simple prospering Brooke Thomas

When we work for ourselves, one of the things we are constantly engaged with is refinement.
 
In this week's episode I trace the journey of refinement for the Healing Arts Practice Incubator, complete with embarrassing tales of my early days in practice. 

Many of us come to self-employment through a side door. Meaning, few of us choose self-employment first, and then what it is we will do as a self-employed person second. 
Instead, most people acquire some skill, and either right away or eventually, it makes the most sense to deliver that skill as a self-employed person.
This means that many people wind up working for themselves without ever consciously asking themselves the question, “Do I want to be self employed?” 
Oftentimes those of us who support self-employed or entrepreneurial types of businesses are caught up in cheerleading it as the best option for everyone. But in this episode, it's real talk time. Let's go through some of the pros and cons of choosing either self-employment or being employed by someone else. There is no one right answer, and, leveling with you here, there is no one perfect career path. So let's talk about it!
 

We made it to the final building block! This week I’m discussing building block number 6: how to systematize your burnout proof business. 
(If you missed building blocks 1 through 5, you can go back through the most recent episodes, and/or you can download the free ebook You Need a Holistic Business here.)
Building blocks 1 through 5 are all about attaining liftoff, but most of what you will be doing in your business is running your actual business! 
This is when the challenge becomes how to streamline and systematize the operations of your business so that you don’t wind up constantly in the weeds or constantly reinventing the wheel (I’m going to go ahead and mix metaphors here!).
In this episode we cover some of the key places to set up your systems, in as simple a way as possible, so that you have more wind at your back than you have wind-drag. 
 

This week I am delighted to be joined by Michelle Warner, a business designer and strategist and an expert on the topic of relationship marketing. 
The vast majority of what we see these days is traffic-based marketing, which is well suited to mass market brands, but not at all well suited to tiny service-providing businesses. What serves us well is strategic, generous fostering of relationships. 
In this interview, Michelle Warner talks us through some of the typical misconceptions, pitfalls, and, most importantly, winning approaches to cultivate our own relationship marketing skills for our own businesses. 
You can find more of Michelle Warner's work at themichellewarner.com
You can find more of my work at Simple Prospering 

"Marketing" and "sales" are much loathed words and activities in the tiny service-providing business space. Most of us got into our work to help people out while practicing something we have a deep love for. Not to feel like we're shaking people down for money. That's totally fair! 
Except... if a business is not bringing in revenue, it's not a business (call back to building block #1...). So marketing and sales become essential, but we don't have to do them in ways that are either overwhelming or which just feel gross. We truly don't!
In this episode I discuss the simplest definitions of marketing and sales for our purposes, and the simplest and most effective (and non-gross) ways to engage with them. 

In building block #4 from You Need a Holistic Business, I'm talking about how branding (done right) puts a lot of wind at your back. 
I also talk about what branding is NOT, particularly when it comes to small service-providing businesses. You don't need an iconic logo the way mega corporations do- If you're listening to this podcast you probably aren't thinking about opening up "flagship" stores, or buying a Superbowl ad, or generally "dominating market share" like an 8-figure company. 
In our cases, branding is about the cohesive voice, vibe, and flow of how your business is presented in the world. In this episode, I go through each and walk you through how you can give yourself a brand refresh if you need one. 
You can download the free ebook here: https://www.simpleprospering.com/free-trainings