Clients Are Not a Marketing Strategy
People don’t work with me because they’re trying to get my life. They’re not looking at me and thinking, I want what she has. They’re not coming to Venus House because I’ve filled the internet with endless testimonials about how amazing I am, or turned my clients’ struggles and successes into proof of how good I am at what I do.
They work with me because of how they feel when they’re with me and how they feel when they leave Venus House.
Maybe they leave feeling relieved, inspired, motivated to finally do something they’ve been putting off. Or maybe they feel empowered and cared for. Maybe for the first time in a while they feel genuinely seen. And that’s what matters to me.
This is why I’ve become increasingly disturbed by what mental health and spiritual work have become online. We’ve taken incredibly sensitive work and dropped it into influencer culture.
Therapy, trauma, spirituality, healing, vulnerability, client stories...all of it can become content. And when the goal becomes building a personal brand, getting more followers, selling more services, or proving how effective you are, there’s a very real risk that the person you’re supposed to be serving becomes a marketing tool.
When you go to school to become a therapist, you learn about ethics. You learn that there are boundaries around the therapeutic relationship. You learn that clients are not there to serve you, your career, your ego, or your business. It is not ethical to exploit your clients. That doesn’t suddenly change because you’re posting online.
I’m not interested in taking someone’s pain, their personal story, or even their success and putting it on display so I can prop myself up and attract more clients.
My clients are not my marketing content.
Their hardest moments are not my sales pitch.
Their progress does not exist to make me look good.
I want the work to speak for itself, not through a highlight reel of other people’s lives, but through the experience of actually sitting across from me and realizing: I deserve to be here. I deserve to take up space. I deserve to live my life. That’s the point of Venus House.