Harnessing The Power Of Your Mindset To Grow Your Practice With Martine Thomassen

IN THIS EPISODE WE COVER:
* The Key To Overcoming The Fear Of Putting Yourself Out There
* The Power Of The Subconscious Mind And How It Relates To The Actions We Take And The Actions We Avoid Taking
* Overcoming Limiting Beliefs Through A Daily Mindset Practice
* Simple Tools To Stay On Track With Your Goals During Difficult Seasons
* How To Help Patients/Clients When Your Schedule Is Already Full

What is The Health & Wellness Practitioners Podcast?

Welcome to The Health & Wellness Practitioners Podcast! Dr. Danielle and other guest experts talk about everything from getting your practice started, developing your clinical skills, growing your practice YOUR way, and dealing with the real stuff life burnout and work/life balance. Whether you’ve been practicing for decades or just started your journey, you’ll find something here for you!

HARNESSING THE POWER OF YOUR MINDSET TO GROW YOUR PRACTICE WITH MARTINE THOMASSEN

DR. DANIELLE: Hello everyone. Welcome to the business of being well! I have a new guest to chat with you today and her name is Martine Thomassen. She currently lives in Norway, was born in Norway, lived in Australia for a while and lives in Norway again. So you'll hear that in her voice, Martine, if you'll go ahead and introduce yourself and share a bit about who you are and what you do. We'll just dive into the conversation from there.

MEET MARTINE

MARTINE: So yeah, I'm an entrepreneur coach and being an entrepreneur has been a fascination of mine since I was 14 years old. So when I went to the university, I decided to do a bachelor of commerce with a triple degree in marketing management and entrepreneurship and innovation, because I was so drawn to that at an early age. And I did that in Australia. Once I graduated, I went on to do some competitions within entrepreneurship. It's a thing called Startup Weekend. I think it's a global thing now. Uh, but they hosted locally and my team actually won back in 2012 and I did another and we came third. So I've been playing around in the entrepreneurial area for a while. Then moving back to Norway, I did my master's degree in digital marketing and I have all these interests. I think that is true for most entrepreneurs as well. We like to think outside of the box and some people also have a difficulty in settling on that one core thing.But basically I found my thing in coaching where I could really bring everything together from both the marketing aspect to the entrepreneurial through the more holistic that I'm so into as opposed to more on a hobby basis. I have been, you know, like just diving in pretty much all of my spare hours into research and personal development and trauma work and everything psychology. So really bringing that all together with the coaching. So, that was sort of how all of the loose ends came together for me.

DR. DANIELLE: Yeah. I have a similar story. I had a lot of interest and I kind of just kept putting one foot forward, one foot in front of the other and all of those interests, sort of blended into the work that I do now. So you mentioned that you have a master's degree in digital marketing. I'm sure, I can only imagine really, that your studies in digital marketing in a university setting were very tactical, like do this, do this, do this, and then some theory added it in. But what I find interesting about this is that people can learn those tactical things. They can learn the strategies and still not do them.

THE KEY TO OVERCOMING THE FEAR OF PUTTING YOURSELF OUT THERE

MARTINE: Exactly. That's something that I'm really diving into now and I'm realizing more and more and more with the clients that I take on that it's not actually the marketing and the strategy. Because you can just jump on Google or on YouTube and learn all of the things. It's freely available with all of the information. But what I found was that it's the psychological aspects that trips people up. They're afraid of putting themselves out there. They’re afraid of being judged. There's already so many people out there doing what I do, so there's not really any space for me. I came late to the party, that train has passed. Or it might even be trauma informed. So people get really triggered when thinking of putting themselves out there so they go into a freeze pattern. So something that they could talk about all day, all night with friends, they're now like lost for words and they don't know what to share because they're just all frozen up. That's something that I'm actually developing right now, I’m considering writing a book about it.

“...it's not actually the marketing and the strategy…it's the psychological aspects that trips people up.”

DR. DANIELLE: When I was still offering one-to-one coaching, I had one client in particular, I think if she hears this, she'll know that I'm talking about her. I wanna be careful to not give identifying information, but we worked together for probably about two years and she really wanted to grow her practice, she wanted to make more money, and yet she was at this place that a lot of service based providers get to where it's really hard for them to see anymore. It's hard for them to grow their business. It's hard for them to make more money because it's hard for them to see more patients or clients because their schedule is so full. And they're feeling really overwhelmed and pulled in all the different directions of being the care provider, being the business owner, also taking care of their family and then also taking care of themselves and trying to find the balance of all those things. It's a very hard phase of business. Anyway, there were things that she knew that she could do and she initially came to me for strategy and we would talk about the strategy and the action steps and then she would not do them. Part of it was because she really struggled to make the time to do those things that she was already feeling afraid to do. But it was mostly because she was feeling so afraid to do those things. And it was like, no matter what I did as her coach for almost two years, no matter what I did, she didn't do those things.

MARTINE: Yeah.

DR. DANIELLE: It was a very deep learning experience for me as a facilitator, as a coach, because it was one of the first times that I had worked with someone who had the pattern of the fear of visibility. It was so strong that no matter what I sent to her, no matter how much I encouraged her, no matter how many times I helped her create positive affirmations and you know, change her fear based thoughts. She still didn't do the things.

MARTINE: Yeah. And it depends how deep the trauma goes as well. Like some people actually need to see a therapist, for example, working with a somatic therapist because a lot of trauma sits in the body and there's a really great book called The Body Keeps The Score.

DR. DANIELLE: I'm actually reading that right now. I just started it really.

MARTINE: Yeah. Yeah. So I haven't gone all the way through myself either. It’s a long book and it's a lot of things to digest. So it's like pick up now and then digest for a bit and then pick up again later. So that might be beneficial to some in correlation with working with a coach, because it really goes so deep. I'm also certified in a modality for inner child work. So I've worked with a lot of people who’ve had deep trauma experiences. I think that's one of the edges that I have with my coaching is that when my clients sign up for a longer program, they get one session where we really go deep into that. It's more like a visualization process because our subconscious speaks in feelings and visions, rather than words, because words are more conscious and it's processed on a different level of your, of your mind. It could be compared to hypnosis, I suppose, but it's more of an interactive thing. But I want to mention too, in terms of when people don't dare to put themselves out there, or when they just never get themselves to do it, it's because they're gaining something from not doing it. They’re gaining their safety. They stay within the confines of what they know. A lot of people would call this self sabotage, but I actually have a pretty different view on it because the way I see it is that the person that is, let's call it the inner critic, the one that is putting you down and telling you, I don't know how to do this and who am I, that's actually a really effective strategy from the part of yourself that trying to keep you safe. So it is just going to pour all of these negative thoughts and things over you so that you stay safe. So it's actually a part of you trying to keep you safe. It's actually not self-sabotage, it's a self preserving mechanism.

DR. DANIELLE: That's such an interesting way to look at it because I talk about both of those things self-sabotage and self protection, and that our nervous system is designed to protect us from things that feel like threats or danger. I don't think that I've really had that perspective that those are two opposite things and yet they can sometimes show up in the same scenario and just kind of isolating them if you can, if you can, first of all, isolate them and just knowing how to facilitate someone through either or both of those experiences.

MARTINE: Exactly. Because just think about how we speak. We can say things like, one part of me really wants to get on social media because I feel like I have so much to share with people I've got so much value to share, but then you have this other part of you that's saying like, oh, but I don't know how to, and I'm probably really bad at it. You're really talking yourself down. And then those are just two parts of yourself that are having different perspectives. So if you can talk to both of them, like if you can really sink to this one, being the scared one, sorry, I speak a lot with my hands. I hope people that are listening to the podcast can follow. So the person on the left is really scared and if we really talk to that person or that part of ourselves and don't judge it and come from very validating space, then we can find some real good gems and just like, okay, well, I hate to put my face out there, but I'll be comfortable in a podcast. Okay, great. Let's start with that. Or, I'm dead scared to do things alone. Okay. Well maybe in a conversation with someone else would be better and just take one baby step step at a time and really validate that you're having those feelings for a reason. All feelings are valid. We just want to sort of bridge the gap between the two extremes.

“All feelings are valid. We just want to sort of bridge the gap between the two extremes.”

DR. DANIELLE: There is a, Hmm, I don't know, I'll call this a coaching strategy, that from my understanding originated from Landmark. I don't know if you're familiar with Landmark. I haven't gone through training at Landmark but I've been coached by several people who have gone through Landmark training. I didn't know that this was even a thing until after I started to practice this myself. You and I have talked about this before that, in this process of growth, whether it's personal growth or business growth, entrepreneurial growth, um, that in order to have different results that we don't have right now, meaning more money, um, a bigger house, like paying off your student loan debt, whatever it might be that you have to become someone different. Well, one of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation with you is because I see so many people asking, well, how do I do that? How do I do this? How do I get that? How do I have that? And I'm like, well, actually you have to start first by knowing who it is that you have to become to get that or who it is you have to become to do the things that then like leads you to the reality, the results, the having. Yeah. Um, so this is all related for someone that's listening and, and they're like, this feels like a really high level coaching type of concept. Identifying how you identify yourself, changing how you look at yourself, changing how you think about yourself is one of the keys to overcoming that fear of visibility.

“Identifying how you identify yourself, changing how you look at yourself, changing how you think about yourself is one of the keys to overcoming that fear of visibility.”

MARTINE: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing. I saw a quote at once saying, if you always do the same shit that you're always done, you're going to still get the same shit that you always got. It's so spot on. It really starts with our mindset. Another coach one said, I can't remember her name at the moment, but she said, don't get stuck in the, how greed, like she calls it, how greed, like you're greedy for all the how, just tell me how. The fascinating thing about that is that only a student mindset would be in the how. A leader's mindset or call it successful person's mindset would be like, it wouldn't seek out externally, like how do other people do it? How, how can I do it?How can I get it explained by others? They ask themselves more strategic questions such as, how is it already true that I can have this? How is it already true that I am creating this? How is it already true that I have everything that I need. That's sort of part of the belief bridging that I mentioned for you as well. You have a limiting belief at the moment and you have this other belief that you'd rather have, and the way that you bridge those two is to ask yourself the question, how is it already true? Because then your brain goes out on a hunt to find these answers within yourself, rather than always just asking, but how, but how, but how, and thinking that if you got that magic pill, everything will get solved for you.
“You have a limiting belief at the moment and you have this other belief that you'd rather have, and the way that you bridge those two is to ask yourself the question, how is it already true?”

OVERCOMING LIMITING BELIEFS

DR. DANIELLE: Can you give an example of a limiting belief and the antithesis or the opposite of a limiting belief in, in this conversation? Like when someone is, especially when they're looking for the how, how do I grow my business? How do I make more money? How do I get more clients, whatever it might be, right. And they're skipping, they probably don't even know., they're not even aware that in order for the how to become apparent to you, you have to first go through these steps. You have to look at what's already true.

MARTINE: So I just first want to give them a little insight as to how to change their angle of looking at this. That is why when we look at ourselves, we tend to close off because it's just little me or, you know, like we have put all these restrictions on ourselves. But if we ask ourselves if there's something/someone that we look up to and we say, okay, so what would Danielle do? Because they see you as a very successful person. All of a sudden you open up your mind because it's not about you anymore. All of a sudden, all of these amazing answers come, oh, well, she will probably reach out to this magazine, she would probably just pitch to that podcast. And all of a sudden you just expand your mind because it's not about you and it's not so scary. So that's one way. To come back to the example around growing a business. So for example, if we're stuck in, I don't know how to build a business, then, your desired belief might be, I run a successful business. And then you could ask yourself, how is it already true that I'm running a successful business? How can I, okay, let's define a successful business. A successful business means that I have X amount of clients or that I have X amount of hours of freedom at the moment, or I live in a beautiful house, I have an assistant, I have an operating calendar. If you have to start, just start small. Like,I have all the education I need, I have a network that I can talk to, and just really play with it. I mean, if you must take a glass of red wine and invite some friends over and just come up with the craziest ideas as to why you're already successful.

DR. DANIELLE: I actually do this every day.

MARTINE: Awesome.

DR. DANIELLE: And I think that is a very big part of how I've been able to grow a business to multiple six figures and then tear it all down and rebuild it to multiple six figures in like, mm, six months time.

MARTINE: Yeah.

DR. DANIELLE: Um, because I do this every day. Yeah.

MARTINE: You got that mindset. So if you have that mindset, you can redo it over and over again because you know the process of doing it. You've done it before. So if you had to tear it down, you would know sort of what would go into it. And you have a self concept that you can do it because you have evidence already as well.

STAYING ON TRACK DURING DIFFICULT SEASONS

DR. DANIELLE: Well, I mean, it sounds easy now that right at the time and there are still many, many days and many times throughout many days that I'm like, is this, am I doing the right thing? Like, can I, do I have what it takes? Oh, now I'm competing against this person or that person, wait, am I competing against that person? Is that really true? There's so many stories and so much doubt and so many limiting beliefs that go through my head every day that without having this practice every day, I would just be spiraling around in all that self-doubt. I have spent a lot of time and money and energy in my own coaching, whether it was one to one coaching or masterminds or group coaching or courses or programs over the last seven years and people often ask me, how did you learn to build an online business? And I'm like, well, I spent a hundred thousand dollars on all these different programs, all these different people. And here's, here's the list. It's like, you know, a full sheet of like 20 lines. So if you wanna go do that, awesome or you can go do that. Or you can just start asking yourself every day, who is it that you need to be to have what it is you want to have? But, it also means you've gotta be clear on what you wanna have and a lot of people are not clear on that. So, I guess that's really the first step. What are your thoughts? Do you need to be clear on what you want the outcomes to be? Do you need to have clarity on a revenue goal? Do you need to have clarity on why you want to reach that revenue goal? What are you gonna do with that money? How is it gonna change the world? How's it gonna change your family?

MARTINE: Yeah. Yeah. I think that is a really important proponent. Establishing your why will get you through the hard times. Another thing that you can do to get yourself through the hard or tough or challenging times would be to read customer testimonials. Knowing that this is valuable work so you get yourself back on the horse that way. I do think that sometimes goals can be overwhelming to people if they don't do it correctly. So something that is really fun to do is to write down a list of all the things that you would ideally achieve within one year, three years and five years, and you just put that list to the side and then you have smaller, more incremental goal. Iit can be, simply having more fun with marketing that has been super effective for myself because it takes the pressure off of having to perform all the time. But a natural consequence of having more fun with marketing is that you do more of it and your energy attracts more people that enjoy watching your content. You could also be more playful with things and not be a little bit more flowy with it and not necessarily so masculine about it, if that makes sense. So I think mixing it up is a good way to trial and learn.

HOW TO HELP CLIENTS/PATIENTS WHEN YOUR SCHEDULE IS ALREADY FULL

DR. DANIELLE: Awesome. Okay. So, imagine that there's a person that's listening to this podcast right now. There's probably about, I don't know, a few hundred of them that'll fit this description. So let me just add the disclaimer, if anyone that's listening to this thinks I'm talking about you, well, maybe I am describing you, but I'm also talking about hundreds of other, possibly thousands of other people who are experiencing the same thing that you're experiencing. So imagine that there's a person who has been running their practice for like a decade 12, 14 years already and that person has a wait list. People are calling every day to try to get in, to see this practitioner and there's no room in her schedule to get people in for, you know, sometimes two, three weeks or longer, but people are hurting and that's why they're calling. She feels incredibly guilty that she cannot get these people in sooner. She wants to make more money. She wants to have more time, freedom. She is constantly tired. Her body always hurts from the work that she does because it's so physical and she doesn't really get to spend the time that she wants to with her family much less work on her own health. What do you wanna share with her right now?

MARTINE: Well, the fact that you have that many customers reaching out to you that you can't even cover is quite a basic thing in business, it's called the supply and demand access. When you have such demand and you only have so many hours, it makes sense to raise your prices. Some people might argue that, you know, uh, yeah, but I wanna help everyone. Yes, but those people can be referred to other practitioners that might be really great as well, but those people just haven't tried going to them yet. So they might really like them. But we don't have to be martyrs and throw ourselves under the bus and not focus on our own health in order to keep prices slow. You would show up better for each person by increasing your price and that would also allow you to have more time freedom. Another thing that you could do if you wanted to, was to create an online program that was more preventative. It could be certain exercises for this problem and certain for that program. So she might get less clients, but each of them pay more and the clients that can't afford coming to her still get the great exercises at a lower price and the chiropractor or practitioner gets to share value, but also gets to be a human being enjoying her life as well.

DR. DANIELLE: Yeah. Yeah. Just this week already. It's only Wednesday right now as you and I are talking, but just this week already, I've had, I don't know, probably five conversations on zoom with individuals who are the person that I just described. They feel like they have to be available, they have to be cheap and affordable, they have to be available all the time for people in general, because they know that people are hurting and they want to not be. They make it their job to save everybody. Meanwhile, they're sinking, like their own boat is sinking.
MARTINE: Yeah.

DR. DANIELLE: So I'm really glad that you said that, cause this is exactly what I suggest people do. Increase your fees. If your practice has a waitlist and you can't get people in, as soon as they wanna be seen and you're overwhelmed, increase your fees. You can hire another practitioner and you can train that person to do exactly what you do and you're gonna probably need to look for that person for six to 18 months. In the meantime, if you increase your fees, it's going to make things much more simple for you. Everyone's afraid to do it though. They're always afraid.

MARTINE: Yeah. And then they're like, oh, I'm so glad I did that.

DR. DANIELLE: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that comes back to what they're thinking, what they're thinking about the consequences or maybe I'll lose all my clients. It’s like if people hurt and they know that you're good, they place a high value on getting you to fix it for them. Some might fall off, some might not afford it, but it’s not our job to provide for everyone. It sounds like there's a huge boundary issue here as well for the practitioners to work on self worth and boundaries because if they're sacrificing their own health, that means that they're sacrificing the quality of their family life and they're also teaching their children to not have boundaries. That's most likely not what they want for their children; to run that same race that they did.

DR. DANIELLE: Yes, absolutely. Okay. So tell me a bit more before we wrap up what you offer, how you work with people.

MARTINE: Yeah. So I work one to one and I want to offer it for your audience that if they have not tried a coach before, or if they have, but if they want to contact me, then I'm more than happy to give them one free hour of coaching just to help them out. Just let me know that you've heard me on this podcast. What I do is when I first start out working with people I have sort of an intake where I look at all of the different things for their business and also a little bit about their private life as well basically just to cover how they think, because most of the time how we do something is how we do everything and our mindset sort of seeps throughout how we run our business as well.
So we're just mentioning that might be something that is both in their private life and in their business, and might have to be angled or looked at both places in order to be really effective. So we have a really big intake and then from that I can see the patterns emerge and then we know exactly what to work on in order to get the goals that they would most ideally like to have and create a roadmap for that. Then I work with them for a certain amount of time and we always go through their wins. So really focusing on celebrating and learning to do that because I think as women most of the time we just don't spend enough time celebrating ourselves. So that's a huge proponent as well. So yeah, basically just helping service based entrepreneurs to reach their goals in a holistic way and helping them out with effective marketing from a more holistic perspective.

“our mindset seeps throughout how we run our business as well.”

DR. DANIELLE: Awesome. Okay. Someone would like to take you up on that offer for an hour of coaching with you. Where's the place for them to go to find that?

MARTINE: The easiest way is just to go on Instagram. My handle is @martinethomassencoaching. Just send me a direct message and I'll be happy to connect with you.

DR. DANIELLE: Awesome. Martine, thank you so much for everything that you've shared today and for having this conversation, because everything that we've talked about is so applicable for our audience, even if they don't quite know it yet. Hopefully we can share this information with more people before they find themselves overwhelmed and burned out. Unfortunately that's not the case and most times people don't find my podcast or find my community, my Facebook group until they are really struggling with feeling burned out.

MARTINE: Yeah, and that's a thing, it seems that we have to hit rock bottom before we realize we need to ask for help or do something. So, I really hope we can spread this far and wide and just get people to put on the brakes before they hit the wall.

DR. DANIELLE: Yeah. Me too. Thank you again so much.

MARTINE: Thank you.

RESOURCES AND LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
* Find Marine on IG @martinethomassencoaching
* Sign up for a free 1 hour coaching session with Martine by sending her a direct message on instagram @martinethomassencoaching