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Learn from my mistakes!
I often got asked by people How To Start a Psychedelic Business, or how did I ended up doing psychedelic assisted therapy, be my own boss, own my own business and live on a Caribbean beach?
Even for me sometimes it seems surreal but when I really reflected on this I realized that it was a series of steps and conscious choices that led me here, to this moment.
Keep reading to learn what were those 10 major steps that led me on a path of service and a life I only dreamed about in communist Hungary, where my story started.
The first 5 steps are related more to personal development while the second 5 steps are related more professional development as a business owner in the healing field, but I believe that they are intimately connected and equally important to have a successful career and meaningful life.’
How To Start a Psychedelic Business
STEP 1 – Commit to self discovery
For me healing and self discovery is the same thing.
We all come to this world with a type of amnesia if you will. Part of this experience is to remember our true nature, who we really are. While most of us wants to live a meaningful life, and fulfill our purpose, how can you know what your purpose is if you don’t even know who you are.
Invest into your own personal healing. You can only take people as deep as you have gone but more than that your wounds are places of vulnerability and weakness. For this reason, any authentic healer will prioritize their own healing, because they understand that healing is our best protection.
I was plagued by this question since as early as I remember and the more I discover who I am the more I find my place and purpose in my life. I remember a long time ago my Mother asked: why are you always digging in the past? And I didn’t have a good answer I just had this unquenchable thirst to know, to figure out who I really am and what is this life about.
This drive, this deep urge inspired me to follow the road of self discovery and live an unconventional life. I think to guide others, you have to leave the beaten path because that’s where the magic is, that’s where your power is and many times that’s where your purpose is. At least, this worked for me.
STEP 2 – Educate yourself
Never stop reading, learning, experiencing and widening your perspective. Life is a learning experience. In the psychedelic healing field it is paramount that you have a wide range of tools, skills and deep understanding that comes from professional training, practice and personal experience.
For a long time I was a ‘workshop-junkie’ meaning I was obsessed of trying and learning different healing tools, modalities and approaches. Everything I heard about in the alternative healing field I wanted to try, learn and master. In retrospect I think I was just always looking for something more, something better until I got to the plants. Sacred plants, especially the Mother Ayahuasca took me to a whole other level. I started to understand how everything has its place in the tapestry of life, everything is connected, everything is important. But most of all I started to learn how to access my power to create the change I desire and this what I do to help others through my program Ayahuasca Assisted Therapy because I feel this way I can be in the greatest service.
STEP 3 – Follow your heart
This might sound cheesy, but I can say that this is the biggest lesson of my life. And definitely easier said than done. Especially in a western society where you are conditioned to follow science, logic and reason above all. You know what? Only your heart remembers who you are. Only your heart knows your purpose and direction. Only your heart values happiness more than the intellect. And only your heart knows what is real success. Inspiration flows through the heart and you access your higher self through your heart. Therefore to step onto your higher path, to fulfill your destiny you have to follow your heart.
This is a big one! I am still learning how to maintain that in my every days. For me it required great courage to leave the familiar life I have always known and to take a leap of faith and jump into the unknown. Fear can hold a lot of power. But I learned how to move beyond that fear and every time I did that, something amazing happened. My life expanded in unexpected ways. My heart opened a bit more. My mind relaxed a little and started to quiet down. And every time I could hear more the voice of my heart. My personal work with the Mother Ayahuasca was one of the most powerful tool that helped me to open my heart. I know from my personal experience, beyond a shadow of a doubt that when I you follow your heart, you become more of who you are, more of yourself, more full-filled, more whole.
Your heart is light, it can’t hold pain, fear or rancor. Through the heart we access true joy. Following my heart led me to Mexico, led me to do something I love and led me to surround myself with amazing people. But most of all I never regretted saying yes to my heart but there were many times I regretted saying yes to my mind:)))
STEP 4 – Be of service
I believe that when you follow your heart, you automatically step onto a path of service to others. This is because the heart knows that we are all one and what you do to others, you do to yourself. When you are on a path of healing and awakening you really feel for the suffering of others as you would feel your suffering and your priority will be to ease that pain.
Compassion allows us to tap into this conectedness in any moment. When you are in service to others you help to ease suffering in the world you are in service to the greater good and you are healing the world.
I always wanted to help others. You can say that I have a hint of savior complex. But at the end of the day I think I really wanted to save myself. The plants helped me realize that by saving myself I am naturally saving others! What a twist of faith:)
Whatever you achieve, whatever you accomplish, it means nothing if you don’t share with others. Sharing is giving back so others can receive the same way as we have.
As I walk my path, my personal accomplishments fill me with joy and pride but I have to say what is even more fulfilling and satisfying is to help another to experience the same joy.
STEP 5 – Do a great job
Work hard, be the best, have great results. Even if you have a gift, a talent a calling and all that, and even if you have a wide range of education and deep understanding, confidence and authenticity only comes through experience. So dedicate yourself to your purpose and take action every day toward that. Invest your time, energy to learn, practice and master and to support others to achieve great results. In the end you are as good as your results are or as satisfied your clients are.
I am obsessed about healing and finding a way to liberate myself from suffering. This is my out most priority. Therefore I will spare no time and effort to learn more, to experience more, to provide a better service and to help people to succeed. I spend countless time on research, going on retreats, participating in programs and collaboration and creating a huge amount of free content and offerings to find effective solutions and connect with people who are looking for this type of support. Therefore I have the best results and amazing testimonials that are the result of all this dedicated work. Your reputation is the best marketing and for a long time I only worked through personal referrals.
I believe that being a therapist, a guide for others is so much more than a job that leave behind at the end of the day and go home to your private life. For me it is a way of life committed to healing and self discovery and the byproduct of that is my job as a guide. If you follow these 5 guidelines mentioned above you can definitely become an excellent guide for others and make a decent living in general.
How to turn your psychedelic therapy practice into a conscious business?
After more than 20 years working as a therapist mostly in one on one setting I started to feel that I am ready to expand onto my next level of service and that’s for me is teaching. You know the saying that it’s greater help to teach somebody fishing instead of just always giving them the fish.
This is how I feel, and I know that through teaching I can make a bigger positive impact in more people’s life. And this makes me excited! But suddenly my little one to one therapy practice became a business that required a very different thinking.
Here is what I learnt from growing my practice as a psychedelic integration guide, creating my signature program, Ayahuasca Assisted Therapy and launched the first professional Training Program to train excellent Ayahuasca integration guides!
STEP 1- Put yourself out there and build an audience
If you want to make bigger waves out in the psychedelic space and put your message out there for more people you have to create authentic, professional and attractive content to draw in the right people.
But first of all you have to think about who are those right people? Who is your ideal listener, follower, customer? Then you have to be clear about what your message really is and find your authentic style, and this may take a while.
For me it took time and conscious effort to do all this. First I only had a simple website that I created. It took years to write and publish my book: Heart Medicine, Ayahuasca Assisted Therapy and the integration process to share my experience and to bring emphasis on the importance of integration in the psychedelic healing space. Not much later I launched my podcast about the same topic, providing a treasure trove of free content about working with the Mother Ayahusca, I have to say this took some time to work through some fears of being seen in this way. Writing was always easier for me. I have a blog for a long time but it seems that nobody reads now days. That’s why chose to do the podcast. I also offer a free biweekly Ayahuasca integration room on Clubhouse and I run a free monthly supervision group fro plant medicine practitioners as well. Now I do all this first and foremost because I am most passionate about what I do, what I stand for and I want to bring my message across to more people in a more effective way as well.
STEP 2 – Get professional support to know how to start a psychedelic business
To create authentic, professional and attractive content you need help with that unless you are also a computer and social media wizard. No matter how good is your content if it is not looking great and it doesn’t reach the right people. I learnt this from experience.
If you want to expand your practice, your business and audience you have to invest in professional help. I had a lot of resistance to this that I had to work through like believing that marketing is evil manipulation, that meditating and visualizing what I want is not enough and various others. But the best thing that you can do is to create a good team and outsource things that you are not an expert in! For example I am a good write and speaker but I am not so good at editing and marketing. I can’t tell you how much more easy my life has become when I let go of the idea that I have to do it all alone.
Now I know that this all cost money. But if you want to manifest more abundance in your practice you have to be willing to put money into it. I always say to my clients, you get out what you put in.
STEP 3 – Heal your relationship with money
We all have money wounds and most people operate from a lack consciousness. On top of that especially healers and spiritual teachers have a lot of cognitive dissonance around money and charing money for their services. The result of this is living always close to the survival level.
And guess what? You cannot grow and prosper if you are in lack and in survival mode. You can’t create financial abundance if you believe that money is evil and healing should be free.
I have to say I am still on this journey. Growing up in a communist country, well you can imagine my relationship with money and my business skills. But I made a huge progress. I learnt to receive, to be proud of what I give and to understood that receiving is also giving, offering the pleasure of giving to who we receive. I realized the money is just an energy, neither good nor evil, we decide what we do with it. I recognized that the more I can receive the more I can give and the bigger positive impact I can make. And in the end I decided that I prefer to be financially wealthy.
So if you want to expand your business, you have to work on your money mindset.
STEP 4 – Have a plan to start a psychedelic business
To grow your private practice into a conscious business you have to make a plan. The time to wing it is over and going with the flow won’t really work, I am telling you from experience!
Even when I work with individuals in my practice we have a treatment plan. So it make sense to have a business plan for your business. This doesn’t mean that things are written in stone and that there is no room for adjustments or flexibility. It simply makes logical steps to have an action plan with distinctive steps that you can follow, measure and change if necessary.
Initially for me it was challenging to get into this business mindset. I had to work on bringing together my values and ethics with business decisions and interests. It took me a while to figure out how to stay try to myself and be successful as a business. I am grateful for all the support and guidance I received and continue to get in this regard. It is a big learning experience but I can say that I am happy with the results so far. Since I developed a solid plan that I am most excited about things started to happen very rapidly and led to accelerated growth and unseen opportunities.
STEP 5 – Surround yourself with successful people
You know that saying, show me the five closest people around you and I tell you who you are. I believe it is true. When you are in the poverty mindset it is most likely that most people around you are in the same mindset. That’s one of the reason why it’s difficult to change that.
In order to change your mind about money, abundance and success, you have to have real examples that demonstrate you what you desire, and inspire you to get that.
This part definitely took some time to apply in my life. As a healer you see I have a slight savior complex. For a long time I would attract very broken people like others attract stray cats to help and take care of. One thing I learnt after many times I did that is that you can only help others if they want to be helped. Otherwise your help just becomes enabling. Sometimes I had to let people go so I could move on to my next step. This has nothing to do with love or judgement.
When I started to surround myself with successful people my view greatly expanded of what I thought was possible. I receive an abundance of inspiration and support.
And with all this I can share even more, like this article!
Let me know what you think!
Nina Izel
www.avatarhealingarts.com
