Prospering Biz

Go back to 1991…

When I asked my supervisor how best to promote my private psychotherapy practice, he got a rather blank look on his face and said “I don’t know.”

I don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know? How could it be possible that this gifted therapist with a full practice, didn’t know how he’d done it…and couldn’t tell me how to do it.

Thus began my education in marketing and promotion. Since then I have been on a mission to learn how to market products and services….first offline and then online beginning in 2001. And what an eduction it’s been!

Despite my 10 years as a retailer prior to returning to school for a Master’s in Counseling Psychology, business and marketing seemed much more of a mystery to me than the life, love and spirit that drew me into the study of the human psyche.

And at first, I didn’t want to go there. I’d left business behind when I quit the futon factory yes?

Wrong, business, money, and marketing are entwined in everything we do in the world of work. Even finding a job involves marketing so there’s no out there and a job, as we’ve come to find out in recent months, is not a certain path to security. (Start a Business or Get a Job?)

Even non-profits are not immune as I learned the year before asking my supervisor that fateful question. That was the year I lost my dream job because, drum roll please, the agency was going bankrupt.

So through all of the conflicts inherent in being in business reluctantly, I continued to read and study and learn about how to build a practice.

There was another mistake I didn’t correct until I trained with Thomas Leonard. I kept distancing myself from the business by calling it a practice. Sounds so simple, doesn’t it, but it’s a profound distinction. Once you begin to see your ‘practice’ as the business it is, you can begin to honor the money making potential of the practice you engage in with clients.

I found the secret to offline success was to be highly visible (oh no!) through writing, speaking and teaching. At that time teaching came easily and it was teaching that was the largest contributer to my success as a psychotherapist.

But there was one other piece that was essential…networking with other professionals who could send me referrals. After years of struggling with this and hesitating to ask, one psychiatrist said to me…”Well why didn’t you say so, I’d be happy to send some clients” and he did. Duh!

Hmmm, writing, speaking, teaching, and networking…sounds pretty much like online business building, doesn’t it?

Yes there are differences. Yes many of the tools are different. Most of those tools make the whole process much, much easier. And yes, the cost of entry is less, but the fundamentals of business success are the same whether you’re online or off.

The similarities didn’t stop me from getting totally hooked on internet marketing. I studied with Andrea Lee of ‘Pink Spoon Marketing’ (I am one of a handful to hold a license to this material) and ‘Multiple Streams of Coaching Income’ fame, while following every big name internet marketer who came along. It wasn’t until I ‘met’ Ed Dale, Dan Raine and Rob Somerville of the Thirty Day Challenge (and the Immediate Edge) that all of the pieces started to hang together.

Though they are a motley, testosterone driven crew they know their stuff, and they thrive on testing and tracking every new technique that comes along. Truth be told, they invent many of those techniques, and the recently outed geek in me loves learning this stuff…and I love doing it. I love doing keyword research. I love customizing Wordpress blogs (definitely the software of choice) and I love seeing new blogs get indexed and ranked quickly. I love the nitty gritty of taking a business online and I love teaching and sharing the fundamental thinking behind those strategies.

That’s what prompted me to start the ‘New Niche Finder‘, ‘Simple Sites Design’ (coming soon) and ‘Prospering Biz‘. Together they provide an integrated group of products and services designed to support you as you take your business online or develop new online income streams.

I hope you’ll join me on this journey. My intent is to give you a complete online business education in the most digestible fashion possible as well as providing the basic (and some not so basic) web business services you need to succeed online.

Here’s to your success,

Susan Fuller

Questions? Feel free to ask.