| The Imago of Business
I grew up fascinated by the linking of Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance. How about linking Imago with marketing and practice building. One is all about relationships, and the other might seem to be about money and our mailboxes stuffed with junk. But as I thought about Imago and our new Practice Builder program, I began to realize that they had a great deal in common.
When I joined Imago I heard that many therapists liked Imago, simply because it works! They had found that other therapeutic approaches were less successful. Some very special skills and approaches are needed in order to work successfully with couples. Couples can grow closer through attending a workshop, but they can often achieve far more through working on their relationship with an Imago therapist or relationship coach.
Building your practice can also require a special set of skills and some ongoing support. Couples imagine that relationships skills just come naturally. Likewise many of us don’t immediately recognize how much skill is required for successful marketing or how valuable it can be.
Imago is so much about good, strong, and open relationships, that it’s often tempting to not want to associate it too much with marketing. Isn’t marketing all about money, junk mail, unwanted phone calls, and manipulation? We want to be relationships people, not annoying people!
But it’s easy to miss that good marketing is all about relationships, too. The Successful Professionals program teaches a set of relationship tools, about connecting with referral sources, with groups in the community, and with people as they search the web. It’s all relationships, and like Imago, one of the key steps is often to put ourselves inside the head of potential clients.
We’re putting programs together now with our chosen partners, “Successful Professionals” because we believe they have the skills and understanding we need for members to grow their business. Their presentation at the Toronto Conference was well received, and many people joined their ongoing tele-class sessions. David McCann said simply “It’s a paradigm shift”, as he talked with enthusiasm about this work on a recent Workshop presenter’s collaborative call.
Our plans include another workshop on practice building at the Conference in October, in addition to a more formal roll-out of some new telephone coaching classes, and we are working on making them as affordable as we can.
If you support our mission, you may have a vision of a world in which most couples enjoy wonderful relationships, deepened through mirroring, validation, empathy, and the healing of childhood wounds. But to achieve this, it’s important to be able to reach out to encourage people to learn with us. Marketing and practice building are therefore an integral part of our Imago work together. |
