This week I was signing a birthday card for my office mate, Jory. I simply adore Jory. In her card, I wrote “I hope 2007 is your best year ever!”

I tend to write that sentiment in most cards I sign and it got me to thinking…

What will it take for you to make this your best year ever?

The best way to approach this is to ask yourself:

What were my biggest successes and wins from last year? And what can I learn from those successes that will help me this year?

Let’s talk about your practice.

What worked well last year? What opportunities did you take advantage of? What personal connections did you make?

Once you know what they are, take a look at how can you leverage those to make 2007 even better than 2006.

I’d like to share with you some of our successes and wins of 2006. My hope is that you will take away something from this – new thoughts or ideas – that you can implement in your own business. I offer this below in the “Moral of the story” notes.

You are invited to share your practice building successes at: http://buildyourtherapypractice.com/casey/archives/43/#postcomment. We’d love to celebrate with you!

Here are 4 of our Be A Wealthy Therapist.com successes in 2006.

1) I reconnected with my vision – to show therapists they can have a meaningful practice and make a good living doing it. As I reconnected with this vision, I recognized that not everyone could afford individual practice-building coaching.

This led to the development of the Exclusive Members Program. Over 400 people have spend time in this program so far and are learning how to attract cash-paying clients. I am very proud of this community of motivated, forward-thinking therapists who aren’t going to let people tell them they can’t make a good living in private practice.

Moral of the Story: Your business will grow in direct proportion to how focused you are on your mission. Know your ideal clients. Figure out how you can best serve them. Then act!

2) We created a “free Cd” “Marketing 101 for therapists” and “10 Myths of Building A Successful Private Practice.” While the CDs were free, we did charge $4.95 for shipping and handling. We started this in the middle of the year and have had nearly 700 orders so far. The people who purchased the CD got a chance to “taste” what we recommend. They had the opportunity to decide if they liked us and trusted us. And many of them have gone on to purchase Exclusive Memberships, Self Study Courses and individual coaching packages.

Moral of the Story: People usually need to get a “taste” of your style and outlook on things before they spend a lot of money with you. Make it easy on them. Give something away free or for very low cost. Then keep in touch with them on a regular basis so yours is the name they remember.

3) Bob and I joined with Dr. Ellyn Bader and Dr. Pete Pearson of the Couples Institute in Menlo Park, CA to offer a very unique teleseminar titled “Why Smart, Savvy Therapists Don’t Implement Effective Marketing Strategies Easily and Effectively.”

This teleseminar was simply amazing. We had over 90 people register for the teleseminar and others have purchased the transcript and replay. In the second part of the teleseminar, Pete took us through an experiential exercise to reduce our fears of marketing. Attendees reported “This call changed my life.”

How did we come up with the idea to offer this program? We listened. We listened to the needs of our ideal clients. We saw that many were learning marketing skills but were stuck implementing them. We wanted to show them a “way out”.

Moral of the Story: Know your niche. Know your ideal client. Understand their problem and show them there is hope and help.

4) We increased our use of technology as a practice building strategy.

This year we started a blog where therapists can comment on any article I have written. You can visit here: http:/www.BuildYourTherapyPractice.com/casey/

We’ve had some great conversations with our subscribers there. We added audio to our website and video to the Exclusive Members program. We employed “pay-per-click” advertising with Google for our Exclusive Members Program and our Self Study Course. This increased our sales for the Self Study course alone by 62%.

Moral of the Story: More and more consumers are going to the internet to find service providers. They want to get a sense of who you are and if you understand them before they pickup the phone to call for an appointment. If you wish to attract those clients, you will need to understand how to use technology to better market your practice.

In summary – I encourage you to look at your successes in 2006. See what made it a good year. Then capitalize on those strategies and opportunities in order to have an even better 2007. I wish you continued blessings and success.

Happy practice-building!

P.S. If you have been thinking of joining the Exclusive Members program but haven’t done so yet, you may wish to consider it now. There will be some exciting changes coming March 1 and you’ll want to get in on them early! For information about the Exclusive Members program, please visit: http://buildyourtherapypractice.com