There’s an alarming pattern I’ve recently noticed amongst highly conscious service providers.  It’s a pattern that forever leaves us feeling financially insecure AND seriously limits our ability to expand our income.

Here’s how it all unfolds.

We start doing the work we love by telling a few friends and acquaintances about what we do.  Friends and acquaintances start referring people THEY know to us – for healing, for coaching, for readings, for professional services.

And hurray – we have clients!!!

Our clients refer more clients.

Sounds great, right?  A referral-based business  with no real marketing or – God forbid! – selling required.  Dreamy, isn’t it?

Wait, there’s more.

We don’t really know why these referral clients come to us.  In fact, THEY often don’t even know!  They just came because so-and-so told them they had a great experience.  “You have GOT to see this lady – I felt great.”

Over time, our clients ask us for new services – classes, perhaps, or workshops, or group experiences.  As best we can, we give them what they want.

Still sounds great, right?

Except we still don’t know how to explain what we do.  We don’t know why our clients come to us.  And we hesitate to define ourselves more clearly at this point – because we’re sure we’re going to lose at least some clients, since they’re all coming to us for mysterious and varied reasons.

So while we’d love to increase our business, we don’t know how.  Heck, we don’t even know how our clients are finding us now … so how can we go about expanding a non-existent marketing funnel?

No, instead we cross our fingers every month and hope that the referrals continue.  We increase our rates a bit, hoping that the referrals continue.  We might offer a new program or service, hoping that it appeals to enough of our existing clientele.

That’s an awful lot of HOPE that we’re basing our income on!

It’s an income stream that is RUN BY OUR CLIENTS, not by us.

I call this a reactive business – we react to what other people want, or seem to want, from us.  It is a business based on our perception of other people’s wants and needs.

It makes us terribly insecure, because we are forever in our client’s business!!!  We wonder what THEY want, what THEY need, whether THEY will buy.  And we can’t know for sure, can we?

Meanwhile, the entire process through which clients come to us in the first place remains mysterious.  We can’t expand it, because we didn’t create a real process to begin with.

We find ourselves at the mercy of a business that seems to be happening to us – because we never consciously decided what to sell, we never consciously created a method that converts prospects into paying clients, and we haven’t identified our ideal client – which means we don’t know where to even find prospects!

Sure, we can do okay in this business for a while.

But we will never feel financially safe and abundant, because we are limited until we step into our role as conscious CREATOR.

If you don’t know where your clients are coming from, or why they’re buying what you offer, then you can’t make money at will.  Money happens to you, in some months more than others.  You aren’t defining yourself or your work at all, because each single referral will position you based on THEIR experience of you.  And so each client comes to you with a different idea of what you do.

Financial freedom isn’t in having money.  Financial freedom is knowing that you can MAKE money at WILL.

I know that is seems so lovely and spiritual – effortlessly “attracting” clients who come to you for their own unique reasons.  Marketing and selling, in contrast, seems so … mundane, right?  So much “less spiritual?”

A business that is created by your clients can work … for a while.  But even while it’s working, you will feel financially insecure.  And that will limit you, and you will make choices from that place of limitation, which creates more limitation.

I’m not against referrals by any means! Referrals are awesome – but YOU still have to determine who you serve, and what you offer.  When you’ve clearly defined yourself, the clients that refer to you actually do so more powerfully, specifically, and effectively … because THEY can express who you are – not how THEY experienced you.

CREATE your income stream consciously.  This is how we eradicate financial insecurity … by knowing exactly HOW we create our income.  Don’t just let it happen to you – because not taking responsibility for how you generate income now will lead to disempowerment down the road.

Blessings,
Andrrea

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Filed under: Manifest Money • Money and Spirituality • Releasing Limiting Beliefs

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