How I Took my Healing Business From $100 to $2500 a Month
Jun 01, 2022As a practitioner, the hardest money you’ll ever make is your first $100. Why? It’s like popping the cherry and saying, “I think I’m actually going to do this thing!”
We often spend weeks to months lamenting about getting going, playing with distractions, and focusing on actions that don’t really get us momentum. Maybe in secret, it's because we didn’t want the clients to arrive to us just yet.
There’s this funny little incubation period that seems to happen after we obtain those certificates or finish training, or perhaps even, just a realization that our entire life has prepared us for this role. We tend to go back inwards for a time, percolating all of the data we’ve just consumed.
The key here is to only stay in that phase for the actual time required, not the addiction that builds from remaining in this space past the point of integration.
And hopefully, that’s where you are - rising up out of integration and declaring loud and proud that you are a helper and ready to support others on this planet! If so, I hope this reflection piece serves you well and gives you a boost of motivation to launch your practice, from the ground up.
The first $100 Gateway
Receiving that first monetary exchange for using our innate gifts to help others opens two doors that you will have to choose from. One is the door to serving more. And door two is the path of the imposter.
Let’s talk you down from opening door #2! When we hit a new level in our life, all of those pesky thoughts about if you are enough, can you actually do this thing, was that even real, and who am I to…, start rolling through our minds like freight trains. We start questioning what we were thinking and if we should go back to our grid job.
What you need to recognize here is that those thoughts are coming up to be played with, because they already exist in your field. They are surfacing purely to be eliminated. Big difference.
This is where you get to walk your talk, use your tools, and get a little lighter for the next client you’re about to serve.
If we don’t recognize this as an opportunity for clearing and healing, we might accidentally open that door and quit before we’ve begun. No bueno.
In my own experience, my first $100 came from a women’s circle I hosted to help some of my friends play with metaphysical concepts, and dispel some fears they had around the subject. Four women, $25 each. 3 hours of joyfully connecting in Circle and seeing how elevated they all felt walking out of that room.
(Wondering what topic to cover next in your Sacred Circle? Take this quiz to find out.)
I didn’t open door number two. Within 24 hours I had a group text message asking if we could go deeper into one of the subjects I presented. This is what created my first $400.
The $400 Gateway
My friends (now students) had something they wanted to learn and had dubbed me an “expert” from our first experience together. They told me exactly what they wanted to know. Now it was my job to create the path.
I answered with a mini 4-week program.
Instead of seeing clients as a one-off event, I was now seeing the longer-term journey we could embark on together. Through teaching and answering their need, they felt seen, heard, supported and only mildly satiated because now they knew there was more!
The $400 gateway will ask you the tough question of, “Is this what you’re really here to do?”
You might do what I did at this stage, and many others before and after me, where you start thinking, Do I even know enough to take them farther? I can’t really be the expert in this, right?! Or, what if these are the only people that want this from me and it doesn’t continuously create abundance, even though I love what I’m doing?'
Now I did this as a circle to start - which I actually HIGHLY recommend because you’ll learn your style, tones and what you’re passionate about quickly. It will make it easier for you to translate it into a digital product later. You can do this as your first 1-on-1 paid client, and first 4 clients. Or, your first person who turns into a longer-term coaching/ healing relationship who books a block of sessions.
Listen, there’s always going to be someone better, smarter, faster, more experienced than you. And the duality of that means that there are always going to be others who haven’t caught up to where you are. This means, you can lead some, and have someone to continue learning from. And that’s pretty darn cool if you ask me.
And this takes us into the $2500 Gateway
If you made it this far, you are committed AF to get your thing off the ground. Cheering you on, you magical thing you!
But this is where it gets real and the rubber meets the road. Are you ready to go *gulp* public?! Here’s my steel-toed boot out of the woo closet just to give you a head start!
Now we have to find and attract others who are looking for the same kinds of things we were just able to do for our first clients. At this stage, we are amplifying our message and what we can do for MORE people.
The answer for me was in building a like-minded community. I would share fun pieces of information, start conversations on topics of contention or interest, and gather the folks together in group circles. I learned the art of sharing publicly the who, what, where, when, and why, and remembering that HOW was what I got paid for.
I launched the exact same circle, to a wider scale of people, and added an up-sell of 1-on-1 sessions with me. These people already knew, liked and trusted me. It was easy for them to feel safe enough to jump into sessions and go deeper with the work we had started together. This is what created my first $2500. And the belief that this really was what I was here to do.
Scale and Repeat
Technically nothing has to change. You can keep running this model with a grass-roots circle whether in-person or online and then upselling to sessions for as long as you’d like! I continued this model for the first few months of my emergence online into the digital space as well. I kept going until I was able to maintain $10k months.
That was quite literally, life changing.
Can you imagine what a $10k per month practice would do for you? Maybe you can. But for most people I talk to, it’s still too big. Too intangible. They haven’t hit that level of income before. So scale back, start with that first $100 gateway.
It’s okay to start small with numbers and build your foundation up. It’s okay to scale at a rate that feels achievable to you. Despite all the online gurus promising you multi 5-figure months if you just x, y, and z, you truly get to design your practice and business your way. And if that means healing your way into it, I’m all for that.
xo, Caitlin
