Private Practice Success Newsletter

September 2008, by Lynn Grodzki, LCSW, MCC (Master Certified Coach)
www.privatepracticesuccess.com

Renewable Resources

Does the daily grind of owning and operating your business overwhelm you? Do you have a never-ending to-do list for your private practice that stays constantly full? Do you feel tired from the stress of being in private practice?

If so, please join the crowd. The most common complaint I hear from thousands of professionals in small business ownership today is about their sense of overwhelm. There is always so much to do.

Running a small business is hard work even in the best of times. Keeping one afloat in a difficult economy is exhausting. Just as our country is running low on its traditional sources of fuel, so are many of us in small business ownership. We are out of gas, still trying to do all and be all. There has to be a better way to stay energized. Read on.

“Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets.” (William Hazlitt)

When I first start to coach someone new, I always ask: Where do you get your energy from?

I want to know if this client can tap into constructive sources of energy such as exercise, meditation, nature, friendships, family or other sources of love and affection. I also want to know if my client gets energy from his or her existing work. If work is an energy drain, my client may resist my attempts to create more business, i.e. more work.

Owning a small business is so demanding that we often need more energy to operate it than we expect. Too many of us use adrenaline or fear as our primary business motivators. While they are effective motivators, they also come with a serious cost.

While vacationing in the mountains of Aspen this summer, I thought about the need for business motivators that are green: renewable resources that would effortlessly fuel small business owners, giving us the power needed to operate our businesses to the best of our ability.

My ideal green business energy source would be one that would keep me calm in the midst of a crisis, generate creative yet pragmatic business ideas, be able to spot and sort opportunities, validate my best efforts, and motivate me whenever I need a boost in pursuit of my goals.

Musing about this in Aspen, I realized that this was a pretty good description of my role as a business coach for others. But then I had an aha! moment: I do this same role for myself, using an inner, intuitive part of self.

I spent some time thinking about how I had developed this inner business coach that I regularly tap into for advice, motivation, and answers. It works as an intuitive wellspring of calm or motivation --whatever I am needing at the moment. This is my intuition at work, in service of my business.

I would like to help instill this same type of internal business resource, which I am now calling my Intuitive Business Coach, within every person I reach. I want to first show you how I have developed this part of self and then invite you to do the same, through the monthly email newsletter and also via a new teleclass.

“Intuition has always been a vital part of human intelligence. It encompasses skills that have always been critical to human life. In a sense, intuition is responsible for the survival of the species. Its long evolutionary history has made it a deeply buried power of the mind.” (Daniel Cappon, PhD)

My sense of intuition has been my fallback survival position for decades. I relied on it as a single, working parent to know, in my gut, if my son, a latch-key child, had made it home from school and was safely inside the house. My intuition was my guide when I left safe employment in the lucrative family business to pursue a riskier career in social work. It directed me in how to build a private practice and move onto the path of business coaching. It guided me to write my books. I have also used my intuition for personal purposes: to determine which house to purchase, how to end a bad marriage, and, later, how to find a much better one.

To develop your own intuition for business purposes, you will need to define and refine your intuitive process so that you understand what it is and how it can be utilized. My best definition of intuition comes from Daniel Cappon's article, “The Anatomy of Intuition,” (Psychology Today, Issue 26, May-June, 1993.)

Cappon says that intuition is a natural, normal skill that helped us survive as early humans and was relegated, as were so many of our basic human survival functions, to our unconscious mind during our evolution as a species. The primary task for us now at this stage of evolution is to bring our intuition forward, to make it more conscious so that we can access it with consistency and interpret the information it provides accurately.

I like this practical approach to intuition because it makes sense to me and matches the way I have developed my own Intuitive Business Coach. I have started giving workshops about intuition at a few conferences lately, and know that many therapists and healers regularly tap into their intuition for clinical work. I do, too. But I am inviting you to go further and branch out, to look at ways to use your intuition for business development.

“My clinical experience has convinced me that intuition is very democratic -- everyone has some capacity for it. Not everyone uses it. And not all those who apply it use it equally. Preliminary evidence…demonstrates that intuition can be trained.” (Daniel Cappon)

Because intuition normally functions at an unconscious level, intuition training focuses on structuring your intuitive process to make it consistent, useful, and conscious. With training, your intuition can help you to make better business decisions and spot opportunities that will be most profitable. Tapping into it is energizing, not depleting. It doesn’t run out.

Ready to get started tapping into your own business intuition? Here is this month’s exercise:

Decoding Your Operating System:

This month, be curious about your existing intuition.

1. How does it show up? Remember, for most of us, intuition is unconscious so it communicates to us in the language of the unconscious: dreams, body sensations, fleeting thoughts, images, subtle spoken messages.
2. Keep a journal during the next 30 days and notice when you get an instinct, a gut feeling, a sensation in regards to your private practice.
3. What did you sense? What happens when you follow through? When you don't? Start to decode the language of your own Intuitive Business Coach.
4. To better understand how your intuition may already be trying to make itself heard, felt, or seen, take a look at Daniel Cappon’s list of 20 intuitive characteristics here: The Anatomy of Intuition (My thanks to my colleague and fellow intuition workshop presenter Kelly Dorfman, MS, for telling me about Cappon and this article.)

Next month, we invite your Intuitive Business Coach to communicate more reliably. Also read on to see a new teleclass specific to those who want to get on the fast track with developing their IBC. .

Upcoming Teleclasses and Presentations

Two New Teleclasses!! and one Oldie but Goodie!

New! Developing Your Business Intuition
Starts October 2008, Tuesdays at 1:00 PM EST (4 1 hr. calls)
This teleclass is brand new. We will share discussion, exercises, business strategies, and other topics to help you develop your Intuitive Business Coach. Come play in this profitable way!

New!! Recession-Proof Your Practice
Starts October 2008, Tuesdays at 3:00 PM EST
Need to weather the storm? It's tough out there for those in private practice – whether you are new to the field or an established practitioner. In this new teleclass based on Lynn's e-book, we look at Lynn’s best ideas for building or maintaining a recession proof practice. We will look at recession-proof marketing, risk and reward, best models for viability.

Oldie but Goodie!! The Basic Strong Start Teleclass
Starts September 2008 Mondays at 3:00 PM EST
Lynn's signature practice-building teleclass, a 12 hour, 4 month tour-de-force based on her Workbook. Great collegial support, enough time to cover referrals, vision, money, basic message, marketing and more.

To see the information on all of the teleclasses including logistics, fees or register, go to:www.strongstartclasses.com

Presentations

October 24, 2008
"Recession-Proof Your Private Practice"
Long Island, NY
Sponsor: NASW NYS
to register contact: www.naswnys.org

LYNN'S NEW eBOOK is on sale now! Only $19.95! Order at the website or click on the book:

Private Practice SOS: Solutions and Strategies for an Up and Down Market. An eBook By Lynn Grodzki It's a tough market out there! You don't need to face the future of private practice alone. Here is a lifeline -- my solutions to the difficult economic challenges we all must respond to today. This eBook is my newest thinking and offers you specific tips and ideas to help you create demand for your services while you minimize your costs. Learn the strategies to higher profits in today's recessionary market. Click on the eBook, order it, and get an immediate download to read on your computer or print out.

Books by Lynn Grodzki, published by WW Norton. To order, click on each book.

	The Business and Practice of Coaching By Lynn Grodzki and Wendy Allen (2005) Reviewed by author Richard Leider as "Nothing less than a radical rethinking of the essentials of building a coaching practice. A must read for all coaches, master and novice alike."
	Building Your Ideal Private Practice By Lynn Grodzki (2000) The best-selling guide to what you need to do and who you need to be in order to have a highly profitable, personally satisfying private practice. Often called the "private practice bible" this book has become a resource for tens of thousands of your colleagues.
	The New Private Practice:Therapist-Coaches Share Stories, Strategies and Advice Edited by Lynn Grodzki (2002) A groundbreaking look at the profession of coaching through the eyes of 16 successful therapist-coaches who tell you how to become a coach, what to charge, and show you how they coach their clients.
	12 Months to Your Ideal Private Practice: A Workbook By Lynn Grodzki (2003) This planned, motivational workbook will help you build the practice you desire. The workbook incorporates fresh ideas, new exercises, further skill sets and much more to give you a direct experience of being carefully coached by Lynn, month-by-month, for a full year.

More next time,

lynn@privatepracticesuccess.com
See the website for additional articles, information about individual coaching, and upcoming classes.