If you really are focused this year on growing and building your practice. I did want to also let you know that I am tentatively going to be starting a sort of course/coaching situation in either late April or early May.

(06:39)
That's going to be an eight week course designed to help people find more clients, specifically herbalists, nutritionists find more clients.

(06:47)
And this is going to be a pretty intensive class.

(06:51)
We're going to meet once a week for an hour. You can have homework, get feedback on your homework. For me, it's going to be a small group and you're going to move your practice forward.

(07:00)
Start finding those people.

(07:02)
If you're interested you can just go to camillefreeman.com/grow and read a little bit about it and get on the waiting list just to let me know. You can vote on times as well, but I do think I have enough people to run it. So that'll be happening in the near future. And I'd love to see you there, if that's something that's interesting to you. All right. Take care, everyone, and hope you have a beautiful day.