As EFT trainers, Alina Frank and I have instructed and mentored hundreds of EFT students as they progressed through the certification process in affiliation with EFTi accreditation. The curriculum is thorough, the practical experience is rigorous, and so is the feedback on sessions that demonstrates each student’s knowledge. This is as it should be. The result is quality EFT practitioners who have gained the skills needed and can feel confident in their abilities.
That being said, a skillful practitioner is not necessarily a skillful businessperson.
Individuals are exposed to tapping through a variety of experiences. They have often witnessed profound transformation and healings. Those events can be so powerful that the practitioner makes the choice to devote their lives to EFT and begin a new career, brimming with excitement and passion. If, however, they have no entrepreneurial skills or have never run a business or a private practice before, they can easily become overwhelmed by the need to wear multiple job-description hats.
Emotional Challenges
New practitioners may be novices in the technology and marketing skills that are so helpful in growing an EFT practice. There is an endless learning curve for understanding website creation and search engine optimization (SEO), blogging skills, social media marketing, and creating teleclass or online products. Emotional challenges often emerge ranging from anxiety-related issues to charging clients for the first time, to the fear of public speaking. Even the tongue-tying process of describing what you do when someone asks can be a challenge.
How Do You Explain EFT?
When someone asks what you do, what do you say? Do you offer something like “EFT is emotional acupuncture without needles,” which leaves them with that quizzical look? Do you do your best to describe acupoint stimulation as reducing amygdala hijacking only to have them say, “That’s great,” and then change the conversation topic?
I will offer a secret that makes this big question far easier to answer and much more likely to create new clients. It is what we tell our EFT business students from day one of their training. When you develop your business niche, your response will become simple and engaging.
Try this experiment
Ask the next 100 strangers you meet: “Do you know what EFT is?” Of course, the response will vary with the demographics of your community. While the recognition is growing by leaps and bounds, my experience is that under 10% will say yes. When someone asks my friend Jean what he does and he says he is a plumber, 100% nod their head in recognition. I would estimate that there are far fewer taxidermists than there are EFT practitioners, yet many more people will understand the former over the latter. So what is there to do?
Within the polite 20 seconds you get to respond to the question regarding what you do, you can try to explain or EFT or you can develop your practice niche and respond like this: “What do I do? I help women who have been recently divorced find their confidence and self-worth to create the relationship of their dreams!” Or “I help first-time authors who are stuck move quickly through their writer’s block to complete their dream book project!” Or “I’m a coach who works with individuals with dental fears get over their worry so they can feel excited about having healthy teeth again!”
A Good Client Fit
You may notice a few things about this. First, there is no need to explain “the EFT tool” from the get-go. If the person is a good client fit, he or she will truly be interested in a deeper conversation in which you can offer a more in-depth explanation as to how you would help them achieve that goal. Even if the individual is not an ideal client fit, he or she will more than likely think of someone who would be. When you respond to the question by saying that you do EFT, it is unlikely that your listener will think of someone who needs you.
Why Limit Yourself?
Now you might think, “Oh goodness, why would I want to limit my clients to a limited number of interested potential clients when I am just starting out? Shouldn’t I keep my practice open to everyone?” The irony is that by being a generalist to everyone you are a specialist to no one. It is likely to have your client calendar awfully quiet. Dental fears affect nearly 20% of the population, and in the United States that’s 68 million people. With divorce running around 50% in America … well, you do the math. As heartbreaking as it is, people take action when they are suffering. People will pay for services when they are hurting. That is the time when they search and ask for help.
The Benefits of Niching
This is where you come in. Developing your niche is the single most important skill I can teach a practitioner to implement in order to have a successful EFT practice.
You might think, “Do I really only want to work with people with dental fears?” The reality is that the issue that someone complains of is usually only the starting point. You may find yourself working with any number of different issues. In sessions, a client may clear a long-standing fear of dogs after being bitten as a child. That client works at an animal shelter and refers all her coworkers, none of whom have dental fears.
Finally, as the number of EFT practitioners grows and they are out there marketing themselves, you are going to need to stand out. Being an authority in a particular arena makes you the expert, and people want to find the expert to help them with what they are suffering from. Shouldn’t that be you?
Craig Weiner is an Accredited Certified EFT Master Trainer of Trainers.
Photo by youssef naddam on Unsplash
Marta says
Thank you for this. I was exactly in this situation “what do you do?” (or will be doing since I am still working for my cert) and I’d start with the needleless acupuncture… and people would look at me as if I was wacko… I understand now what you mean by specializing.