HIP Monthly Business Update #2

There’s something beautifully honest about sitting down with a fellow practitioner and just… talking. No polished presentations, no carefully curated highlights – just two women building their holistic practices from the ground up, sharing the real stuff that happens between the Instagram posts.

That’s exactly what Kim and I do in our monthly check-ins. We’re both holistic intuitive practitioners who graduated from the same program, and we’ve committed to these raw, unfiltered conversations about our business journeys. Why? Because the healing world needs more transparency about what it actually looks like to build a practice that serves both your soul and your bank account.

This month’s conversation was particularly rich – Kim had some major breakthroughs to celebrate, I had some deep inner shifts to process, and we ended with a powerful healing demonstration that left us both a little teary-eyed. Here’s what unfolded.

Kim’s Breakthrough Month: The Bamboo Plant Effect

When Organic Growth Actually Works

Kim started our call with news that made me genuinely excited for her: her Facebook following had grown from 21 to 96 followers in just four weeks. And here’s the kicker – it was all organic.

“Does everybody that follows turn into a client? No, not necessarily,” Kim shared with characteristic honesty, “but I have to remind myself it’s still getting the message out there. I believe that the content I’m putting out there is ministering to people and serving people and helping their hearts and minds be refreshed and renewed.”

This is what authentic marketing looks like in the healing space. Kim posts daily on Facebook and Instagram, weekly on LinkedIn, and focuses on one day per week for content creation so the rest of her time can go to clients and networking. No fancy funnels, no aggressive sales tactics – just consistent, heart-centered showing up.

From First Client to Repeat Clients

What struck me most was how casually Kim mentioned having “a few more clients” since our last call. When I pressed her on this (because hello, that’s huge!), she revealed she’d had one new client and two repeat clients.

“I want to make sure to clarify for viewers and listeners,” Kim said, “it’s not like I’m just brand new doing this work. I’m brand new as far as business, but I’m not brand new as far as being a practitioner in this space.”

This distinction matters so much. Many of us have been doing healing work for years before we step into it as a business. The skills are there; it’s the business confidence that needs to catch up.

The Teacher Emerges

But Kim’s biggest news was about Theo Rapha, the healing modality she’s been practicing alongside her HIP work. Historically, it’s only been taught in person, but it’s now moving to an online format – and Kim gets to be part of training that.

“Throughout the HIP process, some of the women I worked on, I included Theo Rapha in my framework,” she explained. “There was a handful of women who were like, ‘Hey, this is really good, and I would like to learn how to do it.'”

What followed was a beautiful example of how our work creates ripples we can’t always see. Kim had conversations with the modality’s creator, and months later, “the Lord put it on her heart that this was the next step.”

From practitioner to teacher – now that’s a hockey stick moment.

My Journey: Learning to Allow

The Shift That Changed Everything

If Kim’s month was about external growth, mine was about internal transformation. “Something that you mentioned was that you are in the allowing space,” I told Kim. “And in the past four weeks, that message finally clicked for me. I heard it, but I didn’t hear it.”

This is how growth works in the healing world, isn’t it? We can intellectually understand concepts for months or even years before they land in our bodies and become lived experience.

For me, this shift happened during a surf trip to Costa Rica – my first real vacation in probably ten years. “Surfing is such a big mirror for me of how I show up in life in general,” I shared, “because the ocean doesn’t care. The ocean just slams it right into your face, all the lessons you need, so be ready or not.”

The Messy Reality of Platform Building

While I was having spiritual breakthroughs on surfboards, I was also dealing with the decidedly unspiritual reality of Facebook shutting down my ad account. An old hotel ad that hadn’t run in two years suddenly didn’t comply with new algorithms, and boom – account suspended.

“I needed to start brand new, and I wanted to wait until I’m in the US because guess what, when you are in the DR in the Dominican Republic, you are already suspicious for something,” I laughed.

This is the stuff they don’t teach you in business courses – how to rebuild your entire social media presence while traveling internationally, or how platform policies can derail months of work in an instant.

Breakthrough Realizations

But the real gold came during a work workshop where I was part of the backend team for a $5,000+ ticket event. I wasn’t facilitating – my job was to take care of the backend: marketing, website management, email outreach, social media posts, and vetting applications since it was application-based.

“I was like, ‘Hey, I mean, we are selling the most expensive ticket for that workshop… I can sell a ticket in that range.’ That was something like, ‘Hmm, it’s a mental barrier I realized I didn’t have that I needed to overcome.'”

Sometimes our biggest breakthroughs come from simply witnessing what’s possible. Even though I wasn’t the main facilitator, being part of something at that level shifted my internal sense of what I could charge, what I could offer, what I was worth.

The Hockey Stick Effect in Healing Business

This conversation kept circling back to a concept my fitness trainer calls “the hockey stick effect” – the idea that growth often looks flat for a long time before shooting up dramatically.

Kim had the perfect metaphor: “I recently heard about a particular type of bamboo plant where you see no growth at all on the surface, but underneath for six years, the roots are growing. And then all of a sudden it grows something crazy, like 33 feet in six weeks.”

“You can literally sit there and watch it grow,” I added, because I’ve seen this bamboo in action.

This is exactly what building a healing practice feels like. Years of inner work, skill development, and slow client building – and then suddenly, everything accelerates. Kim becoming a teacher, my pricing breakthrough, the organic follower growth – it all looks sudden from the outside, but it’s built on years of foundation.

Why This Matters for Your Practice

The hockey stick effect shows up everywhere in healing work:

• Habit building: You put on your running shoes every day for weeks before you actually start enjoying the runs
• Weight loss: Months of internal shifts before the external changes become visible
• Business growth: Consistent posting and showing up before the clients start flowing
• Personal healing: Processing trauma layer by layer until suddenly you realize you’re free

The key is trusting the process during the flat part of the hockey stick.

Future Visions: What’s Next

Kim’s Focused Growth

Kim’s goals for the next month are beautifully grounded: consistency in posting, getting testimonials on her website, and preparing for speaking opportunities. She’s also working on free resources for her LinkTree and considering a blog or newsletter.

“I’m a big pencil and paper kind of gal,” she said, “so I need to figure out what the best way to move forward is.”

I love this approach – not chasing every shiny object, but thoughtfully building on what’s already working.

My Authentic Expansion

For me, the focus is finally getting my Meta suite set up (thanks, Facebook drama) and committing to posting three times per week consistently. I’m also hoping to get another practitioner interview in – maybe with that astrologer I’ve been trying to schedule with for months.

“The cherry on top of the cake would be to get another interview in,” I shared. “Besides our chat, if I would get another recording.”

Simple goals, but that’s what sustainable growth looks like.

Healing Demo: The Power of Forgiveness Tapping

The most powerful part of our conversation came when Kim demonstrated Theo Rapha’s forgiveness techniques. This modality combines energy psychology, meridian work, and spiritual elements to release trapped emotions.

“Emotions being energy in motion can get stuck in different organs, different meridians, different pathways,” Kim explained. “It doesn’t even have to be some big super trauma for you to choose not to process something.”

The Three-Finger Method

Kim walked us through a simple but profound technique using three specific finger points:

Pinky finger (forgiving others): “All of me forgives [person] for all the ways they made me frustrated.” Repeat three times, then tap the side of your hand and say “enter.”

Pointer finger (forgiving yourself): “All of me forgives myself for the times I didn’t know better.” Three times, then enter.

Middle finger (forgiving the divine): “All of me forgives God for making my healing take so long.” Three times, then enter.

Even as Kim demonstrated this last one, talking about her own two-year healing journey, her voice caught with emotion. “I hope that the fact that I was about to cry even when I’m not meaning to illustrates the power of these simple tapping techniques.”

It absolutely did. I felt the shift in my own body just witnessing her process.

Why This Works

“This works with the meridian system,” Kim explained. “It’s tapping into your nervous system to calm and relax your nervous system. It’s helping to release the emotions that are like, ‘I don’t want to let go of this. This is keeping me safe. This is part of my identity, and I deserve to hang onto this.'”

The beauty of Theo Rapha is that it doesn’t just clear stuck emotions – it identifies the agreements we’ve made with limiting beliefs and helps break those patterns at the root level.

Key Takeaways for Aspiring Practitioners

1. Organic growth takes time but creates lasting connections – Kim’s follower growth happened because she consistently showed up with valuable content, not because she chased numbers.
2. Consistency beats perfection every time – Both of us are committed to showing up regularly, even when we don’t feel ready or polished.
3. Your subconscious will only reveal what you’re ready to handle – This applies to both personal healing and business growth. Trust the timing.
4. Building roots is just as important as visible growth – Those “slow” periods are actually foundation-building time.
5. Community and accountability accelerate progress – Having someone to share the journey with makes all the difference.

The Importance of Practicing Being Human

One of the most profound insights from our conversation came from a workshop I attended on systems change. “We are just practicing being human,” I shared. “Just keep on practicing. There’s some real existential problems that came up for people, and it was such a beautiful revelation – what does it mean to be human in such a world where everything is falling apart? And it’s just like, well, just practice being human and show up. That’s more than enough.”

This is why Kim and I do these monthly check-ins. Not because we have it all figured out, but because we’re committed to practicing being human in public. We’re showing the messy middle, the technical difficulties, the emotional breakthroughs, and the slow-then-sudden growth.

The healing world needs more of this transparency. We need to see that successful practitioners also deal with Facebook ad account shutdowns and self-doubt and the challenge of pricing their work appropriately. We need to know that growth often looks like bamboo – invisible for years, then explosive.

Most importantly, we need to remember that building a healing practice isn’t just about business strategy. It’s about becoming the person who can hold space for transformation – in ourselves and others.

If this conversation sparked something for you, I’d love to connect further. You can grab my free guide on getting started with holistic healing here, and you can explore Kim’s resources and connect with her at her LinkTree. We’d also love to hear about your own “hockey stick” moments in the comments below.

Disclaimer: We do not treat, diagnose, prescribe, or heal, but come alongside to help your body’s natural healing process.