How to Build a Successful Reiki Business
Home Study Business & Marketing Courses for Reiki Practitioners in the UK

Questions around marketing often come up from Reiki practitioners trying to build or establish a client base and make a success of their Reiki business. It’s The main challenge for anyone starting out as a Reiki professional, getting to a point of a stable inflow of new clients/ and or a stable regular client base. I would say it’s the main reason for failure in a Reiki practitioner's business, as it will tend to be the root cause of the lack of profit it causes, which results in a Reiki practitioner not succeeding as a Reiki practitioner professionally. They tend to pack it up and say there was not enough interest in Reiki and go and get another job never to return to Reiki practice professionally. Not making enough money comes from unsuccessful marketing efforts (or more precisely not finding enough of the right clients/ and or poor pricing decisions/ and or problems in selling effectively).

For most the aim of a Reiki business is modest, not many want to build an empire, for most it’s simply being able to earn a moderate, to reasonable income, building a stable business, that is ethically aligned, helping people, whilst enjoying professional Reiki practice, without poverty, crippling stress, or burning yourself out. I wrote this article alongside my articles ‘Why a Good Reiki Business Course is so Needed’ and ‘How to Build a Successful Reiki Practice’ to look into the need for business support for Reiki professionals.

Marketing is an interesting one, as not many people, become a Reiki practitioner for a love of marketing, or sales for that matter (in my marketing courses I consider the two, sides of the same coin if you like, as you need the two to be working well together). Marketing is not just a do ‘X’ and it will be OK. It's part art and experience, there is no one size fits all approach, and what method worked for one practitioner will not necessarily be a good idea for another practitioner. So, you can see the problem, as I commonly see practitioners looking to other practitioners for their method as a solution, so it tends to be a practitioner asking another practitioner what worked for them, then they go off and do that, then if that doesn’t provide long-lasting results, they ask another practitioner, and on it goes. Not very effective.

The biggest problem I see is Reiki practitioners focusing only on the end point of marketing, the method itself. This can be seen with the first question I often get, that being something like: “What do you do for marketing?” or “How do you find clients?” or “Do I need a website?” The focus is on the tool used, before any real evaluation of the task, so without much of a prior overall strategy or reason why that approach is being used at that time. My initial response is “It depends”. A tip to help you straight away would be to switch your start point of focus. What I mean is I encourage any practitioner to first better understand themselves and their clients before selecting a marketing method. Understand more deeply: who they wish to serve, the client’s needs, challenges, and preferences, what they need their business to achieve, understand their stage of business, own strengths, and passions, then start to select marketing methods that fit those criteria.

“The question as to which marketing method is a good idea is the last question to ask, rather than the first.”

Otherwise, what you tend to find is practitioners jumping from a variety of marketing approaches, doing many things in an average way. What I mean is the method of marketing doesn’t have much strategic thinking behind it, or consideration for your personality, skills, awareness of your clients, or where that fits into your overall approach and stage of business you are in. This tends to be an expensive use of time and financial resources, for not much lasting benefit. This also requires a lot of new time, effort, and money to build and sustain a business this way, it also keeps you actively doing a lot of marketing, more than you need to be doing, which is interesting as most practitioners prefer to be doing Reiki treatments with their time rather than marketing. A point to consider is that most Professional Reiki Practitioners also have a deadline- literally to make this work, so can rarely afford such waste, and most practitioners have limited starting resources to make this work anyway.

In addition to this, there are always some interesting intertwining blocks, or dynamics between our beliefs around marketing, sales, money, asking for money, our confidence, self-worth, and how that all fits together with a professional field where our motives are to help people who are usually in some kind of pain or distress and our desire to contribute to society, Reiki practitioners are rarely financially driven. This is such a big issue in itself that can derail a sound business, that I have in my Reiki Marketing course reframed words such as marketing and sales and offered my definitions for them to help you navigate these common issues. Marketing Reiki requires a different approach than mainstream business marketing ideas as for a start the motives and temperament of many practitioners do not sit that well with many marketing approaches. In addition, we are marketing a very non-tangible service, that has many limitations around what can be claimed of it.

I have been interested in this area for the last 20-plus years, actually not from a love of marketing, but more necessity because marketing and sales were not my natural habitat. I had to overcome the same challenges you are facing or would be as a Reiki practitioner. That’s why my business and marketing course series came into creation, to help practitioners navigate marketing swiftly and effectively. In addition to 20-plus years as a solo practitioner, teacher, and coach myself, I am a natural strategist and creative problem solver, so have been figuring out this problem around marketing as a Reiki practitioner for many years. The result of this effort has been the creation and development of firstly my ‘Building a Successful Reiki business’ business course then as this issue of marketing was such a challenging area for most Reiki practitioners and a pivotal part of their business success or failure, I then created my ‘Effective Marketing made Easy for Reiki Practitioners’ business course, to deep dive into this topic, which included me creating my 5- steps to finding the right pricing approach, among other useful parts with the marketing course for Reiki practitioners. Have a look at the business course series and see how it could help you.

How to Build a Successful Reiki Business
Home Study Business & Marketing Courses for Reiki Practitioners in the UK

I am mainly known nowadays for my work with Reiki, as a specialist in authentic Japanese Reiki. I am an experienced, Reiki teacher and practitioner with a proven track record of results. I offer Jikiden Reiki training courses, promoting authentic Japanese Reiki teachings. I am based in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, in the UK. I have a background in coaching and training in the areas of exercise coaching, holistic lifestyle, fitness, and performance coaching. I also have a BSc.(Hons) degree in Sport and Exercise Science, for more information visit: www.shaunmckeown.com

The information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article. Shaun Mckeown, disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article.