9 Common Mistakes Therapists Make In Business. Learn how to stop making the most common mistakes therapists make in their holistic or spiritual business.
Being a therapist or healer and running your own business has its challenges. There are so many things you need to do, between juggling your clients, keeping up with social media, budgeting, and accounts. It is so easy to make mistakes in business. Especially when more and more therapy training is becoming fast-track and fails to cover the important aspects of running a holistic business. Like occupational health and safety issues, insurance and public indemnity, and other business legalities you never ever thought of.
That is why I have included some of the most common mistakes I have witnessed therapists make over the last 30 years.
9 Common Mistakes Therapists Make Today
- Insurance is an ethical requirement if you believe your client’s care should come first. Even when your only starting out and only have a few clients around a full-time job. It is important to have insurance to cover damage or harm to your business or your client’s health and safety. If you want to be professional make sure Indemnity Insurance is on ALL the therapies, classes, and training you practice. This type of insurance policy will normally help cover many eventualities including accidents at your or your client’s premises that you never ever consider may happen. I remember a candle exploding behind one of my client’s head, thank god she was fine. I know a reiki healer who had legal action taken against her after the client said she had permanently injured by the way she helped her off the massage bed. I worked in a counseling organisation where someone tried to sue the charity for falling on a step.
2. Never make claims that your treatment or therapy can cure specific ailments, this is illegal. You may say can help, can aid, can reduce, can support, can help eliminate. You can promote testimonials written by other people though.
3. Make sure all equipment and products are safe, updated, and electrically safe, and get yearly PAT testing. Check high-risk products like for example, the brand of the Hopi ear candles you are using that are up to safety standards.
4. Follow the National Occupational Health & Safety Standards regularly, check for any updated requirements.
5. Never Use Random Photos, Images You Don’t Own: Images you find on Facebook, Pinterest, or Google, these images usually belong to someone else and cannot be used for business use. You can now buy images very cost-effectively so don’t let that put you off. Visuals are a powerful part of marketing. Promotional marketing images used to be very expensive I had to pay £90 for a marketing image which now would only cost approx $1. I used to design websites for others and on 3 occasions I was served with legal action with a demand for £2000 over images they stated were royalty-free but weren’t. I had to legally fight these three separate cases which were extremely stressful and time-consuming. The only reason I managed not to forfeit the fine, was because I could prove 3rd party error and at the time of the legal threat I was very ill was on a low income, and had no assets.
36. Use Free PRS Music: If you play relaxation music in any of your sessions, classes, no matter if it is in your clients or your home you have to have a PRS License or only use royalty-free music. I know two fitness teachers who were served with a hefty fine because they were playing music in their fitness class without a license.
7. Make sure your Business Trading Name Is Legal: make sure your not using someone else’s business name or someone else’s trademark. It is illegal to name your business after a patented trademark.
8. Choose To Sell Only Quality Products: Choose wisely any products you sell or pass on to your clients. Many companies make bold claims in the herbal, supplement, and nutritional industries. Even when their products are not 100% safe for all clients, especially with clients with certain health conditions. I am always shocked at how many combination herbal remedies and supplements are classed as completely balanced, safe, and suitable for everybody, be very wary, these are simply heavy unethical sales tactics. Everyone has different body types, different allergies, different needs, different challenges so will respond differently.
9. Check Out The Training School’s Credentials: Before attending any training or certification don’t assume because you get a Certificate or Diploma when completing the course that your certificate will be by a certain body etc. Or that it actually is at the level you think the course is. Sadly today that are many training courses selling their courses as Diploma or Certificate level that are very basic introductory courses. Check with the training school that you will be able to get insurance. If will you be able to practice legally and safely? Will you get enough training to be competent? With so many fast-track training schools online that train people up in less than a few days in subjects that would normally take a therapist a year or two to train in. It is worth questioning the quality, standard, and recognition, compared to other similar training. It may be a lot cheapest but it’s no use if your actually not fully qualified, insured, experienced, or taught enough to practice safely and confidently.
Eileen Burns owner of Stress Coach Training originally known as The World of Health since 2000 now offers Business Mentorship for Therapists, Healers, and Coaches.
As someone who has studied holistic well-being in many disciplines for 25 years, 16 of those years self-employed she knows the many difficult challenges heart and spiritual-based business owners face.
Eileen brings with her a wealth of online marketing experience and passed down business knowledge from a family business of over 40 years.
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