A therapist recently said to me, “I want to expand my practice, but I don’t want to be one of those therapists who is always promoting.”
He was caught in a paradox: the desire to grow his business and maintain its authenticity.
Most therapists and coaches don’t get into it because they’re entrepreneurs, bad at business, or self-promoting. We are good at supporting others and not ourselves. At the same time, we need a touch to get our business out there. If you don’t promote your genius, no one will know what you are doing. But your fears are valid: if you promote yourself too much, you will lose credibility. (Exhibit A: See my product placement below? It’s very intentional.)
Many therapists and coaches try to “solve” this paradox by treating it like a branding problem. Here’s what I heard:
-
“I just need the right platform.”
-
“I need to fix my posts.”
-
“I need to hire a marketer.”
However, they do not actually solve the underlying problem. The tension between your keep authenticity and getting yourself out there is a source of energy. If you act irrationally with it, you oscillate between: holding back and feeling invisible, pushing forward and feeling unreal, and pulling back and losing power
I felt that tension too. For years I struggled between playing small and then trying to play big and feeling like I wasn’t really me. The solution is not to throw more energy at it. It’s more subtle than that: you need to rethink your question and rethink your result.
What is the paradox anyway?
When I interviewed Marianne Lewis for her book Both/and thinking, I was struck by the parallels between his work with organizations and my work coaching therapists. He defines paradoxes as persistent, interrelated contradictions that cannot be resolved.
Consider this statement: I want to develop my work and stay true to how I show myself.
- Permanent → this tension will never go away
- Interdependent → both sides are important and interdependent
- The opposite → they pull you in different directions at the same time
Attempts to resolve this paradox can drain your energy and ruin your results. If you overdo authenticity, you’ll spend too much time trying to make everything perfect, and nothing will come of it. If you overdo the growth, you can lose your voice in the process.
You cannot remove one side without weakening the other. You need both. So ask yourself: are you too focused on authenticity at the expense of growth, or growth at the expense of authenticity?
If you work with this paradox and move within it instead of destroying it, you will have a different kind of energy. This is work.
Paradox audit
Grab a piece of paper, your phone, or walk and talk to a colleague.
1. Find the strain.
Where does this tension manifest itself for you?:
- avoid publication or distribution
- thinking about what to say
- long silences followed by bursts of vision
- it’s awkward to say anything that isn’t original
- excessive quoting from others
2. Name both sides of the paradox
Say it directly. Out loud: I want to grow my business and I want to stay authentic. Not one or the other. Both of them.
3. See the correlation
A paradox is not always something to be resolved; it can be something to work with: Your authenticity sustains your growth – and your advertising allows your authenticity to reach everyone. Without visibility, your work becomes small. Without authenticity, people will lose trust and so will you.
How do they reinforce each other for you?
4. Determine the energy consumption
In Smart move, I refer to three forms of mindless action: What story are you stuck on? What are you holding on to so tightly? And what are you afraid to feel?
When you’re building your practice, do you wait until something is “fully formed” before sharing? Avoid things that seem stimulating? Do you rely solely on word of mouth? Or do you post content that doesn’t look like you?
5. Enter paradox and design for both
You can create a system that allows for both authenticity and growth. Give yourself room to explore your voice by freewriting, imperfect posts, and even sharing random things like learning to ride a bike. Also, block out time for visibility, newsletters, posts, and learning tools AI can support your achievement.
Keep your voice and do your work out there. We need it.
6. Wise discomfort
To be visible, to be seen as real, creates discomfort, vulnerability, and perhaps criticism. As my book mentor, Jenny Nash, taught me, if you make people angry, you’re onto something, and you’re no longer hiding on either side of the paradox.
The job is to feel it and proceed with rational action.
If you do this paradox well, your growth will be less intense. Your voice will be clearer and less diluted. You begin to build something that truly reflects you. Don’t you want it?
