Not every "opportunity" for collaboration that comes your way is actually in your favor! Here's how to distinguish a true Strategic Alliance from a false one that costs you money and often provides little return.

A member recently asked me on the Member Forum whether she could share a "job opportunity" she'd heard about with a wellness coaching company.

Her question was so relevant to what constitutes an effective strategic alliance (one of our favorite Engine activities) that I decided to write an article about it.

Not Every "Opportunity" is A True Strategic Alliance

What I've found is, there are so many things out there called "opportunities" or "alliances", but they really are people CHARGING you to become their partner. That's not what a true strategic alliance is.

Here's the kind of "opportunity" I'm talking about... each of these is gathered from real HTH member stories:

• Someone "invites" you to host an internet radio show - but you pay several hundred dollars for the privilege, AND you don't even know how many people are really tuning in (and how well they fit your target market).  It's really just a link to an audio file on a website.
• Someone approaches you to write a chapter in a book - but you have to buy 500 copies yourself... to the tune of $1000s of dollars.
• Someone is looking for "associate coaches" or "associate healers" - but YOU pay THEM to be listed on their site, OR you are also a "sales" person who is expected to drum up clients.
• Someone offers you a chance to become a "certified presenter/trainer/healer" in something, promising it will build your business - but you pay them to train you in it, you pay to license their materials, and you are still solely responsible for getting clients.

Sound familiar?

We're not saying these "opportunities" have zero value.

For example you can tell people, "I host a weekly women's radio show on the internet" and you can have some nice audios to promote to people.

But you are paying someone for that - and with today's cheap audio recording and editing software you could probably create your own "radio show" audios for $100's of dollars less.

You Have Limited Marketing Energy - Use It Well!

But the biggest problem with these situations is that they take your energy away from REAL marketing - the down on the ground, day-to-day work of becoming more visible to your target market.

For example...

• You could spend the same energy and much less money speaking to local divorced women's groups and offering Intro Sessions.
• You could approach the local day care center and offering a strategic alliance where they refer parents to your migraine acupuncture program in return for a referral fee or some other appropriate value.
• You could systematically "shadow" doctors (most MDs like it!) and taking health care practitioners out to lunch so you can learn about their fertility services and they learn about your integrative naturopathic fertility support services.

These are much more immediate ways of increasing your visibility. AND, you can track how well they are working much more easily.

You can see right away how many people you are encountering and how well your talks are going, whether you need to tweak your intro session offer, how many people picked up a card, how many people signed up for your newsletter... all immediate feedback on what's working on what's not!

Can you see the picture? There is so much more you can do with your marketing energy than to give it to someone ELSE's business!

You can put it into proactive behaviors that cost you very little and that return a whole lot more to you in terms of real clients, a referral network and word of mouth that lasts!

Banking on Insecurity 

Quite frankly, a lot of these "opportunities" I see out there are simply a way to take your insecurity about marketing and building your own practice and turning it into dollars for THEM (in exchange for a vague promise of some future dollars for you).

Listen, I fully understand the urge to have an alliance or collaborator or even an employer to shore up your skills, confidence, and finances when you're first starting out.

Working For Others - Not Always Possible 

In some professions, that's possible - for example you can work at a mental health clinic when starting out as a therapist.

These days acupuncture and chiropractic care are so popular that you can find a job as an associate acupuncturist or chiropractor and transition into your own practice when you feel more confident.

But even if you decide to work for someone else, at some point you may really want to start up your own practice. You'll need to know how to get clients, won't you?

Plus, what if there are no good opportunities for you to be hired by someone else? Or what if you simply don't want to work for anyone other than yourself?

What if, like some other professions such as coaching or reiki, the only viable "employer" is YOU?

Know How To Get Clients Anyway

In these very common scenarios, you will still need to learn to market and promote your services - just like any other service-based business on the planet.

At that point, don't be confused by the so-called "opportunities" and "alliances" we've talked about here. If they don't fit the arrangement we show you in our Strategic Alliances workbook, then they are not a true Strategic Alliance.

If you still want to try these things out, realize they are probably NOT a good Engine (active marketing) strategy but just an additional way of being visible, like having a special brochure or product.

You STILL have to build a good marketing train and you STILL have to take responsibility for promoting your own practice. Stop trying to get out from under that!

Face your fears, arm yourself with the program we teach you (it WORKS) and just put one foot in front of the other and you can make it happen! Thousands of others have done it using this program and SO CAN YOU.

Believe in yourself!

Marketing does not come naturally to everyone at first but that can change. And, believe it or not, marketing can be fun, as many of our program participants have discovered.

That's because all you're really doing is finding out the very best ways you can get in touch with people who need you, and how to talk on their level. This way, they will find YOU and make all those powerful changes in their lives and health that only YOU can help them achieve!

That's why we say marketing is your professional responsibility as a healer. Don't give that responsibility over to a third party!

Learn the simple skills it takes to do it yourself, build your own practice, and have a blast deleting all those no longer tempting "opportunities" from your inbox!