Using the principles of the Create a Thriving Practice course, this practitioner was able to set up 13 new individual client sessions in less than a week!

I’m often amazed by the results that are produced when people take to heart the principles of my Thriving Practice course.  As a shaman or healer, you’re already aligned with Spirit.  That means that the totality of the Universe is on your side.  So to me, awesome results should follow. Yet, for many practitioners who want to be of greatest service, they are stuck and blocked. There are many healers who know that they make a tremendous difference with someone once they’re in a session with them. The question simply becomes, “How do you set up more client sessions?” and “How can you present yourself in a way that’s not pushy or trying to force an outcome, but rather in a graceful way that simply attracts those that you’re meant to be of service to?”  That’s what the Create a Thriving Practice course provides. Join us Thurs, Sept 18th to Sunday, Sept 21st in Laguna Beach, CA! The course is a combination of mythical elements, conscious marketing, branding, and practical business-building information. Since you have an integrity to “do the work”, come explore what it takes to do more of it!

I was shocked, back in January, when I asked the attendees of the first Collective Course, “How many of you are actively seeing clients?”

Out of 25 people, 2 raised their hands.

This was a group of very skilled, experienced energy medicine practitioners who were in an advanced class.  Yet, only 2 people were actively seeing clients.

That means that most of them were not actually being of service using their energetic tools, doing the work of the soul’s journey.

Why? 

Why are there so many people who have spent thousands of dollars on training, who could do so much for other people, but are not utilizing their healing skills and abilities? 

There might be several reasons for this:

• Some simply feel they’re not ready yet.
• Some would like to be of service, but all of the attempts to attract clients have fallen short and they don’t know what to do.
• Some are afraid to be visible and seen for who they really are and how they can be of service to others. They are afraid that “coming out” may be harmful, or they may be mocked or judged.
• Some are using other excuses to not step into their big mission.  Like, “I’ll do it when…(insert excuse or rationalization here)”.

I think it’s fair to say that most people who are able to be of tremendous service to others have huge holes in the calendar when it could be filled with clients.  Or, they are so consumed with their traditional jobs that it will just have to wait until another day.

A final word from John…. Last week, on an expedition I was leading to Peru, I realized that we each need to look within to see what is the appropriate amount of rock or starenergy for our endeavors.  I feel that there are too many people whose practice just isn’t “off the ground”. How can you elevate what you’re doing by tapping into the wisdom of the stars? Much of what has made me successful over the last 10 years has had to do with tuning in to my divine guidance.  It has come from above.  Yet, there are practical ways of putting into practice the insights that I’ve received in a grounded way that speaks to people right where they are.  Come get your practice off the ground by exploring what the upcoming Create a Thriving Practice course could provide for you.  I hope you can join us! ~ John Germain Leto

Sometimes, we can get really close.  Really close to achieving what we’ve set out to.  We can go far on a journey.  We can travel a long way down a path, first for our own healing and growth, and then for the healing and growth of others.  But do you actually see it to completion?

I had a client tell me this week that before we started working together, five years ago, that the one word that would most characterize his life was “almost”. He was almost happy. He was almost fulfilled. He was almost satisfied with his physical well-being.  He was almost pleased with his career.

Now, his life is not “almost” anymore. It’s taken quite a journey of letting go, of healing, of facing many fears and breaking through the barriers that he thought were in his way. He’s not “almost” anymore. He is living. He is being.

Where in life are you “almost”?

Where have you skirted the edge of what is possible, but haven’t fully jumped in?

Where are you tinkering with things, almost feeling as if you’re there, but knowing that there is so much more for you to give and experience?

I remember what my life was like, nine years ago, when I had a consulting arrangement 4 days a week and only had Fridays to focus on my budding business. I was doing client sessions at night and on the weekends. But thank God for those Fridays each week, when I could actually focus on the activities that were most important. At the time, my life was such that I HAD to have that consulting arrangement for financial reasons. I wasn’t yet making enough money as a coach and practitioner.

But sometimes, if felt as if I was only really living one day a week. I remember what that felt like. At the time, it seemed as if my life was “almost”. I couldn’t wait until I could finally turn the corner with my practice and be able to leave the consulting job. I was able to make it happen, but not without additional information, resources, and support. There are countless book, seminars, and business coaching sessions that I consumed, which once I put into action, ultimately made the difference for me.

I’ve taken all that I’ve learned of what it takes to be a successful practitioner in the last 9 years and put it into my upcoming course – Helping Healers Help the World: Create a Thriving Practice.

I tend to walk on the edge of life, rarely taking the safe or middle road. I listen; I take risks; I travel to wherever Spirit calls me to go. And so far, Spirit has provided for me in many beautiful ways.

And yet, there are times, when we’ve gone as far as we can go on our own. When we must open up to divine help, to other resources and information, that Spirit is providing us on our path. Sometimes, it comes from our own inner Source speaking directly to us. Other times, it can be the words that you read from another Source (just like right now). Either way, if you feel a calling, do you act on it?

If you feel that what you’ve been doing is working, but only to a degree, then maybe you could use some additional resources and support to catapult you and your practice to a new level.

Stop being almost and make the choices that will have you fulfill your highest destiny.

May your path be illuminated in front of you.

 

• Would you be able to quit your unfulfilling day job? 
• Would you be able to spend more time with your children?
• Would you be able to travel more, taking your sessions with you via phone or skype?
• Would it mean no longer having to commute to work? 
• Would it mean no longer struggling with money, but rather a sense of freedom around your finances to finally be making much more than you’re spending each month?

These are all of the things that I’ve been able to experience by having a full client practice over the last 10 years.  

Let me share with you what I’ve learned.  Here’s a quick video where I share the first primary intention of the next Shaman’s Collective course:  Create a Thriving Practice.

There are many other “pieces of the puzzle” that also need to click together in order to thrive as a healing practitioner. These other pieces include:

• Having your own unique strategy to attract your ideal clients
• Breaking through any energetic barriers you may have to being fully visible
• Learning how to speak powerfully about what you do
• Creating a personal brand that’s rooted in your truth
• Learning how to tell your personal story in the most powerful way
• Creating a compelling online presence and website that works for you
• Learning how to have an effective phone conversation with a potential client
• Building complete certainty as a healing practitioner
• Activating the highest destiny of your practice

If you’re missing one or more of these pieces, it’s like having an engine that’s not firing on all cylinders.  

If you’re really going to succeed with your practice, you need more than glimpses of greatness.  You need to be that way almost all of the time.  You need an engine that is revving.

“I never wanted to be a practicing shaman.” 

Like most people, I stepped onto this journey for my own healing. There were things that were “up” in my life and I wanted to go as deep as I could to resolve them.  I certainly did that.  Along the way, I picked up invaluable energetic tools and ways to shift someone’s personal energy and help them to heal from the past.

But I never started with the intent of being a practicing shaman.  Yet here I am now, doing client sessions with people all over the world, helping them to heal past wounds and step forward powerfully in their lives. 

I don’t think I’m alone.  Most likely, you’ve explored the shamanic arts primarily for your own transformational journey.  Now you have all of these powerful tools.  Yet maybe you don’t make use of them for others as often as you’d like.

Creating a thriving practice does not mean you have to see 5 clients a day or open up a retreat center.  A thriving practice is whatever you say it is.  Perhaps it’s simply having an outward presentation and website that matches your inner clarity and healing, so that if people wanted the same, they would know where to find you.

If this is you, it would be of tremendous benefit to experience some of the Create a Thriving Practice course content.

Below is a webinar that explores some of the practical elements to setting up your conscious healing business, however that looks for you, whether it’s just actively seeing one or two clients per week or setting up your own retail establishment for healing, like one of my newest clients.

The Webinar Recording!

Every time I teach the Create a Thriving Practice course, new insights occur.  I’m approaching the second class of the current 6-week webinar and I’m at the point where I’m helping everyone craft a focus for their practice so they can attract their ideal clients.  How? By exploring the greatest lessons they’ve experienced in their own life.

I’m always amazed at the profound wisdom that people acquire on their journey through life and the incredible upheaval they’ve been able to transform.  They’ve completed a tremendous amount of personal work and understand so much about the mythic journey that we’re all on.

And yet, some of these advanced souls are mystified by business.  Even one of my key mentors and teachers – who is extremely advanced – recently exclaimed, “I just don’t think I understand business.”

In one of my favorite scenes from The Wolf of Wall Street, the main character says to a group of his employees, “Sell me this pen.”

One of the guys then stumbles through an answer about the pen.

When he asks the second person the question, “Sell me this pen”, he replies,

“Do me a favor a write your name down.”

“I can’t, I don’t have a pen.”  The main character replies.

“Well, here you go! (Tosses him the pen).  Supply and demand, my friend.”

It occurred to me this morning, in the simplest of terms, what business actually is.  Reduced to its most plain language, business is simply…

Fulfilling a need.

That’s all it is.

Yet, most healers and practitioners seem to forget this when build their websites or talk about what they do.  They often position themselves and their offerings as “a good idea” instead of something that fulfills a need.  I’ve seen some beautiful practitioner websites that explain things like the chakra system and “dreaming the world into being”.  Yet, for most people, it all sounds like “a good idea”, not something that’s indispensible.  It’s a service that seems worthwhile, but something that, “I’ll do a little later when I have some spare money”.  If you’re a healer looking to build a practice, this simply won’t work.

So business is fulfilling a need.

Like the movie, another way of saying that is:  “Supply and Demand.” 

But it occurred to me that it’s actually more appropriate to think of it as Demand and Supply. 

What’s the demand that people are asking for?

Where are they experiencing pain?

What’s their need?

What would they demand of you?

Then how can you supply it?

How can you position your services as meeting and fulfilling their demand:  the need that they have for your services?

Do that one thing correctly and you’ll never have to worry about having enough clients. 

Do that one thing well and you won’t have to work another day in your life. 

It would simply be about doing what you love to those that NEED what you can offer.

Would you like to have more clients?

The ones where you not only do your best work, but where they come to you in an easy and graceful way?

There’s a way to achieve that.

Last year to promote the Create a Thriving Practice course, I led a teleclass entitled, How to Attract Your Ideal Clients with Grace & Ease.  For the first time, I’m releasing the recording of that class.

This isn’t some “puff piece” that’s all promotion and no real help to your business.  It was my intention to really make a difference with the 300 or so people who were on the call.  In it, I share how to stand in your own truth so that people are just naturally drawn to what you have to offer. A great first step would be to listen to the free teleclass on how to attract your ideal clients. If you’re going to do that, must first look within to see how you can most be of service to others.  Look at your own biggest lessons of your soul’s journey by clicking the link below:

Attracting Your Ideal Clients with Grace and Ease: Teleclass Recording from John Leto on Vimeo.

Prepare yourself though.  If you’re going to actually learn how to do something as important as attracting your ideal clients, its not going to happen in a quick 2-minute video.  In this hour-long teleclass, I share the in-depth exercise that participants complete in the full Thriving Practice course.  It is one of the cornerstone pieces of the upcoming 6-Week Webinar Series: Create a Thriving Practice, which starts on January 30th.  For more information on the upcoming course, click the link below:

6-Week Webinar Series: Create a Thriving Practice

Yesterday, I gave one of my most radically honest interviews ever regarding Purpose and how to connect more deeply to it.  I simply opened up and let the truth of my experience flow through.

To hear the in-depth discussion of ways that you can increase your connection to your highest path, here’s the direct link for the replay:

http://www.intentiontraining.com/2014/01/06/fulfilling-your-souls-journey/ 

What are you creating in your life?

Now, you might be thinking:

“What do you mean – what am I creating? I’m just living. I’m trying to be on my highest path, but most of the time I’m just doing what I’m obligated to do. I’m also trying to make a little bit of money and build my practice.  But what am I creating?  What do you mean?”

What I mean is that whether you realize it or not, you are creating your life. You are creating your experiences. You are creating your reality.

You have exactly the situations, the friends, the amount of money, worry, and love that you have created up to this point. See, many of us have lost our connection to creation – we’ve lost our ability to truly create. We really don’t have to create anything anymore. We just have to follow. We just have to react: just go to the meeting, say what you’ve already said a thousand times, just answer the text, send the email, drive there, go here – we’ve lost our sense of what it means to be the creator of our own lives.

How can you restore the power that you’re supposed to have to create whatever you’d like for yourself and your life?

1) The first thing to get is that you actually are the creator. If you’ve lost touch with this, then rekindle it. Deep down, you know this to be true. If you don’t believe me, then suspend your own belief for a minute, and then keep reading.

Try on that every single thing that you feel and that goes through your head – matters. Every single thing. The thought about that girl, the judgment about your body, the doubt about yourself, whatever it may be – it matters. It counts, big time.

Now, I probably don’t have to go too far to try to convince you of this. You’re probably living proof that the Law of Attraction is very real.  You know that you become what you think about. Yet, how conscious are you of it on a moment to moment basis?

“Our minds are always active anyway, so they might as well be focused on something worthwhile.”

-       from the movie, I heart Huckabees

So once you’re present to the fact that you are the one who is constantly creating your own reality, the next step is to go into Nothing.

2) Enter the Void

Emptiness is a concept that I’ve been sitting with all year long. Believe me, it hasn’t been easy. It’s much easier to be Something than to be Nothing. I’ve been studying Tai Chi intensely one on one with a master for the last year and a half. The whole point is to access a deeper sense of nothing to be able to work with the true “chi” – the energy of the universe – instead of our own. What I’ve learned is that if I’m working only with my own energy, it’s a pretty limited and finite thing. I mean, how long can you go before you need to rest or have another cup of coffee? But if you’re working with universal energy, you have access to all that is and can actually be limitless. One of the major lessons of Tai Chi though is that you can’t work with universal energy if you’re already full of your own. If your cup is already full of what you think you are, then how will the energy of the universe be able to get in? Hence, the concept of emptying oneself: Going into Nothing.

The reason why it’s important to go into nothingness is because if you don’t find some way to be in stillness, you’re doomed to your own momentum tunnel.

This is a familiar concept if you’re a Four Winds student.  If you’re not, think of it this way: there is a momentum pushing you forward in life. It consists of all of your previous actions, thoughts, and beliefs. It has created the environment of your home and work as well as the people you know and where you live. It’s the sum total of your past. And it has a momentum. If you don’t believe me, just think of the things that you have to do tomorrow or next week because of the momentum that your life has already set up.

So if you’re going to be able to change anything about your life, if you’re going to embrace being the creator of your life, you have to regularly step off your own momentum tunnel. If you don’t, then you’re just going to get more of what you’ve always gotten.

The only way to do this is to bring yourself to a still point. Only then will you truly have the freedom to create. Otherwise, if you try to create while you’re still being pushed by your momentum, you’re going to get mixed results.

So the bottom line is that you have to find a way to quiet your mind and find stillness. Here’s a link to a quick guided meditation that I created to do just that:

Enter into Stillness – A 9-minute guided meditation

Then only once you’ve accessed stillness, emptiness, the void (whatever you want to call it), you’re now able to make a conscious choice.

We all want to fulfill our soul’s journey and use our time here well.  It’s great that so many people are now aware of their life’s purpose of being of greatest service to others.

Yet there are many who yearn to use more of their skills and abilities on a daily basis by creating a rich and full client practice.  There are a lot of practitioners who are frustrated and struggling because they haven’t yet sorted out how to continually attract paying clients.  My heart goes out to them.  I certainly know what it’s like to get a glimpse of your soul’s journey and then not be able to support yourself financially while doing it.  In the last 9 years of creating my own successful business, a blend of life coaching, shamanic energy medicine, and also brand consulting, I’ve learned that it takes more than just good intent, high integrity, and strong desire.  It also takes some practical marketing skills.  For me, that simply means learning how to position yourself to the people who can most benefit from what you have to offer.  It takes looking within to learn from your greatest wounds to see how those lessons can be applied to others on a similar path.  In order to build certainty, not only in your abilities, but also in how you present yourself to the world, it often requires a more strategic approach.

I hesitate to use the word “marketing” when describing my upcoming Creating a Thriving Practice course with the Four Winds.  I don’t think of it as a “marketing” course.  It’s not about being a good marketer.  It’s about learning how to stand in your Truth, in the key awakenings of your own soul’s journey, and then be able to express those lessons in your speaking and presentation materials so that when you increase your visibility, you easily attract lots of people who are happy to pay you for the difference you can make in their lives.

I understand the challenge in talking about what you do. I’ve been fumbling around with language for the last couple of years trying to come up with a way to describe to others what I’m up to in a way that not only makes sense, but that they find it so valuable that they are willing to write a check for it.  That’s no easy task, but I now feel that I have some clarity.

Our conscious paths are deep and profound.  They happen at the level of the mythic and affect our lives in meaningful ways.  But when we have to use our minds to explain it, sometimes people aren’t able to relate.  We need a better way of talking about what we do.  There is a method that I’ve discovered to bridge the non-linear, sensing, energetic path with that of the linear, logical, rational way that our mind likes to comprehend things.  Here’s the key – it needs to be specific and individual to YOU.  We all know the importance of “making our own medicine” and utilizing our own unique gifts in the work that we do for others.  The same is also true for how we talk about what we do.

How I describe what I do should be different from how you describe it.  My particular challenges, awakenings, and life experiences are unique to me, as yours are to you.  Herein lies the gems that are waiting to be discovered.  These are the access points into the conversation with others.   What I mean is that you have to first look within at your own healing and success journey, see the most meaningful ways of how your path has helped you, and then talk to others from THAT PLACE.

As an example, a client of mine has been struggling with how to attract veterans with post traumatic stress disorder.  Even though he has never been in the military in this lifetime, I had him look at what experiences in his life mirror that of the veterans that he longs to be of service to.  When we discussed his lessons from being bullied at school earlier in life, he had the realization that veterans are warriors who do well with fighting their external battles, but when they enter their internal battle with PTSD, they are basically entering a gun fight with only their fists.  By positioning his healing work as helping them to have weapons to more successfully fight their internal battle with PTSD, he’s now speaking their language.

This is about reaching people where they actually are.  It’s speaking into their listening.  Not from your coach/healer/teacher place, but from a place where they can hear you best.

So here are some questions to ask yourself:

What’s the greatest truth that you’ve learned through your own experience?

What challenge has been your greatest teacher?

What have you discovered about yourself and about life by going through what you have?

What have been your most cherished accomplishments on your soul’s journey?

How can you use these as an access point into a meaningful conversation with others?

I believe that this is what Alberto Villoldo means when he says you take your greatest wounds and turn them into your greatest strengths.  Also, these are the areas where you can have the most compassion for other people as they go through a similar journey.  You understand how tough it is.  You understand the ins and outs of healing from those particular situations.

When you position yourself to people in this way, you not only attract those who you can most benefit, you do your best work in a way that comes easily to you. 

It’s not really a target market, but if it helps you to think of it in that way, then go ahead.  For me, it’s more about looking within, seeing the truths that you have discovered about your own life, and then positioning your services to others in that way.

A quote I heard a long time ago is that people don’t buy coaching or healings.  They buy situational problem-solving.  They have a specific situation in their life that is challenging and you happen to have some tools that can help them to solve their problem.  You only need to sell people themselves.  I don’t like using the word “sell” because that’s actually not what you’re doing at all.  You’re simply talking to people about what they’re facing and where they’re at.  You have a profound way of helping them so that they can attract what they’d like in their lives, whether it’s a more fulfilling relationship, a more satisfying career, or of simply being more at peace with themselves.

Are you a practitioner with not many clients?  It’s a shame to be sitting on all of the beautiful and powerful tools that you’ve developed while you could be actively walking the path of your soul’s calling, making a tremendous difference in the lives of others.  If you could use some additional tools in learning how to reposition yourself or your brand, then I hope you’ll check out my upcoming course, Creating a Thriving Client Practice with The Four Winds.   Be of greatest service to the world by more effectively reaching those that you are meant to touch.