Time, money, and courage.
Those are the three things you can invest to grow your practice. The trick is that you have to invest in at least two of them to make decent progress. Choosing only one fails almost every time.
Just time and you spend hours in your office. Alone.
Just money and you go deep in debt with no reward.
Just courage and you lack credibility.
Which ones are you investing?
Ask yourself:
- Have you invested in your practice financially since you left school? You can be frugal. You can bootstrap. But don’t forget to invest in the thing that pays your bills.
- Have you put in the time required to “turn pro”? You don’t need to burn yourself out, but you do need to show up more than a handful of hours a week.
- Are you doing things that stretch you? When was the last time you introduced yourself to a stranger? Spoke to a group? Focused on meeting instead of tweeting?
There’s a risk to taking no risks. A big one. So you need to pick two.
Yes, it’s scary. But just pick two and you can knock it out of the park in one year like this practitioner.
I used to focus on investing only one of these (time) and I certainly did spend a lot of time by myself in my office, wondering how to get new people in the door. For me, the big challenge was going out and meeting new people at networking events in my city. You’re right… it did take courage. But it was so effective. I didn’t have money to invest at the time, so it was the best way for me to get new people interested in my practice. Thanks for the reminder that I still need to focus on at least two of these every day!