Your Clients are Already in Your Own Backyard

By Coach Cary Bayer

Recently, while doing a Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, I was stumped by a clue for a four-letter word. The clue was "Grant." I ran through the Rolodex in my mind and came up with answers like award, prize, and so forth. None of them were four letters. Finally, I got the first letter; it was a "C." But that didn't help me either.

Eventually, the light bulb went off in my mind--Eureka. (No, not that endearing term of excitement--it's got six letters.) The answer wasn't a grant of money, it was a Grant of Cary. The irony in this story is that there were only two men who ever made my mother's heart race, and they were Cary Grant, and my father, Sam Bayer. And that's why she named me Cary Bayer.

What value does this hold for alternative healer? Actually, quite a lot. What my puzzle story demonstrates is that I was failing to see something that was right in front of my face. It's like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, an intelligent character who dreams up the scheme that rescues Dorothy from the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West, but didn't realize that he already had the brain that he was searching for. Dorothy, from that same movie, realizes at the film's end, that everything that her heart ever really wanted was always right there in her own backyard.

There's a legend in the East about the musk deer, who searches all over the world for the source of the fantastic musk scent that he just keeps smelling wherever he goes. Just like that, alternative healers often fail to see all the clients right there in front of them. Everywhere hypnotherapists, counselors, psychologists, chiropractors, LMTs, and energy workers, among others, go they see potential clients. But very few of them actually realize that they're almost always in the presence of new sources of revenue. The truth is, that virtually every adult whom you encounter wants what you offer: relief from pain, deep insights, freedom from limiting patterns of thought and action, and/or the opportunity to feel deeply relaxed, refreshed and invigorated.

Being an alternative healer and wondering where your next client is going to come from is like being a fish and wondering where your water supply will come from. A fish is swimming in that supply. And, as a facilitator of growth for people, so are you.

Cary Bayer was keynote speaker at the 2006 AMTA national convention. Widely known as The Business Coach for Massage Therapists, Cary is a CE provider licensed by NCBTMB and Florida Dept. of Health's Board of Massage Therapy; and faculty member of Massage Business University, he writes for Massage Today, and massage publications in 14 states. His 30 publications include Healer, Heal Thyself, and 11 specifically for massage therapists. He's coached some 150 LMTs and dozens of other healers. His 6-CE seminar, "Build a $100,000 a Year Massage Business" is very popular among therapists.

For more information visit www.CaryBayer.com.