Unmasking Your Business (The Marketing Advice We Don’t Talk About Enough)
Introduction
This is an excerpt from Delightful Sites — a weekly email series helping therapists, coaches, and entrepreneurs build sustainable, values-aligned businesses, through the power of website marketing. 💐
I recently had a therapy session where we talked about unmasking. We discussed how important it is for therapy to be a space where it’s safe to unmask & be yourself. Otherwise, we’re just doing therapy on the mask.
If you work with clients who often feel the need to mask, because they’re treated differently or other-ed in society, these conversations may be all too familiar for you.
It got me thinking about how the marketing for our practices cannot happen behind a mask either.
Now, marketing and unmasking are terms that don’t tend to go together, so here’s what I mean.
👉🏽 If you’re masking in your marketing, you might be saying you work with X issue/population, but deep down you actually want to work with a completely different issue/population… and you might feel shy to admit it.
👉🏽 You might be masking in your marketing if you say that you want to do one type of work (like 1:1 weekly therapy), but secretly you dream of running retreats, switching to an intensives-only practice, or pivoting to consulting, because that feels more exciting to you & works better for your schedule, your skillset, and your nervous system. You might hesitate to take the leap because no one else around you is doing it; or people tell you, “do you really think that’ll work?”
👉🏽 You might be masking in your marketing if you say that you’re available & accepting your clients, but when you really check in with yourself, you’ve reached your maximum capacity, and it’s time that you set clearer boundaries around your schedule (like, no more Friday evening sessions), or consider raising your rates so that your income actually meets your needs... because the numbers don’t lie.
👋🏽 I can share from my personal experience: marketing my therapy practice became more easeful, and the right-fit clients came, when I got super clear on who I was and what masks I needed to let go of in my public persona as a therapist… and edited my website accordingly to reflect what I was actually trying to call in.
Remember: you don’t have to do things the way that we’ve all been taught, or the way that every other therapist/coach/practitioner is doing things.
Our field could use some shaking up, anyway.
Plus, most clients can tell when we’re not presenting authentically.
This is not to say that you have to share every detail of your personal life with your clients. Rather, it’s an invitation to consider what might be getting in the way of you showing up fully in your sacred role as a space-holder, and what needs to shift in order for you to build the business that only you can build.
🎧 If you want encouragement as you consider making bold changes in your practice, you might enjoy this conversation between me and Carolyn Solo, fellow therapist & business coach.
I had the pleasure of speaking with her on her podcast: Future Template Parent: EMDR Intensive Tips for EMDR Therapists. Here’s what we talk about:
🪷 my journey of becoming a therapist (transitioning from a generalist practice, serving all populations, to specializing in neurodivergence)
🪷 why I realized early on that the traditional path (work at an agency, see 30+ clients per week) wasn’t going to work for me
🪷 the changes I experienced in my capacity, my nervous system, & my work-life balance when I started offering 3-hour intensives, in addition to weekly 50-min sessions (and why my best clinical work happens in the intensive model)
To be clear, this is not an overnight success story — there was plenty of self-doubt & what the heck do I think I’m doing?! moments along the way. There still are.
But it is the story of how I unmasked in my business, and why that is the best decision I ever made.
You can listen along here:
Liked this blog post?
👉🏽 Subscribe here to receive letters from Liz directly in your inbox.
