92 | Revenue Down in Your Practice? Practical Steps for Solo Practitioners

0:00 Hi there. Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I'm an herbalist and nutritionist, and in this podcast, I share little tips and tidbits that might be helpful for other practitioners. Today, I want to expand on something I talked about in my practitioner newsletter last week. In the newsletter, I talked a little bit about how I'm connected with a lot of different people who own small businesses, solopreneurs, if you want to use that word, in different fields, not just herbs and nutrition, but consulting, coaching, all sorts of related things. And pretty much everyone I know, whether they have an in-person brick-and-mortar business or an online business, almost everybody I know has a downturn in expected revenue this year. It is a strange time.

0:49 People are feeling stressed economically. Prices are up. Folks feel insecure about their job, et cetera, et cetera. There's lots of reasons for that. In the newsletter, I mentioned how, regardless of our current economic circumstances, it is the natural flow of things to have ups and downs in business. We don't generally just grow and grow and grow every single year, going 20%, 30%, 50%, etc. In our revenue. That's not normal for most businesses. It is normal and okay to have some years that are up and some years that are down. And just because you're having a down year does not mean necessarily that the following year will be even worse and that you're on this rapid downturn to eventually flatlining and having to close down your business.

1:38 Okay, so that was the newsletter. If, by the way, you don't already get my practitioner newsletter, I think you might like it. You can sign up at camillefreeman.com slash newsletter. And I send that out most Thursdays, pretty much every Thursday. It has like a little, a short little essay message for me, as well as some recommended resources and a note about any upcoming programs that I have. So anyway, sign up for that if you're not already on it. What I wanted to expand upon today is, all right, so we have years, sometimes multiple years in a row where the business is growing. We're making about the same or maybe more money than the year before. And it's easy sometimes in those years to be like, okay, I know what's working.

2:21 Sometimes you can even coast and you're like, wait, great. Business is up. People are finding me. I have plenty of clients. Things are okay. I want to talk today about what do you do in the down years? When you're like, wow, okay, we're in month 10. I'm recording this in October of 2025. And you're looking at your numbers and you're like, wow, I am down 30%. I talked to somebody the other day who's down 60% based on last year's numbers. So what do we do? What are the strategies? I said before, all right, some years are up, some years are down. But that doesn't mean we just say, oh, okay, it's a down year, never mind, I guess I'm just not making enough money this year. There are things that you can do. You need to have a different strategy, a different tactic, if your numbers are down substantially, and it's affecting your ability to continue doing this work, to pay yourself, to pay your bills, all of these things.

3:16 So what do we do? Number one. You are going to put in place the basics. The basics are, you need a general marketing plan. How are you going to meet new people? How are you going to stay connected to those people? Are you inviting the people that you're connected to, to come and work with you? And are you doing the best job that you possibly can with your current clients? Solidify all of those things. If you're like, no, Camille, I do not have any kind of marketing plan. I've fallen off the wagon when it comes to meeting new people or connecting with people. You know, I haven't posted on social media in forever. I sent a newsletter once this year, whatever it is.

3:56 Okay, now is the time to be like, I got to get back. I got to get back on track here. Let me just put into place the things that I have been doing that might be working. Now, let's say you have a marketing plan, you're doing the marketing plan, but it's not working the way it used to work, or maybe it never worked, who knows? What you do then is you don't say like, oh, oh, well, I guess I'm just not good at this, and I'll just keep doing it until I drive my business into the ground. No, that's also not what we do. What we do is we say, oh, okay, the plan that I have either isn't working or I need some support to make it work. And you're not just automatically supposed to know what that is. Nobody is born a marketing genius who already knows exactly what's going to work and what's not going to work.

4:43 You're not expected to already know. But what you are expected to do, if you want to carry on, especially during hard years or years where there's a downturn, what you are expected to do is to say, hmm, okay, I'm missing something, and to learn how to do it. Seek out support. Okay, so if you're like, wow, I don't actually know what I'm going to do to connect with the people who have already signed up to say, oh, you know, let me follow you on social media, or let me sign up for your newsletter. You know, like, I'm stuck. I don't really know what to do. Great. Number one thing to do is look through any kind of resources that you already have access to.

5:25 Maybe you have purchased classes or signed up for freebies or bought some great book on one of these topics in the past, and then you never really got around to reading it or doing it. This is your moment because now you need help. So pick something that you have access to and try it out. There's tons of resources in the library, online. Ask some of your friends and colleagues, hey, I'm a little bit stuck with my newsletter. Do you know any resources that helped you? Side note, I wrote a whole book about newsletters called Write Better Newsletters, which you absolutely could use if you're stuck here. But my point is, if you are stuck somewhere, ask around and see what resources people recommend.

6:07 Is there a course that a bunch of people say, that really changed everything for me? Is there a specific person that sends out a really great newsletter explaining how to do the thing that you're stuck on doing? Tap into your community, see what's working for people. We're not helpless, but we do have to try to learn and grow and expand if we're stuck somewhere. All right, so there we go. Step number one, identify where you might need some help. Step number two, see what resources you already have squirreled away somewhere in your computer or on your bookshelf or wherever it is, and actually do them.

6:49 Step number three, if you don't have any resources or the ones you have don't seem like a good fit, ask your community and see what works for other people. I promise you there are tons of free, low-cost resources for any of these things. You don't need a multi-thousand-dollar course. See what's worked for other people, see what they found helpful, and then try some of these things. What we don't want to do is get into this whole scenario of like, well, I've tried nothing and I'm fresh out of ideas. We want to be in a place where you're like, all right, things are hard. That is a call to grow as a practitioner. That is a call to do something differently, to reach out and renegotiate how you are navigating your business.

7:35 And it's very similar in some ways to health concerns we want to go to the basics you know i always tell people if they come into my practice or actually sometimes i have friends or colleagues connections and other ways we're like oh you know camille i'm having whatever the symptoms of xyz are there any supplements or herbs that you might recommend and i'm like well. One of the first things that I recommend is you need to make sure that you're putting your body to bed and going to sleep and not staring at your phone all night. You need to be moving your body in ways that feel good and that you're not sitting around all day or standing in one place all day.

8:18 We need the foundations of health in place. That is step number one before you pay any practitioner, unless you need to pay for help and accountability doing those things, which some people do, which is wonderful. I love doing that kind of work. But the point I'm making here is foundations have to be in place before you go getting fancy and being like, I want to do all these fancy labs and take these XYZ supplements. Let's make sure that the food you're putting in your body is working for your system. Let's make sure the person is getting enough sleep. Let's make sure your stress is managed to the extent that's possible. Let's make sure you have some rhythm. All of these basics need to be in place. The same exact thing is true for your marketing.

8:59 Do not try to get fancy if you don't have these basics in place you are you have a plan for meeting new people it is working you are meeting new people they're signing up to stay in your newsletter or stay in your social media once they're there you're connecting with them you're sending out useful things you're staying in touch and you're showing up and you're being visible and then you're periodically inviting people to work with you. Once you do get a client, you're doing a really, really good job with them. You're making the experience great so that they're coming back and perhaps they're telling other people. You're building your role in the community. Make sure those things are in place before you try getting fancy.

9:42 And reach out for help if you need it. Okay, I hope this was helpful. It is hard. It's hard to be in business when things are slow, when there's a downturn, when it was okay, and now it's not really okay. But remember, we're not just giving up. We're not just saying like, well, I guess I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm not cut out for this. That's not the conversation. You may need to stop. You may need to get another job. That's okay. Sometimes we do what we need to do to get through a downturn. But you do have the capacity to learn new things. You're probably going to have to try new things. Some of them will work. Some of them won't work. That's part of the process. We don't want to just get stuck saying it is how it is. The economy's bad. And therefore, I'm going out of business.

10:23 All right. Hopefully that was helpful. If you have questions about this, I'd really love to hear them. Or if you want to talk about your specific situation, maybe send me a short summary. And I'll see if I can help in our next podcast episode. Okay. Have a lovely rest of your day. And I will talk to you very soon.