Dear Diary...

Oh dear! Its almost the end of August and after my initial surge of blogging enthusiasm back in the cold, dark months of the year, I have been absent from these pages.

Its very like when the diaries I started every year from the age of eight onwards. Few of them made it beyond the end of January. Anyway I'm back with the blog so let me share what's happening in my tapping world.

Throughout the spring I was teaching EFT Foundations and Practitioner courses and am so delighted and impressed by the tapping tales and feedback you send me. You really are trying it on everything... Animals, children and people of all ages and persuasions with great success But I know how much energy, focus and effort it needs to get a fledgling EFT practice to be an EFT livelihood so I'd like to share some experiences and ideas.

In July I was chosen to be interviewed for an EFT Marketing package that brings together the advice, views and business building tips from a range of successful EFT folk including Pat Carrington, Rue Hass, Brad Yates, Carol Tuttle, Rebecca Marina and others. We were all interviewed by Angela Treat Lyon who has then used her talents with both art and technology to bring the materials together. The whole experience of thinking out my own answers to her questions and then reading the responses of successful EFTers was very valuable. I realised just what I have achieved in seven years of focused work.

What can I share? Well the themes that run through all that I have reviewed so far in the package follow the three pillars that structured my own response

• Experience
• Reputation
• Processes (and technology)

Experience is how you get good at what you do. EFT is a craft or a skill that has to get into the muscle - like learning to drive a car or ride a horse or play a ukulele, its about repetition. Doing something over and over so that you don't need to think anymore and that takes you to the stage where you can get creative. Experience is what gets you so good that you have the right to put yourself out there and ask for a return. Experience is so valuable that you don't have to be paid to get it - volunteer or exchange or give your work in return for testimonials. The joy of EFT is that if you are tapping you are learning.

Reputation in how you get found. Its what is added to your skill, your name and the need of someone out there such that they pick up the phone. Reputation needs the hook of your name to hang on, so the first stage is getting your name out there. And in these internet days its so much easier - with technology as your best friend there are so many opportunities for you to spread your name around the virtual world. Even better is that many of them cost no more than your time and energy. The next stage is connecting your name to something that its known for. You may be a generalist who works with anyone who walks through the door but find a theme to write about, to talk to the world about. Then if you can find a niche, a group, a community for whom that theme responates, if you can get talked about in that community, you are on the way to fame. They say in Bollywood: Name>Fame>Gain

Processes are how you make it easy for people who come to you and for yourself. This means at a basic level having a simple way for people to make appointments and get directions. Clear written or verbal agreements. Simple ways for you to keep notes, keep your books, handle receipts. Simple ways to get your name out through leaflets, business cards, websites, blogs, YouTubes, directories and all of that... For me Regonline has not only streamlined my workshop registration but the whole process also looks far more professional. Key to effective processes is making your computer your best friend and getting to know the many ways that the web can turbo charge your ideas.

And after all that remember that you are marketing YOU and not EFT. People buy people and they buy people they like. Just think of the people you buy from- everyone from your electrician to your hairdresser to the bar staff in your favourite pub. So let your marketing, your website, your leaflet, your writing express YOU, who you really are. And let yourself be who you really are, not who you think you should be or try to package yourself as an imitation of someone already successful. And if that throws up writings on your walls, then you know what to do with those!

Invest in yourself. You have spent money, time and energy on building EFT skills and may have become a workshop junkie. So invest in some more skills, writing skills, technology skills, marketing skills, public speaking skills. Local colleges and Business Link have some great value courses and you never know who you might meet because...

You are going to do it yourself but you don't have to do it in isolation. You need support. Find someone to talk business with, thrash ideas around with. Someone who gently stops you going around in circles and points out the obvious and gives you a pat on the back once in a while. This need not be another tapper. I started by talking things through with my accountant (now a tapper, its contagious) and going out for dinner with the owner of my favourite dress shop. Talking with other small business owners is always supportive and encouraging so seek them out and make new friends.

More in my next post, which won't be six months (I have a process to remind myself now). And you can find out here about the EFTBiz package


Happy Tapping
Gwyneth