simple prospering – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Jae Gruenke is a Feldenkrais teacher who specializes in working with runners. She founded The Balanced Runner in 2004 in NYC and has helped runners from beginner to Olympian all over the world since then. 

To find more of Jae's work: https://www.balancedrunner.com/

We talk about:

• The benefits of niching (and how not to do it arbitrarily) 
• The challenges that smaller holistic health fields can come up against in getting the word out
• How Jae manages 2 different business models: working 1:1 in private practice, and running a self-study online course
• The reality of time spent marketing, and where she has spent it best
• How Jae has navigated maintaining her business across multiple international moves

I got off of all social media in 2020. I didn’t miss it. I cannot tell you what a weight it was off of my shoulders.

And yet, I have recently gotten back on social media- you can follow me on Instagram at @simpleprospering winky winky…

So I figured I would use this opportunity to talk about why to be on social media and why not to be there.

I cover:

• How having a therapeutic relationship at the center your business makes a huge difference in how you should try to make it more visible
• How the main things we see marketed in our culture are products and entertainment, and why that's hugely different than a healing arts practice
• What the influencer business model is all about
• What the algorithm rewards
• The burning question: "Brooke, are you a hypocrite?"

Show notes: 

Grow Without Social Media course

Fake Famous

Michelle Warner interview on SP

Welcome back to the summer re-run series! I’m pulling out some of my older episodes that I still get the most positive feedback on. And they happen to be related to slaying ideas that keep us miserable. Sometimes we have to pop the bubbles of ideas that we are supposed to agree with or keep up with so that we can make businesses (and lives) for ourselves that are supportive and satisfying. 

So- especially if you feel a little lost, hopeless, or like you are on the road to, or already deep into, a burnout stage listen in to Workism, Frankenstein and the Passion Principle. Be prepared to let go of cherished ideas that circulate in the self-employed worlds.

simpleprospering.com/hapi

It’s a summer re-run episode which pertains directly to why I still believe everyone should not hop on the social media bandwagon. And that, if you are a healing arts provider in private practice. It just plain will not grow your practice.

So if you love it and posting is a fun hobby for you- enjoy! If you hate it and are only posting on social media because you need to bring in more clients- I release you from this labor! Go be free! It won’t grow your practice. Fostering relationships will.

This rerun is actually my first episode of Simple Prospering- titled What is the Influencer Business Model? It goes deep into all the reasons, which I still heartily agree with, about why small healing arts providers don’t need to bother. 

simpleprospering.com/hapi

What do you have the resources (of time, energy and money), strengths and skills for? 

This is the essential question to ask yourself when starting a business, particularly when you are branching out from private practice. 

This episode is actually pulled from a lesson in the Business Model Buffet, which is the bonus course within the Healing Arts Practice Incubator (HAPI). https://www.simpleprospering.com/hapi

In that course, I talk all about the different business models that people in the healing arts can use to deliver their expertise or service. Things like: 

• Private practice
• Group practice
• Running a studio or center
• Signature courses
• Hosting retreats or events
• Productized services
• Membership/subscription offerings
• And, of course, hybrids of any of the above

Before we get to serving ourselves something at the buffet however (aka before we can choose a business model), we first need to do some informed inquiring into what we are and aren't up for, and what the new model will ask of us. 

As we go through the life cycle of our business, we're going to come to all these different forks in the road. That's very normal. We usually wind up asking ourselves some version of the question, "Should I be branching out?" at different stages of our business. 

People wonder if they should be trying out different marketing tactics, or create a new offerings, or deliver their services differently. And there is plenty of noise about what the current golden ticket is (podcasts! online courses! membership sites!) as we cycle through new trendy options.

Rather than falling for other people's hype, this episode helps to navigate how to answer the branching out question for yourself through a process I call the Assumption Busting Question Tree. It's not a catchy name, sure, but it will help you surface the assumptions you might be making and get you to a clearer, more true-to-you answer about what your right next steps are. 

https://www.simpleprospering.com/hapi

Today I want to talk about the lifecycle of a healing arts business. I have been working on figuring this out for, oh… almost 24 years now… Both in navigating my own healing arts businesses (which have spanned many different business models, aka ways of delivering the service), and in helping many many other people to do the same thing.

If that sounds like a snoozefest, the reason why it’s useful to connect all the dots in one place is that once you see the patterns, you can spot where you are within them (within your own business). And from there you can do a lot of things! Things like: 

• Understanding what is “normal” ups and downs, and what is cause for recalibrating things

• Assessing current challenges and knowing what will actually help to alleviate them rather than throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks. 

• Saving you from spending TONS OF TIME AND MONEY on things that will not help you because they are not oriented towards a tiny healing arts business, or because they are just not the right tool at the right time. 

• Feeling much more comfortable in your own skin, and in your own business, based on living up to the values and desires that you have for your work, rather than all the “supposed-tos” that float around. Basically, feeling less like you are “doing it wrong” in your business, and knowing that some amount of consternation is just normal when you are self-employed. 

So… hopefully this mapping of the lifecycle of a healing arts business will help you to more quickly and easily alleviate unnecessary stress!

Want some support in your business? Visit simpleprospering.com

I’m emerging from a creative cave, and so I thought I’d talk a bit about the creative cave itself. This is when you know you want to focus thoroughly on one thing, and so you deliberately stop doing other things that will drain time energy and attention away from the One Thing. 

But if you wear all the hats in your business, how do you decide what can be paused? And once you do, how do you make sure to put your creative cave time to good use?

https://simpleprospering.com/

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!

https://simpleprospering.com/hapi