Self-Disclosure Sabotage
What do you tell prospective clients about yourself? What will they know about your passion for your work, and what led you to your choice of career field? Do you generate trust and rapport with bits of your own life story?
If you are like most of my clients, you probably feel uncomfortable with those questions.
A big issue in marketing among many of my clients is how much to disclose about themselves. As counselors, coaches and NDs, we’ve all been taught to keep extremely tight lipped about ourselves when working with clients. That training is a huge obstacle when it comes to effectively attracting ideal clients.
Here’s how you can do it differently:
speak about your passion for helping your ideal client
tell where in your own life that passion comes from
explain the mission of your practice
tell why that mission is important to you
give a set of personal commitments to your client (listen without judgment, suggest options, etc)
tell an anecdote from your childhood that led to your interest in motivation or suffering
talk about what it does to you to see people hurting or underachieving
tell how that motivated you to get your training
Strong, prohibitive indoctrination about revealing anything about yourself generates fear of judgment from peers. We’re left with a serious misunderstanding of what might or might not be ethical in marketing ourselves.
Consequently, most solopreneurs in the healing arts err on the side of just listing educational credentials and licenses, which often has a cold, egotistic, and distancing effect.
This is institutionalized, professional self-sabotage, similar to what doctors and lawyers faced decades ago when the AMA and ABA frowned on marketing private practices. It’s a fear-based mindset that belongs to a past century, and that’s out of step with today’s business world.
A bit of your own life experience helps establish the know you, like you, trust you factor that is important in relationship-based client attraction marketing.
So, do you really have the blank slate therapeutic or coaching philosophy, or is your reticence to reveal a little bit of your personal self based in insecurity and fear? Are you letting your own anxieties about being visible at being good enough sabotage your business?
There are at least 3 ways to formulate your personal bio page for your website that range from the openly self-disclosive, to the still-warm professional. If you need help with writing a good bio page for your website, schedule a consult with me and get my worksheets on each of these three formats.